Greg Palast, a "Chomsky for Dummies" and "a slim Michael Moore", emerged
as an apologist for the Jews and an accuser of greedy WASPs and Arabs. 

Greg Palast, the left wing of the Lobby 

By Israel Shamir 

I always had a problem with Greg Palast. Apparently this critic of Bush
and Blair, an opponent of the war in Iraq, who wrote for the Guardian
and the Observer is a man on our side, a good left-wing guy. He is
apparently against the corporations, against the neoliberal setup; some
of his ideas are surely good. He is considered "Chomsky for Dummies"
["more accessible than Chomsky", a newspaper wrote in a polite way] and
he has a good class attitude, for instance: "The world’s three hundred
richest people are worth more than the world’s poorest three billion.
The market’s up, but who is the market? The Gilded One Percent own 4/5th
of the nation’s stocks and bonds." His philippics against Bush ("an evil
sonovabitch") are as fiery as those of a preacher in a mosque in my
neighbourhood, and this is not a fault in my eyes. He is equally
outspoken against the war in Iraq. What else could one ask from a guy? 

But at the second sight, there were small alarums. He was against Bush
and passionately - for Gore and Kerry. As if Gore and Kerry would keep
the US troops out of Iraq. As if Gore and Kerry would pass the spoils of
three hundred richest men to the poorest three billion. He claimed that
Bush administration covered up... "Saudi financing of terror". This
smacked of a familiar claim - that the US made a mistake to attack Iraq
- instead of Saudi Arabia, or Iran. He disliked America, his native
land, with too strong a passion. "Antisemite is one who dislikes Jews
too much", quipped Yael Lotan, an Israeli writer. The same goes about
America: it’s quite all right to dislike the superpower, but do not
dislike it too much, it’s bad for your karma. 

Palast wrote: "The United States is ugly. [It is] a numbing repetitive
vortex of sprawled Pizza Huts, Wal-Marts, Kmarts, the Gap, Jiffy Lubes,
Kentucky Fried Chickens, Starbucks and McDonald’s up to and leaning over
the Canyon wall." In my view, this is too much. Even if your mother -
and one’s native land should be as important as your mother - is ugly,
you do not say it, not even think it. 

Palast’s unequivocal support for unlimited immigration was not inspired
by his compassion to les miserables of the Third World (also an
erroneous position, in my view, but still comprehensible), but by his
profound disdain of the ordinary local indigenous native.
Characteristically, in his Best Democracy Money Can Buy Palast argues
with a London cockney cabby, whether England should accept millions of
refugees and asylum seekers. The cabby was horrified by his
multiculturalist attitude, by his indifference to local culture and
tradition. But Palast pooh-poohed "the cabby’s fear of losing his
English identity. Face it, Shakespeare’s dead. England’s cultural
exports are now limited to soccer hooligans, Princess Di knickknacks and
Hugh Grant." Face it, Palast, "England’s cultural exports are now
limited to soccer hooligans" because England’s cultural imports were
limited to Greg Palast and others of your ilk. A new Shakespeare may be
alive in England, as well as a new Melville in the US, but you won’t
recognise him for he won’t fit your ideas. For you, ordinary people are
"brown-shirted antiforeign electoral mobs", for us - the sovereign
people. 

Palast is obsessed with money, as evident from his title Best Democracy
Money Can Buy. He is not even aware of other motives, whether noble or
vile. For him, "the number one question on the minds of Americans was
not, 'Does Saddam really have the bomb?' but 'What’s this little war
going to cost us?'" 

I have no idea of Palast’s ethnic background, but ideologically, nobody
can be more Judaic than this man, who worships money, despises the
native and wishes to bomb some place in the Middle East. These are
classic Judaic attitudes, so I was not surprised when Palast emerged as
an apologist for the Jews and an accuser of greedy WASPs and Arabs. In
his 'Was the Invasion of Iraq A Jewish Conspiracy?' essay published in the
Jewish ‘progressive’ magazine Tikkun, Pallast pulls usual ropes; for
him, whoever thinks that the Jewish establishment pushed for the war on
Iraq (including Mearsheimer and Walt, apparently) must adhere to the
Elders of Zion and Christ-killers paradigm. He writes: "after killing
Jesus, did the Elders of Zion manipulate the government of the United
States into invading Babylon as part of a scheme to abet the expansion
of Greater Israel?" Not surprisingly, he finds the Jews "not guilty".
The bad guys are "a devout Christian, Norquist [who] channeled a million
dollars to the Christian Coalition", and "the Houston-Riyadh Big Oil
axis". The Jews? Forget it: "Wolfowitz and his neo-con clique -  bookish,
foolish, vainglorious - had their asses kicked utterly [...] A half-dozen
confused Jews, armed only with Leo Strauss’ silly aphorisms, were no
match for Texas oil majors and OPEC potentates." 

