….Democratic candidate for the Senate from Pennsylvania (Specter’s seat).
Whether you call it the Israel Lobby or AIPAC (the American Israel Public Affairs Committee) or the Neocons, there’s no question that as a result of Sestak’s past criticisms of Israel, they are now an albatross around his neck. Check out this political ad paid for by a new (old) group of Washington pro-Israel Neocons just resurrected as the The Emergency Committee for Israel. If you ask whether Sestak is in the process of being AIPAC’ed just as Cynthia McKinney (D-Georgia) was several years ago, this time with the Neocons leading the way, it turns out to be a silly question. Of course. Watch the attack video just released by this Neocon group:
Chicken Hawk Neocons Target Vice Admiral Joe Sestak was MJ Rosenberg’s title for this story, but substitute AIPAC or the Israel Lobby and the result would be the same, and it would go on below the radar. The story, for example, was featured in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, but not at all by the mainstream American press. Thank heaven for the alternative press that comes to us by way of computer screens.
Joe Sestak, the Democratic candidate for the United States Senate in Pennsylvania, is a former three-star Vice Admiral and the highest-ranking former military officer currently serving in Congress. But that does not make him a good enough patriot for the chicken hawk neocons. Nope. A new organization called The Emergency Committee has been established by Bill Kristol, Michael Goldfarb, Rachel (Mrs. Elliot) Abrams and other famous war heroes who think that Sestak is insufficiently loyal to…Bibi Netanyahu. (The Emergency Committee no doubt lists Rachel and not Elliot Abrams because he was convicted of lying to Congress on a national security issue. Even the neocons don’t like invoking that guy’s name!)
Bill Kristol says the new “organization” is the “pro-Israel wing of the pro-Israel community.” In other words, we aren’t just Israel-firsters. We are Israel firsters on steroids, not like those mealy mouths at AIPAC who actually cite US security needs (even if they get them wrong). The Emergency Committee For Israel could be headquartered in Romania or the Phillipines. Although its heart is in a West Bank settlement.
Anyway, check out the anti-Sestak ad (above) and spend a minute wondering how these neocons — whose only experience with war is lobbying to get other Americans to fight them — have the audacity to imply that a career spent in the US military is less American that careers successfully dedicated to getting US policy to conform to the concept of Great Israel. Unbelievable.
As noted, the ad also criticizes Sestak for signing a letter against Israel’s siege of Gaza while at the same time refusing to add his name to a defense of Israel letter circulated by powerful pro-Israel lobby AIPAC. The group also attacked Sestak for appearing at a fund raiser for the Council on American Islamic Relations, which it said was an “anti-Israel organization the FBI called a `front group for Hamas”. (What anti-Israel organization hasn’t the FBI, CIA, or the US State Department not listed as a ‘terrorist’ group?)
Wasn’t it Stephen Walt (The Israel Lobby co-author) who recently identified the Neocons as Israel-centric, with all of its past saber rattling against Iraq, and now Iran, as primarily focused on carrying out right wing Zionist goals?