By Mohamed Khodr • Apr 23rd, 2009 at 7:10 • Category: Analysis, Biography, Counter-terrorism, No thanks!, Israel, Newswire, Opinions and Letters, Palestine, Religion, Somoud: Arab Voices of Resistance, War, Zionism
The Honorable Attorney General Eric Holder In the AIPAC espionage case the deliverer of the espionage material, Larry Franklin was found guilty and sentenced to twelve years, but the recipients of this material, two ex AIPAC employees may have their cases dropped. This maybe unconformable to fathom but it seems that when dealing with potential allegations of impropriety or investigations of Israel, AIPAC, or government officials involved with these entities our government seems to bury the story, our media ignores it, until the story dies under the power and influence of political and media lobbying of its own lobbying volition.
Defense Lawyers for the two AIPAC suspects have successfully postponed the trial nine times thereby frustrating the prosecutors. The main strategy for the defense lawyers seems to be that the disclosure of such classified information is not illegal but is of the kind usually obtained by AIPAC freely from governmental officials given the "special relationship" we have with Israel. Sir, if such free flow of information exists, it is a national security nightmare.
That the AIPAC espionage case deals with sensitive information on Iran one can't help but come to the conclusion that dropping this case will further Israel's powerful pressure on the U.S. for an attack on Iran, something the Pentagon and JCS have publicly stated would be a disaster for this nation. However we did follow Israel's push into Iraq, will we do the same with Iran.
David Ignatius, in a column in the Washington Post (A Tax Break Fuels Middle East Friction, March 26), highlighted the hypocrisy and double standards of our government's inaction against Jewish American organizations that illegally raise funds, tax exempt, to build illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank.
He wrote: "For many years, the United States has had a policy against spending aid money to fund Israeli settlements in the West Bank, which successive administrations have regarded as an obstacle to peace. Yet private organizations in the United States continue to raise tax-exempt contributions for the very activities that the government opposes."
I pledged my allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America and to obey and uphold its laws; yet simply because my name is Mohamed, I have an FBI file; but for Israel's Lobbyists our laws and legal system are ignored, lest there be a political media backlash.
Dr. Sami Al Aryani has been held for years without any specific charges simply because he's a Palestinian who opposes Israel's brutal and illegal occupation; but AIPAC employees can spy on our nation and may walk away. He deserves his day in court or to be freed.
Sir, I strongly urge you to pursue the case against AIPAC and consider requiring it to register as an agent of a foreign government, something it has eluded successfully with help from powerful friends in Congress and the Supreme Court.
No one is above our laws, no one, not even Israel. Please don't surrender our justice system to lobbyists. It's enough that our Congress is beholden to AIPAC and not our national interests.
Thus far, Justice is not blind in our nation, it's simply Kosher.
Respectfully
P.S. I refer you to the website below, especially to the comment included from a person who claims to have been the initial person to notify officials on this case.
THE AIPAC Prosecution
The key e-mail was sent about 3 months prior to this WaPo article. It was sent to a Middle Eastern country that I knew from previous e-mails would appropriately make use of such information - far more successfully than if I had contacted U.S. authorities (or the US MSM) directly criticizing Israel and its minions.
I immediately knew that the e-mail made an impact when within a day and a half Colin Powell, then Secretary of State, distanced himself from CIA Director George Tenet. The following day Tenet resigned his position. (This key e-mail singled out, among other charges, a corrupt link between the CIA and Israel.) And personally, I was offered a new H2 Hummer both over the phone and, then when I refused the offer, in person. Many other "curious" events have occurred in subsequent years when the same basic charge was raised in various situations.
So I can't say that nothing has happened in the last 4+ years to deal with the "smoking gun" that was exposed through the help of these e-mails. But it has been, in my opinion, totally insignificant especially given the unprecedented malignity of the underlying crime. Thus at this point I have concluded that our governmental leaders lack the capacity - and quite probably even the interest - to self-correct this most critical problem.
The principal points of my key e-mail can be summarized as follows:
- The United States provides Israel with $3+ billion per year in aid and loans, which are never repaid.
- Israel doesn't account for the $billions and $billions that they receive and, notably, are never audited by the US. In other words, this money provides a huge hidden slush fund for Israel to do with what they like.
- Israel's primary use of the slush fund is to bribe key political officials of the United States, elected and appointed, to achieve Israel's goals, including objectives often in conflict with interests of the United States.
In other words there was/is a deeply corrupt relationship between Israel and the United States involving massive corruption, bribery, treachery and treason that threatens the very foundation of the United States as well as the concept of democracy as a laudable form of government. And this wasn't a single indiscretion or something that just happened over a short time period. Rather it was/is a deliberate scheme carried out broadly over decades.
