The Passionate Attachment

By Maidhc Ó Cathail
The Passionate Attachment
July 2, 2012

In an op-ed on Al Jazeera entitled “How the Israel lobby erodes US sovereignty,” Ahmed Moor illustrates how Tel Aviv and its foreign supporters exert a major influence on American politics. Citing the Israeli origin of the Kirk Amendment designed to cut US funding of UNWRA by redefining Palestinian refugee status, casino mogul and IDF veteran-wannabe Sheldon Adelson’s lavish contributions to the 2012 presidential campaigns of Republican candidates Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney, and Tel Aviv’s make-or-break behind-the-scenes role in Washington’s P5+1 negotiations with Iran, the Palestinian-American graduate student of Public Policy at Harvard University concludes:

So, to summarise again: Israelis are helping write US laws, funding US campaigns, and helping craft US war-making policy.

What is left for Americans to do? Well, to fight the wars, of course.

The only flaw in Moor’s piece is his citing of Senator John McCain’s “criticism” of Adelson’s Israel-centric political contributions. When McCain said in an interview that “obviously, maybe in a roundabout way, foreign money is coming into an American campaign,” he was disingenously referring to “Chinese money” from Adelson’s Macao casinos — as if it were the Chinese gambling lobby that is eroding US sovereignty. Anyone familiar with the McCain family’s longtime service to Israeli interests would also know that this misdirection was unlikely to have been inadvertent.