The past month was again one for the history books. On May 1 our president startled the nation with the news that Osama bin Laden had been found in Abbottabad, Pakistan. He was killed while resisting arrest in a nocturnal raid by a Special Forces team, which included Navy Seals. His body had been taken to the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson in the Arabian Sea where it was given up to the waters in order to avoid his burial place from becoming a shrine. We were also informed that DNA tests had identified his remains with 99.7% accuracy and “justice has been served.” While one may have questions about some of the specifics which we have been told, the main fact that the man is now officially pronounced dead can be regarded as good news. Whether or not this will benefit the ill-conceived “War on Terrorism” remains to be seen and so does what the lasting effects on our relationship with nuclear armed Pakistan will be.

This piece of good news was, however, more than offset by the shameful conduct of Congress which bodes ill for the future. At some time during the past months our Republicans had, for unfathomed reasons of their own, invited Israel’s President Benyamin Netanyahu, fondly referred to as Bibi in the media, to address a Joint Session of Congress on Tuesday May 24. In order to pre-empt any misunderstandings and to assure the country who is in charge in regard to our Middle East policy the president gave a speech on the day prior to Netanyahu’s arrival which also touched briefly, very briefly, on the Palestinian issue. There needs to be a “two state solution” he declared, where the Jewish state lives peacefully alongside a Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders and mutually agreed land swaps to account for some of the settlements. When Bibi read “1967 borders” he became apoplectic and vowed “Never Again!”

Next day’s meeting in the Oval Office with Obama was frosty. Although Obama pledged all of America’s might to the security of Israel this fell on deaf ears and “1967 borders” became a battle cry. Inasmuch as it was known that Netanyahu would give a talk not only before Congress on the following Tuesday but also to the major Israeli lobby group, AIPAC, on Monday, Obama decided to present his own version to AIPAC on Sunday. It brought no news but tried to reassure the Jewish leadership of our country that our heart is with Israel, come what may, and that the dispute is really a tempest in a teapot. The Palestinians will be made to see reason and any attempt on their part to unilaterally declare a state in September before the UN will not be viewed with favor here. He then promptly left town for Ireland and the UK where he found a warmer welcome than he nowadays receives in Washington. 

Netanyahu’s AIPAC speech was merely a dress rehearsal for next day’s before Congress and I must say that the latter was masterful. Dr. Joseph Goebbels could not have done better. But let me start with the pomp and circumstance as I saw it on CNN that morning. In last year’s February issue (The Humpty Dumpty Society) I mentioned the ceremony which accompanies our presidents’ annual State of the Union speech and this event was an exact replica. The only difference was the missing herald who would have announced, “Mr. Speaker: The Prime Minister of the State of Israel.” But everything else was there: the thunderous applause, handshakes and embraces as he made his way to the podium. There was more applause when he was officially introduced and at least 26 standing ovations during the 45 minute speech. One lone heckler was promptly removed from the scene and what has been called the “Lovefest” continued unabated.   

The substance of the speech was: Israel wants peace and needs peace! He welcomes the changes in the Arab world where the people are demanding democracy and this is completely in line with Israel’s aspirations, “an epic battle is now unfolding in the Middle East between tyranny and freedom. A great convulsion is shaking the earth from the Khyber Pass to Gibraltar. The tremors have shattered states and toppled governments. And we can all see that the ground is still shifting. Now this historic moment holds the promise of a new dawn of freedom and opportunity. Millions of young people are determined to change their future. We all look at them. They muster courage. They risk their lives. They demand dignity. They desire liberty.”

But Israel as the lone nation in the Middle East has already achieved this goal. “Israel is different. As the great English writer George Eliot predicted over a century ago, that once established, the Jewish state ‘will shine like a bright star of freedom amid the despotisms of the East.’ Well, she was right. . . . Of the 300 million Arabs in the Middle East and North Africa, only Israel’s Arab citizens enjoy real democratic rights. This startling fact reveals a basic truth: Israel is not what is wrong about the Middle East. Israel is what is right about the Middle East. Israel fully supports the desire of Arab peoples in our region to live freely.”

