israel – R&R – Reachout and Rebuild

Drumbeat of War

David Posnett — Sun, 26 May 2019 18:39:19 +0000

John Bolton is at it again. Watch the video and then please share !

From: https://www.facebook.com/moveon/videos/2379403038949493/?v=2379403038949493

Depressing Half-hour Meeting with Lee Zeldin

David Posnett — Sun, 28 Oct 2018 23:40:18 +0000

Ken Dorph 7:05pm Oct 27

I wrote this letter to a Long Island newspaper in reaction to my depressing half-hour meeting with our local Congressman, Lee Zeldin, to discuss the Middle East.
Let’s hope it gets published. Feel free to read and share.

Lee Zeldin, the Middle East, and Me

I knew before meeting Congressman Zeldin that our views would differ. He avidly supports President Trump’s bullying approach to foreign policy. But I did not expect to get massively depressed afterwards.

Received wisdom is that Long Island voters don’t give a whit about foreign policy. This is a shame, given that our disastrous overseas adventures have sucked our economy dry and ruined our global standing.

I’ve lived in the Middle East for a good portion of my life, from Morocco to Syria. I was invited to share my views with Congressman Zeldin based on my unusual experience. I was told that Zeldin wanted me to send detailed questions beforehand. I painstakingly constructed seven questions of concern, from the war in Yemen to the plight of the Palestinians. In each case, I shared my own experience on the ground.

When we were settled in Zeldin’s office, I asked if we should start with the prepared questions that he’d requested. Puzzled, he looked at his assistant. He hadn’t seen them. Fortunately, I had a copy with me.

I am now working on my third project in Iraq since the invasion. Zeldin puts himself forth as a veteran of the Iraqi war. Someone told me that they thought he had been a parachutist. I was curious.

So I told him about my various projects in Iraq – always out there with the Iraqis, sleeves rolled up. I am now on working a project in Mosul, trying to entice small businesses back amid the ruins.

I asked about his experience in Iraq. He was cagey, evasive. I later pressed him a second time and again, no details. I later learned from a fellow politician that Zeldin’s war experience consisted of a few weeks in Iraq as a JAG officer working in some back office with Americans, no contact with the Iraqis. Our perspectives could not have been more different.

I am also working on a project with the woebegone Yemenis. The Saudi-American destruction of that country is at the forefront of my mind. So I asked why we are taking sides in a tribal war in Yemen that’s killing so many civilians.

“There is a plan of the Iranians of a growing regional influence that is a threat for US Interests, whether it’s the US itself or Israel, in the region.”

Yemen is really far from Israel, so that was a puzzling response. In the Middle East, it is widely believed that US foreign policy is concocted in Israel. His response seemed to affirm that.

I asked why he and the President are so rabidly anti-Iran and pro-Saudi. I’ve lived in Saudi Arabia, the country that supplied most of the perpetrators of 9/11. I personally like many individual Saudis but their government is less democratic and less free than Iran. Why were they the good guys?

A muddled answer for that one, except that we’re ‘defending American interests.’ I took this to mean cheap gas and weapons sales. It’s hard to defend Saudi Arabia as a beacon of human rights, and this before Khashoggi’s brutal murder and dismemberment.

Ok, but then how do we get back to peace in Yemen? I didn’t understand how selling all these arms to the Saudis was going to help. Shouldn’t we stop supplying the weapons and logistical support that are killing so many civilians, including children?

His response: “Not unless there’s, not unless … I’m not completely … No one’s read members of Congress like myself completely what strategically the big picture is with that deal. So I’m left to speculate. I don’t believe that that is a solely Yemen play, what the President agreed to in Saudi Arabia. That there is more of a regional play there that’s going on right now. Yemen is a piece of it. If everything got narrowed down to that we’re giving weapons in order to fight in Yemen, it would be a different analysis of what I am speculating to be part of the picture, not all of it.”

I then questioned our foreign aid to Egypt, almost all of it military in a country where over two thirds of the people have no bank account. Since Camp David, Egypt has been the second largest recipient of our funds after Israel. Together the two have received almost half of all US foreign aid for decades. Egypt is a dictatorship arising from a coup. According to US law (Section 508) we must cut aid to countries whose democratic leaders are overturned by a military coup. I personally know Egyptians who have been arrested or have fled for speaking their minds.

