The Pro-Militaristic Israel Political Action Committees Historically

With regard to the 124 political action committees [PACs] in the United States which were established since 1976 by U.S. political allies of Militaristic Israel to purchase special political influence in Congress, the Zionist movement’s Israeli government has, historically, not sought too much publicity.

Pro-Militaristic Israel PACs which specialize in funding U.S. congressional candidates “rarely mention the Middle East, Israel, or Judaism in their titles,” according to the 1990s book Stealth PACs: How Israel’s American Lobby Seeks To Control U.S. Middle East Policy by Richard Curtis. “Other PACs established by corporations, trade associations, consumer organizations, and religious or ideological groups, identify their sponsors or purposes in their titles,” according to the same book.

Among the nondescript names which the pro-Militaristic Israel PACs operate under are “National PAC,” “Washington PAC,” “Hudson Valley PAC,” “Joint Action Committee for Public Affairs PAC,” and “Desert Caucus PAC.” According to Stealth PACs, since 1984 nearly all the pro-Militaristic Israel PACs “have deliberately sought nondescriptive titles to mask their purposes from the American public.”

Among the leading recipients of pro-Militaristic Israel PAC donations between 1978 and 1988 were the following U.S. politicians: Senator Thomas Daschle of South Dakota ($286,630); Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada ($208,540); Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania ($163,423); Rep. Richard Durbin of Illinois ($146,633); and Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont ($106,200).

According to Stealth PACs, “Suggestions that in coordinating contributions of pro-Israel PACs, and in some of their other activities on behalf of Israel, present and former officers of American Israel Public Affairs Committee [AIPAC] like Michael Goland have violated both the letter and the spirit of the law are generally ignored by the media and met with extreme hostility…” Southern California real estate developer Michael Goland, a former member of the board of directors of the AIPAC pro-Militaristic Israel political lobbying organization “was convicted of federal law violation” in 1988 “for concealing the fact that he was the source of the funds” for the successful 1984 campaign of Militaristic Israel’s political allies to defeat Senator Charles Percy of Illinois, according to the Stealth PACs book.

Percy was regarded by Militaristic Israel’s political allies as more sympathetic to Arab aspirations than his opponent, former U.S. Senator Paul Simon of Illinois. AIPAC board member Goland had illegally spent $1.2 million of his personal funds in AIPAC’s successful 1984 campaign to defeat Percy. Although Goland was fined $5,000 in 1988 for his 1984 federal law violation, he was again indicted in 1990 “on charges that he used other individuals as fronts to conceal illegal contributions of $120,000 of his own funds” to finance the U.S. senatorial campaign in California of Michael Valleni, and he “was convicted…of exceeding the [then] limit of $1,000 on individual donations to a candidate,” according to Stealth PACs.

Downtown twice attempted in late 1991 to speak to a press representative at the Manhattan office of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee [AIPAC] regarding its response to some of the charges made in Stealth PACs about the methods used by AIPAC to secure congressional support for Israel. But the American Israel Public Affairs Committee was not too eager to speak to the public. The first time Downtown telephoned, all the AIPAC spokespersons “were out to lunch” and Downtown was told to telephone an hour later.

When Downtown telephoned AIPAC a second time, the receptionist asked Downtown what it wanted to talk about. After Downtown told her it wanted to talk about “congressional support for Israel,” she replied, “Oh, political questions,” and put Downtown on “hold.” A minute later, Downtown was taken off “hold” and the AIPAC receptionist informed Downtown: “We don’t talk to the press.”

U.S. law requires the U.S. president to cut off U.S. economic and military aid to any country which violates the provisions of the 1968 Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons Treaty. Yet Militaristic Israel still received over $6 billion in direct U.S. government grants in the early 1990s despite its Holy Land Nuclear War preparations and its refusal to sign the 1968 Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons Treaty, historically. But it’s not too likely that the pro-Militaristic Israel PAC donation recipients in the U.S. Congress will ever be too likely to vote for a cut-off in U.S. military and economic aid to Israel—now matter how many bombs the Israeli War Machine drops on civilians in Gaza or Lebanon, in pursuit of its undemocratic political objectives and ethnically-chauvinist settler-colonialist goals..