He then proceeded to castigate Iran’s leadership for their quest to obtain nuclear weapons and after this brief detour ended up with what is on everybody’s mind: the Palestinians. “We must also find a way to forge a lasting peace with the Palestinians.” In order to achieve it “I am willing to make painful compromises . . . this is not easy for me. I recognize that in a genuine peace, we will be required to give up parts of the Jewish homeland. In Judea and Samaria the Jewish people are not foreign occupiers. . . . This is the land of our forefathers . . . . But there is another truth: the Palestinians share this small land with us. We seek a peace in which they will be neither Israel’s subjects nor its citizens. They should enjoy a national life of dignity as free, viable and independent people in their own state.”

What should this state look like? There was no word in regard to what the painful compromises would consist of but a return to the pre June 1967 armistice line with minor corrections was clearly out of the question. Furthermore, the Palestinian state must be demilitarized and the Jordan River valley must remain under Israeli military control. The major settlement blocks must be incorporated into the Israeli state and Jerusalem “must remain the united capital of Israel.” Furthermore, “Hamas is not a partner for peace . . . So I say to President Abbas: Tear up your pact with Hamas! Sit down and negotiate! Make peace with the Jewish state!”   

As mentioned, our “lawmakers” were ecstatic and another scene of more than half a century ago came to mind. It was Goebbels’ speech in the Sportpalast in February of 1943 where he raised the rhetorical question: “Wollt ihr den totalen Krieg? Wollt ihr ihn, wenn nötig, totaler und radikaler, als wir ihn uns heute überhaupt erst vorstellen können?” It received frenetic applause and can be rendered into English as: Do you want total war? Do you want it, if need be, to be more total and radical than we are even able to imagine today? The analogy is not altogether inept. The war was already going badly at the time with the Wehrmacht in retreat on all fronts and a massive effort by the “homefront” would be required to prevent the expected Bolshevization of Germany and Europe. The folks who enthusiastically clapped at the Sportpalast can be excused because their lives were literally at stake. Israel today feels itself likewise beleagured and under existential threat, at least in the minds of its leading politicians. If Netanyahu had given this speech at the Knesset and it had received this welcome it would, therefore, also be understandable, but for our lawmakers to act in this manner is simply inexcusable. Were they really so bereft of all good sense not to realize that hey had applauded the death of any lasting Middle East peace and thereby fostered further wars in which we are bound to be inextricably involved?

May 24, 2011 is likely to have been Netanyahu’s “finest hour,” to use Churchill’s phrase, who didn’t realize when he uttered it that it was also the beginning of the end of the British Empire as he had known it throughout his life. But Netanyahu is no fool. He knew precisely what he was doing. As an apostle of peace and praising Obama ever so often, while playing the role of the previously eternally victimized who is now at long last standing up for freedom and democracy, he sounded all the notes Americans love to hear. Even when they were pure propaganda. To claim solidarity with freedom loving Arabs and at the same time exempting the Palestinians from their right to self-determination is the height of hypocrisy. To state that Abbas must disavow approximately half of his people who had voted for Hamas, while at the same time his coalition in the Knesset includes equally radical  elements, is disingenous. To state that “Only a democratic Israel has protected freedom of worship for all faiths” in Jerusalem is equally dishonest. Jews were forbidden to enter the city only after the disastrous Bar-Cochba revolt during the 2nd century of our era and it was the Muslim Caliph Umar ibn al-Khattab who granted the Jews unhindered access into the city after he had conquered it in 638. Religious freedom was also granted to Christians who lived there at the same time, although they had fought against him while the Jews had been his allies. Access to the Western Wall was denied to Jews thereafter only from 1948-1967 when the city was divided between Israel and Jordan. Netanyahu knows that observant Jews regularly came to live and die in the Holy Land, especially after the demise of the “Crusader kingdom,” and that Muslim rulers had always been more generous to Jews than Christians had ever been. He also knows that, while he was speaking, Muslims from the West Bank have only restricted access to the Al Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock, while the inhabitants of Gaza have none at all.   

Some of these glaring discrepancies between fact and fiction were, of course, picked up in the foreign media and even our Christian Science Monitor wrote under the headline, “Netanyahu’s real message to Congress: There will be no  peace talks. OK, those words didn’t come out of his mouth. But that’s the practical meaning of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to Congress this morning.” The article also mentioned that an Abbas aide had called it “a declaration of war.” Although one may take exception to that blunt opinion the fact remains, as even the Salt Lake Tribune conceded in an Editorial, that Netanyahu’s insistence that Israel must be able to retain troops on the Jordan River “is a deal breaker. No sovereign state of Palestine can be expected to tolerate Israeli troops along Palestine’s border with Jordan.”  

