SPY TRADE: How Israel’s Lobby Undermines America’s Economy

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By Grant F. Smith

Smith Once Again Exposes Israel Lobby’s Danger to America’s Security and Economy

By Andrew Burroughs

November 1, 2009

This is perhaps Smith’s most important work exposing the deleterious and dangerous influences of the Israeli lobby on both U.S. economic and national security. Smith has devoted several years objectively and thoroughly examining the history of the Israel lobby.
He earlier exposed how domestic political considerations undermined the Justice Department’s valiant efforts to define the lobby as an agent of a foreign power (See Deadly Dogma, Foreign Agents and America’s Defense Line).
As is his practice, Smith is thorough in his research. This latest work is 178 pages, contains more than 300 footnotes, citing more than hundred specific sources including files the FBI only recently declassified.
It is written in a commendably easy to read style, organized into short concise chapters that cover several critical topics including: Israeli arms smuggling; the history of the Israeli Lobby; how the Israeli lobby subverts the investigation of commercial espionage against American firms by Israeli agents; Jonathan Pollard’s treason; the harmful role played by AIPAC in advancing Israeli interests at the expense of the United States. So important is this book that I plan on putting it in my friends’ and family’s Christmas stockings.

Smith systematically demonstrates how since before the establishment of the Israeli state, Zionists abroad and in the United States violated federal laws solely to the advantage of the nascent state regardless of the consequences to American interests. It is this profound contempt for American interest by Zionists in pursing their almost fanatical allegiance to a foreign power that most troubles this reader.

Other writers such as Paul Findley and Mearsheimer have also discussed this danger to American strategic interests and how the “lobby” ensures that all those who challenge its stranglehold on American Congress and the media are publicly attacked, denied employment and marginalized. However, Smith provides an unassailably researched work documenting actual criminal activity. In fact, to this reader’s knowledge, neither Smith’s credibility nor his work’s research has ever been successfully challenged.

The America that Smith paints is a disturbing one. He presents a Congress motivated by lobby money, ignorance, indifference to the interests of the American people and influenced by an false image of Israel as a “David v. Goliath” justifying its systematic violations of U.S. law. Personally, I do not begrudge Israelis from engaging in activities to promote the interests of their home state. What I find disgusting and intolerable is when American citizens actively use political and economic leverage to subvert this country’s own strategic interests solely to the advantage of a foreign power. In my book this is called “treason,” “espionage,” and “betrayal.”

The picture documented by Smith should disturb all patriotic Americans. One truly wonders if this is the America that Washington and Jefferson imagined when they fought our war for independence. Have we substituted one imperial master for another more insidious?

Who can doubt that this country was manipulated into the invading Iraq solely to advance Israeli interests?
Why did Ahmed Chalabi make a secret visit to Israel in 2002 where he declared that the “road to Baghdad lies through Jerusalem!?!”

Was the war against al-Qaida effectively abandoned in Afghanistan to invade Iraq because the “lobby” took advantage of the 911 attack to push for the invasion of Iraq in order to advance Israeli regional interests? Is it only coincidental that al-Qaida has never attacked Israel?

These questions remain to be answered. This reader hopes that Smith will soon apply his demonstrated research and writing abilities to answering these critical questions.


Also See:
SPY TRADE: How Israel’s Lobby Undermines America’s Economy Foreword by Michael Scheuer, former chief, CIA Bin Laden unit
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November 25, 2009 Posted by Elias