THE HANDSTAND

February 2005



Senator Fullbright, Chair of Senate Foreign Relations Committee: 10/07/1973 on CBS' "Face the Nation".

"I am aware how almost impossible it is in this country to carry out a foreign policy [in the Middle East] not approved by the Jews..... terrific control the Jews have over the news media and the barrage the Jews have built up on congressmen .... I am very much concerned over the fact that the Jewish influence here is completely dominating the scene and making it almost impossible to get congress to do anything they don't approve of. The Israeli embassy is practically dictating to the congress through influential Jewish people in the country"

SOME JEWISH VIEWS  "THE war in Iraq was conceived by 25 neo-conservative intellectuals, most of them Jewish - Perle, Wolfowitz, Feith, Kristol, Abrams, Krauthammer, etc." Ha'aretz News Service, Israel (April 5, 2003)
"I could give you the names of 25 people who are within a 5-block radius of this office, who, if exiled to a desert island a year and a half ago, the Iraq war would not have happened!"  Thomas Friedman, New York Times (April 4, 2003)



"When one of our infants is weaned and becomes a youth,
Tyrants fall down on their knees before him.”

The correspondent for Mafkarat al-Islam in al-Qa’im reported that US troops showed up at the boy’s home at 9am on Sunday and found the sign. They asked their translator to interpret it and when they learned its meaning became enraged and tore it up. They then knocked on the door and threatened al-Hajj Salman that they would arrest him on charges of defamation of the US army.


Black Orpheus left Brazil with black magic in his heart and soul.

     Black Orpheus with Black Magic
took to the streets & 
played his music &
sang his sweet song
& stones & rocks
& trees & bees
& beast at feast
in fields listened
heard & were charmed

& folks studied war no more
& wars stopped &
the dead rose up &
smiled smiles again.
     
     joseph nyerere

* * *

September 11th....to say that Israeli’s warned Jews, no they did not and that’s the point: you see that American Jews have to find out that to Israeli’s they are American first! And that’s the point, that’s driving them crazy because see that suggests a relationship that they cannot stand you see. Israel’s chief lobbyist should be registered as an agent of a foreign power..!! It’s the question! It’s the question! It’s the question! It’s the question that’s actually the door to, you know, a vision! You say Who?
ABaraka, 1996

 WASHINGTON - As the Department of Justice intensifies its
investigation of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Jewish
communal leaders fear that the goal of the probe is to compel the
powerful lobbying organization to register as a "foreign agent"
representing the government of another country.
By Ori Nir
December 31, 2004


The possibility of having to change its registration is "an issue of
concern to Aipac, in terms of the outcome" of the investigation, said
Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice-chairman of the Conference of
Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations.

 Among other things, the shift would undermine Aipac's standing as
the chief grass-roots organization of American Jews who advocate for
a strong American-Israel relationship into an entity that represents
Israel in America. It also would play into the hands of Aipac's foes,
who for years have charged that the organization's chief loyalty was
to Israel rather than to the United States.
Even if an attempt to force Aipac to register as a foreign agent is
unsuccessful, Jewish activists said, a public fight over the issue
would damage the pro-Israel lobby and the wider Jewish community.
"This is a real threat. If Aipac eventually has to become a foreign
agent, that would mean the end of Aipac as we know it. But even if
not, it will be ugly," said the leader of one major Jewish group, who
- like most other communal leaders interviewed for this story - spoke
on condition of anonymity.
Several Jewish communal leaders believe that the FBI's initial
investigation into Aipac might have revolved around alleged
violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act. Passed in 1938,
the law was originally designed to block Nazi Germany's propaganda
efforts in America. It requires that a "foreign agent" register with
the Department of Justice, and submit detailed reports of "any
transactions or connections between the foreign government and the
U.S. agent, as well as detailed lists of expenditures," said Kenneth
Gross, a Washington lawyer who is considered one of the nation's
experts on the law.
Aipac is registered as a lobbyist with Congress, as required by the
Lobbying Disclosure Act. This law requires some disclosure of
lobbying activity on Capitol Hill, but not nearly the same level of
detail as the rules dealing with foreign agents. More than 20,000
lobbyists are registered with Congress. Fewer than 500 are registered
with the Department of Justice as foreign agents.

According to the law, any person or group that acts "at the
order, request, or under the direction or control of a foreign
principal" has to register with the Justice Department as a foreign
agent.

Aipac's foes have repeatedly called for the lobbying powerhouse to be registered as a foreign agent. In the mid-1970s, a prominent
Democratic senator from Arkansas, William Fulbright, (see headline this page,JB) led such a
campaign. In 1988, former senior CIA official Victor Marchetti filed
a complaint with the Department of Justice, alleging that a thorough
study he conducted of Aipac's conduct demonstrated that under the
law, the pro-Israel lobby should have been registered as a foreign
agent. The complaint was rejected.

........there have been incidents in the past in which
Israeli officials gave directions to Aipac to act in one way or
another, said former Aipac employees speaking on condition of
anonymity.
Jewish activists say that even if the likelihood is low that a legal
attempt to compel Aipac to register as a foreign agent will be
successful, public focus on the issue could be damaging. "Any open
debate of this issue could be damaging," said a Jewish communal
leader. "Questions of loyalty will resurface, and this time such
questions will have to do with the chief pro-Israel lobby in America."

Ten years ago Prof. Robert Rockaway, from the department of Jewish history at Tel Aviv University, published the first important study of Jewish criminal organizations (in English: "But He Was Good to His Mother: The Lives and Crimes of Jewish Gangsters," Gefen Publishing House, paperback edition, 2000).
Jewish-American gangsters helped in the struggle for Israel's creation during the 1940s. In his book, Rockaway describes how an emissary of the pre- state Haganah defense organization (the forerunner of the Israel Defense Forces) approached Meyer Lansky, one of the major players in the crime scene in America, and with his intervention, shipments of weapons and military equipment were smuggled out of New York harbor, bound for Palestine. Lansky wasn't the only one. According to Rockaway, other Jews from the underworld donated tens of thousands of dollars to the Haganah.