(Downtown 1/15/92)

Militaristic Israel's Mordechai Vanunu Case Remembered

During the 2008 election campaign both Democratic President-Elect Barack Obama and U.S. Secretary of State-Designate Hillary Clinton expressed their concern that the U.S. imperialist version of “Peace in the Middle East” would be threatened if the Iranian government acquired nuclear weapons. Ironically, the Zionist movement’s militaristic Israeli government in the Middle East--which Obama & Clinton regard as a U.S. government ally—has already been producing nuclear weapons at its Dimona nuclear bomb factory for many years.

In 1987, nine Australian senators, the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation and 36 members of the British Parliament nominated Mordechai Vanunu for the 1987 Nobel Peace Prize. In their letter of nomination, the nine Australian senators wrote the following:

“We believe that Mordechai Vanunu’s action in revealing details of Israel’s nuclear weapons arsenal to the world was motivated by a great and long standing desire for world peace, and we believe that he deserved the world’s recognition for his selfless action. The award of the Nobel Peace Prize to him would be a timely and appropriate expression of such recognition.”

Vanunu was a technician at the Dimona Nuclear Bomb Factory from August 1977 to November 1985 who, after becoming anti-war in his politics, decided to photograph for the world what the Israeli government was actually doing inside its Negev Nuclear Research Center. After passing the photographs on to investigative reporters at the London Sunday Times in 1986—which published the long news story on Oct. 5, 1986 that first revealed the existence of the Israeli government’s Dimona Nuclear Bomb Factory—Vanunu was kidnapped in Rome by Israeli Mossad agents, taken to Israel, tried by a secret Israeli tribunal, convicted of espionage and treason on March 24, 1988, and sentenced to an 18-year prison term.

According to the book Triple Cross by Louis Toscano, after learning from the Israeli embassy in London that the London Sunday Times was about to print its expose of the Dimona Nuclear Bomb Factory, then-Israeli Prime Minister [now-Israeli President] Peres telephoned then-Mossad Chief Admoni on Thursday, September 25, 1986 “for a briefing on the Vanunu operation” and “Admoni assured Peres that agents were in position in London, prepared to pounce on Vanunu once the Sunday Times story appeared.” The then-Israeli Prime Minister [now-Israeli President] Peres then “indicated he didn’t want to hear any more, and instructed Admoni to inform him when the agents completed their mission.” According to Triple Cross, the reason why Peres didn’t want to “hear any more” about how the Israeli agents were going to kidnap Vanunu on foreign soil was that “it was important for government officials to be able to deny any knowledge of the dirty tactics employed by their spies.”

According to Triple Cross, the then-25-year-old Cheryl Hanin-Bentov, who had lived in Orlando, Florida for the first 17 years of her life, “became the key to capturing Mordechai Vanunu.” After moving to Israel in 1978 and receiving some intelligence training while serving in the Israeli Army, Hanin-Bentov had married a major who worked for Israeli Military Intelligence. A few weeks before the London Sunday Times was to publish its Dimona Nuclear Bomb Factory expose’, Hanin-Bentov—“traveling on her U.S. passport NO. 040936379, issued at Miami, Florida”—entered London with other Israeli agents. After befriending Vanunu, she persuaded him to travel with her to Rome on British Airways Flight 504 a few days before the London Sunday Times article was to be published.

After Hanin-Bentov and Vanunu arrived in Rome, according to Triple Cross, she “walked briskly out of the terminal and waved at a man slouched against a small red taxi” and the taxi dropped the pair off in front of an apartment building. Entering the apartment building, according to the same book, Hanin-Bentov and Vanunu “climbed the stairs to a second-floor apartment” and then Hanin-Bentov “drew a key from her shoulder bag and opened the door, standing aside to let Vanunu enter first.” Former UPI Jerusalem Bureau Chief Toscano described in his Triple Cross book what apparently happened next to Vanunu:

“The door slammed shut behind him. In an instant, he was attacked by two Mossad agents…He was knocked to the floor on his stomach. As the agents knelt on either side of him, pinning his arms, Bentov took a syringe filled with a fast-acting sedative from a bag lying on a table. One of the agents pulled up Vanunu’s right shirt sleeve and Bentov plunged the needle into his arm. In a matter of seconds, Vanunu was unconscious.”

