The United States Fights and Pays for Israel’s Wars: Maidhc Ó Cathail
17. Oct, 2010
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Interview by Kourosh Ziabari for Intifada Palestine
Maidhc O' Cathail
Maidhc O’Cathail is a widely-published Irish author and journalist. He has been living in Japan since 1999. O’Cathail’s articles and commentaries have appeared on a number of media outlets and newspapers including Tehran Times, Khaleej Times, Antiwar.com, Foreign Policy Journal, Information Clearing House, Intifada Palestine, Pakistan Daily and Palestine Think Tank.
Maidhc joined me in an exclusive interview and responded to my questions about the 9/11 attacks, the influence of Israeli lobby over the U.S. administration, the prospect of Israeli – Palestinian conflict, the prolonged controversy over Iran’s nuclear program and the freedom of press in the United States.
Kourosh Ziabari: The Iranian President’s recent proposal for the establishment of a fact-finding group to probe into the 9/11 attacks stirred up widespread controversy in the United States. American politicians reacted to Mr. Ahmadinejad’s plan with frustration. Is it because they are aware of some evidence which suggests that Israel was behind the attacks?
Maidhc Ó Cathail: I would say that most American politicians are totally unaware of the Israeli “art students,” the so-called “dancing Israelis,” the Odigo warnings and other facts that point to Israeli involvement in the 9/11 attacks. Therefore, they probably considered Ahmadinejad’s questioning of the official 9/11 narrative to be yet another unwarranted provocation of the United States by the Iranian leader.
KZ: You’ve recently written an article about the bill proposed by Senator Joe Lieberman which claims the entire internet and the whole global computer network and everything on it as a “national asset” of the United States, thus giving the power to the U.S. President to kill the internet in the event of a national cyber-emergency. How does this bill, as you’ve put it precisely, kill the internet? In what ways is this proposal contradictory to American freedoms and incongruous with international law?
MÓC: Titled “Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act of 2010,” the bill stipulates any internet firms and providers must “immediately comply with any emergency measure or action developed” by the “National Centre for Cybersecurity and Communications,” a new section of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. If the bill becomes law, not only American citizens but people everywhere could have their right to access and share information cut off at any time by this increasingly powerful government department.
Interestingly, the Department of Homeland Security owes its origins to a bill co-sponsored by two of Israel’s biggest supporters on Capitol Hill: Senator Lieberman and Senator Arlen Specter, who was seen as “the go-to guy for the Jewish community on Israel.” As I wrote in an article entitled “The Merchants of Fear,” Israel has profited enormously from “homeland insecurity” in the United States and elsewhere since 9/11. It’s hardly a coincidence that the source of this latest expansion of Homeland Security at the expense of civil liberties is “the No. 1 pro-Israel advocate and leader in Congress.”
KZ: In your articles, you’ve alluded to some facts which American citizens might be unaware of. Israel is claimed to be the “staunchest ally” of the United States, but as you’ve mentioned in your articles, it frequently and inexcusably undermined the strategic interests of the U.S. Why does the U.S. government continue to offer its unconditional support for Israel while there are influential voices within the U.S. administration who acknowledge that Israel will betray the United States after all?
MÓC: On this issue, domestic politics invariably trumps the national interest. Any president who offers anything less than unconditional support for Israel will be immediately reprimanded in an AIPAC-drafted letter signed by 76 senators, whose overriding desire to be re-elected apparently blinds them to the incalculable damage Israel is doing to American interests.
I’m not sure if there are “influential voices” within the administration who question Israel’s value to the United States. Those who hold such heretical views as Charles Freeman, Admiral Blair’s nominee for chairman of the National Intelligence Council, are generally kept out of government by the Lobby.
KZ: Controversy over Iran’s nuclear program has spanned more than six years and we’re witness to erosive, unfruitful and unconstructive approaches to this issue. What do you think about this standoff? Don’t you believe that Iran has become the subject of an unfair, unjustifiable exercise of double standards while Israel, a non-signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, possesses up to 200 nuclear warheads and is immune to any kind of investigation or accountability before the international community?
MÓC: It beggars belief that no sooner than Iraq had been invaded over non-existent WMDs, the so-called “international community” began falling for the same lies – from the same source – about Iran’s non-existent nuclear weapons programme. We are also supposed to believe that Israel’s massive nuclear arsenal is justified by what Obama called its “unique security requirements,” whereas “evil” Iran must want them to “wipe Israel off the map.” Of course, in the real world, the “Iranian nuclear threat” is all about Israel’s fear of having its regional hegemony challenged. And that’s why, as Marsha B. Cohen expertly documented in a recent article, “In the wake of 9/11, Israel put Iran into ‘Axis of Evil.’”