Why didn’t we question what’s going on in Egypt?

Long silence, then: “I don’t know exactly what the play is as far as leveraging the money [to Egypt].” Zeldin changed the subject to cutting foreign aid to the Palestinian Authority, whose aid has been cut to zero. Egypt still gets billions. But they are the good guys. Like the Saudis.

Tunisia is the Great Hope for democracy in the Arab world, which we Americans purport to care about. Yet the day before our chat, the US Government had cut the already paltry aid to Tunisia from US$120 to US$70 million. Meanwhile Israel, less than half Tunisia’s size, gets several billion in aid a year, receiving each day more than Tunisia’s yearly package. Why in the world would we cut back such critical aid?

“I don’t know, how much did we cut?”

Almost half. This happened yesterday. You voted to support the cut, as I understand.

“I have to dig into that one deeper.”

Well, I never heard back on that, but I didn’t expect to.

We ended on the most delicate of issues, Israel and the Palestinians. I said I thought it was fairly simple: One state or two. Most Americans, including most American Jews, oppose Israel’s colonizing of the occupied territories. The massive settling of the West Bank by Israeli Jews was clearly ending the possibility of two separate states. A single state that absorbed the Palestinian lands, if democratic, would mean the end of the Jewish state, since the majority would be non-Jewish. So how could he support the settlements if he supported two states, as he claimed? Zeldin started to talk about the occupied territories, then corrected himself and said, “the disputed territories.” I’d heard about this trick of right-wing Israelis to falsify the narrative. I corrected him, a bit heated now: I pointed out that since the territories were taken in war, they were occupied, as per the Geneva Convention, to which the US is a signatory. Colonizing occupied territories is illegal. I tried to get him to commit to opposing the settlement project, but he refused.

By this time we realized we had no common ground, and it was time to go. I shook his hand but was deeply saddened to think that this man represented me on the world stage. No wonder Americans are so unpopular.

I went home and went to bed for three hours with the blanket over my head. If this is the best we have to offer, there is little hope for anything but more needless confrontation and endless war.

We are at a crossroads. Lee Zeldin personifies the wrecking ball diplomacy of Sheldon Adelson, John Bolton, and Donald Trump: Tear up treaties negotiated by people of good faith, make enemies of old friends (Canada!), and bully nations big and small. This election we can choose a grown-up who can play well with others. I have met Perry Gershon several times and the difference cannot be more dramatic. Folks like Zeldin gave us the disaster of the Iraq war, trillions of our good money down the drain, and whole nations laid waste. This same clique now wants to do battle with Iran, an even more terrifying prospect. More than half our discretionary budget goes to the Pentagon and our foreign wars, leaving us with a failing national infrastructure and a growing national debt.

Great nations die by battling on all fronts while letting their heartlands wither. Let us not follow that path.

Bolton War(s)?

David Posnett — Mon, 14 May 2018 18:21:02 +0000

It is unambiguous! Any war ensuing due to the Bolton appointment can now be squarely blamed on Zeldin and his fellow Republicans who have endorsed Bolton for National Security Adviser.

The reations from different law makers were recently reported in the NY Times and they include this:

Representative Lee Zeldin of New York: “Ambassador John Bolton is ridiculously knowledgeable and will be a great national security adviser. The leaks coming out of the National Security Council will end, Obama administration holdovers will be gone, and the team, chemistry and work product will all be improved. Ambassador Bolton is a very underrated, amazing American, and I applaud this extraordinarily talented pick. I look forward to working closely with Ambassador Bolton on the many national security concerns facing our exceptional country.”

Unfortunately, this appointment did not require Senate confirmation. Unlike Bolton’s unsuccessful nomination for the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations in 2005.

Let me sum up why Bolton is so dangerous. Bolton has been preaching pre-emptive war for decades: war in Iraq, war against Iran, war in Syria, war against N. Korea.

