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JAMES BAMFORD, washwriter@gmail.com
Bamford recently wrote “The Trump Campaign’s Collusion With Israel” for The Nation. He has written extensively about the NSA and other agencies. His latest book is Spyfail: Foreign Spies, Moles, Saboteurs, and the Collapse of America’s Counterintelligence.

Bamford writes: “While the American media and political system fixated on Russian President Vladimir Putin” what was completely missed “in the Russiagate investigation of 2016 was the Israeli connection. … The FBI did uncover hard evidence of extensive collusion between close Trump associates and the highest levels of the Israeli government.” After then-Secretary of State John Kerry had pressed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about negotiating with the Palestinians during a meeting in Rome in 2016, an Israeli agent sent a message to Trump operative Roger Stone: “RETURNING TO DC AFTER URGENT CONSULTATIONS WITH PM [Prime Minister] IN ROME. MUST MEET WITH YOU WED. EVE AND WITH DJ TRUMP THURSDAY IN NYC.”

Bamford highlights that Unit 8200, the Israeli equivalent of the NSA, was “eavesdropping on the Russians and they were picking up all this information that the Russians were getting from the Clinton campaign and the DNC. And rather than giving it to the president of United States, to Obama, which is what an ally is supposed to do, especially one that gets $4 billion a year, they instead were secretly giving it to the Trump campaign, in order to get concessions from Trump when he became president, and hopefully they were going to help make him president.”

Specifically, Bamford notes that Roger Stone had fingered “Randy Credico, a one time friend who had a radio program in New York, as his back channel to WikiLeaks,” which had gotten hold of the DNC emails and would make them public. “Credico had interviewed Assange on his program, but that was four days after Stone’s tweet about [Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John] Podesta’s upcoming time in the barrel. Credico denied under oath that he had acted as a back channel for Stone, and there was never any evidence to show he had.” Bamford effectively argues that Credico was being truthful and it was Israel that was funnelling the information to Roger Stone and the Trump campaign — not WikiLeaks or any of its allies.

Bamford’s recent in-depth piece concludes: “Throughout this chain of events — including the trial, the Mueller Report, and the nearly 1,000-page Senate Intelligence Committee Report — no hint of the involvement of Israel was made public. Despite the clear violations of U.S. law and months of clandestine, high-level attempted interference in the presidential election, no details were released, and no congressional hearings or investigations took place. Nor was there ever a hint in the press, which remained transfixed by Russia.

“The evidence however, suggests that throughout the summer and into the fall of 2016, Israel illegally interfered in the U.S. presidential election. A top agent of Netanyahu was secretly offering intelligence and other covert assistance to Trump to get him elected — all with virtually no oversight or scrutiny by the FBI or the U.S. media, though both had numerous personnel in Israel at the time. Now Netanyahu is back in office as prime minister, and Trump is once again running for president. All the ingredients are there for history to repeat itself, unless the Justice Department and Congress conduct long-overdue investigations into the real source of secret foreign collaboration and interference in the 2016 election, and both the FBI and the media remove their self-imposed blinders when it comes to Israel.”

In “Israel’s liberal supporters speak out against Netanyahu — but they’re still in denial” for Salon, Norman Solomon (executive director of IPA) argues that many Jewish Americans are alarmed by Netanyahu’s coup — but they’re not ready to face the truth about Israel.

Solomon writes: “Israel has been the fruition of a Zionist dream, but at the same time a real-life nightmare for Palestinian people. The occupation of Gaza and the West Bank that began in 1967 has been nothing less than an ongoing, large-scale crime against humanity. Now, early 2023 has brought an unprecedented flood of concern from Israel’s supporters in the United States. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s new government has made clear its fascistic contempt for Palestinian lives, while even taking steps to curb some rights of Israeli Jews.”

OLIVER ADELSON, oliveradelson03@gmail.com
Adelson recently questioned Israeli ambassador Tzipi Hotovely at the Oxford Union in Britain where he is a student. Adelson is currently in the U.S. and is an intern with IPA.

He said today: “The leading human rights organizations have left no room for ambiguity. Israel is carrying out a policy of apartheid against the Palestinians. The question all Americans must now ask themselves is how to put pressure on U.S. lawmakers to make Israeli aid and political protection conditional on implementation of a just peace settlement and on compliance with international law.”