In a late 1991 telephone interview with Downtown, then-War Resisters League staff person David McReynolds said he thought Israel’s secrecy about its nuclear weapons was not unusual since “any country will be secretive about its nuclear weapons,” but that he thought the kidnapping and imprisonment of Mordechai Vanunu by the Israel government “was a scandal.”

(Downtown 1/15/92)

Tel Aviv University's Complicity With Israeli War Machine

One reason U.S. anti-war activists should consider supporting an academic boycott of Israeli universities is that universities like Tel Aviv University are “playing a major role in enhancing Israel’s security capabilities and military edge,” according to the winter 2008/2009 issue of the Tel Aviv University Review journal. As Gil Zohar revealed in his “Lifting The Veil of Secrecy” article that appeared in this same issue of Tel Aviv University Review:

“In the rough and tumble reality of the Middle East, Tel Aviv University [TAU] is at the front line of the critical work to maintain Israel’s military and technological edge.

“While much of that research remains classified, several facts illuminate the role of the university. MAFAT, a Hebrew acronym meaning the R&D Directorate of the Israel Ministry of Defense is currently funding 55 projects at TAU…

“Nine other projects are being funded by DARPA—the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency of the U.S. Department of Defense.

“Seven…Israel National Security Prizes have been awarded in recent years to members of TAU’s Blauntnik School of Computer Science—more than any other institution in the country. For security reasons, the recipients cannot be named.”

The results of some of the secret war research projects on Tel Aviv University’s campus have apparently been reflected in the weapons systems that are being brutally used against Palestinian civilians in Gaza by the Israeli War Machine, in violation of the Nuremberg Trial Accords, the United Nations Charter and international law. But the Tel Aviv University professors involved in these campus war research projects have tried to hide what they’re up to from any curious anti-war students or anti-war faculty members at Tel Aviv University. As the “Lifting The Veil of Secrecy” article also observed:

“Not surprisingly, much of the defense-related research at TAU remains hush-hush, conducted in rooms and laboratories protected by barred windows, multiple locks and office safes. `There are people in this university dealing with very secret projects, and they won’t talk about it,’ matter-of-factly notes Dr. Michael Gozin, an expert in organic chemistry and explosives detection, who himself chooses words carefully to describe his work.”

Bu according to the “Lifting The Veil of Secrecy” article, Tel Aviv University Professor Ady Arie, who heads TAU’s Institute for Electronic Devices, is working with Tel Aviv University Professor Aladar Fleischman in “designing systems to protect aircraft from missiles” in partnership “with El op, part of Elbit, which makes electrical optic defense systems.”

The head of the Applied Physics Group at TAU’s School of Physics and Astronomy, Tel Aviv University Professor Abraham Katz, is “working on a laser-based counter-measure system against shoulder-launched surface-to-air missiles (SAMs)…”

Tel Aviv University Professor Ron Bachrach of TAU’s Department of Geophysics and Planetary Sciences is doing research on “seismic waves and remote sensing technologies” that “may finally stop the flourishing underground trade between Gaza and Egypt.”

A “three-year project initiated by the IDF Intelligence Corps on how to enhance and stabilize video images shot from a long-distance” of about seven miles or more was also recently completed by Tel Aviv University Professor of Engineering Leonid Yaroslavsky.

The head of TAU’s School of Electrical Engineering, Tel Aviv University Professor Anthony Weiss, told the “Lifting The Veil of Secrecy” article writer that “I’m not free to talk about things funded by the Ministry of Defense, naturally;” while “characteristically, MAFAT denied” Tel Aviv University Professor Michael Gozin “permission to speak in all but generalities about his research into the detection of `green explosives’—next generation munitions based on multiple nitrogen atoms in the molecules,” according to the same writer. The director of TAU’s Interdisciplinary Center for Technology Analysis and Forecasting [ICTAF], Tel Aviv University Professor Yair Sharan, also “is not free to discuss his current work with Israeli defense agencies including MAFAT, the counter-terrorism unit in the Prime Minister’s Office [MALAL], the Ministry of Defense and the police,” according to the “Lifting The Veil of Secrecy” article.

