Andrew I. Killgore

America provides Israel with military technology and then Israel sells it to China for a profit? Some are beginning to question the wisdom of this arrangement-and are calling for change.

By Andrew I. Killgore

During the tacit alliance between Iran and Israel from 1972 to 1979, Iran provided oil and lucrative contracts to Israel. In return, Israel-via the United States-provided huge amounts of arms, stoking the ambitions of Muhammad Reza Shah Pahlavi to play a larger role in the region. Nor did Washington object when the shah announced plans to build 10 nuclear power plants.

Iran's 1979 political cataclysm, however, ushered in a Shi'i Islamist regime. Tehran began to support its fellow Shi'i in Lebanon, particularly the resistance by Hezbollah to Israel's illegal occupation of south Lebanon. There flowed the Litani River, the waters of which have been coveted by the Zionists since the 1919 peace conference ending World War I.

Israel successfully argued in Washington that Iran's support of Hezbollah amounted to sponsoring "terrorism." As a result, Iran was linked to Libya in the 1996 Iran-Libya Sanctions Act (ILSA), for which the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee is largely credited with authorship. ILSA provided for U.S. sanctions against any company spending $20 million on Iran's or Libya's oil or gas industry. European companies failed to succumb to U.S. pressure, however, and Iranian aid for Hezbollah continued. Under AIPAC pressure-and without consulting newly inaugurated President George W. Bush-Congress extended ILSA for five years in 2001.

In his 2002 State of the Union address, President Bush linked Iran with Iraq and North Korea in an "axis of Evil." The 2003 invasion of Iraq followed, based on Saddam Hussain's alleged possession of "weapons of mass destruction" and ties to al-Qaeda. With over 1,000 American soldiers killed and thousands wounded, that war has gone very sour, and may cost Bush the November election.

By Andrew I. Killgore

Congressman Jim Moran of Virginia's 8th District, just across the Potomac River from Washington, DC, won his June 8 primary race against challenger Andy Rosenberg by a vote of 59 to 41 percent. The outcome is significant because Rosenberg was openly supported by the Israel Lobby.

The pro-Israel Washington Post, the leading newspaper in the nation's capital, heavily played an accusation by a former pollster for Moran that the congressman privately had made an anti-Semitic remark. Moran denied the accusation, which his dismissed pollster declined to reveal.

An even more significant attack on the Israel Lobby was an almost-unheard-of editorial by the local Falls Church News Press. "This election is not about Moran's ability to lead, or about news headlines [i.e., in The Washington Post] accusing him of questionable public statements or personal finances," the paper stated. "It's about a cabal of powerful Washington, DC-based interests backing the Bush administration's support of right-wing Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's handling of the Middle East conflict trying to up-end an outspoken and powerful Democratic opponent."