recent crimes in hender it's one of several takeaways from tonight's community watch association meeting featuring neighborhood watch leaders but kathy curran says encouraging guns in particular could make matters worse my concern is a lot of anniston people are going to be hard because you've got every suspect he may be blank he may be white maybe a standing that's what i was expecting however they never said that police have implied that releasing more information could so you can see it came out march twenty third two thousand and six and the title i believe that the harvard version has been downloaded over three hundred fifty thousand times  the united states supports israel in a variety of ways to give them all sorts of military and economic support roughly three billion dollars a year israel despite the fact that it is a relatively rich country receives more foreign aid than any other country in the world we veto resolutions in the united nations all the time that are critical of israel  and the united states is actually talking about using military force against iran now the question is why is the united states so deeply concerned about iran acquiring nuclear weapons the reason it is that big a deal at this point time is because of pressure from  the article basically says that inside the united states there is a powerful interest group that is deeply committed to shaping american foreign policy in ways that work to the benefit of israel and second the article or accuse that the policies that the united states pursuing in the middle east because of the wild beast force in the decision making process or not in the american national interest a free prosperous here in israel is in this nation's national interest didn't mean the notion that a that some people sitting in the in jerusalem are pulling the strings of institutions that are somehow divorced from a sense of what is in the american interest and working instead for israel that there's just no evidence to support that i'm really surprised that they didn't seek to protect their reputations by doing really watertight rigorous research that they could defend and in fact they've been demolished and alan dershowitz says i mean there's nothing left after the why did they go i don't know why they did this i don't know some of the things they they say in their piece really made me wince because mere shimer and walt both are better academics than that report reflects family in vietnam to have to father must be stuff shift from colin powell but it does shed some light on a number of aspects the most important of which is that we don't debate this issue in america you know who can talk about this in america that's the most important thing they did the second thing they did was called into question post cold war the strategic value of israel to america ten years ago you couldn't even talk about the israel lobby today we can we do it's explosive it's controversial but we do pad and they all stood me for this when i said you should have written about the mess on the wall they have not said anything and they agreed which was already a change but they insisted that somewhere in the  a jew because this would give them protection controversial article about the israel lobby yes but he's jewish it's ok that's what we know it's not fun to be called an anti semite it's not fun to be told that your scholarship is shoddy and that it's not fun to be pounded day after day and to see very few people standing up in your defense but again we knew that was coming we knew that was price of writing the article they're right but they're wrong now they're right from a strictly geopolitical geostrategic point of view that is to say what i spent my life studying israel no longer provides the united states a strategic value like it did during the cold war not only that israel is a strategic bird on the united states that's a big difference from cold war days at the same time though for a more comprehensive strategy this in me says that doesn't matter because the connections between america and israel are so great and so strong that geo street geo strategy political strategy whatever you want grand strategy is of no consequence here you actually take that psychological component up to the level of grand strategy and you say america can't get out of this even if it wanted to so mr walsh mr mir shimer you may be technically right but you are pragmatically wrong because america simply cannot say israel you're on your own it just wouldn't work and one of the reasons it wouldn't work is because you have a very powerful jewish lobby in america but we have this that we are going to be together inseparable in the defense of israel and the jewish people we have millions of people in the infrastructure we have over twenty two thousand spiritual leaders and some of those spiritual leaders have a million or a million and i have names on their mailing list we have the major radio television ministries in america supporting what we're doing because every event jellicoe believes the bible and the bible has a clear mandate to be supportive of the state of israel where  say again there's a new hitler and he's the president of iran and he intends to build nuclear weapons on his brazen declarations against the jews of america have been carried on the front page of america's newspapers ladies and gentlemen we must demonstrate courage we must demonstrate intellectual on a stage we must demonstrate the willingness to stand up and to speak out we must i don't think there's ever a time that you can say you have enough support i think that our objective is to always let our elected officials know that a we do support israel and that if anyone comes against israel in a malicious way we would do everything in our power to see that that was their last term in office they just kept them in a resolutions wolf syria and were firing and wolf i re they kept putting them in there and resolution and kept pushing for all kinds of sanctions all kinds of  action against them and course i voted against the resolution and others start voting against it and and i think what they did i found out what really made and those commercials and you have to understand the mode that the country was in we're just going through now and he leavitt and most americans didn't know he was saying from there is an enormous very very powerful machine out there that notes immediately when someone takes anti israel positions and moves out on the attack i'll give you a very concrete example i had mentioned the mere sham or walt study once in a seminar at one of the universities where i teach and within forty eight hours i had an email from alan dershowitz wheezy alan dershowitz is a harvard professor who protects the jewish lobby in america like an attack dog i had an from him and the e mail essentially said he didn't think i was doing just as stu the american israeli relationship to israel's existence in the world it's cetera by citing the walt and