Ironically, although these Tel Aviv University professors may be shy about fully disclosing the nature of their secret war research work to anti-war students at Tel Aviv University, at least one professor, Tel Aviv University Professor Oded Maimon, has not been shy about apparently violating the privacy rights of people around the globe who correspond with each other by e-mail. As Gil Zohar revealed in his “Lifting The Veil of Secrecy” article, “with implications for intelligence gathering, Professor Oded Maimon…mines cyberspace in a project funded by the European Union, Israel’s Ministry of Science and General Motors;” and “using sophisticated algorithms,” Tel Aviv University Professor “Maimon reads millions of e-mails and identifies those that are suspicious or important.”

Yet, according to Tel Aviv University President Zvi Galil, “people are” still “just not aware of how important university research is in general, and how much TAU contributes to Israel’s security in particular.”

Coincidentally, Tel Aviv University President Galil is a former Columbia University School of Engineering and Applied Science Dean. After moving from his Columbia University campus office in Manhattan to his Tel Aviv University president’s office in June 2007, former Columbia University Dean Galil stated:

“I look forward to continuing a dynamic, positive relationship with the American Friends of Tel Aviv University and collaborating with our friends in the United States…TAU and Columbia are separated by an ocean, but that has less meaning than at any prior time in human history.”

A former senior regional director for the militaristic Israeli government’s AIPAC lobbying firm named Sam Witkin was the president of the tax-exempt American Friends of Tel Aviv University until a few years ago; and before Witkin was replaced in 2007 by a former executive at the Zionist movement’s United Jewish Appeal office in New York City named Roni Krinsky, former American Friends of Tel Aviv University President Witkin was paid an annual salary of $248,972.

According to its Form 990 financial disclosure form for 2006, between October 1, 2006 and September 30, 2007 the “non-profit” American Friends of Tel Aviv University group’s total revenues exceeded $22 million, while its total expenditures were only $16 million. In addition, during this same period the “non-profit” American Friends of Tel Aviv University earned over $1.3 million in dividends from the over $21.3 million in corporate stock that it owned; while the amount of State of Israel bonds that the American Friends of Tel Aviv University also owned exceeded $1.2 million.

Perhaps the surplus capital still controlled by the American Friends of Tel Aviv University should be used now to pay some reparations to the Palestinian civilians that the Tel Aviv University-supported Israeli War Machine has been brutally attacking in Gaza during the last three weeks, in violation of the Nuremberg Trial Accords?

Militaristic Israel's Nuclear Bomb Factory & Secrecy Historically--Part 2

During the 2008 election campaign both Democratic President-Elect Barack Obama and U.S. Secretary of State-Designate Hillary Clinton expressed their concern that the U.S. imperialist version of “Peace in the Middle East” would be threatened if the Iranian government acquired nuclear weapons. Ironically, the Zionist movement’s militaristic Israeli government in the Middle East--which Obama & Clinton regard as a U.S. government ally—has already been producing nuclear weapons at its Dimona nuclear bomb factory for many years.

Within Nuclear Israel, there was some internal opposition to the Israeli government’s decision to produce weapons of mass murder in the Holy Land. According to the book Triple Cross by former United Press International Jerusalem Bureau Chief Louis Toscano, “seven of the eight members of the Israeli Atomic Energy Commission [IAEC] resigned in protest over the decision to build weapons, but the reasons were never made public.” And in 1961, two of these former IAEC members helped form the Committee for the De-Nuclearization of the Israeli-Arab Conflict, which was opposed to Israel developing nuclear weapons.

