'The Difference Between America and Israel?—There Isn't One': Netanyahu Knows He Can Get Away With Anything in America

Illustration by DonkeyHotey.

By Robert Fisk
Uri Avnery is without doubt the most intellectual, philosophical, prescient leftist Israeli seer I have ever met. Like TS Eliot, he has a habit of using the fewest words to tell the greatest truth. Every essay he writes, this reader always says the same thing: Exactly! Yet, for the first time in 40 years, I disagree with the great man.

He has just suggested that Benjamin Netanyahu’s agreement to address the US Congress at the invitation of Republicans tomorrow – two weeks before an Israeli general election – and Barack Obama’s decision not to see the old rogue, has destroyed Israel’s bipartisan support in America. For the first time, says Uri, Democratic politicians are allowed to criticise Israel.

Absolute Tosh.

Congressmen of both parties have grovelled and fainted and shrieked their support for Bibi and his predecessors with more enthusiasm that the Roman hordes in the Colosseum. Last time Bibi turned up on the Hill, he received literally dozens of standing ovations from the sheep-like representatives of the American people, whose uncritical adoration of the Israeli state – and their abject fear of uttering the most faint-hearted criticism lest they be called anti-Semites – suggest that Bibi would be a far more popular US president than Barack. And Bibi’s impeccable American accent doesn’t hurt.

And his aim – to earn votes for himself and to destroy the one foreign policy achievement within Obama’s grasp – will have absolutely no effect at all on Israeli-US relations. When Bibi made himself the laughing stock of the UN Security Council – by producing an infantile cartoon of an Iranian bomb with a red line in the middle, indicating that Iran could build nuclear weapons by the end of 2013 – his charade was treated with indulgence by the American media. These mythical deadlines have been expiring regularly for more than a decade, yet still we are supposed to take them seriously. Obama is struggling to reach an agreement with Iran which would protect the world from any nuclear weapon production by the Islamic Republic.

Bibi wants to destroy this opportunity. He wants more sanctions. He wants to win the Israeli elections on 17 March. He might even bomb Iran – which would bring an immediate military response against the United States.

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Meet the Billioanaire Pro-Israel War Mongers Preparing to Throw Tens of Millions Toward Total Control of United States in 2016

Sheldon Adelson (Top - Illustration by DonkeyHotey) and Haim Saban.

By Alex Kane
On November 9, the ugly face of America’s money-saturated election process was put on full display.

Sheldon Adelson and Haim Saban, two billionaires with right-wing, pro-Israel agendas, took the stage at the Israeli American Council’s inaugural conference in Washington, D.C. They fantasized about bombing Iran and about buying the New York Times because they said it’s biased against Israel. Both are bound to play an outsized role in the 2016 presidential elections by flooding the campaign with money to support their favored candidates. In a post-Citizens United world, Adelson and Saban are kings, and Israel will be the beneficiary of their largesse if the donors have the ear of a future president.

Saban and Adelson are on opposite ends of the mainstream (and narrow) political spectrum. Adelson is a casino mogul who bankrolled the 2012 presidential campaigns of GOP candidates Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney. Saban is in the entertainment business and is a major Democratic Party donor. But when it comes to U.S. foreign policy and Israel, Saban and Adelson take many of the the same positions, displaying an eagerness for war with Iran and a desire to keep the U.S. alliance with Israel rock-solid.

“There’s no right or left when it comes to Israel,” Saban said in what news reports called a joking reference to the moguls’ seating positions at the conference where they spoke.But the quip was more than just a joke. It was a nod to how the Democratic and Republican parties are united in singing Israel’s praise, backing its military actions and voting to give the country $3.1 billion in U.S. military aid annually.

If Adelson’s and Saban’s chosen candidates in 2016 get their way, that unity will shine through during the presidential campaign, with the debate being reduced to who would support Israel the most.

Saban, an Israeli-American famous for producing the TV show Power Rangers, is currently the CEO of the Saban Capital Group, which invests in media companies around the world. A 2010 New Yorker profile of Saban by Connie Bruck paints a portrait of a man who is heavily influential, charming and hawkish. “I'm a one-issue guy and my issue is Israel,” he told the New York Times in 2004.

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Chris Christie for Sale: Christie Apologizes for Referring to 'Occupied Territories' — He's Terrified of Billionaire GOP Funders Like Israel-Based Sheldon Adelson

Israel-based billionaire casino owner Sheldon Adelson has the tough-talking NJ governor Chris Christie under total control (Illustration by DonkeyHotey)

By Kenneth P. Vogel
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie apologized to Sheldon Adelson in a meeting Saturday for stepping on a fault line in Middle East politics during a speech he gave earlier in the day, according to a source familiar with the conversation.

Invoking a 2012 trip he and his family took to Israel, Christie recalled in the speech: “I took a helicopter ride from the occupied territories across and just felt personally how extraordinary that was to understand, the military risk that Israel faces every day.”

While the story was intended to forge common cause with Adelson and the several hundred donors to the Republican Jewish Coalition to which Christie was speaking, his use of the term “occupied territories” set off murmurs in the crowd. The term refers to lands in which Palestinians live where Israel maintains a military presence, including the West Bank.

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French Police Raid Home of Black Comedian Accused of Telling Anti-Semitic Jokes

Dieudonné: Comedian and son of Cameroon father and
French mother, is called an "activist" who "took a rightward
turn" and became controversial for denouncing Zionism,
the Israeli Lobby, and calling Holocaust remembrance
"memorial pornography." (Photo by Emmanuel Digiaro)

French police have launched a raid on the home of anti-Zionist comedian, Dieudonne M'bala M'bala, as well as his offices, seizing his personal documents and other belongings.

The French government accuses the controversial comedian of what it describes as promotion of anti-Semitism, and it is mounting pressure against him through judicial measures.

The government has already banned M’bala M’bala’s public gatherings and the raids on Tuesday were sanctioned as, what the government claims, part of a broader investigation into suspected fraud by Dieudonné.

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Black French Comedian Faces Demands for Bannning Over His 'Jokes' About Jews

Dieudonné: Comedian and son of Cameroon father and
French mother, is called an "activist" who "took a rightward
turn" and became controversial for denouncing Zionism,
the Israeli Lobby, and calling Holocaust remembrance
"memorial pornography." (Photo by Emmanuel Digiaro)

Dieudonné has been part of France's comedy scene for years, but while he started out with a Jewish comedian in sketches that mocked racism, he gradually veered to the far-right and alienated some fans with anti-Jewish comments -- one of his latest being a joke about gas chambers.

RELATED STORY: Riot Police Sent In As 'Anti-Semitic Pedlar Of Hate' Dieudonne Has His Tour Banned

Pressure mounts on French comic in racism row (via AFP)

The mayor of Paris has joined France's interior minister in calling for comedian Dieudonne, whose vitriolic brand of humour targeting Jews has caused outrage, to be banned from the stage. Anti-racist groups also threatened legal action against a provocative…

Riot Police Sent In As 'Anti-Semitic Pedlar Of Hate' Dieudonne Has His Tour Banned

Riot Police Sent In As 'Anti-Semitic Pedlar Of Hate' Dieudonne Has His Tour Banned (via Sky News)

Riot police had to be brought in to contain furious fans of a controversial French comedian after he was banned from performing by a court just hours before he was due on stage. The 47-year-old comic Dieudonne M'Bala M'Bala, who has been condemned as…