mearsheimer report because it was so heavily flawed mistaken and so forth and he even attached his own attack on the wall mirror shama report and advised me to use it as counterbalance in my seminar well i wasn't even using the reported by seminar i simply had mentioned it as as evidence of some people's i r if you will with the lack of discussion the lack of debate on these issues in america and within forty eight hours i had one of the attack dogs for the jewish lobby coming after me and how could he know this there are people all over america on campuses all across america who are set up to do just what he did to protect the interest of jewish americans and particularly the interest of israel in america in that sense the jewish lobby is probably more organized and more able to move swiftly against any potential threat than any other lobby i was newspapers at the time and i had nothing until about a week before my talk i was informed by his secretary the president of his organization secretary that we would be meeting at the polish consulate which is the usual place apparently where they met and then the next week two hours before i was supposed to talk i had a telephone call from the organizations leader terribly upset saying the polish consul general had cancelled the been working very hard to try to build good relations with washington to be friendly with israel to show that it's a good guy and so on these subjects and else suddenly someone comes along and says to the polish consul general in new york you stand up heroically for my right to speak they have bigger concerns so i don't blame them the wabi what it's doing is it's going after people in a really hard hitting way for the purposes of shutting us down and also for the purposes of sending a message to other people that if you follow in the footsteps of jimmy carter or you follow the footsteps of tony judd or you follow in the footsteps of john steve walt you will pay a serious price for your transgressions so there's that that's a deterrence model they're trying to deter other people from doing what we did the united states you're called an anti semite and demonizing to jewish state concerning human rights watch reporting in the lebanon war human rights watch is fairly extensive reporting during the war reporting that i should say focused both on hezbollah as indiscriminate attacks into israel and on israel's indiscriminate bombardment in lebanon was matched by some reflexive defenders of israel not with rational discourse not with  discussion of the facts but with name calling i'm including accusations of anti semitism of blood libel of of you know this or that we're used to being attacked by say the governments who were criticizing but in this case the israeli government was actually rather quiet and indeed we had what you might call a reasonable dialogue with the israeli government in the course of the war about what was happening in lebanon but it was the supporters of the israeli that you are jewish i think in the course of the debate over the lebanon war it was significant because it was heard or for the reflexive defenders of israel to simply dismiss me as being anti semitic it just didn't have any credibility  father fled the nazi holocaust my mother's parents fled pogroms in poland in belarus i'm just not a candidate for anti semitism and while there is the old kind of tired line of self hating jew it doesn't describe either and nobody even really bothers with that kind of criticism anymore why why rule why not just let ineffective people like me do a little talking here we have to come back to something else it wasn't always like this it began in the sevent the with the rise of identity politics in this country where it became fashionable and eventually politically and economically role for people to think of themselves as black americans italian americans irish americans no one says i was jewish america if someone says you're a jewish american it has a slightly uncomfortable to it but they have to have an identity the sense of the need to have the same kind of cultural identity as italian americans or black americans or hispanic americans have has created in the american jewish community two external identification tags one is israel and the other is alfred's so to speak one in space and one in time to be a jew is to be moved by the memory of the holocaust and to identify with israel even if you have no personal connection with the holocaust and you've never been to israel which is true for most of them the result is that they are extraordinarily sensitive politically and personally it's not an invented political thing people feel this to any suggestion that there is criticism of israel  forgetting of the holocaust because it touches the cole identity of american jews the state of israel is the dream of your ancestors made a reality by your grandparents and your parents every year a pac has a conference where they bring in their supporters from around the country they meet in hollywood element where they they produce these videos that show they get people all mobilized and roused sort of a pep rally atmosphere and they get an it's become like it's a ritual where they have to they fish will have to go to sort of show that they are on a pack side you know half the congress shows up top administration officials and they have a keynote speaker every year who is stern albert from kentucky does an excellent job of constantly testing the loyalty of people in congress to their cause and so there's a constant stream of resolutions that get proposed on the mideast  expressing support for israel about something it's done or sympathy with victims of a suicide bombing or condemning iran or other people in the region who are being hostile to israel and these become test of sort of loyalty of people in congress on this issue and those who vote in the way that a pac once will ultimately will in many ways be rewarded ultimately it with with campaign contributions from people sympathetic to a bad day back itself to not give money but they sort of this whole series of votes and they're very careful cataloguing of how people vote very much affects where people make decisions about who to give the money to money does not flow into a particular congressman's call for or senators coffers and less he supports positions taken by the lobby that's that's their first i think major influence is money in this administration is awash in money more so probably than any administration in american history for two months we've been trying to get in contact with congress people who voted nay to certain of the bills that were supported by a bank but nobody wanted to speak to us is that normal yeah this is an issue where our congressperson will see no gain to be made by speaking on it just even voting against a pacs recommended positions is perilous for them because it can lead to a reduction in campaign funds that can create all kinds of problems in their home district voted nay