How Israel Controls Its Narrative

Potential critics often self-censor

By Philip M. Giraldi

"Information Clearing House" -   It is interesting to note how the Israel Lobby is able to manage and contain the commentary of groups in America that might normally be critical of Israeli policies vis-à-vis the United States. A recent article by Professor Andrew Bacevich entitled “President Trump, Please End the American Era in the Middle East” is a good example of how self-censorship by authors works. The piece appeared as one of Bacevich’s regular weekly contributions to The American Conservative website under the rubric “Realism and Restraint.”

The article particularly focused on the foreign policy pronouncements of Bret Stephens, the resident neocon who writes for The New York Times. Stephens, per Bacevich, has been urging constant war in the Middle East and worrying lest “we may be witnessing the beginning of the end of the American era in the Middle East.” Bacevich, unlike Stephens, is a genuine foreign policy expert, a realist, an Army veteran, and always quite sensible. He correctly described how “in the Middle East, the military power of the United States has played a large part in exacerbating problems rather than contributing to their solution.”

The overall message is sound, but in this case, it is interesting to note what Bacevich left out rather than what he included. It is easy to understand the “realism” part when he writes and it is sometimes also possible to perceive the “restraint.” He cited Iran seven times as well as Saudi Arabia, but, strangely enough, he never mentioned Israel at all, which a number of commenter's on the piece noted. It rather suggests that there is a line that Bacevich is reluctant to cross. The omission is particularly odd as Israel is absolutely central to and might even be described as driving American policy in the Middle East and Bret Stephens, whom Bacevich excoriates, is a notable Israel-firster who once worked as the editor of the Jerusalem Post. Almost everything Stephens writes is basically a promotion of Israel and its interests coupled with a call for the United States to do what it must to attack and destroy the Jewish state’s principal perceived enemy Iran.

The reticence is perhaps understandable as Bacevich is president of a newly organized group called the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, which I have written about previously, that will have its official launch in November. It claims to promote “ideas that move U.S. foreign policy away from endless war and toward vigorous diplomacy in the pursuit of international peace” and further takes some pride in being non-partisan though bipartisan might be a better description. To be sure, Quincy’s two major donors are the highly controversial George Soros on the globalist left and the equally notorious Koch Foundation on the libertarian-lite right, which leads one to wonder who is ordering the restraint when it comes to Israel. Or is it both of them as neither organization, though very active in foreign policy, has indicated any desire to seriously criticize the many crimes of the Jewish state. I appear to have accurately predicted in my earlier article on Quincy that “…there will inevitably be major issues that Quincy will be afraid to confront, including the significant role played by Israel and its friends in driving America’s interventionist foreign policy.”

Indeed, anyone who wants to be a player in Washington DC has to avoid the Israel hot wire. That it should be so is a tribute to the power of the Jewish lobby coupled with the bulk support and Bible-belt votes of its brain-dead Christian Zionist spear carriers. Congress, once described by Pat Buchanan as “Israeli-occupied territory,” likewise knows whom not to offend lest one be unemployed in the next electoral cycle. That is why criminalizing criticism of Israel or support of a non-violent boycott of the country are regularly introduced in Congress and find themselves with more than one hundred sponsors and co-sponsors. Nearly two dozen such pro-Israel bills are currently at certain points in the legislative process, including one that will enable aggrieved Israelis to sue the Palestinian Authority (PA) in sympathetic U.S. courts for damages, a move that will potentially bankrupt the PA.

And the colleges and universities have not been immune from pressure to conform to the pro-Israel narrative. The White House acting through the Department of Education is functioning as thought police on behalf of the Jewish state. It is currently planning on withholding some federal funding of the University of North Carolina and Duke because their joint Middle Eastern studies program does not meet alleged government standards. The standards involved relate to the fact that the program has had speakers and course content that can be construed as critical of Israel and friendly to Muslims. The message clearly being sent to the schools by the Trump Administration is that if you criticize the Jewish state you will be punished.

The drive to eliminate any pushback against Israeli actions at colleges has been spearheaded by leading Zionist Kenneth L. Marcus, who was appointed the Education Department’s Assistant Secretary of Civil Rights. Marcus, who has worked as a paid pro-Israel activist, has been urging the government to define the BDS movement as anti-Semitic and has used his office to designate any Palestinian advocacy as a violation of Jewish students’ civil rights.

The federal action to enforce educational conformity on Israel is not exactly new as universities have long since been self-censoring, just like Bacevich, normally in response to complaints by Jewish groups. To cite only one example, in 2013, at nominally Catholic Fordham University in New York City, a student group sought to form a Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) club. Their paperwork advised that their goal was to “build support in the Fordham community among people of all ethnic and religious backgrounds for the promotion of justice, human rights, liberation and self-determination for the indigenous Palestinian people.” The applicants also revealed that they would support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. Three years later, Fordham’s Dean of Education denied the application because of the support for BDS. The students took Fordham to court and in August of this year, three years later, a New York judge finally struck down the decision as “arbitrary and capricious.”