More significantly there were also Jewish voices raised, both here as well as in Israel, who saw through Netanyahu’s ploy and condemned it. In regard to the vigorous protestations over Obama’s Middle East speech MJ Rosenberg, who used to work for AIPAC in the 1980s, wrote under the headline, “Mission impossible. Keeping Israel happy.” “Trying to appease Netanyahu and AIPAC empowers the right and cuts moderates off at the knees. It’s time for Obama to treat these people as what they are: enemies of everything he aspires to do and be.  Why would the president think that he can possibly find friends on the right? He can’t.” A few days later Rosenberg wrote an article, “Congress to Palestinians: Drop Dead. Netanyahu’s address to Congress demonstrated that he has no intention of making peace with the Palestinians.” In the article he pointed out that “If anyone had any doubt whether the Palestinians would declare a state in September, they can’t have them now.”

This is likely to be correct. Netanyahu, fully supported by the American Congress, has left them no other choice and Palestinian envoys are currently traveling around the world to garner support from abroad. Sandy Tolan, associate professor at the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at USC, headlined his article on the problem with “The surreal solution. Following Obama’s weak speeches and Netanyahu’s rejection of any compromise, Palestinians look elsewhere for support.” He pointed out in the article that, “By making a new demand, Netanyahu has moved the goal-posts – insisting that a nation where one in five people is Arab be formally recognized as a state for Jews only. This may make sense for a delusional Congress, but why should any Palestinian leader agree to that?  . . . Obama, who raised genuine hopes in the West Bank with his Cairo speech nearly two years ago, has now utterly lost the Palestinians. As September approaches, and a talk of a third intifada builds, America may find itself virtually alone on the question of Palestine, far less able to influence events in the region.” 

The hour of truth for American Jews is rapidly approaching. They have to come to grips with the fundamental question: Where does my primary loyalty reside? The problem was highlighted by Aaron David Miller in his book on the ill-conceived second Camp David negotiations which had been initiated by the Clinton administration in its waning days (March 1, 2009. Whither Zionism? Revisited). Miller defined himself as “an American who happens to be Jewish” while Denis Ross’ attitude, the chief negotiator for our side, was the opposite. For Israel’s died in the wool Zionists this is a distinction without a difference because as Golda Meir had quipped when confronted with Kissinger’s stance of being an American Jew, “I don’t care. I read from right to left anyway (Kissinger Years of Renewal p.375).”

America’s Jews are now worried because soul-searching is required. This was expressed in print by Jane Eisner who wrote an article in The Guardian with the headline, “Don’t be fooled by the applause, Binyamin Netanyahu. Israel’s PM received a rapturous reception from Congress, but US Jewish opinion at large is frustrated with his intransigence.” In the article one finds statements such as, “Jews in the United States do not like finding themselves in the position of choosing between their president and the prime minister of Israel. . . . Netanyahu’s defiant stance puts us in a heart-wrenching conundrum. We can choose to support his view of the world, in which an aggrieved Israel bears no responsibility for the occupation and for the impasse in negotiations – and many American Jews will. They will side with him and the Republican Congress who offered him this unusual platform without, of course, any reciprocal chance to hear another point of view. But I don’t believe that all or even most American Jews share that position. . . . Most of us dread what will happen in September, if the UN vote is successful and Israel will become even more isolated and demonised. You are making us choose, Prime Minister Netanyahu. Please don’t.” 

This article is important not only for the truth it tells but that it was published in the UK rather than the US. I have yet to see a similar one in the American press where it would make the impact it deserves. Who knows, let alone reads, The Guardian here? The fact that these views by an American Jew could only be published in a major foreign newspaper testifies to the censorship the average American public lives under.

Politicians always like to present their position as the only legitimate one for whatever people they speak for. Furthermore, they always act as if they were speaking for all of the people of the given nation they represent. Zionism’s spokesmen: Herzl, Weizmann, Ben-Gurion, always confronted the Gentile world with an image that their views and desires were those of all Jews, which was never the case. Netanyahu is no exception and he simply follows in their footsteps. But the fact is that he does not speak for all of his citizens in Israel and neither does he for world Jewry at large, although he’d like us to think so. The Diaspora Jews have fundamentally different needs from those in Israel. They want to pursue their personal goals in peace and prosperity in whatever country they live in. They will support their relatives abroad but the Zionist dream of emigrating to that patch of land for which they are supposed to “eternally yearn,” holds little attraction. The limited applicability of the idea was clearly demonstrated after 1948 and especially after the Soviet Union was forced to let their Jewish citizens emigrate. About eighty percent of them chose Western nations rather than Israel, and one must say for good reason.

