Servileness:  One of Slavish Spirit, Parasitic, a Fawning, Sniveling, Groveling

Carlos Latuff/ MWC NEWS

Shakespeare’s Caesar caustically commented, “Cowards die many times before their deaths; / The valiant never taste of death but once.” Curious how our lawmakers huddle behind their sophistries, their voice votes, their parliamentary play acting to avoid the daring feat that would force them to confront the moral consequences of their obsequious pandering to the lobbyists who pad their pin striped suits with the means to stay in office, all the while selling their souls to their executioners. Every day they die another death; every day a new resurrection to fulfill their obligation to their puppeteers. How different from their forebears who understood the valiant feast on liberty, even in the face of death: “Americans! Liberty or Death” rang through the hills of Massachusetts and all the colonies as the Revolution loomed, a fervor marked by foreigners because they could see the Americans really meant it. But how can our representatives be free if they are at the mercy of a foreign lobby? (David Fisher, Liberty and Freedom, Oxford University Press, 2005).

Consider the last annual gala held by AIPAC where Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid (D. Nev.) and Sen. Mitch McConnell (R. Ky) appeared as keynote speakers to an audience that included half of the U.S. Senate and more than half of the House, an event that took place just as the newly constituted Congress of Democrats was asserting its response to the American electorate with a provision to require the President to get the Congress’ approval before he took any action against Iran. By the end of the week AIPAC had successfully pressed for removal of this bipartisan provision from the bill (“Jewish News Weekly of Northern California,” Ron Kampeas, 3/16/2007). David Corn, reporting in Nation magazine noted that keeping that provision in the bill “would not be to the liking of AIPAC, the powerhouse pro-Israel lobby, which has declared the Lantos bill a top priority (Lantos’ bill pushes legislation to intensify sanctions against Iran). “In a recent speech AIPAC executive director Howard Kohr said that legislation restricting Bush’s options would be ‘a sign of weakness.’ Asked if he can point to a political fight lost by AIPAC recently, Representative Larson replied, ‘Not to my recollection.’” (Corn, Nation 4/23/2007). Pat Buchanan, four days later wrote “Why did Pelosi capitulate? Answer. She was ‘under pressure from some conservative members of the caucus, and from lobbyists associated with neoconservative groups that want war with Iran and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee,’ writes John Nichols in the Nation.” 

M. J. Rosenberg, in a commentary on the Mearsheimer and Walt study of the influence of the Israeli lobbies on our representatives offered this reflection, an observation that came from his own experience serving representatives over the years: “Once again, Presidential candidates are being told that in order to earn the ‘pro-Israel’ label, they must heartily endorse the status quo. That means that when asked what they would do about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the candidates must state unequivocal support for Israeli policies. … They must never use the words ‘even-handed’ or ‘honest broker.’ There is a script and candidates must not deviate from it.” (“W-M’s Best Seller: Why the Hysteria?” 09/07/07).

“There is a script and candidates must not deviate from it.” So much for the valiant soul who searches his/her conscience, free in his/her mind to decide issues that send young Americans to their deaths or to varying states of dementia caused by roadside bombs that shake the brain inside the skull like a bartender preparing a cocktail. So much for the valiant legislator that hides behind the façade dictated to him or her by AIPAC extolling the desire of the Israeli government for peace with Palestine when, in fact, it desires nothing of the sort short of the slow, agonizing, and insidiously torturous ethnic cleansing of all Palestinians from their own homeland. So much for the representatives of the people, who were voted into office with the expressed understanding that they would not just bring the invasion of Iraq to an end but would not create another unprovoked war with another mid-east nation that would cause the deaths of more U.S. soldiers to say nothing of the innocent people caught in the maelstrom of murderous slaughter their mild “yea” could cause even as it ushers forth from their respective mouths. So much for liberty, for the mind free to reflect, weigh and judge for self. So much for the mind Jesus sought to instill in the Christian, the true Christian who followed His teachings, not the venom hurled from the pulpit of Pastor John Hagee and his ilk, militant ministers of the AntiChrist they condemn, preaching a gospel of hate that supports the rabid minority of Zionists that debase the very beliefs of Christianity.

Listen to the voice of Christ that our representatives have buried under their fear of AIPAC retribution lest they have to confront the reality of Jesus’ teachings, not the “reality on the ground” that the AIPAC vultures peck at them day in and day out. Hear the words of Jesus, words never uttered by Hagee who would find no peace in the inclusiveness they extol: 

There is an untold irony behind the research that Mearsheimer and Walt brought to light, a story that goes back to the years preceding the UN creation of the state of Israel. As early as 1941, and obviously for some years preceding that date, Jews living in Palestine found themselves under the total control of the “gangs” of Zionists who dictated the allegiance they must have to the establishment of the Zionist state they were determined to bring into existence. That allegiance they ensured through coercion and fear. These are the words of the British High Commissioner for Palestine, Harold MacMichael, addressed to the Secretary of State, dated 16th of October, 1941.

3. A second matter which deeply impresses me is the almost Nazi control exercised by the official Jewish organizations over the Jewish community, willy nilly, through the administration of funds from abroad, the issue of labor certificates in connection with the immigration quota, the forced contribution of funds and the power of the Histadruth. The Royal Commission were, in my view, fundamentally at error in describing the Jewish community in Palestine as “intensely democratic’ (chapter V, paragraph 7).  The Zionist organization, the whole social structure which it has created in Palestine, has the trappings but none of the essentials of democracy. The community is under the closed oligarchy of the Jewish official organizations which control Zionist policy and circumscribe the lives of the Jewish community in all directions – the Mapai, the Histadruth, the Vaad Leumi and the Jewish Agency. The reality of power is in the Agency, with the Hagana, the illegal military organization, always in the background. (copy of dispatch, Reference No. 0.8.573, Rhodes Library Archives, Bodleian Library, Oxford University).