{"id":10743,"date":"2011-09-08T17:24:02","date_gmt":"2011-09-08T13:24:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/?p=10743"},"modified":"2011-09-08T17:25:15","modified_gmt":"2011-09-08T13:25:15","slug":"crabgrass-in-the-lawn-the-darling-of-the-israeli-lobby-in-the-u-s","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/showcase\/crabgrass-in-the-lawn-the-darling-of-the-israeli-lobby-in-the-u-s\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Crabgrass in the Lawn’. The Darling of the Israeli Lobby"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>From an Israeli point of view, Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen is the ideal\u00a0American politician. Although many in the US government aspire to her level of\u00a0commitment to Israel, few can measure up to a dedication that extends beyond the\u00a0very interests of her own country.<\/p>\n

\u201cLawless extremists infest Congress like crabgrass besets lawns. House Foreign\u00a0Affairs Committee Chairwoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R. FL) is one of the worst,\u201d wrote\u00a0US columnist Stephen Lendman on September 1.<\/p>\n

Ros-Lehtinen\u2019s resume is a distressing read. The congresswoman \u201cendorses US imperial\u00a0wars, police state laws, corporate empowerment, tax cuts for the rich, laying waste\u00a0to Libya, perhaps a second Bay of Pigs, and Israeli lawlessness, while, at the same,\u00a0opposing Palestinian statehood,\u201d according to Lendman.<\/p>\n

It is, in fact, the \u201cIsraeli lawlessness\u201d and her opposition to a Palestinian\u00a0statehood that has made her a darling to Israel and its lobby. Unsurprisingly,\u00a0Ros-Lehtinen has been rewarded handsomely for her die-hard support of Israel by some\u00a0of the most powerful pro-Israeli individuals and lobby groups in the United States.<\/p>\n

One of these individuals is Irving Moskowitz.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe benefactor of a controversial Jewish development in eastern Jerusalem is a\u00a0major donor to U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen,\u201d reported the Jewish Telegraph Agency\u00a0on January 11, shortly after the congresswoman claimed her new post.<\/p>\n

Moskowitz, the well-known American Jewish millionaire, made his fortunes as a\u00a0\u2018casino magnate\u2019. A high proportion of the revenue he made from the gambling\u00a0industry has been used to demolish Palestinian homes, raze ancient olive trees and\u00a0fund Jewish settlements. It has also been used to finance Ros-Lehtinen\u2019s campaigns.<\/p>\n

Ros-Lehtinen is hardly swayed by such over-sentimental notions as ethnic cleaning.\u00a0In fact, \u201cIleana Ros-Lehtinen: Ready to play hardball\u201d was the title of a profile\u00a0article in the rightwing Jerusalem Post on December 23, 2010.<\/p>\n

For years, the congresswoman has advocated crippling sanctions against Iran, cutting\u00a0any US funds to the UN Human Rights Council, United Nations Relief and Works Agency\u00a0(UNRWA) and all support to the Palestinian Authority (PA). \u201cThis feeling that Abbas\u00a0and Fayyad are the good guys, if they\u2019re the good guys then we should start praying\u00a0for Israel\u2019s safety right now,\u201d she said, despite the fact that both men have won\u00a0the praise of many US officials and western institutions.<\/p>\n

Now the PA \u2013 threatened by changes sweeping the region, and largely seen by most\u00a0Palestinians and Arabs as a US-lackey that has secured neither peace nor\u00a0Palestinians rights \u2013 has decided to seek admission into the UN as a member state.\u00a0In response to this, Rep. Ros-Lehtinen has also decided to escalate her tactics. On\u00a0August 30, the congresswoman introduced a new bill \u2013 \u201cHR 2829: To promote\u00a0transparency, accountability, and reform within the United Nation system, and for\u00a0other purposes.\u201d Known as the United Nations Transparency, Accountability, and\u00a0Reform Act of 2011, and backed by 57 co-sponsors, the bill appears to be an act of\u00a0collective punishment against UN members for daring to consider such a legitimate\u00a0demand as admitting the state of Palestine in prospected vote sometime in September.<\/p>\n

\u201cRos-Lehtinen’s irresponsible bill would slash 50% of the United States’\u00a0contributions to the UN’s regular budget if her unrealistic demands aren’t met,”\u00a0wrote Don Kraus in the Huffington Post (September 2).<\/p>\n

Some of these demands require US president Barack Obama to direct the US permanent\u00a0representative at the UN to \u201cuse the voice, vote, and influence of the United States\u00a0at the United Nations to expand the Western European and Others Group (WEOG) in the\u00a0United Nations in Geneva to include Israel as a permanent member with full rights\u00a0and privileges.\u201d More, it \u201crequires all employees of the United Nations and its\u00a0specialized agencies to officially and publicly condemn anti-Semitic statements made\u00a0at any session of the United Nations or its specialized agencies, or at any other\u00a0session sponsored by the United Nations.\u201d<\/p>\n

These demands, and many others, are aimed at isolating Palestinians, stifling all\u00a0criticism of Israel, and propping up Israel\u2019s legitimacy in the face of\u00a0international uproar resulting from Israel\u2019s illegal occupation and continued\u00a0violations of human rights. Since they are clearly stated with the prior knowledge\u00a0that they will not be met, Ros-Lehtinen\u2019s intention is probably to take the US\u2019\u00a0relationship with the UN back to the dreadful days of neoconservative US ambassador\u00a0to the UN, John Bolton, who continues to serve as a bulwark for Israeli interests\u00a0whenever possible.<\/p>\n

But Ros-Lehtinen seems to have surpassed the benefit of the likes of Bolton. Morrie\u00a0Amitay, former executive director of the lobby group, Israel Public Affairs\u00a0Committee (AIPAC) enthusiastically told the Jerusalem Post last year, \u201cI think\u00a0she\u2019ll be terrific on Israel relations issues. I don\u2019t think there\u2019s anybody better.\u00a0She\u2019s 100 percent behind making Israel secure. I can\u2019t think of any issue affecting\u00a0Israel in which she hasn\u2019t been on the right side.\u201d<\/p>\n

She is definitely on the \u2018right side\u2019 of Israel\u2019s and it policies. However, she is\u00a0not necessarily on the right side of the US, which is in urgent need of altering its\u00a0policy in a region that is rife with popular revolutions demanding justice,\u00a0democracy and human rights.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need to help Israel, we need to show Israel that we are strongly in its corner,\u201d\u00a0Ros-Lehtinen stated days before she officially claimed her post last January.<\/p>\n

Aside from issues pertaining to Israel and Palestine, Ros-Lehtinen\u2019s resume is\u00a0filled with episodes so shameful that they seem to lack any moral frame of\u00a0reference. For example, the congresswoman was credited for rallying her Republican\u00a0peers at the Congress to defeat a \u201cbill Dec. 16 that would have committed the United\u00a0States to combating forced child marriages abroad,\u201d according to The Washington Post\u00a0(December 22, 2010).<\/p>\n

Ros-Lehtinen remains committed to such a dismal legacy, now going after\u00a0organizations that provide housing, schools and health care for Palestinian refugees\u00a0and other plighted people.<\/p>\n

All of this is done in the name of Israel, at the expense of global security and\u00a0United States leadership (or whatever still remains of it)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

RAMZY BAROUD: It seems that there is nothing that Ileana Ros-Lehtinen will not do or say to support Israeli interests. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":10744,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[154,56,82,171,483,119,60,482],"tags":[355,1103,2453,3015,8654,18306,8653,18311,726,8651,18332,18297,690,1747,1808,2995,2465,2627,6108,387,18302,2738,5418],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10743"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10743"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10743\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}