So you see there is much more involved with the raid on AIPAC and subsequent prosecution of Rosen, Weissman and Franklin. If you put Israel's interests first by all means toss the case out. Otherwise pursue these traitors as well as the Senators, Representatives and other governmental officials that received Israel bribes in return for doing Israel's bidding. (And WaPo, since you never even investigated the source of these e-mails, how can you possibly now conclude that you have sufficient information to editorialize for a dismissal?)
Look at the Power Rangers Below: lovers of peace and justice?
By John Cook, 12:07 PM on Wed Apr 22 2009,
The reported efforts by a "suspected Israeli operative" to get Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.) to quash an espionage prosecution into AIPAC hinge on Haim Saban, an Israeli-American billionaire. Who is he?According to the story thus far, the Israeli agent whose phone was being tapped by the NSA promised Harman that, if she could get the Department of Justice to abandon its prosecution of two former AIPAC staffers, Saban would use his influence with then-minority leader Nancy Pelosi to keep Harman in her leadership seat on the House intelligence committee.
The Los Angeles Times, in a brief profile today, describes Saban, who was worth $3.4 billion in 2008, in quasi-heroic terms as a generous and committed man of passion:
Even in a town of bigger-than-life personalities, media mogul Haim Saban stands out — lion-like in demeanor, furiously determined and unshakably loyal to those people and causes in which he fervently believes.
Those causes: Israel, the Democratic Party and medical philanthropy — in that order. And he has a history of putting his vast fortune behind all three.
Saban has a reputation as a brutal businessman. In person, he projects all the charm and terror of Ian McShane's Deadwood character Al Swearengen. Once, according to an excellent Portfolio profile from last year, while negotiating with Kiss' Gene Simmons over the rights to Kiss characters for use in a cartoon, Saban turned to his partner and said, in Hebrew, "Now we gut him." Saban didn't know that Simmons, who was present, was Israeli and spoke Hebrew.
Another way to put it is that Saban decided to buy himself a foreign policy. He has personally paid more money to politicians than any other American—$13 million since 1999, according to Portfolio—all with the avowed intent of ensuring that the U.S. will support Israel no matter what Israel does. Saban told Portfolio that his grudging support of Barack Obama in the 2008 election was premised on being reassured that Obama had a "visceral commitment, as opposed to a logical or strategic one," to the Jewish state.
Saban was born in Egypt, moved to Israel in 1956, and landed in America in 1983. He started his career as a musician and promoter, playing bass in an Israeli Beatles cover band called the Lions. He began making his fortune by buying the rights to background music in children's cartoons, and is credited as the "composer" for more than 3,700 theme songs and cues—meaning he gets paid every time they are aired—but the Hollywood Reporter reported in 1998 that he simply paid the actual composers a one-time fee for the rights and the credit. (That's not an uncommon arrangement in Hollywood, but a number of composers threatened to sue Saban, according to Portfolio, and he settled for $10,000 to each of them.)
Saban's interest in cartoon music led him to discover the Might Morphin' Power Rangers in Japan in the mid-1990s, which made him a fortune when he brought it to the United States. He parlayed that into a deal with Fox to purchase Pat Robertson's Family Channel, which they sold to Disney in 2001 for more than $5 billion. He is currently an owner and chairman of Univision, the Spanish-language broadcaster.
He applies the same attitude to his political machinations. During the 2008 Democratic primary campaign, when it looked like superdelegates were going to decide the race, Saban reportedly offered the Young Democrats of America—which controlled two superdelegate votes—$1 million if they would support Hillary Clinton. Saban denied it. Nor is his political largesse limited to the U.S.—he reportedly paid $120,000 to Shimon Peres' prime minister campaign in 2006 in exchange for help in purchasing the Israeli communications company Bezeq.
In 2002, Saban launched the Saban Center for Middle East Policy, an arm of the Brookings Institution, with a $13 million grant. It served as a sort of left-wing cover operation for proponents of the invasion of Iraq, employing liberal hawks like Kenneth Pollack, whose book The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq was influential in bringing Democrats on board with the Bush Adminsitration's plans.
Personally, Saban is a boisterous showman. The gardens at his Beverly Hills estate are modeled after the ones at Versailles. When he learned in 2000 that a $250,000 donation to the Democratic National Committee had been bested by someone else who gave $500,000, he sent another check for $250,000 plus a $1 bill: "No. 2 doesn't fly for me," he told Portfolio. He's married to a shiksa wife, and the family buys a Christmas tree every year.
It's not surprising that Saban is wrapped up in the Harman story—he's been at the center of Israeli advocacy in the U.S. for decades. But it is odd that Israeli intelligence—if that's what the sources describing the wiretaps are referring to when they say "suspected Israeli operative"—would engage such a well-known and colorful figure in a highly sensitive operation.
Saban has been active in Hollywood and the media business for years. What can you tell us about him?
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