In response to a recent New York Times report that the Biden administration was giving Israel “warnings that the country’s image as the sole democracy in the Middle East was at stake,” journalist Jamal Dajani wrote: “President Biden is worried about Israel’s image … not that it’s been ethnically cleansing Palestinians for decades, not that it’s an apartheid state, not that it’s the only regime to have introduced nuclear weapons to the Middle East… just its image!”

Russia invaded Ukraine a year ago tomorrow. The Defuse Nuclear War coalition is organizing protests around the country.

DAVID GIBBS, dgibbs.arizona.edu
Gibbs is professor of history at the University of Arizona and has written extensively on NATO and Russia. He said today: “NATO’s relentless escalation of its proxy war in Ukraine has endangered world security, while escalating inflation and lowering living standards for working people in the United States. Though we all deplore the illegal Russian invasion, we must accept that there can be no final victory over a nuclear armed power. Continued NATO arms deliveries will only prolong the suffering of Ukrainians, while risking global nuclear war. With the one-year anniversary of Russia’s invasion, the Biden administration must abandon its objective of victory and press for a negotiated settlement.”

See his new website for numerous articles and interviews. Gibbs’ books include First Do No Harm: Humanitarian Intervention and the Destruction of Yugoslavia and the forthcoming How America Became a Right-Wing Nation.

Al Jazeera reports: “Israeli forces kill 11 Palestinians in Nablus raid.”

TRITA PARSI, tparsi@gmail.com, @tparsi
Parsi is the executive vice president of the Quincy Institute and just wrote the piece “By Caving to Israel, Biden Opens the Door to War.”

Parsi writes: “As all eyes were on Ukraine and Chinese balloons in the sky, the Biden administration seemingly shifted America’s longstanding opposition to Israel starting a disastrous war with Iran. U.S. Ambassador to Israel Tom Nides told the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations Sunday that ‘Israel can and should do whatever they need to deal with [in regards to Iran] and we’ve got their back’ — a thinly veiled reference to military action.” Parsi also cites statements by other officials including Secretary of State Tony Blinken.

Parsi adds: “Unlike any of his predecessors, the president seems to be openly courting the idea of Israeli military confrontation with Iran,” which Parsi argues would be disastrous, further destabilize the Mideast and risk sucking in the U.S.

He also notes that “Biden has refused to reverse almost all major policy shifts in favor of Israel that Trump put in place — from moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, to recognizing Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights (which exposes the blatant double standard in Biden asserting that Russia’s illegal annexation of Ukrainian territory threatens the ‘rules-based order’)…”

Alice Speri of The Intercept writes: “The U.S. has laws banning the funding of military assistance to foreign military units with a record of human rights abuses. But they have never applied them to Israel.” See her new piece.

On Monday, Sam Husseini questioned State Department spokesperson Ned Price, see: “State Dept. Claims ‘We Follow the Law in Every Instance’ but Stonewalls on Law About Israeli Nukes” on Substack.

On Monday, Price criticized Israeli building of illegal Jewish-only settlements on the West Bank, but said Israel “is going to make its own sovereign decisions.” But Israel does not have sovereignty over the West Bank.

ISSA AMRO, issaamro@gmail.com, @Issaamro
The Israeli military assaulted UN-Recognized Human Rights Defender Amro on the closed Shuhada Street in occupied Hebron. The assault, which was caught on camera in a viral video, happened in front of New Yorker correspondent Lawrence Wright, who said the Israeli military misrepresented the incident.

An Israeli soldier was filmed grabbing Amro by the throat and throwing him violently to the ground, then proceeding to kick him before another soldier intervened. Wright tweeted the video, which went viral. The Israeli army claimed that Amro provoked the incident. In response, Wright tweeted: “The IDF is misrepresenting what led to assault on peace activist Issa Amro in Hebron yesterday. The soldier initiated the encounter. Amro did not curse or interfere only asked that he call the commander. Nothing to justify the attack that followed.”

Haaretz reports the soldier is to be jailed for ten days.

But Amro notes Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir tweeted a statement in support of the attacker. In response, Amro stated, “Last time I filmed an Israeli soldier brutally beating up an activist, Israeli media reported that the soldier received large money donations in support of his violence.” Amro stated. “I would not be surprised if this soldier will now receive money too. This is the reality under Ben Gvir’s extremist army.”