This is not the place to repeat the discussion of the Jewish Lobby. This
was done by many people, including Mearsheimer and Walt (their recent
response to Lobby’s attacks is on
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=3506 ), by Philip
Weiss (whose blog http://mondoweiss.observer.com makes more and more
sense - actually, this man grew a lot since his triumphalist pieces of
2001, and I read him with great interest), by our friend Jeff Blankfort,
whose emailing list jblankfort@earthlink.net scans much of American and
British media, and even by my humble self. 

The conclusions we reached are only fortified by the massive apology for
the Lobby coming from various Trots, from Socialist Viewpoint, from Greg
Palast and others. The Jewish Lobby is like a Stealth jet, and these
guys provide it with invisibility. Palast will have to live many more
years if he wants to see us weeping over the "neo-con leader of the pack
Wolfowitz being cast out of the Pentagon war room and tossed into the
World Bank". We know of worse fate. And he will have to live as long as
Methuselah to see us feeling sorry for General Jay Garner, the first
Gauleiter of occupied Iraq sacked by his superiors - see item 4. 

In short, we went part of the way with Mr. Palast, but what’s enough,
is enough. Let him prefer General Jay Garner to Paul Bremer III, Kerry to
Bush, Jews to Texans, and Saudi Arabia to Iraq as a good place to bomb.
Coprophagi may choose between various kinds of excrements, but we are
free from this worry. 

2. Here is a response of Jeff Blankfort: 

This is an interesting article by investigative journalist Greg Palast
who has, in the past, has avoided any mention of Israel or the Israel
lobby even in his book, "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy," when, if he
really wanted to know who the biggest buyers were, he could have readily
found them in the internet among the Mother Jones 400, and the big
donors from the Communications and Finance industries on the Center for
Public Integrity site, and they are not oil men. Of the 400 top donors
to the 2000 election cycle, 7 of the top 10, 12 of the top 20 and at
least 125 of the top 250 were Jewish. Haim Saban, an Israeli-American,
and a big backer of AIPAC, gave to the Democrats in 2002, $12.3 million,
which is two million more than Ken Lay and Exxon gave to the Republicans
over a 10 year period but strangely, it didn't get the same media
attention. 

On the other hand, this article of his bears out what I have been saying
for the three years, that the neo-con notion to take over and privatize
Iraqi oil was nonsense and flew in the face of how the oil industry
operates, that the neo-cons were no longer running the show, but what
Palast doesn't deal with is the initial opposition to the war on the
part of Bush Sr., as well as James Baker, and oil company executives
including Phillip Carroll of Shell, nor does he, once again, mention
that not only were the neo-cons the main tub thumpers for the war, it
was also supported by the major organizations of the Israel lobby, led
by AIPAC and the parade of pro-Israel Jewish columnists who are
nationally syndicated and led by Tom Freedman, William Safire (since
replaced by David Brooks), Charles Krauthammer, Jeff Jacoby, and all the
publications of Rupert Murdoch and Mortimer Zuckerman. The war was also
called for by the major principals of both Likud and Labor in Israel,
Sharon, Netanyahu and Peres, as well as Chef of Staff Shall Mofaz who
said that after taking care of Iraq, the US should do the same with
Syria and Iran. 

If Palast was not so intent on shielding Israel and its American
supporters from scrutiny, he would have acknowledged that the reason
that the Democrats joined the Bush administration in supporting the war
was that the majority of their funding comes from pro-Israel lobbyists
which makes the Party, as Prof. Francis Boyle recently said, "a front
for AIPAC." Now that the war has taken out Saddam and literally
destroyed the country, the Democrats are allowed to criticize the
conduct of the war, but not so directly the war itself, and will be
ready to serve the lobby's call when it comes to taking on Iran. They
have already overwhelmingly approved the Iran Freedom Act, the latest
AIPAC war-mongering effort. 

It is a shame that Palast has not employed his excellent investigative
skills to examine this aspect of American society and instead has
allowed them to play second fiddle to his attachment to Israel.
Otherwise, he would not also be trying to convince us that both Bolton
and Wolfowitz have important roles still to play for the Bush regime. 

I have sent a copy of this to Greg Palast, with whom I have had two
superb interviews on my radio program, but not on this subject. I am
hoping that he will reply and, if so I will forward it to my list. 

3. Frankly speaking, Greg Palast is a slim version of Michael Moore.
Here is a very relevant piece: 

Wendy Campbell vs. Michael Moore 

http://www.marwenmedia.com/articles_images/campbellvsmoore.html 

4. Was the Invasion of Iraq A Jewish Conspiracy? 

BY GREG PALAST Tikkun Magazine JULY/AUGUST 2006 

Did the Jews do it? 