John Bolton, who served as United States Ambassador to the United Nations under former President George W. Bush, had a recent Op-Ed in The Wall Street Journal calling for pre-emptive war against North Korea. According to foreignpolicy.com/:

Trump shocked the world by agreeing to meet with Kim sometime before the end of May. Reports suggest that the timing of Trump’s move to replace McMaster with Bolton, as well as the president’s earlier decision to fire Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and replace him with Mike Pompeo, is an effort to put key personnel aligned with his views in place leading into the summit. Yet if Bolton reflects, or influences, Trump’s position on North Korea, the entire endeavor is doomed. Indeed, Bolton reacted to news of the summit by dismissing any prospect for success and rooting for a quick failure. According to Bolton, the only value in having this “unproductive” leader-to-leader meeting now, instead of starting with a more deliberate set of working-level talks, is to “foreshorten the amount of time that we’re going to waste in negotiations that will never produce the result we want, which is Kim giving up his nuclear program.”

John Bolton has a history of skewing intellingence and is known to retaliate against people he disagrees with. Here is a sample from talkingpointsmemo.com:

A biological warfare analyst wrote back that Bolton’s proposed comments overstated what U.S. intelligence agencies really knew about the matter, and, as routinely happens, suggested some small changes.

The analyst was summoned to Bolton’s office. “He got very red in the face, and shaking his finger at me, and explained to me that I was acting way beyond my position,” the analyst, Christian Westermann, recalled later during a Senate inquiry. Bolton then demanded that Westermann’s supervisor remove him permanently from the biological weapons portfolio, thundering that “he wasn’t going to be told what he could say by a mid-level munchkin.”

Jimmy Carter is warning of a looming nuclear war!

My Sources

http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/john-bolton-is-foolishly-calling-for-preemptive-war-against-north-korea/

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-legal-case-for-striking-north-korea-first-1519862374

https://www.theaustralian.com

http://foreignpolicy.com/2018/03/23/john-bolton-is-a-national-security-threat/

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/john-bolton-skewed-intelligence

https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/938108/North-Korea-news-World-War-3-Donald-Trump-Kim-Jong-un-USA-Jimmy-Carter-latest-video

Zeldin – Bannon Alliance

David Posnett — Thu, 30 Nov 2017 02:02:05 +0000

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – NOVEMBER 29, 2017
CONTACT: Mara Gerstein: mgfightclub@gmail.com or Victoria Glynn
Victoria.Glynn@berlinrosen.com
Coalition of Groups Launch Petition to Demand Lee Zeldin Disinvite Steve Bannon From
Upcoming NYC Fundraiser

Suffolk County and New York, NY – New York City and Long Island residents and activist
organizations are planning coordinated actions between now and Lee Zeldin’s December 14th fundraiser in New York City to protest his headline speaker, Steve Bannon.

Steve Bannon proudly foments hatred against immigrants, Muslims, people of color, women, the poor, and Jews. As a member of Trump’s inner circle and executive chairman of Breitbart, Steve Bannon’s platform and strategy empowered the white supremacists who violently took to the streets in Charlottesville. Now, removed from the White House, Bannon is focused on electing extremists to Congress who support Trump and a white supremacist agenda. By hosting Bannon, Congressman Zeldin is declaring that he wants to be part of that plan too.

Jewish social justice organization, Bend the Arc, in collaboration with several New York activist groups, launched a petition to demand that Lee Zeldin immediately disinvite Bannon from his December 14 fundraiser.

You can read and sign the petition here: http://www.weveseenthisbefore.org/zeldin_dump_bannon

The groups are also planning protests as part of a coordinated response.
Congressional District 1 resident Amy Turner said,” Zeldin says he represents the needs of our diverse district yet he is willing to align himself with Bannon’s white supremacist agenda. We will not allow him to infect our district and the City of New York with his message of hate.”

Rabbi Jan Uhrbach, rabbi of a congregation in Lee Zeldin’s district, said “I’m sickened that Zeldin is aligning himself with Bannon and the divisiveness and bigotry he fuels. During the high holiday season, I stood in the wind and rain outside Lee Zeldin’s office alongside Jews and allies to blast the shofar. I said these words to Zeldin: ‘You cannot include Nazis and White Supremacists as part of your coalition and not be complicit in their hate and violence. It’s that simple.’”

This is national news that is spreading virally!

No one Above the Law, at Least in Israel

David Posnett — Fri, 08 Sep 2017 12:38:04 +0000

Sara Netanyahu Will Be Indicted For $100K Fraud Scheme

September 8, 2017 By JTA

The wife of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Sara, will be indicted on four counts of fraud for allegedly diverting some $100,000 in public funds for her family’s personal use, Attorney General Avichai Mendelblit said.

