Archive for March 2014
Ending the “Passionate Attachment”: Allies in the Medieval-Modern Struggle
By Harry Clark
The Passionate Attachment
March 15th, 2014
In his farewell address in 1796, George Washington warned the nation he had served as its first president against a “passionate attachment” or “inveterate hatred” toward any nation. Some Americans were impassioned about revolutionary France. Within a few years, agents of foreign minister Talleyrand would boast to American diplomats of French power within the United States, and demand large bribes and loans to advance relations. The correspondence was eventually published in the US, in the XYZ Affair, which embarrassed France and the French party in the US, and incited US opinion against France. The rupture was not permanent, and relations eventually resumed on dispassionate terms, to the benefit of both countries.
Since the 1992 publication of The Passionate Attachment: America’s Involvement With Israel, 1947 to the Present, by George W. Ball, undersecretary of state for Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, and his son Douglas B. Ball, Washington’s prescient term has become ubiquitous to describe the US-Israel relationship. No agents of Israel have ever been embarrassed by boasting of Israel’s power in the US, or by demanding loans and aid. The protestations of American diplomats at Israel’s aggrandizement and damage to US interests have embarrassed them, not the pro-Israel party, which has gone from strength to strength until quite recently.
This has produced a loose establishment diaspora of US diplomats, military and intelligence officers, politicians, academics and journalists critical of the US-Israel relationship, in Washington and elsewhere. On March 7 a quorum of these and other critics gathered in Washington, for a “National Summit to Reassess the U.S.-Israel ‘Special Relationship.” The event was organized by the Council for the National Interest, If Americans Knew, Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy, and Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. There was a full day of six panels with a total of 25 speakers. Despite the full program moderators kept the event on schedule. The ballroom of the National Press Club was filled, and the event was broadcast live on C-Span. Video of each panel and separate audio for each speaker, and near-complete transcripts, are at the IRMEP program page. The proceedings survey Israel’s influence and its damage to the US.
Who’s really afraid of NSA surveillance?
Maidhc Ó Cathail
The Passionate Attachment
January 20, 2014
In the wake of Edward Snowden’s media custodian Glenn Greenwald having appeared on Israeli TV Channel 10 — owned by admitted Israeli nuclear spy Arnon Milchan and World Jewish Congress president and Obama critic Ronald Lauder who enabled the July 24, 2001 privatization of the soon-to-be demolished World Trade Center — calling for the release from prison of convicted Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and reliable AIPAC mouthpiece Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) makes a joint appearance with the “progressive” Zionist George Soros-funded J Street-endorsed chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) on the “born again” Jew David “Netanyahu is the leader of the Jewish people” Gregory’s “Meet the Press” on NBC — whose Jewish chairman and CEO, Brian L. Roberts, is a recipient of the pro-Israel Simon Wiesenthal Center‘s 2004 Humanitarian Award — to insinuate that Russian intelligence may be behind Snowden’s NSA leak.
Is it not reasonable to ask — once again — if another country’s intelligence services, infamous for waging war by way of deception, is not only trying to divert the American public’s attention away from the more likely culprit, but also attempting to undermine their confidence in the U.S. national security agency’s essential self-defensive efforts to keep its dubious “Israeli ally” under close surveillance?
UPDATE: The so-called NSA “whistleblower” Edward Snowden worked as a contractor for Booz Allen Hamilton, Inc., a security and defense contractor to defense and intelligence agencies. Might Snowden’s bosses at Booz Allen have a passionate attachment to what Snowden’s media custodian Glenn Greenwald oddly described as America’s “Israeli ally” on an Israeli TV channel, owned in part by the unconvicted Israeli nuclear spy Arnon Milchan, in which the former porn industry profiteer called for the release from prison of convicted Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard?
Dr. Ralph W. Shrader, Chairman, Chief Executive Officer, and President of Booz Allen Hamilton Inc. has been honored with a leadership award from B’nai B’rith (Children of the Covenant) International, a self-described “staunch defender of the State of Israel” and founder of the Anti-Defamation League, a U.S.-based de facto front for Israeli intelligence; while Horacio D. Rozanski, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of Booz Allen Hamilton Inc., sits on the board of advisors for the Wolf Trap Foundation for the Performing Arts and the Jewish Primary Day School of the Nation’s Capital.
When Israeli Congressional asset Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) appeared on the “born again” Jewish David Gregory’s “Meet the Press” show on NBC, whose Jewish chairman and CEO, Brian L. Roberts, is a recipient of the Simon Wiesenthal Center‘s 2004 Humanitarian Award, to insinuate that Russian intelligence may be behind Snowden’s NSA leak, he only helped add to the suspicion that the intelligence services of America’s dubious “Israeli ally” were the more likely source of Snowden’s foreign assistance.
Maidhc Ó Cathail is an investigative journalist and Middle East analyst. He is also the creator and editor of The Passionate Attachment blog, which focuses primarily on the U.S.-Israeli relationship. You can follow him on and Twitter @O_Cathail.