KZ: The mainstream media in the United States frequently boast of their independence and professionalism and usually lash out at the media in developing, non-aligned countries by labeling them state-run and state-controlled. The unanticipated expulsion of Rick Sanchez from CNN over his remarks about the dominance of Jews in the U.S. media demonstrated that the media in the United States are not as free and self-determining as they claim. Is it practically possible to dissolve the Israeli lobby’s stranglehold over the U.S. media? If not, what are the reasons for that?
MÓC: As Helen Thomas, the 89-year-old victim of a vindictive Lobby, recently observed, “You cannot criticize Israel in this country and survive.” That’s because there are very few major U.S. media that are not owned and run by pro-Israelis. I can’t see that changing anytime soon. However, the internet is, as John Mearsheimer put it, a game changer. Perhaps that’s why Joe Lieberman seems so eager to “kill” it. It may be that he is less afraid of “cyberterrorism” than he is of the truth.
KZ: Let’s switch to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. What is, in your view, the prospect for this erosive and unremitting war? Will the U.S.-brokered peace negotiations bear any fruit and bring about peace between the two sides? Is Israel capable of keeping up its aggressive attitude towards the Palestinian nation? Will it submit to international pressure to lift the blockade of Gaza? Above all, will Israel succeed in surviving politically with its shaky, unsteady foundation?
MÓC: As Charles Freeman recently stated, “Only a peace process that is protected from Israel’s ability to manipulate American politics can succeed.” So, to paraphrase the neocons, the road to Jerusalem leads through Washington. As long as the Lobby holds sway inside the Beltway, Israel can do what it likes in the West Bank and Gaza.
Unless the Palestinians can be forced to accept a series of disjointed Bantustans and call it a “Palestinian state,” there is going to be a single apartheid state between the Jordan and the Mediterranean which would be difficult to sustain over the long term. In order to forestall that threat to its vision of a “Jewish and democratic state,” Israel may be about to embark on another wave of the ethnic cleansing it began in 1947-49.
KZ: A brief review of the contemporary history of international relations reveals that the United States has never been faithful and loyal to its stooges. It held up Saddam Hussein, unconditionally aided him, supported him, funded him and persuaded him to invade Iran in the 1980s and executed him 20 years later. It backed and sponsored the House of Saud and Bin Laden family until an international terrorist gang was framed out of it, and now is bombarding Northern Pakistan in an attempt to kill Osama Bin Laden, the man whose relationship with the Bush family is known to almost everyone. So can we conclude that a similar destiny is awaiting the state of Israel?
MÓC: First of all, Israel has never been a “stooge” of the United States. If there is any stooge in this relationship, it is America. After all, it is the U.S. that has been fighting and paying for Israel’s wars, not the other way around. However, if enough Americans ever learn about the well-documented examples of Israeli treachery, the Lavon Affair, the USS Liberty, Operation Trojan and Jonathan Pollard come to mind, the Jewish state may be left to fight its own wars. Perhaps then, as Ahmadinejad really said, the occupation regime over Jerusalem will “vanish from the page of time.”
Kourosh Ziabari is an Iranian freelance journalist and media correspondent. His articles and interviews have appeared on a number of media outlets and news websites including Tehran Times, Press TV, Global Research and Foreign Policy Journal.
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I’d like to see an explanation of how a policy can be against the US national interest if 76 Senators are in favor of it. What I mean is this: On its face, the slogan “national interest” denotes a compromise computed, adjusted, arranged. modified over time on a continuing basis depending on the ebb and flow of political pressure (usually in the form of the gray-green greasy river of money spent for campaigns and lobbying by corporations and wealthy individuals) (aka “dollar averaging”).
If this is not the “national interest”, what is, and who “computes” it?
In hindsight we may be sorry that de-regulating the banks was in the US “national interest” at the time it occurred, but it was, just as US kow-towing to Israel is, today and always it seems, in the “national interest”.
Individual voters, small corporations, etc., may feel that their views are not receiving enough weight in this wonderful process of dollar-averaging, but that’s how the system works. And as long as it works that way, on what basis can we complain? And, especially, on what basis can we say that US support for Israel is not in the US “national interest”? (I use quotation marks merely to designate a technical term which masquerades as English.)