i mean they did but they don't want to go even more public about it a film clip in particular can you imagine a campaign opponent using that it could become the basis of a  campaign ad and look this person is against israel's interest so when i whenever i've spoken to people on capitol hill about this it's almost always on a not for after abuse and basis i was told off the record once by a very prominent democratic senator we were at a meeting in paris and it was late in the evening sitting in a hotel he was talking about the middle east and he was saying things about israel which are very similar to the criticisms that i would make and so i said to him but you never say these things in the senate why not is it because you're worried about the jewish vote he said forget it it's nothing to do with the jewish vote i come from a state i can't tell you where because senate floor and say in a moving speech why we need to take our distance from israel understand better what has happened to the palestinians maybe i would wind five ten senators over to a general motion criticizing us for maximum he said but that's all i could get and he said in return i would be finished in the senate because no one would ever vote again for my needs if i wanted to move something from my state or the education bill or a financial bill or a tax bill anything to do with domestic policy nothing to do with israel i would be punished i bet that it's impossible for either steve reich to ever get a high level policymaking position in the american government for example steve was invited  to go to a dinner with an aspiring presidential candidate at harvard and the person who had invited steve to this dinner came to see steve about a week after the piece came out and she said that she disinvite him from the dinner because the presidential candidate staff had called and said that it would not be acceptable for the presidential candidate to be at a dinner with america and israel ha a special friendship with devoted yourselves to strengthening the bonds between the united states and israel i mean states and with israel now and for ever if a politician would rise with this point a few that the united states would stop supporting israel what would be the effect do you think he'd lose the next election almost certainly now there may be a district here or there or out of the we have four hundred thirty five members of the house and one hundred senators five hundred thirty five we have fifty two governess it's certainly possible that some congressional districts somewhere would reelect a candidate who had said we should abandon israel reject the relationship with israel but it's it's pretty unlikely and i would be surprised if there are more than friends or to friends to be as candid as possible so let me say that a precipitous american withdrawal from iraq would be a disaster for the united states and the entire middle east a sudden withdrawal of our coalition w dissipate much of the effort that's gone into fighting the global war on terror and result in chaos and mounting danger and for the sake of our own security we will not stand by and let it happen i would argue that had you not had all these neoconservatives prominently placed inside the bush administration that collin powell would have never ended up giving that disgraceful  presentation in early february two thousand and three that played such a critical role all and turning american public opinion this is important they force all as we review the situation respect with respect to iraq and its disarmament obligations under u n security council resolution fourteen forty one i realized as i watched it there at the u security council for the first time because every time i watched it before i was you know running around trying to get things changed do this do that talking about the graphics and everything else was there in the u n security council i sat down quietly and watch secretary powell make his presentation my colleagues every statement i make today is backed up by sources solid sources these are not assertions we're giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence as i show you these images i will try solid capture and explain what they mean what they indicate to our imagery specialists let's look at one before that or in red squares represent active chemical munitions bunkers i wouldn't go to war based on that that's what i told myself i would not go to war based on that there was most of it could be interpreted different from the way we were present based on their description show drawings we know what the finances looked like we know what the tanks pumps compressors and other parts looked like and we know a great deal about the platforms on which they are mounted i walked outside the united nations building on february the fifth after the presentation of been made into the kind of bracing cold new york air and i thought it was a total failure i thought i had failed because i was the person who put it together responsible for putting it together then later a couple of days later three days later when i'd had some sleep and i could think about it i wondered why the reaction seem to be fairly positive we hadn't persuaded that many people who were adamantly opposed but we had made some impact on particular on the american people and i think we made a little impact on the international community to probably in the u k in particular and so i realized the reason for that the reason was colin powell gave the presentation colin powell who had poll ratings roughly equivalent with mother teresa had made the presentation and the american people believe if colin powell said it was so than it was that made me feel even worse so yes i i have trouble sometimes sleeping at night thinking about my participation  so the question you have to ask yourself is if the evidence was so flimsy why did pal get up and make an unequivocal such an unequivocal case that iraq had wm day and was an imminent threat and the reason is that there was tremendous pressure inside now out side the administration to make that argument and the question is who was creating that pressure and the answer is it was the neoconservatives almost singlehandedly and dick cheney and his minions have brought and i richard or was spreading democracy don't believe it for a moment they didn't even think about spreading democracy when they started this war they transmogrify the mission into starting democracy simply to appease the american people and to give them some reason to support the war  you have to decide where were these factors and inevitably the jewish lobby in america apac in particular the focus lobby has got to be there you're being naive if you don't put that factor up there is an influence on national security decision making particularly with the bush administration the apac lobby is very influential through vice president cheney very influential and through people like elliott abrams paul wolfowitz and a host of