So it took six years and a lawsuit to enable a group of students to form a club that was admittedly political in nature but non-violent and welcoming of everyone. So much for freedom of speech and association at America’s colleges and universities when they run up against the Israel wall.

What is less observed is how Israel’s message is promoted at the state and local levels. At the state level, anti-BDS legislation is now the rule in 26 states, with some requiring government employees to sign a pledge not to boycott Israel. And the same thing is happening among Boards of Education. Fourteen states now require holocaust education, where students are compelled to read fiction like Eli Wiesel’s “Night” while also consuming the established and standard, largely fabricated, account of what the so-called holocaust was all about. In Virginia, for example, a shadowy group called the Institute for Curriculum Services (ICS), which is actually a “partisan group with backing by state and local Israel advocacy organizations,” is seeking to change the information conveyed by the history and social studies textbooks used in K-12 classrooms across the state. ICS recommended changes include: “1. Emphasizing Arab culpability for crisis initiation leading to military action and failure of peace efforts—and never Israeli culpability, even when it is undisputed historic fact. 2. Replacing the commonly used words of “settlers” with “communities,” “occupation” with “control of,” “wall” with “security fence,” and “militant” with “terrorist.” 3. Referencing Israeli claims such as “Israel annexed East Jerusalem” and the Golan Heights as accepted facts without referencing lack of official recognition by the United Nations and most member nation states.”

The ICS is only one example of the persistent Israel Lobby brainwashing of the American public on behalf of the Jewish state to completely alter the narrative about what is going on in the Middle East. Taken all together, the self-censorship of groups and individuals that wish to remain viable by ignoring the Israel problem, the criminalization of non-violent movements like BDS, and the pressure on universities and schools to conform with positive narratives about Israel means that any genuine understanding of that nation’s war crimes and crimes against humanity will, unfortunately, remain on the margins.

Philip Giraldi is a former counter-terrorism specialist and military intelligence officer of the United States Central Intelligence Agency.  Philip is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest.

Feeding ‘the Monster’

Dr. Philip M. Giraldi, Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, has written an interesting article on the fact that Washington's spinelessness enables Israeli brutality. What follows is all from Dr. Giraldi’s own tongue and words.

I, Dr. Philip M. Giraldi, Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, have just spent a couple of days in New York City. Returning to Virginia a few days ago, I had a somewhat strange experience. I cleared through my emails before leaving the hotel and also read through a number of the featured news articles. One, in particular, caught my eye. It described how the US Democratic Party primary in Queens New York had returned a startling result. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez won over mainstream incumbent Joe Crowley, signaling that not everyone in the Democratic Party is buying into the Clinton model of good governance by big donors and powerful interest groups. Many want change and even a radical departure from the political game whereby media savvy pressure groups and narrow constituencies are pandered to create a governing majority. 

 One paragraph in particular in the article I read was highly suggestive, the claim that Ocasio-Cortez had been strongly opposed to the Israelis’ routine slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza, which has by now become of such little import that it is not even reported any more in the U.S. media. She is also allegedly a supporter of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanction movement (BDS), which pressures the usurper regime of Israel to end its theft and occupation of Palestinian land. The article expressed some surprise that anyone in New York City would dare to say anything unpleasant about Israel and still expect to get elected. 

 This is what Ocasio-Cortez, who called the shooting of more than 130 Gazans a “massacre,” actually said and wrote: 

“No state or entity is absolved of mass shootings of protesters. There is no justification. Palestinian people deserve basic human dignity, as anyone else. Democrats can’t be silent about this anymore. I think I was primarily compelled to speak out on moral grounds because I could only imagine if 60 people were shot and killed in Ferguson. Or if 60 people were shot and killed in the West Virginia teachers’ strikes. The idea that we are not supposed to talk about people dying when they are engaging in political expression just really moved me.” 

 Five hours later, when I arrived home in Virginia I went to pull up the article I had read in the morning to possibly use it in a piece of my own and was somewhat surprised to discover that the bit about Israel had been removed from the text. It was clearly yet another example of how the media self-censors when there is anything negative to say about the brutal Zionist regime of Israel and it underlines the significance of the emergence of recent international media reporting in The Guardian and elsewhere regarding how Zionist billionaire Sheldon Adelson largely dictates U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. That means that the conspiracy of silence over Israel’s manipulation of the United States government is beginning to break down and journalists have become bold enough to challenge what occurs when pro-Zionist guys obtain real power over the political process. Adelson, for what it’s worth, wants war with Iran and has even suggested detonating a nuclear device on its soil to “send a message.” 

