Dual loyalists a threat to America's security

Exclusive To American Free Press

By Michael Collins Piper



Based on a variety of public comments by well-established opinion leaders of the Israeli lobby in America, there are legitimate reasons to question if American supporters of Israel support America’s interests—or Israel’s interests—first.

Even as most Americans were still mourning the deaths of some 6,000 of their countrymen following the events of Sept. 11, the leader of Israel and his supporters in America were lashing out at President George W. Bush and Secretary of State Colin Powell in the most bitter terms possible.

Ironically, the anti-American attacks by Israel and its supporters were coming at the same time that many Arab Americans and Muslims were fervently expressing their support for the president’s campaign against terrorism.

The major media did report the highly inflammatory public attack on the United States on Oct. 4 by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in which Sharon suggested Israel was being sold out by Bush and Powell—who have made friendly overtures to Arab countries that Israel does not like.

Suggesting that the vaunted U.S.-Israeli alliance meant nothing, Sharon said that “We can only depend on ourselves” and compared the Bush-Powell policies to the much-talked about so-called “appeasement” by Britain’s Neville Chamberlain in 1938 to Germany’s Third Reich during the crisis over Germany’s annexation of the ethnic German Sudeten region of Czechoslovakia.

To many Americans, Sharon’s analogy sounded almost as if he were suggesting that the Bush policies were somehow akin to those of the Hitler regime.

Sharon subsequently issued what amounted to a half-hearted apology but only after some Jewish leaders in America raised concerns that Sharon’s remarks could result in an anti-Jewish backlash by angry Americans who have sent hundreds of billions of dollars to Israel.

However, lest any supporters of Israel take Sharon’s explanation that he was “misunderstood” too seriously, one of Sharon’s leading cheerleaders in the United States, Frank Gaffney, Jr., president of the Center for Security Policy, an unabashed support group for Sharon’s hard-line policies, announced on Oct. 9 in his influential regular column in the conservative Republican daily, The Washington Times, that Sharon’s analogy was “actually very much on point.”

But Sharon’s comments—however hysterical—are only the tip of the iceberg. What the mass media has not widely reported are the rumblings of disloyalty toward the United States being made by American supporters of Israel.

The most preeminent evidence came in the Oct. 5 issue of Forward, a New York-based newspaper which is one of the most influential Jewish journals in the United States.

Its front page headline story slammed Bush for the public revelation (first reported in The New York Times and other major media on Oct. 2) by his administration that—prior to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks—Powell had planned a major speech calling for the establishment of a Palestinian state.

The headline read: “Zuckerman, AIPAC Lambaste Bush for Endorsing a Palestinian State.”

The “Zuckerman” refers to Mortimer Zuckerman, the publisher of U.S. News & World Report who also doubles as chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations.

AIPAC is, of course, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, an Israeli lobby.

To add insult to injury, Forward even featured a subheadline suggesting that President Bush was “undermining” his own war on terrorism. To make certain that no readers would miss the intent, the headline on a follow-up page announced “Lobbyists, leaders rip Bush on statehood.”

The use of the terms “lambaste” and “rip” leave no question about where the Israeli lobby’s leaders stand concerning America’s wartime president.

Asserting that Bush and Powell “appeared headed toward open confrontation with American Jewish lobbyists and community leaders” for the perceived crime of wooing moderate Arab states into its anti-terrorism coalition by endorsing Palestinian statehood, Forward said that American Jewish leaders “reacted furiously” to reports that Bush would become the first Republican president to announce support for a Palestinian state.

Forward asserted that the actions by the president “will put pressure on Jewish activists here to choose sides between America and Israel.”

The words speak for themselves: according to one of the most respected Jewish community newspapers in America, some Jewish Americans would actually “choose sides between America and Israel” as though any loyal American could make such a decision.

As a caution, Forward added that making such a decision was “something most community leaders do not relish in a time of crisis” and rightly so: Some actions those community leaders might make could constitute treason.

The aforementioned Zuckerman made the outrageous claim that “this is a very short-sighted and erroneous policy. It means that if you attack America, you’ll get something. This is the wrong message to send at the wrong time.”

For its own part, AIPAC said that un-named advisors—presumably meaning Powell and others who do not deem Israel’s interests to necessarily be those of the United States—are “undermining America’s war against terrorism” and they are “encouraging the president to reward, rather than punish, those who harbor and support terrorism.”

President Bush and his father are said to be quite disturbed about recent attacks on Powell by American leaders of the Israeli lobby led by Bilderberg members William Kristol and Richard Perle and their associates among the so-called “neo-conservative” network which is an influential cog in the Israeli lobby. The key role of the Kristol-Perle in the campaign for all-out war against the Muslim world was outlined in detail in the Sept. 24 issue of AFP.

Columnist Robert Novak, an outspoken Jewish-American critic of Israel, reported in The Washington Post on Oct. 4 that rather than putting a division between Powell and Bush, the attacks bring them together: “Neither wants to go it alone with Israel against all of Islam. . . . Personal attacks on Colin Powell are not likely to favorably influence George W. Bush.”

In the meantime, Anne Roiphe, an eminent novelist known for her sympathies for Israel, has raised the question as to whether Jews will still continue to support America if U.S. policies do not continue to place Israel first:



. . . When the smoke fades the Jews will still be there on the front line and America may well be done playing cowboy in alien pasture . . .

Are we so sure the American heartland will stay with us? American Jews have long rallied under the comforting banner that our Jewish cause is America’s cause. That’s not so clear right now.

. . . Our loyalties may be tested. For all our American Jewish disunity we may find ourselves tarred en masse as the enemy of peace.



Writing in Forward on September 28, Roiphe also acknowledged that—contrary to what the major media has been suggesting—U.S. support for Israel and the powerful influence of the Israeli lobby did help instigate the terrorist attacks.

Referring to supporters of Israel, Roiphe commented: “We are not responsible for the crimes of madmen, but we are connected most intimately to the moment. . . . We are innocent of the blood shed but we are nevertheless once again implicated in the events.”

“How do we protect ourselves,” she asks, “when the world erupts around us—when hatred of Israel is one of the factors that made American towers fall, leaving American children without their parents?”