Zionism’s problem with the Jewish Diaspora is not new and points to what may be called the dual identity of the Jewish soul. Some Jews have always regarded themselves as members of a Jewish nation, albeit in exile, while others have mainly felt themselves as either religiously or ethnically associated by tradition and shared fate with other Jews. The German word Schicksalsgemeinschaft is, therefore, quite appropriate. This duality is the reason why Zionism, which emphasized nation status above everything else, was originally met with such hostility by the majority of Jews in the West. They did not want to go to Palestine and the specter of being accused of dual loyalty was a very real one of which, as we know, Hitler took full advantage. His war was not only against the Allied nations it was also against the “Jewish nation” which had been the first to declare “holy war” on him by initiating boycotts of German goods immediately within two months of his ascension to power in 1933. Subsequently Weizmann promised Chamberlain in September of 1939, that the Jewish people would extend all possible help to the Allies in the war effort. Deliberately inflated fears in March of 1933 as to what Hitler might do as well as attempts to destabilize his regime had turned into a genuine horror when he took vicious revenge during WWII. The German Jews had warned their American cousins before the war not to make life any harder for them than it already was, but these voices remained unheard. The propaganda mills ground on with the well-known disastrous outcome (Understanding the Holocaust Parts I-III).

This is history but what are the “facts on the ground” today? We owe the term to Ariel Sharon in regard to the settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories and it was duly echoed by George W Bush, thereby no longer making them illegal in American eyes. But let us start at home. The overriding aspect which limits Obama’s choices is the election campaign for 2012 which is already in full swing. He cannot alienate major Jewish donors and regardless of what his real feelings are in regard to the Palestinians he is forced to at least pay lip-service to Jewish opinion in our country. Although there are some warning voices in the Jewish community which point out that continued unquestioned support of the Netanyahu government is a disaster, this has not yet reached the mainstream papers such as the New York Times, the Washington Post or the LA Times. This would be a pre-requisite to counter the claim by Republican presidential aspirants that he is “abandoning our most faithful ally.” Mitt Romney has already set the tone, by declaring that “Obama has thrown Israel under the bus.” This is the type of rhetoric we can expect for the rest of this year and up to November of next. It will be a serious hindrance for the conduct of a foreign policy which serves American rather than Zionist interests. A foreign policy which is of “the honest broker type” could only happen if the distinction between Zionism and Judaism were to be fully recognized. But this depends now entirely on our Jewish community. Unless it speaks out and dissociates itself from Likud policies it will bear the responsibility for the disasters which are in the offing. This is America’s current tragedy: we cannot pursue an independent foreign policy in the Middle East because the propaganda of the “Judeo-Christian tradition,” makes Israel for all practical purposes already the fifty first state of the Union. American Jews, who see what the future holds if the current course is maintained, need to muster courage and declare themselves unequivocally on the side of universal human rights which grant equality to Palestinians. If they were to do so they would not be alone but merely be helping the Israeli peace camp which is in urgent need of it.

In Israel Netanyahu, for all of his bravado, is also in a real bind. Even if he wanted to make a viable peace agreement with the Palestinians it is too late for a number of reasons. First of all he would lose his job because his government coalition would never ratify any agreement. Netanyahu has placed emphasis on Hamas as the chief reason why there can be no negotiations with the Palestinians but this is merely a ploy. First it was Arafat who was no partner for peace, then Abbas failed the test, when Hamas won the election there could not be further negotiations with Abbas because he could not speak for all of the Palestinians and when the Palestinians reconciled there can be no negotiations because Hamas is a terrorist organization and as such unqualified to participate. The offshoot is in essence: there can be no serious negotiations although we need to talk about them endlessly. Furthermore, Americans are by and large unaware of what Netanyahu’s coalition partners in government really stand for. This was highlighted by Elliot Spitzer who is a former governor of New York, and now hosts the CNN prime time news slot. Last week he had Dr. Hanan Ashrawi, a well-known Palestinian educator and legislator, for a few minutes on his program. Spitzer, who is Jewish, dominated the conversation with the usual assertion that it’s all the Palestinian’s fault why there is no peace and that they must disavow Hamas. Ashrawi, who happens to be Christian, was not given a proper chance to disabuse him of some of his notions and when she told Spitzer in regard to Hamas that Netanyahu’s government is full of people who want to get rid of the Palestinians he scoffed and broke off the conversation. But Ashrawi had a point which Americans don’t want to recognize.

