The Israeli Government Lobby's Media Connections

As The Power Peddlers: How Lobbyists Mold America’s Foreign Policy by Russell Howe and Sarah Trott noted in 1977, “today, the Israeli Air Force can bomb a more or less defenseless Lebanon in search of Palestinian guerrilla camps, immolating hapless civilians in its passage, with nary a word being said about the provisions of the Foreign Military Sales Act…” One reason for the Israeli government’s ability to apparently violate the provisions of the U.S. government’s Foreign Military Sales Act without getting its military aid cut-off by the U.S. government may be because its lobbying organizations in the U.S. have ties to the Big Media and also spend a lot of money on spreading propaganda in the U.S. As The Power Peddlers revealed:

“The 1963 Fulbright hearings into foreign lobbies probed the activities of the Jewish Agency, the United Israel Appeal, the United Jewish Appeal, the American Zionist Council [AZC] and AIPAC [American Israel Public Affairs Committee]. The AZC’s report for the previous year noted that it had supplied free lecturers and articles and sent `journalists and others’ on junkets to Israel. The report, without naming names, said its magazine committee was `chaired by a man who holds a key position on the editorial level in the magazine business. He knows everyone in the trade, has important contacts, and exploits them on behalf of Israel.’ The magazine committee was responsible for `the writing and placement of articles on Israel in some of America’s leading magazines.’ The TV-radio committee had been `fortunate in securing the services of the director of creative projects of an important TV chain.’ This would `expand the influence’ of the American Zionist Council on television…

“Gottlieb Hammer and Isidor Hamlin of the Jewish Agency testified that they had spent over $5 million between 1957 and 1962 on propaganda in the United States…In a 1974 article, Senator Abourezk accused the World Zionist Organization—an Israeli Government front—of spending `$5 million a year’ on “propaganda in the United States.’”

(Downtown 9/1/93)

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