The US Congress will open hearings this week on the War in Iraq -- a wee
bit late one might think. But one question at the forefront of the minds
of many on both the Left and the Right is sure not to be asked: Did the
Jews do it? I mean, after killing Jesus, did the Elders of Zion
manipulate the government of the United States into invading Babylon as
part of a scheme to abet the expansion of Greater Israel? 

The question was first posed to me in 2004 when I was speaking at a
meeting of Mobilization for Peace in San Jose. A member of the audience
asked, "Put it together- Who's behind this war? Paul Wolfowitz and
Elliott Abrams and the Project for a "Jew" American Century and, and,
why don't you talk about that, huh? And ...." 

But the questioner never had the full opportunity to complete his query
because, flushed and red, he began to charge the stage. The peace
activists attempted to detain the gentleman-whose confederates then
grabbed some chairs to swing. As the Peace Center was taking on a
somewhat warlike character, I chose to call in the authorities and slip
out the back. 

Still, his question intrigued me. As an investigative reporter, "Who's
behind this war?" seemed like a reasonable challenge-and if it were a
plot of Christ-killers and Illuminati, so be it. I just report the
facts, ma'am. 

...It was more like a corporate takeover, except with Abrams tanks instead
of junk bonds. It didn't strike me as the work of a Kosher Cabal for an
Imperial Israel. In fact, it smelled of pork-Pig Heaven for corporate
America looking for a slice of Iraq, and I suspected its porcine source.
I gave it a big sniff and, sure enough, I smelled Grover Norquist. 

Norquist is the capo di capi of right-wing, big-money influence peddlers
in Washington. Those jealous of his inside track to the White House call
him "Gopher Nose-Twist." 

A devout Christian, Norquist channeled a million dollars to the
Christian Coalition to fight the devil's tool, legalized gambling. He
didn't tell the Coalition that the loot came from an Indian tribe
represented by Norquist's associate, Jack Abramoff. (The tribe didn't
want competition for its own casino operations.) 

I took a chance and dropped in on Norquist's L Street office, and under
a poster of his idol ["NIXON- NOW MORE THAN EVER"], Norquist took a look
at the "recovery" plan for Iraq and practically jumped over my desk to
sign it, filled with pride at seeing his baby. ... The very un-Jewish
Norquist may have framed much of the U.S. occupation grabfest, but there
was, without doubt, one notable item in the 101-page plan for Iraq which
clearly had the mark of Zion on it. On page seventy-three the plan
called for the "privatization....[of] the oil and supporting
industries," the sell-off of every ounce of Iraq's oil fields and
reserves. Its mastermind, I learned, was Ariel Cohen of the Heritage
Foundation. 

..."It's a no-brainer," Cohen told me, at his office at Heritage. It was a
dim little cubby, in which, in our hour or two together, the phone rang
only once. For a guy who was supposed to be The Godfather of a
globe-spanning Zionist scheme to destroy the Arab oil monopoly, he
seemed kind of, well...pathetic. 

And he failed. While the Norquist-promoted sell-offs, flat taxes and
copyright laws were dictated into Iraqi law by occupation chief Paul
Bremer, the Cohen neo-con oil privatization died an unhappy death. What
happened, Ari? 

"Arab economists," he hissed, "hired by the State Department -- the
witches brew of the Saudi Royal family and Soviet Ostblock." 

Well, the Soviet Ostblock does not exist, but the Arab economists do. I
spoke with them in Riyadh, in London, in California, in wry accents
mixing desert and Oxford drawls. They speak with confidence, knowing
Saudi Arabia's political authority is protected by the royal families --
of Houston petroleum. 

WOLFOWITZ DAMMERUNG: TWILIGHT OF THE NEO-CON GODS 

So there you have it. Wolfowitz and his neo-con clique- bookish,
foolish, vainglorious-had their asses kicked utterly, finally, and
convincingly by the powers of petroleum, the Houston-Riyadh Big Oil
axis. 

Between the neo-cons and Big Oil, it wasn't much of a contest. The
end-game was crushing, final. The Israelites had lost again in the land
of Babylon. ...The State Department's knuckle-dragging enforcer of neo-con
orthodoxies, John Bolton, was booted from Washington to New York to the
powerless post of U.N. Ambassador. Finally, on March 16, 2005, second
anniversary of the invasion, neo-con leader of the pack Wolfowitz was
cast out of the Pentagon war room and tossed into the World Bank, moving
from the testosterone-powered, war-making decision center to the lending
office for Bangladeshi chicken farmers. 