The assault is the most recent incident in the bout of attacks against Palestinians and Amro in the wake of the latest Israeli elections. Amro has faced threats, beatings and arbitrary detentions since filming an assault of an Israeli peace activist in late 2022. Amro is the director of the charity Friends of Hebron and the co-founder and former coordinator of the Palestinian community group Youth Against Settlements. While visiting the U.S. last month, Amro was featured on an IPA news release.

Sam Husseini is an independent journalist and senior analyst at IPA.

Secretary of State Tony Blinken is meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu on Monday.

MIKO PELED, mikopeled at gmail.com, @mikopeled

ISSA AMRO, Issaamro at gmail.com, @issaamro

Peled is an activist and podcaster. His books include The General’s Son: Journey of an Israeli in Palestine. He has argued that while Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has claimed Israel didn’t ethnically cleanse Palestinians in high profile interviews, some other Israeli ministers have advocated another such expulsion — while Netanyahu says the first never happened. Peled’s name and argument were cited in a question at the State Department on Friday, but the spokesperson would not denounce any of the Israeli ministers, see video.

Amro is based in Hebron and is founder of Youth Against Settlements. He has been making presentations with Peled and meeting with the New York Times and other editorial boards. He is regularly threatened, harrased and detained by the Israeli military and settlers for his nonviolent activity such as making films and attempting to prevent home takeovers.

He just appeared on the Katie Halper Show and spoke about his confrontations with Itamar Ben-Gvir, who Amro notes is associated with groups officially labeled as terrorist like those spawned by Meir Kahane and in support of Baruch Goldstein, who killed 29 Palestinians in a mosque. Gvir is now minister of national security for Israel. The State Department took one of the groups, Kahane Chai, off its terrorism list last year.

Amro argues that the rightwing ministers like Gvir now show the “true face of Israel.”

Peled says Gvir’s “partner in crime, Bezalel Smotrich, also a man who has been charged and actually sat in jail, very openly racist, he is now the minister of the treasury, allowing settlers to expand their settlements. Orit Strook, she will be the minister of national missions and she will be charged with West Bank settlements, and with dealing with these pre-military military academies. Another character in this very, very sad drama is a man by the name of Avi Maoz. He is also an extreme right-wing rabid racist Arab-hating homophobe, who will actually be given a position within the ministry of education, teaching national identity … he will be dealing with establishing curricula for Israeli schools.”

RICHARD SILVERSTEIN, richards1052@gmail.com, @richards1052

    Silverstein writes at Tikun Olam and recently wrote the pieces “Judeo-Fascist Coalition Affirms ‘Inalienable Right’ of Jewish People to ‘All the Land of Israel’” and “Israeli ‘Arsonist,’ Ben Gvir, Stirs Outrage with Haram al Sharif ‘Visit.’”
 
    Silverstein quotes Jewish Voice for Peace: “The new Israeli government has been clear about its agenda from the beginning: ensure Jewish supremacy over all land between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, and expedite the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.”
 

    Silverstein has written about AIPAC and related groups playing a critical role in the Democratic Party over the last year, noting: “Its own PAC and those affiliated with it spent over $30 million to defeat progressive Democrats in primary elections, who voiced even the slightest disagreement with Israeli policies.” Silverstein wrote pieces such as “AIPAC Astroturf Groups Plow Millions into Defeating Progressive Democrats.”

 
    New House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries is an outspoken advocate for Israel. According to Open Secrets, three of his top five contributors — Pro-Israel America PAC, NorPAC and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee — are pro-Israeli government. See 2021 profile piece on Jeffries, which notes his extremely pro-Israeli government views, from The American Prospect. 

Rep. Rashida Tlaib has been attacked by colleagues for saying, “I want you all to know that among progressives, it becomes clear that you cannot claim to hold progressive values yet back Israel’s apartheid government.”

Katie Halper, who had been a contributor to The Hill TV, produced a segment defending Talib.

Then Halper herself was fired; the story was broken by The Intercept.

Halper posted the commentary that got her fired.

Among Halper’s points: “Look at the Law of Return of 1950 and tell me it’s not apartheid. The law allows any Jew, which means anyone with one Jewish grandparent, the right to move to Israel and automatically become citizens of Israel. It gives their spouses that right too, even if they’re not Jewish. Palestinians, of course, lack that right. …

“Israel’s own human rights organization B’Tselem has declared, ‘The Israeli regime enacts … an apartheid regime. B’Tselem reached the conclusion that the bar for defining the Israeli regime as an apartheid regime has been met after considering the accumulation of policies and laws that Israel devised to entrench its control over Palestinians.’ B’Tselem divides the way Israeli apartheid works into four areas.” The segment breaks down Israeli policies on land, citizenship, freedom of movement and political participation.

