Rosen's short-term victory over Freeman

The Freeman affair continues to rumble on. But, as Robert Dreyfuss comments,* the seeming victory for Steve Rosen, AIPAC and the rest of the Israeli lobby in foreclosing his appointment may turn out to be pyrrhic.

Freeman's vocal backlash and the Washington press's front page coverage identifying an actual "Israel lobby" comes just as the governmental alliance between Netanyahu and Lieberman is formalised, bringing together a truly open racist coalition.

Dreyfuss sees this as a crucial joint moment for the Obama administration and the Lobby:

Perhaps most important of all, Israel is about to be run by an extremist, ultra right-wing government led by Likud Party leader Bibi Netanyahu, and including the even more extreme party of Avigdor Lieberman, as well as a host of radical-right religious parties. It’s an ugly coalition that is guaranteed to clash with the priorities of the Obama White House. As a result, the arrival of the Netanyahu-Lieberman government is also guaranteed to prove a crisis moment for the Israel lobby.

Rosen and his circle must, indeed, be running just a little scared these days. As previously noted, there's little indication of Obama rushing to Freeman's defence or facing-down people like Rosen. Yet, the adverse publicity generated by their squalid manoeuvrings, coupled with shifting public perceptions after the slaughter of Gaza, signifies a growing public relations crisis. The murderous actions of Israel and the extremism of the US Lobby have pushed both into the critical limelight.

Rosen's own statement of alarm over the proposed Freeman appointment illustrates the Lobby's determination to put naked Israeli interest before peace and justice for the region. It's worth quoting it and Freeman's cited words in full:

Readers of this blog know that I have been generally quite positive about the appointments the new Adminsitration is making for Middle East policy positions. Today's news is quite different. According to Laura Rozen at the Foreign Policy blog, Chas W. Freeman, Jr., the former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia, will become chairman of the National Intelligence Council, and may at times participate in daily intelligence briefings to President Obama. This is a profoundly disturbing appointment, if the report is correct. Freeman is a strident critic of Israel, and a textbook case of the old-line Arabism that afflicted American diplomacy at the time the state of Israel was born. His views of the region are what you would expect in the Saudi foreign ministry, with which he maintains an extremely close relationship, not the top CIA position for analytic products going to the President of the United States.

Here is a sample of his views on Israel, from his Remarks to the National Council on US-Arab Relations on September 12, 2005: "As long as the United States continues unconditionally to provide the subsidies and political protection that make the Israeli occupation and the high-handed and self-defeating policies it engenders possible, there is little, if any, reason to hope that anything resembling the former peace process can be resurrected. Israeli occupation and settlement of Arab lands is inherently violent. ...And as long as such Israeli violence against Palestinians continues, it is utterly unrealistic to expect that Palestinians will stand down from violent resistance and retaliation against Israelis. Mr. Sharon is far from a stupid man; he understands this. So, when he sets the complete absence of Palestinian violence as a precondition for implementing the road map or any other negotiating process, he is deliberately setting a precondition he knows can never be met."

Here is another example from 2008: "We have reflexively supported the efforts of a series of right-wing Israeli governments to undo the Oslo accords and to pacify the Palestinians rather than make peace with them. ... The so-called "two-state solution" - is widely seen in the region as too late and too little. Too late, because so much land has been colonized by Israel that there is not enough left for a viable Palestinian state alongside Israel; too little, because what is on offer looks to Palestinians more like an Indian reservation than a country."

According to Foreign policy blog, Freeman has told associates that in the job, he will occasionally accompany Director of National Intelligence Adm. Dennis Blair to give the president his daily intelligence briefing. His predecessor, Thomas Fingar, wore a second hat as deputy director of national intelligence for analysis.

Rosen and his Zionist cohorts may be feeling pleased at preventing this "profoundly disturbing appointment". But Freeman's damning words can't be so easily dismissed. His description of what's actually on offer to the Palestinians - "more like an Indian reservation than a country" - also helps keep the spotlight on Obama's failure to tackle the central issue of Israeli aggression.

John

* Thanks to the excellent Pulse site for documenting this and multiple other facets of the Palestinian cause.