To assure the U.S. government that no nuclear bombs were being produced at the Israeli government’s Dimona Nuclear Bomb Factory, former Israeli Prime Minister Ben-Gurion “agreed to permit regular inspections of the plant by American experts” in the 1960s, “but he secretly ordered severe restrictions on the inspectors’ access,” according to the Triple Cross book. The Israel’s Nuclear Arsenal book by Peter Pry notes that the 1969 U.S. inspection team “complained in writing that because the Israelis made their earlier inspection hurried and limited and did not permit them to move freely, they could not guarantee that there was no weapons-related work being done at Dimona.” And according to Triple Cross, on one second-floor corridor at the Machon 2 nuclear bomb factory are two elevators “that dropped into the heart of the weapons plant,” but the entrance to the corridor where the elevator doors are located “had been routinely bricked up when American inspectors were shown the building.”

After 1969, even the previously limited U.S. inspections of the Dimona Nuclear Bomb Factory were no longer allowed by the Israeli government. And in November 1976, thirteen U.S. Senators who were on a Middle East fact-finding tour were not allowed to examine the Dimona Nuclear Bomb Factory. According to Triple Cross, taped to a wall in Machon 2 in 1977 was “a newspaper clipping about the senators’ attempted visit and the government’s denial that any weapons were being built at Dimona.”

(Downtown 1/15/92)

Militaristic Israel's Nuclear Bomb Factory & Historic Secrecy--Part 1

During the 2008 election campaign both Democratic President-Elect Barack Obama and U.S. Secretary of State-Designate Hillary Clinton expressed their concern that the U.S. imperialist version of “Peace in the Middle East” would be threatened if the Iranian government acquired nuclear weapons. Ironically, the Zionist movement’s militaristic Israeli government in the Middle East--which Obama & Clinton regard as a U.S. government ally—has already been producing nuclear weapons at its Dimona nuclear bomb factory for many years.

Perhaps because most people in the world believe that the Holy Land should be a nuclear-free zone, the Israeli government set up its Dimona Nuclear Bomb Factory operation covertly and continued to be secretive about its nuclear war preparations during the 1990s. According to the Oct. 20, 1991 issue of the New York Times, “journalists working in Israel’ in the 1990s were “not allowed to publish anything substantial on Israel’s nuclear program.”

The book None Will Survive Us: The Story of the Israeli A-Bomb by Ami Dor-On and Eli Teicher, for example, which was scheduled to be published in 1980 by the two Israeli journalists, “was banned from publication by Israeli government censors” and Dor-On and Teicher were “allegedly threatened with prison sentences of 15 years to life if they defy the ban,” according to the book Israel’s Nuclear Arsenal by Peter Pry.

In 1952, the Ben-Gurion government of Israel “secretly founded the Israeli Atomic Energy Commission [IAEC] and placed it under the supervision of the Defense Ministry,” according to Israel’s Nuclear Arsenal. “The architect of both the bomb factory at Dimona and the 30-year effort to keep it secret,” former Israeli Prime Minister [and now-Israeli President] Shimon Peres, was then director-general of the Israeli Defense Ministry and he persuaded the then-Prime Minister Ben-Gurion “to pursue the nuclear option,” according to Louis Toscano’s Triple Cross book.

In The Fall of 1956, according to The Undeclared Bomb by Leonard Spector, “France secretly agreed to supply Israel with a sizeable plutonioum-producing reactor to be built at Dimona.” The agreement between the French and Israeli government to construct the Dimona nuclear reactor was signed on Sept. 17, 1956; on Oct. 10, 1956, “further details” were “set forth in a classified accord,” and in November 1956, the French government made a “secret pledge to help Israel develop nuclear arms,” according to The Undeclared Bomb.

Following the secret French-Israeli government agreements of 1956, “hundreds of French technicians flooded the Negev to construct the facility, including a plutonium processing plant underground to elude American and Soviet spy satellites,” and “by 1967 Israel had enough plutonium on hand to build its first bomb,” according to Triple Cross. The same book also noted that “to explain the feverish construction activity in the Negev, Ben-Gurion announced Israel was building a textile plant”; and, after the U.S. government discovered that what was actually being built at Dimona was a nuclear reactor, “Peres claimed the power produced at Dimona would be used to desalinate billions of gallons of sea water for the irrigation of the Negev.” On Dec. 21, 1960, when then-Israeli Prime Minister Ben-Gurion publicly acknowledged that a nuclear reactor—not a textile factory—was being built at Dimona, he had also “declared that the facility would be used exclusively for peaceful research and training,” according to The Undeclared Bomb. (end of part 1)