Halper quotes Israeli leaders: “In 2007, Israel’s former education minister Shulamit Aloni wrote, ‘the state of Israel practices its own, quite violent, form of apartheid with the native Palestinian population.'”

She also quotes South African leaders like Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

Tutu, in his last published piece, called on Biden to acknowledge that Israel has a nuclear weapons arsenal, writing: “there are few truths more critical to face than a nuclear weapons arsenal in the hands of an apartheid government.”

CommonDreams reports: “Rights Groups Implored EU Leaders to Denounce Israeli Apartheid at Summit.”

Rev. GRAYLAN S. HAGLER, gshagler@verizon.net, @graylanhagler
Hagler is former chief pastor at the Plymouth Congregational United Church of Christ in Washington, D.C. and director of Faith Strategies.

RONNIE KASRILS, [in South Africa] rkasrils@gmail.com
Kasrils was Minister for Intelligence Services in South Africa from 2004 to 2008 and was a leading member of the African National Congress during the apartheid era. He wrote the piece “How to Stop Apartheid Israel.”

PHYLLIS BENNIS, pbennis@ips-dc.org, @phyllisbennis
Bennis directs the New Internationalism Project at Institute for Policy Studies, focusing on the Middle East.

BILL FLETCHER, Jr., billfletcherjr@gmail.com, @BillFletcherJr
Fletcher is past president of TransAfrica Forum. He said today: “There is no provision that provides for a cease and desist on criticisms of the Israeli political system. There are no provisions for a cease and desist on criticisms of the domestic and/or foreign policies of any country on planet Earth. The criticism of Israeli apartheid has been raised across the globe and cannot receive a response in the form of purges or other forms of silencing. To attempt that is to attempt to hold a bubble under water.”

The Intercept reports on the American Israel Public Affairs Committee: “AIPAC Defeats Andy Levin, Most Progressive Jewish Representative.” Last month, The American Prospect reported: “AIPAC Has Taken Over the Democratic Primary Process” and Richard Silverstein at Tikun Olam broke down the numbers: “AIPAC Astroturf Groups Plow $30-Million into Defeating Progressive Democrats” including Donna Edwards, Jessica Cisneros and Nina Turner.

GRANT F. SMITH, gsmith@irmep.org, @IRmep

Smith is director of the Washington, D.C.-based Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy which has just released a podcast series: “How Israel Made AIPAC.”

Grant notes a key finding: “In 1962, AIPAC was the lobbying and foreign propaganda division of an umbrella group (the American Zionist Council) that triggered the Department of Justice order to AZC to register as an Israeli foreign agent. The Justice Department kept this fact secret until 2008. It has never since tried to enforce the order.”

While many have claimed that U.S. policy has been somehow unduly influenced by the Chinese or Russian governments, Smith, the author of Big Israel: How Israel’s Lobby moves America has highlighted that the biggest destination for Congressional junkets is Israel.

The new 13-part podcast beigins: “AIPAC has recently established its own political action committees. AIPAC is using tens of millions of dollars of PAC money to knock off candidates for office it believes won’t be sufficiently deferential to the government of Israel. There is a lot of current analysis about this in social and even legacy news media. Most of it has one thing in common: no history about how, when or why AIPAC came into existence. What exactly is AIPAC and where does it come from?”

Smith examines a series of questions including: “Why is AIPAC circumspect about its origin story? How has AIPAC largely written its founder, Isaiah L. Kenen, out of that history?

“What was the Israel Office of Information and AIPAC founder Isaiah L. Kenen’s role at IOI? How long did Kenen stay in the employ of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs? What propaganda information did IOI omit in its FARA [Foreign Agents Registration Act] filings? How did Kenen, chafing under FARA, maintain an active lobbying campaign in the U.S. Congress for foreign aid while still operating as an employee of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs? …

“How does AIPAC history inform us about foreign influence on U.S. political campaigns and American Middle East policy today?”

Grant concludes: “The Justice Department effort to regulate under FARA was serious, but fizzled out. AIPAC should still be seen as a creation of Israel, no matter what its current funding flows and framing.”

Grant’s research draws from Freedom of Information Act filings he pursued for years as well as end-of-life writings by the people involved in the creation and attempted regulation of AIPAC.