 I, Dr. Philip M. Giraldi, Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, personally would have liked to see Ocasio-Cortez go farther, a lot farther. The occupied lands called “Israel” is a place where conventional morality has been replaced by an alleged ‘theocratically’ and culturally driven sense of entitlement which has meant that anything goes when it comes to the treatment of “inferior” Christian and Muslim Arabs from the Zionists’ eyes. It also means that the United States is being played for a patsy by people who believe themselves to be superior in every way to Americans. 


 The question of the relationship with Israel comes at a time when everyone in America, so it seems, is concerned about children being separated from their parents who have illegally crossed the border from Mexico into the United States. The concern is legitimate given the coarse and sometimes violent justifications coming out of the White House, but it’s a funny thing that Israeli abuse and even killing of Arab children is not met with the same opprobrium. When a Zionist fanatic/Israel settler kills Palestinian children and is protected by his government in so doing, where is the outrage in the U.S. media? Settlers and soldiers martyr Palestinians, young and old, with impunity and are almost never punished. They destroy their orchards and livestock to eliminate their livelihoods to drive them out. They bulldoze their homes and villages. The US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency does none of that and is yet subject to nonstop abuse in the mainstream media, so what about Israel? 

 A recent story illustrates just how horrible the Israelis can be without any pushback whatsoever coming from Washington objecting to their behavior. As the United States is unfortunately the only force that can in any way compel Israel to come to its senses and chooses not to do so, that makes U.S. policymakers and by extension the American people complicit in Israel’s crimes. 

The UN is in fact manipulated in a way, the US has vetoed several anti-Israel bills at the UN Security Council. The particularly horrible recent account that I, Dr. Philip M. Giraldi, Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, am referring to describes how fanatical Zionist settlers burned alive a Palestinian family on the West Bank, including a baby, and then celebrated the deaths while taunting the victims’ surviving family when they subsequently appeared in court. The story was covered in Israel and Europe but insofar as I could determine did not appear in any detail in the U.S. mainstream media. 

 Israeli settlers carried out their shameful deed outside a court in the city of Lod, chanting “’Ali was burned, where is Ali? There is no Ali. Ali is burned. On the fire. Ali is on the grill!” referring to the 18-month old baby Ali Dawabsheh, who was burnt alive in 2015 by Zionist settlers hurling Molotov cocktails into a house in the West Bank town of Duma. Ali’s mother Riham and father Saad also died of their burns and were included in the chanting “Where is Ali? Where is Riham? Where is Saad? It’s too bad Ahmed didn’t burn as well.” Five year-old Ahmed, who alone survived the attack with severe burns, will have scars for the rest of his life. 

 The Zionist settlers were taunting Ali’s grandfather Hussein Dawabsheh, who accompanied Ahmed, at a preliminary hearing where the court indicted a man who confessed to the murders and a minor who acted as an accomplice. A video of the chanting shows Israeli policemen standing by and doing nothing. The court appearance also revealed that there has been another Molotov cocktail attack by settlers on another Dawabsheh family house in May that may have been an attempt to silence testimony relating to the first attack. Fortunately, the family managed to escape. 

 And by all accounts this outrage was not the first incident in which the burning of the Palestinian baby was celebrated. A December 15th wedding video showed settlers engaged in an uproarious party that featured dances with Molotov cocktails and waving knives and guns. A photo of baby Ali was on display and was repeatedly stabbed. A year later, 13 people from what became known as the “murder wedding” were indicted for incitement to terrorism, but as of today no one has actually been punished. Israelis who kill Arabs have never been indicted or tried. If it is a soldier or policeman that is involved, which occurs all too often, the penalty is frequently either nothing at all a slap on the wrist. Indeed, the snipers who fired on Gazans recently were actually ordered to shoot the unarmed civilians and directed to take out anyone who appeared to be a “leader,” which included medical personnel. 


 The Trump Administration could, of course, stop the Israeli brutality if it chooses to do so, but it does not think Benjamin Netanyahu’s crimes against humanity are on the agenda. Nor did Clinton, Bush and Obama dare to confront the power of Israel’s lobby, though Obama tried a little pushback in a feeble way. 

 Someone in Washington should be asking why the United States should be fighting unnecessary wars and becoming an international pariah defending a brutal Zionist and usurper regime that believe they are “chosen” by God? One can only hope that the shift in perceptions on the Middle East by liberal Democrats like Ocasio-Cortez has some legs and will lead to some real change in U.S. foreign policy. To succeed the liberal Democrats will need to push against some formidable obstacles within their own party, most notably the Clinton wing and people like Senator Chuck Schumer, Minority leader in the Senate, who describes himself as Israel’s “shomer” or defender in the Upper House. Perhaps someone on the New York Times editorial board should publicly suggest to Schumer that he go and run for office in Israel since he seems to prefer it to the country that has made him rich and powerful. But of course, the Times and all the other mainstream media, which is responsible for what we are not allowed to know about Israel and its American mouthpieces, will never entertain that suggestion or anything like it.

Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is www.councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134