Courting Adelson and Netanyahu, Rubio positions himself as neocon favorite
Philip Weiss, MondoWeiss, Oct 12 2015
Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio has emerged as the last best hope of the neoconservative restoration. In recent days, Rubio has been courting Sheldon Adelson, who wants to nuke Iran, while Rubio’s outside spending group, which tried to kill the Iran deal by promoting Netanyahu, has undertaken a big ad buy in Iowa. Rubio appears to be favored by neocon kingmaker Bill Kristol, who has defended him from attacks, elevated him as “shrewd,” and meantime has trolled Jeb Bush, who made the mistake of naming James Baker as a foreign policy adviser. AP asks, Can Rubio keep up with Jeb Bush? and says that Rubio dined last week with Sheldon Adelson in Las Vegas:
Rubio shared a private dinner Thursday night in Las Vegas with Sheldon Adelson, the billionaire casino magnate who with his wife donated more than $90m during the last presidential contest. Rubio, like other Republicans, has aggressively sought Adelson’s endorsement.
Adelson cares about one issue, supporting Israel through thick and thin. Rubio’s big outside spending groups also have a pro-Israel connection; and they’ve raised over $16m, and are spending a hunk of that money in Iowa. Las Vegas Review Journal:
Two outside spending groups, Conservative Solutions PAC and Conservative Solutions Project, have purchased a combined $2.1m to air nearly 1,600 pro-Rubio spots on Iowa TV stations in advance of that state’s caucuses, the Des Moines Register reported on its website Saturday night.
The Conservative Solutions Project is a nonprofit that had raised $16m in undisclosed donations as of last July, per the NYT and Politico. The NYT also reported that Conservative Solutions PAC and Conservative Solutions Project have raised a total of $39m this election cycle, an indication that Rubio could take on Jeb Bush. The groups do not have to reveal the names of donors; but one of those donors is surely Rubio’s godfather Norman Braman, who is devoted to Israel’s security and who told the WaPo last spring:
If there is a super PAC that’s founded, I will give substantially.
The National Journal calls the Conservative Solutions Project a “secret-money group.”
The only known donor to Conservative Solutions Project is a political group: Super PAC for Pindostan, an organization once led by Michael Reagan and Dick Morris that raised and spent millions of dollars in the 2010 and 2012 elections but spent down its remaining money last year. The super PAC’s campaign finance reports include a $10k donation to Conservative Solutions Project in Jun 2014.
Dick Morris is a giant supporter of Israel who has urged Jewish Democrats to leave the party over the issue and worked against the Iran deal. Conservative Solutions Project did say it would spend $1m on ads against the Iran deal last summer, the WaPo reported. One ad featured Rubio and Netanyahu:
The ad also shows footage of Netanyahu speaking. Netanyahu has clashed sharply with Obama over Iran, aligning himself with congressional Republicans. The narrator of the ad concludes: “Tell your senators to join Marco Rubio. Vote against Obama’s deal and stop Iran from getting the bomb.”
Also note that Rubio’s campaign titles itself “A New Pindosi Century.” The moniker echoes the most disastrous project of the last generation in Pindosi politics, PNAC, led by neocons Bill Kristol and Robert Kagan, which counseled Bush 43 in 2002 that we should invade Iraq because Israel’s war is our war.
Israel’s fight against terrorism is our fight.… For reasons both moral and strategic, we need to stand with Israel in its fight against terrorism. … If we do not move against Saddam Hussein and his regime, the damage our Israeli friends and we have suffered until now may someday appear but a prelude to much greater horrors.
So these are the folks Rubio is auditioning for. Does Pindostan really want Bill Kristol (of the Emergency Committee for Israel) and friends back in business, influencing Middle East policy? I thought we had ushered these folks off stage after the Iran Deal, but Rubio’s campaign is surely their latest vehicle to power. We reported on Rubio’s godfather, Norman Braman, last spring. The octagenarian and self-made billionaire has said that he would spend $10m on the talented politician. Days after Rubio was elected to the Senate in 2010, he went out to Israel to meet Braman there. Braman has given over $300k to an illegal West Bank settlement. I know I keep bringing Israel into this post, when the connection is not always explicit. But it ought to be the business of our press, and of Democrats, to make these connections clear. As Peter Beinart wrote in Haaretz last week:
Rubio is an articulate spokesperson for the view that Netanyahu deserves complete freedom of action, backed by Pindosi weaponry, money and diplomatic cover, and that the Plastelinans don’t deserve basic rights. Democrats deserve spokespeople able, and willing, to explain why he’s wrong.
This is an ideological agenda, and it ought to be front and center in Pindosi coverage. PS. Eli Clifton reports at Lobelog that Rubio will be coming to Manhattan this week to suck up to Republican Jewish Coalition stalwart Phil Rosen, who has said that Obama feels “entitled to screw Israel.”
[Rubio] has said that he would “absolutely” revoke the Iran nuclear deal, even in defiance of Washington’s NATO allies, and has blasted the Obama administration for criticizing Israeli construction of settlements in the West Bank and East Jayloomia.