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Why is USA loosing?
The people of America are made addicted to every thing which has no meaningful purpose in life.
They have been made couch potatoes by their home entertainment, which provides a cheap and abyss fat gathering class who are only working like machines doing one job after the other to just keep up with their expenses and the rising taxes and rising responsibilities, that increases with the passage of time.
Every now and then an election is scheduled where in they are made to vote for an individual who has yet to perform and who has been hyped by the media in such a manner that the people have to vote one or the other, out of mostly the two main contenders, and take a back seat for the next four years for that incumbent to either perform as per his/her promise or doom the country if the promise is missed.
The affairs of USA are more or less given on contract and are managed by the Lobbying firms or the Groups that have clouts and the machinery of the State are slaves of these power firms that hold the entire country hostage to their way of thinking or the way of thinking of their paymasters.
The working class is just like the workers of an ant colony. They toil for the queen, here the queen are the Media, the Corporations, the vested and interested groups and those that have foreign or ulterior interest in the slavery of the American people to be kept as slaves.
Americans are made to buy highest costing goods measured in monetary terms, compared to the same goods else where in the world, just because they are “Branded.” Who brands them? What is the purpose of Branding? Why does the cost go so high for the branded goods? No one knows the answers and no one is made responsible for the loot of the hard earned money of the American citizens siphoned off to God knows where and how, and what becomes of their money once they have left their hands?
Americans are the most “used” nation of the world, because their people have toiled to become the greatest nation of the world. However, do they get the fruit of their toil? No. They are made to toil further with the passage of every day. No one knows why and who benefits from their toiling except that they are most certainly not the benefactors.
Americans are the most indebted nation of the world. Can you imagine? The earners of the highest per capita income are the most indebted. Indebted to whom? Indebted to the Federal Reserve. Who is Federal Reserve? They are bunch of Bankers and owners of Financial Institutions who have made the life of the Americans mortgaged for the money they have loaned to the American Government. What the hell did the American Government do with the money they mortgaged their entire life for? The Governments in succession spent to make the Corporations, the Bankers and the ones who lobby for them, to keep these corrupt politicians in power, more resourceful. With whose money? With the money of the Federal Reserve, borrowed for this purpose. Where did the Federal Reserve get this money? They either printed it or credited in the accounts of the Government to be spent, without any collaterals. I am writing this and I am getting hic-up, I don’t know how the general readers will feel about it?
Every American except those that are controlling the Banks, the Financial Institutions, the Corporations and the Politicians are getting rich with the passage of each mili-second, and the general public of America is getting poor in the same ratio and proportion, except, that those who are getting poor, are about 300 million Americans, and those getting rich from their misery are 30,000 ultra rich Americans, and other nationals.
There is inbuilt lava of resentment for the people who are cheating on the vast majority of the Americans. This resentment is deluding and dissolving the American patriotism towards America by the people. The people of America are getting frustrated with the Nationalist concept. The people are increasingly being felt cheated. The isolation of the vast majority of Americans with increasing individual debts and a society which is divided on lines of poverty never seen before in the history of America is wasting the resources of the greatness of America which lies in the wealth of the people that make America great.
The looters have not made America. The people have.
If American people loose their patriotism towards America, America will loose itself and there will be a very big gap felt, just like the vacuum felt when USSR dissolved.
The media controlled by the Jews have made the Americans addicted to the protection of Jews State of Israel, which is consuming bulk of its economic resources, it is a luxury America cannot afford and has to give up, for its own survival.
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In pratice USA give Israel three billion dollar each years so Israel lower likleyhood Israel using it nuclear arms. During Yom Kipper war airleft we send nearly did not come on time. That almost cause nuclear war.
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The US govt. will continue spending people’s money after Israel’s wars until it become a poor country within a period of 40 to 50 years.
May ALLAH give courage to the Americans to protect this upcoming disaster.
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97% Americans of most are the among nice people of the world but thay are also so simple that unaware of their manipulation by jews.when thay would understand that the wars against muslim countries are jewish desire?
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@ Shahid. Its not a matter of being simple, maybe naive.. But the fact remains that the American population are being manipulated by the media.
Any politician or journalist that has the courage to tell things the way they are will be quickly labeled anti-semetic by mossad… A real career stopper in the west.
The twisted irony is of course the true intentions if the zionist regieme are literally laid out in mossad’s own motto : by way of deception thou shall do war
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