"The realists," crowed the triumphant editor of the journal of the
Council on Foreign Relations, "have defeated the fantasists!" 

So much for the Big Zionist Conspiracy that supposedly directed this
war. A half- dozen confused Jews, wandering in the policy desert a long
distance from mainstream Jewish views, armed only with Leo Strauss'
silly aphorisms, were no match for Texas oil majors and OPEC potentates
with a combined throw weight of half a trillion barrels of oil. 

5. Palast’s apology for Gauleiter Garner: 

Greg Palast, author of Armed Madhouse, noticed: why Defence Secretary
Donald Rumsfeld fired General Jay Garner on 21 April 2003. Garner,
appointed by Bush, made the mistake of "taking the US president at his
word". He thought that his job was to keep the peace and bring
democracy. Then he was given a plan. It was a 101- page document to
guide the long-term future of Iraq. There was nothing in it about
democracy or elections or safety. There was, rather, a detailed schedule
of selling off "all of Iraq's state assets," "especially" said the plan,
"the oil and supporting industries." 

The plan, according to Garner, included the sale of Iraq's banks and,
curiously, changing copyright laws; "items that made the plan look less
like a programme for getting Iraq on its feet than a programme for
corporate looting of the nation's assets." 

Garner did not think much of the plan. He had other priorities like food
distribution and preventing famine. "Seizing title and ownership of
Iraq's oil fields was not on Garner's must-do list. He let it be known
to Washington that 'what we need to do is set an Iraqi freely elected
government represent the will of the people. It is their country, their
oil.'" 

Apparently, Rumsfeld disagreed. "Worse," writes Palast, "Garner was
brokering a truce between Sunnis, Shias and Kurds. They were to begin
what he called 'big tent' meetings to hammer out the details and set a
date for elections. But quick elections would mean the end of the
state-asset sell-off plan. An Iraqi-controlled government would never go
along with it. Garner had spent years in Iraq in charge of the Northern
Kurdish zone and knew the Iraqis well. He was certain that an
asset-and-oil-grab, 'privatisations', would cause a sensitive population
to take up the gun. 'That's just one fight you don't want to take on
right now.'" 

But that's just the fight the neo-cons wanted. Palast continues: "And in
Rumsfeld's replacement for Garner, they had a man itching for the fight.
Paul Bremer III had no experience on the ground in Iraq, but he had one
unbeatable credential that Garner lacked: Bremer had served as managing
director of Kissinger and Associates." General Garner, watching the
insurgency unfold from the occupation authority's provocations told
Palast: "I am a believer that you don't want to end the day with more
enemies than you started with." Such words seem from a different era to
ours. As Palast concludes, "You can't have a war president without a
war. And you can't have a war without enemies. "Bring 'em on," our
commander-in- chief said. And Zarqawi answered the call" 

http://lists.riseup.net/www/arc/iac-discussion/2006-06/msg00105.html 

P.S. After the first publication of the article, our friend Ian Buckley
wrote: According to this, Greg Palast is indeed 'a Jewish leftie' :
http://www.forward.com/issues/2003/03.08.15/faces.html . He is often
funny and has an agreeable habit of getting up the noses of some of the
powerful, but the above article illustrates his deficiencies.. 

The article in the Jewish newspaper Forward makes it clear: “His fans
are too conspiracy-theory-minded. Too anti-American. Too antisemitic. "A
large part of my European readership I wouldn't urinate on," Palast told
the Forward. Some Europeans aren't so wild about him, either. Unlike
some of his fellow Jewish lefties, Palast is not ready to dismiss
antisemitism when he sees it. "The members of the Jewish left — and I
certainly am one of them — are very glib about antisemitism and the
dangers out there," he said. "The British left is infused with the worst
elements of antisemitism." 

He even sees antisemitism in the pages of his own newspaper. 

"When the Hebrew teachers in Tehran, in Iran, were put on trial as spies
for Israel — which was beyond unlikely — my paper had an editorial by
some fool saying, well, we shouldn't attack Iran — there's very good
evidence, and we shouldn't vilify everyone George Bush says is our
enemy," he said. "They want Israel to release people who are admitted
child killers, but the Hebrew teachers should rightly be in jail." 

Never one to compromise his opinions, when the Arab news channel
Al-Jazeera offered Palast a job, he turned it down cold; he refers to
the station as TNN, Terrorist News Network.” 

Thus an opinion of Mr Palast about the Lobby is as valid as that of Abe
Foxman and Daniel Pipes. 

P.P.S. To my great regret, our wonderful Cynthia McKinney accepted Greg
Palast's help in her electoral campaign.

Probably we shall witness erosion of her position vs. Israel very soon.
She is not to be blamed: no politician in the US can do without a
pipeline to the Lobby.