The House’s songbird for an Israeli Middle East

Congresswoman Illena Ros-Lehtinen was busy as a bee as she made her way through the political and social rounds of the Republican National Convention. Illena is the one female committee chair in the House of Representatives, probably Israel’s most ardent voice. She is a constant thorn in the Obama administration’s side, regularly condemning the president for playing “political games with U.S. foreign policy” and being “soft on Iran” while undermining the legitimacy of Israel. Bad Obama, bad Obama. Heel.

Ros-Lehtinen is also a congressional cheer leader for her Jewish voters in Florida—a key battleground state in the US presidential election. Most recently, Ros-Lehtinen helped push through Congress still another bill tightening sanctions against Iran while calling for US military action against the Assad regime in Syria, busy little agent-bird that she is.

The congresswoman’s focus will not be touting Republican talking points regarding her party’s nominee Mitt Romney, whom she is aware may not likely take the White House. This, while according to a source at the Democratic National Committee, she frantically had pasted together final touches on her own convention, held the week of September 3 in Charlotte, North Carolina. The question is will Illena spend much time with or promoting Mitt’s running mate, Congressman Paul Ryan.

Ryan, a confessed Ayn Rand adept, who claims that “Ayn Rand’s teachings have been one of the most profound philosophical influences of [his] life”—obviously never read the Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right, by Jennifer Burns. It seems Rand, the author of The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged and founder of the Objectivism movement), renounced religion and abortion, and passed away in 1982 as an avowed atheist, strongly pro-abortion. The fact is, Rand was born of a Jewish family (her real name was Alisa Rosenbaum), and became a strong supporter and donor of Israel, the opposite of what Ryan tells audiences she was. When she was ill with lung cancer, she took and her husband, Frank O’Connor, signed up for Social Security and Medicare, she under the name Ann O’Connor. So much for consistency!

Returning to Ros-Lehtinen, she met “with local, national, and international Jewish leaders in this must win state where she had been assigned the task of reassuring them that the Republican Party is Israel’s best friend and that a recent US government draft report urging the US take a deeper look at its relationship to Israel is the responsibility of none other than Barack Obama, and it reveals his true disdain for Israel,” Franklin Lamb wrote in a Foreign Policy Journal article in August.

“Helping her smear the White House with the findings in the draft analysis will be William Kristol, publisher of the neoconservative Weekly Standard and co-founder of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), an ‘Israel first’ Washington-based lobby “promoting joint Israeli and American political and military leadership across the globe, while bringing democracy to the Middle East.” Go know.

“So what was all the fuss about?

“It’s a paper entitled ‘Preparing For A Post Israel Middle East,’ an 82-page analysis that concludes that the American national interest is fundamentally at odds with that of Zionist Israel. The authors conclude that Israel is currently the greatest threat to US national interests because its nature and actions prevent normal US relations with Arab and Muslim countries and, to a growing degree, the wider international community.

“The study was commissioned by the US Intelligence Community, comprising 16 American intelligence agencies with an annual budget in excess of $ 70 billion. The IC includes the Departments of the Navy, Army, Air Force, Marine Corps, Coast Guard, Defense Intelligence Agency, Departments of Energy, Homeland Security, State, Treasure, Drug Enforcement Agency, Federal Bureau of Investigation, National Security Agency, National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, National Reconnaissance Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency commissioned the study.”

The Intelligence Community’s findings recommend that:

“Israel, given its current brutal occupation and belligerence cannot be salvaged any more than apartheid south Africa could be when as late as 1987 Israel was the only “Western” nation that upheld diplomatic ties with South Africa and was the last country to join the international boycott campaign before the regime collapsed;

“The Israeli leadership, with its increasing support of the 700,000 settlers in illegal colonies in the occupied West Bank is increasingly out of touch with the political, military and economic realities of the Middle East;

“The post Labor government Likud coalition is deeply complicit with and influenced by the settlers’ political and financial power and will increasingly face domestic civil strife which the US government should not associate itself with or become involved with;

“The Arab Spring and Islamic Awakening has to a major degree freed a large majority of the 1.2 billion Arab and Muslims to pursue what an overwhelming majority believe is the illegitimate, immoral and unsustainable European occupation of Palestine of the indigenous population;

“Simultaneous with, but predating, rapidly expanding Arab and Muslim power in the region as evidenced by the Arab spring, Islamic Awakening and the ascendancy of Iran, as American power and influence recedes, the US commitment to belligerent oppressive Israel is becoming impossible to defend or execute consistent given paramount US national interests which include normalizing relations with the 57 Islamic countries;

“Gross Israeli interference is taking place in the internal affairs of the United States via spying and illegal US arms transfers. This includes supporting more than 60 ‘front organizations’ and approximately 7,500 US officials who do Israel’s bidding and seek to dominate and intimidate the media and agencies of the US government which should no longer be condoned;