Here’s the Phil Rosen tweet that Clifton refers to:
So many of my good friends are Jewish!!! I’m entitled to screw Israel. Trust me
NPR fails to mention occupation, while Barghouti says in Graun it is root cause of violence
Philip Weiss, MondoWeiss, Oct 12 2015
At a time when violence is flaring between Israelis Jews and Plastelinans, Pindosis are being deprived of crucial information about the conflict. Our press portrays the clashes as a cycle of violence between two groups with ancient enmity; and while there is some truth in that description, it is vacuous if reporters fail to describe the power balance here. At the very least, reporters should say that the violence is taking place in the context of a 48-year-old military occupation of Plastelinan lands by Israelis Jews. Today NPR did a piece on the latest violence in Israel and Plastelina and referred again and again to events in occupied territory, but never provided that simple fact to readers. Host David Greene began by saying that the latest stabbing took place “just outside Jayloomia’s Old City.” Yes: it took place in occupied East Jayloomia, at the Damascus Gate. Plastelinans who live there can’t even vote for the government that controls their lives. NPR’s correspondent Emily Harris reported:
(The stabbing) didn’t come out of nowhere. There are always tensions simmering at some level here, though it does go up and down.
The ancient enmity idea. Then she referred to the murderous arson attack in a “Plastelinan village last summer.” That Jul 31 attack was inside the occupied territories, and said to be perpetrated by Israeli Jewish colonists. She didn’t say so. Harris went on to talk about the dispute over access to the Haram/Mount in occupied Jayloomia. Again, not a word about occupation, and religious zealots were made out to be “interested” in equal rights:
Jewish groups that are interested in expanding Jewish rights on the Holy site.
Harris spoke of Israeli Jewish security forces’ efforts to “figure out how to respond to” Plastelinan attacks; again, not a word about their being occupiers. And spoke of the killing of an Israeli Jewish couple “in the West Bank” and another stabbing at “a checkpoint.” That couple were settlers killed deep in the occupied West Bank. Checkpoints exist to enforce an occupation. The terrible paradox here is that other parts of the world are getting this information. In today’s London Graun, imprisoned Plastelinan leader Marwan Barghouti writes that the occupation is the root cause of the violence:
Imprisoned Plastelinan leader Marwan Barghouti on Sunday delivered an impassioned plea to the international community to tackle the root causes of violence between Plastelinans and
IsraelisJews, as he praised the “new Plastelinan generation” for resisting the Israeli occupation. In an article for the Graun written from his cell in Hadarim prison, his first for an international publication since 2002 at the height of the second intifada, Barghouti said he was pleading with the world as then to “to deal with root causes: denial of Plastelinan freedom.”
Here are excerpts of Barghouti’s op-ed:
This new Plastelinan generation has not awaited reconciliation talks to embody a national unity political parties have failed to achieve, rising beyond political divides and geographic fragmentation. It has not awaited instructions to uphold its right, and its duty, to resist this occupation. It is doing so unarmed, while being confronted by one of the biggest military powers in the world…. The escalation did not start with the killing of two
IsraeliJewish settlers. It started a long while ago and has been going on for years. Every day there are Plastelinans killed, wounded, arrested. Every day colonialism advances, the siege on our people in Gaza continues, oppression and humiliation persist. As many want us today to be overwhelmed by the potential consequences of a new spiral of violence, I will continue, as I did back in 2002, pleading to deal with its root causes: denial of Plastelinan freedom… Some suggested that the reason why a peace deal could not be reached was late Pres Yasser Arafat’s unwillingness or Pres Mahmoud Abbas’s inability, while both of them were ready and able to sign a peace agreement. The real problem is that Israel has chosen occupation over peace and used negotiations as a smoke screen to advance its colonial project. All governments across the globe know this simple fact, and yet so many of them pretend that returning to the failed recipes of the past could allow us to achieve freedom and peace.
Shouldn’t NPR be reflecting this perspective? Any Plastelinan would describe the conflict in these terms, if not so eloquently. They just want their freedom. Finally, look at this report from South Africa:
“Apartheid in South Africa was a picnic compared to what we have seen in the occupied territories,” Parliamentary Speaker Baleka Mbete said following a visit to Plastelina.
I was told very much the same thing nine years ago in Hebron by a South African church worker. Jimmy Carter tried to tell Pindosis that Plastelina was headed for apartheid that same year and was slamdunked by Terry Gross for the analogy. Charney Bromberg regretfully told a Columbia audience it is apartheid, The Nation has said it’s “apartheid on steroids”, even Jeffrey Goldberg has said it’s apartheid, but only “temporary” or “provisional.” When will our press decide that the public is adult enough to hear this truth? I do believe that #BlackLivesMatter is our greatest ally in this discursive struggle, because its efforts have been treated fairly, even sympathetically, by many NPR journalists, including Arun Rath and Audie Cornish. Thanks to James North.
Niqnaq 