  Currently Netanyahu’s coalition government consists of six political parties of which Likud is the largest and it has steadfastly refused the establishment of a Palestinian state. The current apparent agreement is a sham because the conditions, before negotiations even start, are unacceptable and everybody knows it. Next comes Yisrael Beitenu (Israel is our Home) under the leadership of Avigdor Li(e)berman (the name is spelled both ways in various documents) whose family emigrated from the Soviet Union to Israel in 1978. He is also currently Deputy Prime Minister and Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs. His party aims to establish an exclusively Jewish state in as much of the conquered territories as possible, including the Golan Heights. Li(e)berman’s attitude towards Arabs in general and Palestinians in particular is largely one of disdain. It has been reported that in 1988 he had called for the flooding of the Aswan dam in retaliation for Egyptian support of Yasir Arafat and in May of 2004 he has been quoted as having said that 90 per cent of Israel’s 1.2 million Palestinian citizens “have no place here. They can take their bundles and get lost.” 

After these comes Labor under Ehud Barak whose views I have discussed previously on these pages (March 1, 2007 Barak in Salt Lake City). Although he would agree to a Palestinian state, the attached conditions would not be accepted by any Jew if the situation were reversed. The other three coalition partners come from the religious and settler organizations. Shas opposes any negotiations over the status of East Jerusalem, and so does United Torah Judaism. The Jewish Home party rejects the return of any of the Occupied Territories.

When confronted with a government of this type, reasonable persons must ask themselves: who is the negotiating partner the Palestinians are supposed to have? Yes, everybody will agree that all Israeli governments, including the present one, want peace. But they want it on their terms. The demand is: give me what I want now and don’t be surprised if I want more later on. This was precisely the tactic Ben-Gurion had successfully used with the British. When partition of Palestine was offered in 1937 the Arabs rejected it but Ben-Gurion wisely decided that half a loaf is better than none and that he would get the rest through military action later. Now that the shoe is on the other foot Israelis have no incentive to give up their conquests unless forced to by world opinion.

As mentioned earlier, for peace negotiations to begin the Palestinians must recognize not merely the existence of the state of Israel but that Israel is a “Jewish state.” What this means precisely is not quite clear. Is it supposed to be a theocratic state based on the laws of the written and oral Torah? Or is it to be a secular state where “Jewish values” govern? How these differ from universally agreed one, has never been defined.  But whatever a “Jewish state” is it cannot be democratic because the non-Jewish minority in the country can by definition never be full-fledged citizens. Inasmuch as any Palestinian government sees itself as responsible for all Palestinians wherever they live it can never agree to this demand unless the rights of Palestinians in the Jewish state are clearly and precisely spelled out. If one were to say that the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza have no right to speak for their relatives in Israel and the diaspora a fair minded person would immediately counter with: but this is the right Zionists are appealing to when it comes to Jews anywhere in the world.

Netanyahu and his partners have, however, an additional problem which they know but don’t talk about. The settlements on occupied land after the 1967 War were originally a secular military enterprise to keep the land for “security reasons.” But by now they have acquired an additional religious dimension. The ground is holy, all of it, and no government has the right to give up an inch. To evict a Jew from any part of Eretz Israel is a sin punishable by death. Rabin was murdered for precisely that reason. In the current climate any government which proposes to do so is likely to fall and there is even the danger that the army may refuse to evict the settlers, because it has also been imbued with orthodox religious fervor.   