Mendelblit gave Sara Netanyahu the news Friday, according to Army Radio.

“The attorney general examined the case evidence and reached the decision [to indict Sara Netanyahu] after consulting relevant sources, including the state prosecution and the Jerusalem District Prosecutor’s Office,” read a statement from the attorney general’s office Friday.

Benjamin Netanyahu’s office dismissed the indictment as “absurd and unfounded.”

“Sara Netanyahu is a brave and honest woman,” read a statement posted on his Facebook page. Any financial discrepancy at the Prime Minister’s Residence came from former housekeeper Menny Naftali, described in the statement as “problematic.”

The Netanyahus ended their statement Thursday by alleging that they were the target of an “obsessive” smear campaign.

The most serious of the four charges being brought against Sara Netanyahu involves the hiring of electrician Avi Fahima, a Likud Central Committee member. A committee charged with overseeing residence expenditures — and which included the Prime Minister’s Office legal adviser — ruled against the hiring of Fahima, but he was employed regardless.

Does this sound familiar?

The Art of the Steal: Trump’s “deal” with the Saudis

David Posnett — Thu, 25 May 2017 21:30:39 +0000

It looks like President “Art of the Deal” Trump got hornswoggled by the Saudis. He agreed to sell them $110 billion of advanced weapons in return for – wait for it – nothing. What a deal! Or as our President himself might put it in one of his early A.M. Twitter rampages: Sad! Fail!

So what goodies are the Saudis getting? 133 M1A2 tanks, one of the most sophisticated tanks in the world. 48 CH-47F Chinook cargo helicopters, along with 112 Lycoming T55-GA-714A engines that the Chinooks use, and 58 AN/AAR-57 Common Missile Warning Systems. This is the U.S. Army’s only heavy-lift cargo helicopter supporting combat and other critical operations. The Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD, one of the most advanced missile defense systems in the world, able to intercept short, medium, and intermediate range ballistic missiles. The deal on this last item was greased when Jared Kushner picked up the phone during a final pre-trip meeting with the Saudis and called Marillyn Hewson, CEO of Lockheed Martin (the company that makes the system), and straight-up asked her if she could give the Saudis a discount. What a deal! At least what a deal for Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, and other defense contractors.

We’ve been down this road before. Until the Shah was overthrown the U.S. sold Iran billions and billions of dollars of advanced weaponry. What difference did it make that the Shah’s regime was repressive and autocratic – we had to go all in with Iran for “geopolitical” reasons, to counterbalance our adversary. What could possibly go wrong? Of course we wouldn’t make the same mistake again! Except that Trump in the Middle East is like a goldfish swimming with the sharks. Alliances in the Middle East never change (he seems to think). No way any of our enemies could ever get their hands on some of those fabulous weapons (he seems to think). The Saudis are our permanent really special friends (he seems to think).

Or are they? It’s not difficult to find fault with Iran, but aside from our “permanent” alliance with them are the Saudis that much better? The terrorists responsible for 9/11 did not come from Iran. Osama bin Laden was not an Iranian. ISIS itself hates Iran. The closest thing to an establishment “radical Islam” is Wahhabism, which has been supported and spread throughout the globe as the state policy of Saudi Arabia for over 200 years. A recent article by the British journalist Carlotta Gull details how with Saudi support the moderate brand of Islam in Kosovo is being supplanted by Wahhabism, creating a fertile recruiting ground for ISIS.

Our brilliant deal-making President didn’t even make a peep about the human rights catastrophe unfolding in Yemen, which is facing famine and already has over 50,000 casualties of the conflict between Iranian-backed Houthi rebels and the Saudi backed regime. In fact Trump seemed quite pleased to reverse the U.S. policy of at least paying lip service to human rights, and pointedly omitted any mention of the numerous human rights violations of the Saudi regime including extreme discrimination against women, slavery, anti-Semitism, mistreatment and abuse of foreign workers, and overt repression of religious minorities. Maybe Trump thinks some of this is not so bad…

Good job, Mr President! In return for giving the Saudis exactly what they wanted from us and more, you’ve released them from any obligation to clean up their act and have received precisely nothing in return that commits them to help us in any way. The Saudis must be celebrating “The Art of the Steal”.