Smith is also author of America’s Defense Line: The Justice Department’s Battle to Register the Israel Lobby as Agents of a Foreign Government.

The American Prospect recently reported: “Will AIPAC Crush One of Congress’s Most Prominent Jewish Democrats?”

The targeted congressman, Rep. Andy Levin (D-Mich.), tells MSNBC: “I’m not just Jewish, I’m one of two former synagogue presidents in Congress. … AIPAC has completely gone off the rails and they are trying to end my career because I won’t fall in line with their view of what it means to be pro-Israel.”

RONALD ARONSON, ronald.aronson@wayne.edu
Aronson is distinguished professor emeritus of the history of ideas at Wayne State University in Detroit. He recently wrote the piece “‘Anti-Israel’ and ‘Pro-Israel’ in Michigan Election” in Tikkun magazine about AIPAC’s targeting of Levin, whose primary is on Aug. 2.

Aronson explains AIPAC’s targeting: “The main reason is Levin’s Two-State Solution Act, which he presented to Congress after the High Holidays in September, flanked by Peace Now’s Hadar Susskind and J-Street president Jeremy Ben-Ami. With no negotiations taking place since the ill-fated efforts of John Kerry, and with the Israeli colonization of the West Bank proceeding relentlessly, the two-state solution has been abandoned virtually everywhere except as a shibboleth to which lip service must be given to undercut accusations of ‘apartheid.’ In the face of these realities Levin, J-Street, and Americans for Peace Now, along with over 40 co-sponsors in the House of Representatives seek to reassert the two-state solution as active American policy.”

RICHARD SILVERSTEIN, richards1052@gmail.com, @richards1052   
Silverstein writes at Tikun Olam and recently wrote the in-depth overview piece “AIPAC Astroturf Groups Plow Millions into Defeating Progressive Democrats.” He was featured on IPA news releases on AIPAC’s successful targeting of Donna Edwards and another titled “AIPAC Has Taken Over the Democratic Primary Process.” He also contributes to Middle East Eye, Jacobin magazine and other outlets.

GRANT F. SMITH, gsmith@irmep.org, @IRmep
Biden on Israeli TV threatened to use force against Iran, allegedly to prevent it from getting a nuclear weapon, as a “last resort.” But Biden has not re-instated the Iran nuclear deal which Trump withdrew from. Smith is director of the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy. He has written extenstively on Israel’s nuclear weapons which Biden has refused to acknowledge. Smith’s work was cited in the late Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s last published piece: “Joe Biden should end the U.S. pretence over Israel’s ‘secret’ nuclear weapons.”

RULA JEBREAL, jebreal.rula@gmail.com, @rulajebreal

Jebreal is visiting professor at the University of Miami, an author and noted foreign policy analyst. She just arrived in New York City from the Mideast. 

She said today: “There are many layers of the Israel-Saudi alliance — and the U.S. government role in forging it. It’s mainly based around militarism and authoritarianism. It’s a bloody legacy of ‘shared values’ — Israel’s ‘unbreakable bond’ with the U.S. means that Biden will ignore international law and commits to unconditional support to Israel’s occupation. The leader of the free world is enabling militarism by working to forge a NATO-like entity for the authoritarian Gulf states, binding Americans to protect the world’s most corrupt despots and apartheid Israel.”

Background: See from last month in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz: “Thanks to Saudi Arabia, Pakistan’s Recognition of Israel Is Now Inevitable.”

The New York Times reported in 2021: “Israel secretly authorized a group of cyber-surveillance firms to work for the government of Saudi Arabia despite international condemnation of the kingdom’s abuse of surveillance software to crush dissent, even after the Saudi killing of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi, government officials and others familiar with the contracts said.”

IPA news release from 2020: “Protesting Trump’s Israeli-Gulf ‘Fake Peace’ Deals.”

See “Saudi Arabia’s Unholy Alliance with Israel” — video and transcript — of The Real News interview from 2018 with scholar As’ad AbuKhalil who gives a history of Israel-Saudi collusion going back at least to the first Yemen war of the 1960s.

See from 2015 by Robert Parry “Did Money Seal Israeli-Saudi Alliance?”

In 1955, the U.S. government tried to establish an effective southern flank of NATO called CENTO, also known as the Baghdad Pact. The organization became largely moribund in 1959 following the overthrow of the U.S.-backed monarch in Iraq and collapsed altogether in 1979 when the U.S.-backed Shah was ousted in Iran.