others within the government and of course you don't want to lose sight of the fact that the israeli government was also feeding united states government intelligence which said that iraq had serious w m d capability and was an imminent threat there's an israeli brom who has written a piece on this which says in effect that israel was a full partner in this scheme to convince the public in the united states and around the globe that iraq was an imminent threat iraq was not an imminent threat the fact is that even if saddam had had nuclear weapons it was nothing to do with them but you could not make those arguments at the time and the united states is very very hard to get them out into the public domain and for them to get any traction do you agree with morris time and will that the influence of the pro israel lobby was important for going to war with iraq i do but i would not  presented it the way they did because i think that they underestimate ideas and they underestimate if you like emotions that are very cold unrealistic in their view of politics and for them since the going to war with iraq is absolutely crazy and it was pretty obviously crazy for many of us before it must have been the must have been some pressure to do something so irrational and of course there was but they underestimate other factors the illusion for example that we could have control of iraq's oil and of the strategic region the belief which is a deep american belief which was not in vented by the jewish lobby that america knows how to knows how democracy should work and is an example to the world and has a moral duty and certainly a right to bring this example to the world and it's all mixed together so ideals believe about american exceptionalism american duty as american provincialism not knowing about what's going on outside and israeli pressure yes the suggestion that that the israeli lobby as he describes it is in effect  operated by the israelis and reflects israeli preferences is simply wrong and can be shown to be wrong ellen show you know part of israeli lobby no i'm not part of  israeli lobby i have my own views i'm sympathetic to israel as most americans are sympathetic to israel i'm not incapable of being critical of in israeli policy that i don't like but the main point is that that it is not the israeli government that shapes the thinking of americans who are pro israeli richard perle would probably say in response to your question if you got the truth out  israel's interests and america's interests are the same and so if i'm an advocate for israel's interest i'm an advocate for america's interest and i would say back to them again as a strategist mole shit no two countries in history and no coup no two countries in the future in history i will predict will ever have coincidental national interest all the time no way four american engagement there for a two state solution and we did the geneva initiative and they were in favor of that as well but the institutional organized leadership of the community as kind of taken things in a very different direction and i do feel that for their own reasons reasons that i understand reasons that are not unique to the jewish diaspora in america reasons that are prevalent in many diaz propellor ticks around the world it's to do with my identity in the diaspora is to do partially with guilt is to do with my own political role in my new host community etc etc they've driven so called pro israel politics in washington in a direction which is directly antithetical to what is good for in that respect yes i do feel we paid a price of course that has been increased many fold under the current administration america has become part of the israeli victim narrative it began i think in the seventy's when one of the way it's in which the african american community could begin to get a man's for slavery and the consequences of slavery it was by emphasizing that it wasn't it was a victim of history that even if you or you didn't do it history did it your grandparents did it it's not a personal responsibility but there's a cultural de victim narrative if you can't criticize someone because he himself is a victim what do you do with the whole country which is a country born of victimhood so to speak i have been in conversations many times with people who are very reasonable amount so  you're right israel does do bad things the occupied territories stealing the water stealing the land bombing the houses etc but remember what happened to the jews there is a background there is a history there is a reason there is an excuse for this but of course you can say the same thing for the palestinians remember what happened to the palestinians after the naacp everybody eight or nine hundred sixty seven no wonder they have suicide bombers you can always do this there's always a relationship between collective power suffering and present individual actions to turn that into public policy is catastrophic that is what we see today antithetical to my understanding of israel's interests if that particular view is continued to be bulldozed owned to the american public and political leadership  extension their elected public officials turn round and say we need to disengage from all over the stretch in the middle east could be that is a consequence of what happens in iraq and what happens in iran that people become very angry with their relationship with israel and there's just an upsurge of public opinion it could be that you have two or three senators who come out and make a very forceful case for change in our policy it just isn't going to happen it is not going to happen and you could eliminate by some waving a magic wand you could eliminate the the israeli mearsheimer talk about and everything i've said would continue to be true i will make a prediction if this president orders us to go to war in ira in the next two years and he orders any considerable ground component to participate in that marines or army then i think you're going to see a another major exodus from the armed forces general officers because i think they understand just how colossally wrong such a decision would be and how much that would be the precursor for call it what you will remember the roman empire for a long long time the state of judea behaved in ways which annoyed the romans but didn't do them any harm at the point at which they were becoming a nuisance turned against them destroyed their temple wiped them out told them an empire has bigger concerns than you this is what israel faces in the next twenty five years the risk that the american empire will say wait a minute you don't matter to us so much the demographic move to the next generation this is a catastrophe for israel because israel has no other friends in the world it's a celebration of the people who have worked so hard to foster a strong us israel relationship i want to take this opportunity to thank the more than three hundred fifty members of congress who are here this evening