“That the United States government no longer has the financial resources, or public support to continue funding Israel. The billions of dollars in direct and indirect aid from US taxpayers to Israel since 1967 is not affordable and is increasingly being objected to by US taxpayers who oppose continuing American military involvement in the Middle East. US public opinion no longer supports funding and executing widely perceived illegal US wars on Israel’s behalf. This view is increasingly being shared by Europe, Asia and the International public;

“Israel’s segregationist occupation infrastructure as evidenced by legalized discrimination and increasingly separate and unequal justice systems must no longer be directly or indirectly funded by the US taxpayers or ignored by the US government;

“Israel has failed as a claimed democratic state and continued American financial and political cover will not change its continuing devolution as international pariah state;

“Increasingly, rampant and violent racism exhibited among Jewish settlers in the West Bank is being condoned by the Israeli government to a degree that the Israel government has become its protector and partner;

“The expanding chasm among American Jews objecting to Zionism and Israeli practices, including the killing and brutalizing of Palestinians under Israeli occupation, are gross violations of American and International law and raise questions within the US Jewish community regarding the American responsibility to protect (R2P) innocent civilians under occupation;

“The international opposition to the increasingly apartheid regime can no longer be synchronized with American claimed humanitarian values or US expectations in its bi-lateral relations with the 193 member United Nations;

“The Draft ends with language about the need to avoid entangling alliances that alienate much of the World and condemn American citizens to endure the consequences.”

Lamb said, “Interestingly, it notes Iran as an example of a country and people that have much in common and whose citizens have a real interest in enjoying bilateral associations (an apparent reference to Israel and its US lobby) not determined by the wishes of other countries and their agents. It also highlights the need for the US to undertake repairing of relations with Arab and Muslim countries, including the drastically curtained use of drone aircraft.

“The coming days will clarify the success of Israel in making an issue of the finding in the soon to be published draft report and the degree to which the Republican Party will gain for its findings in the race for the White House.”

As to Congresswoman Illena Ros-Lehtinen, she will be singing her song of a post Israel Middle-East, I imagine, which could either boost Romney and the Republicans over the top or lose them the election.

The fact that Romney promised to back a nuclear attack on Iran to obtain the Jewish vote might have dire consequences with voters. In fact, this is why Obama, who has had enough of Netanyahu and Israel’s endless demands, did not make any such promise. What’s more, he got rid of his chief advisor, Rahm Emanuel, who served with the Israeli Defense Force (IDF), and whose father was a Zionist and pediatrician, who fought with the terrorist gang Irgun.

In fact Obama is signaling, via the production and subsequent distribution of this 82-page intelligence document, that he won’t back Israel under these conditions. This is given the fact that an Israeli attack on Iran could lead to a third world war and nuclear conflagration. Yet this fact, according to sources, is driving Netanyahu crazy, despite the fact that even his military chiefs are urging him to back off any plan to attack Iran. If all Americans had all the facts on this, I believe it could be a game-changer.

More esoterically, what might come to light is that Romney’s Mormonism has a special relationship to Judaism. As Wiki reports, “The doctrines of the Latter Day Saint movement, commonly referred to as Mormonism, teach that its adherents are either direct descendants of the House of Israel, or are adopted into it. As such, Judaism is foundational to the history of Mormonism. According to Mormonism, the Jewish people are considered a covenant people of God, held in high esteem, and are respected in the Mormon faith system. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints refers to itself as philo-Semitic in its doctrine.

“Studies have shown that Jews generally view Mormons more positively than any other religious group, despite often voting on opposite ends of the political spectrum. Explanations for Jews’ high regard for Mormons is speculated to come both from their solidarity with other historically abused religious minorities and the philo-Semitism of Mormon theology.”

I can’t be sure if Congresswoman Illena Ros-Lehtinen (sometimes spelled Ross-Lehtinen), whose family emigrated from Castro’s Cuba to Florida and her Jewish voters can relate to this, but it could be a reason she is so highly inflamed about “Preparing For A Post-Israel Middle East,” the 82-page intelligence analysis.

More than that I’m afraid I would require a crystal ball and some Twilight Zone background music to predict. Certainly, the first Obama/Romney debate did not produce a knockout winner. Romney’s facts are already being questioned. Unfortunately, the 80-year old narrator Jim Lehrer was named “The Loser” by The National Memo. It is clear that this is a battle of two distinct ideologies, the haves and have-nots, none of which was explicitly brought out but certainly lurked under the surface.

Jerry Mazza is a freelance writer, life-long resident of New York City. An EBook version of his book of poems “State Of Shock,” on 9/11 and its after effects is now available at Amazon.com and Barnesandnoble.com. He has written hundreds of articles on politics and government as Associate Editor of the intrepidreport.com (formerly Online Journal). Reach him at gvmaz@verizon.net.