The facts on the Palestinian side have also changed in the past few years. As mentioned, Jewish settlements have proliferated and bypass roads, which Palestinians are prohibited to use, crisscross the West Bank. Travel within the territory has also been impeded by numerous checkpoints as well as by the “Wall of Separation” which has gone up. Ian Buruma reported in the New York Review of Books that it could take between three and five hours “to get to Bethlehem from Ramallah, depending on the Israeli checkpoints. Normally a trip would take only thirty minutes via Jerusalem. But Ramallah is also now surrounded by settlements and cut off by the wall. Some Palestinians have permits to go to Jerusalem . . . but it can take them three, four or five hours to get there, even though the trip can be made by car in fifteen minutes.” One may ask: how long are people supposed to put up with this kind of chicanery?

During the past two years the Palestinians have largely given up the idea that violence will lead to independence and have charted a different course. Under its Prime Minister, Salam Fayyad, the infrastructure has been developed in preparation for independence. Construction is rapidly proceeding in Ramallah and even a sushi restaurant has opened. The Palestinian economy in the West Bank is currently booming and the goal of independence, which was announced in September of 2009 for two years hence, seems now to be in grasp. Add to this President Obama’s statement of last September “that he expected the framework for an independent Palestinian state to be declared in a year [New York Times April 2, 2011].” In this context reconciliation with Hamas was a necessity because the Palestinians have to speak with one voice come September.

These developments including the Egyptian opening of the Rafah border to the people of the Gaza strip puts the Netanyahu government in an extremely difficult position. As the above mentioned New York Times article also reported time is not on the Israelis’ side any longer and they know it. The article quoted Ehud Barak as having told a conference in Tel Aviv, “We are facing a diplomatic-political tsunami that the majority of the public is unaware of and that will peak in September. It is a very dangerous situation, one that requires action. Paralysis, rhetoric, inaction will deepen the isolation of Israel.” What would the consequences be if the UN admitted the Palestinian state with the borders which existed prior to the 1967 Six Day War? Israel would then automatically become an occupying power of another member state of the UN and as stated in the same New York Times article, “Every military base in the West Bank will be contravening the sovereignty of an independent U.N. member state.”

In this light Netanyahu’s triumph in Congress and the enthusiastic reception upon his return to Israel is quite meaningless. He said correctly in Washington that the ground is shifting but he and his followers have not drawn the proper lesson. He had insisted on “security” for Israel which in today’s world is ephemeral. Not even the people in the Twin Towers had security on 9/11, and rockets know no borders. Security can no longer be obtained by “strategic depth” or a powerful military. The bomb, which Israel has, is still the most effective deterrent as the example of North Korea versus Libya as well as Iraq has proven. The optimal deterrence is, however, conduct. If Israel were to give up plans of dominating the Palestinians and instead concentrated its efforts on economic and scientific developments, in conjunction with the Arab world, it would be accepted as a partner and fears of invasion and/or obliteration could be shelved. But this is too much to hope for because emotions, religious as well as political, stand in the way.

September, which bodes ill for Zionists, is only 3 months away. The clock is ticking and if the Palestinians can avoid the temptation of another intifada within this period their statehood might come to pass. But their problem is again the US. Although there is no veto in the General Assembly its president, Joseph Deiss, has already said that membership without approval of the Security Council is out of the question. As such, the ball will again be in Obama’s court. Will the US veto the resolution as we did on the legality of the settlements earlier in the year, will we attempt to have the Brits veto it for us, or will we simply abstain from voting? This is the question Obama faces and no one can answer it for him.

The Arab spring is turning into a hot summer and Netanyahu’s problems can only grow rather than diminish. What politicians have done in the past in situations of this type was to make a war to detract attention. This may take the form of Israel bombing Iran’s nuclear plants or an invasion of Lebanon or Syria. We don’t know what the plans of Mossad and the Israeli Army are but judging from past experience they may well do something to avoid the September tsunami, to use Ehud Barak’s term. I would not doubt that a major “false flag” terrorist attack on the US may also be under consideration. It is a dangerous time and Congress has deprived us of the last hope for a peaceful future. We have squandered our freedom of independent action and are now thoroughly enmeshed in the support of a reactionary regime in Israel, to our and the rest of the world’s detriment.

Most Americans don’t see what’s on the horizon and those who do resign themselves to the notion that they can’t do anything about it. This is not quite true. Currently it is only propaganda which keeps us captive and theoretically it could still be counteracted. But where are the people of stature in our country who would be willing to take up this task? Yet it is urgent because unless the pro Likud stance of our media is reversed we will have a war which will be far more serious than the ones we are currently engaged in.