News roundup

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee spy case is heating up again. The FBI clearly believes that AIPAC is at the center of an important political conspiracy, but may not be able to make the whole case in the legal system.

Whatever the outcome of the case, AIPAC should have to register as a foreign agent. It is shameful that a small and fanatical group of rightwing devotees of colonial settlerism in the West Bank should be virtually controlling the foreign policy of the US Congress toward the Middle East-- especially since colonial settlerism in the West Bank causes so many people in the Middle East to hate the United States for supporting it-- and to lash out at us.

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Gee, I wonder who is funding those illegal colonies in Palestinian territory? Alas, it is I. The Israeli government funds them, while orally distancing itself from them, and the Israeli government gets $10 a year from each American, including me. A family of five in America since 1980 has conservatively been made to donate $1250 to the Israeli government, so that it can thumb its nose at our peace plans. Nor has it bought us security; the Israeli security agencies didn't do squat to prevent 9/11 (they're supposed to be protecting our flank in the Middle East for all that money), and Israeli intelligence told us Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. So I'm funding the illegal colonies. I don't like funding them. You know why I have to? Because all my representatives in Washington are deathly afraid of being targeted for un-election by AIPAC. It is not a completely irrational fear, though AIPAC is not nearly as powerful as Capitol Hill seems to think.

The Israeli Far Right is so virulent that it already killed one prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin, for daring make peace with the Palestinians, and is threatening to kill Ariel Sharon for planning a withdrawal of settlers from the vast and desperately poor slum of Gaza. (People commiserate with me for being constantly attacked, smeared and harassed by far rightwing Zionists in the US press, but it is minor compared to what they are saying about Sharon himself! Some people, you're not allowed to disagree with, Or Else.

Of course, it is not as if Sharon is himself a peace-maker. He stole more land on a vast scale this week, with a plan to put 3500 new settlers into the West Bank, , which is euphemistically called "settlement expansion" in the Western press, and which will draw no more than a rap on the knuckles from Condi Rice.