(Downtown 1/15/92)

Militaristic Israel's Dimona Nuclear Bomb Factory

During the 2008 election campaign both Democratic President-Elect Barack Obama and U.S. Secretary of State-Designate Hillary Clinton expressed their concern that the U.S. imperialist version of “Peace in the Middle East” would be threatened if the Iranian government acquired nuclear weapons. Ironically, the Zionist movement’s militaristic Israeli government in the Middle East--which Obama & Clinton regard as a U.S. government ally—has already been producing nuclear weapons at its Dimona nuclear bomb factory for many years.

According to Israel’s Nuclear Arsenal by Peter Pry, “Dimona’s corner of the Negev is ideal for hiding atomic bombs” because it is “protected from Jordan by the Dead Sea and the rough country of the eastern desert, and over 250 miles distant from the nearest Syrian military bases.”

At the Negev Nuclear Research Center, the Israeli government’s nuclear bombs are produced in “the windowless, two-story concrete building” next to the Dimona nuclear reactor, according to Triple Cross by Louis Toscano, a former United Press International Jerusalem Bureau Chief. The roof of the Dimona Nuclear Bomb Factory, which is called Machon 2, is “topped with an elevator tower” and its walls are “several feet thick,” according to the same book. Of the Negev Nuclear Research Center’s 2,700 workers, only 150 are allowed to enter the Holy Land’s Machon 2 nuclear bomb factory.

These 150 scientists and technicians build their nuclear bombs “in laboratories and work shops on six levels under the desert floor” and Machon 2 is “essentially a giant reprocessing plant” where plutonium is produced and “then fashioned into nuclear weapons,” according to Triple Cross. After the Machon 2 work on the nuclear bombs is completed, the bomb components are moved in convoys of unmarked cars to “a secret military airfield near Haifa,” where the spheres are “fitted with triggering devices and other technology needed to turn them into nuclear weapons,” according to the same book. Some of the Israeli government’s nuclear warheads in the 1980s were then used in nuclear-armed Jericho II missiles which were then deployed in hardened bunkers or silos by the Zionist movement’s Israeli government, according to The Undeclared Bomb by Leonard Spector, a senior associate in the 1980s at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

(Downtown 1/15/92)

Billionaire Warren Buffett's $4 Billion Israeli Investment

One reason the U.S. Corporate Establishment and its Big Media is still supporting the Israeli war machine’s brutal war against Palestinian civilians in Gaza (in violation of the Nuremberg Trial Accords, the UN Charter and international law) is that many U.S. corporations have invested a lot of money in the Zionist movement’s Israeli economy in recent years. U.S. Billionaire Warren Buffett's investment firm, for example, invested over $4 billion in Militaristic Israel a few years ago.

As the website of the American Israel Investments Associates at http://www.israelgrowth.com/about.html notes:

“With the highest GDP growth (5.2%) of any Western country (2005), Israel has become a very popular market for foreign investors. Warren Buffett’s $4 billion purchase of Iscar, his largest international investment ever, continues a trend that has sent foreign investors running to invest in the dynamic Israeli economy. Global stalwarts such as Johnson and Johnson, Intel, Ebay, Kodak, HP, Cisco, Alcatel, Broadcom, Microsoft, BMC Software, Verifone, and PMC Sierra all purchased Israeli companies in the last year.

“With more companies listed on NASDAQ than any other country except for the United States, Israel is the focus of more and more investor attention.

“Israel has become a destination for all types of investors who seek potentially high returns. Over $1.4 billion of venture capital money was invested in 2005. This ranks Israel second only to the United States in venture capital funding, outranking European and Asian rivals. As the privatization of government companies continues, the large global hedge funds and private equity firms have become very active players, investing billions of dollars in purchasing firms like Bank Leumi (Israel’s second largest bank) and Bezeq (the national phone company)."