US Congress Prostrates In Front of Bibi

It has never looked more like the "theater of the absurd". A few years back when academics John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt published their paper "The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy" they were heckled from polite company as a bunch of rabble rousing anti-Semites with Germanic surnames to boot. The rebuttal to the lobby paper and subsequent book was always asinine. One can debate the merits of ascribed heavy influence to the Israel lobby, but opponents resented the very noting of such a lobby. Never mind that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, has an eight-story office complex on Capital Hill, a massive annual budget in the tens of millions and always ranks in the nonpartisan National Journal of lobby prowess as either tied for first with the American Association for Retired Persons, AARP, (an organization with 36 million well-organized and voting seniors) or a close second. But Israel's supporters and apologists resented that anyone would dare mentions that US unconditional support for Israel has anything to do with lobbyists and campaign contributions. Better to maintain the myth of unyielding love in the name of ostensible "shared values". The Israel lobby wanted to dominate Congress but pounce when anyone dared notice.

But, today, Mearsheimer and Walt are no longer the kooky conspiracy theories and Jew-haters they were dismissed as. Today, even the pro-Israel Wall Street Journal columnist Bret Stephens references the "Israel lobby" and notes Obama's pro-Israel pontification in front of AIPAC as "perennial bromides". And the Journal's news section recently had an article identifying "Jewish donors" as liable to ditch Obama because of his perceived critical policies and stances toward Israel.

Obama clashing with Netanyahu, Obama pandering at AIPAC, the Journal - America's number one selling newspaper - writing about "Jewish donors" and now Netanyahu addressing Congress, the lobby in its sheer vulgarity has never been more naked. The emperor has lost its clothes. And as a former AIPAC staffer, Steve Rosen, once said, a lobby thrives in darkness and dies in light. That is why the lobby resented the works of two academics so much and worked to discredit them, because informing people about the lobby and shining a light on its insidious acts will undermine its intimidating power.

And so the lobby is on a course for oblivion. Slowly it is being chipped away at and will soon become just another right-wing shop and not the commanding titan it is now. But before that's done, it has one last hurray: Netanyahu, Israel's fat-assed, militant, fanatical propagandists, recently addressed a joint session of Congress.

Members of Congress were so eager to prove their pro-Israel credentials in order to elicit campaign dollars that they rose in the most pathetic and obsequies manner to pay homage to a foreign leader who just dissed their president. It was so vulgar and such a sad image of bowing down to a nation that it itself the dependent and pull-peddler so-called "ally". And, yet, it is the US Congress that must show its loyalty and deference. Yes, Virginia, there is an Israel lobby.

ABC News reported that Netanyahu's speech got more standing ovations than Obama's State of the Union address, 29 to 25, leading the New York Times to conclude "Mr. Netanyahu received so many standing ovations that at times it appeared that the lawmakers were listening to his speech standing up." Netanyahu got 59 rounds of applause in all.

Many commentators in the Arab world noted the hilarity of the US Congress behaving like a third-world banana republic puppet-parliament where the seating MPs stand up and cheer anything their leader is saying. This oldest of democracy in its venerable chamber was a reminder of the sham democracy and farce parliament of Syria when its dictatorial leader Bashir Assad recently addressed it and received effusive applause. With Bibi it was the same thing. Congress did not care what he was saying, just stand up and cheer because the lobby is watching and taking notes. Hilarious. The theater of the absurd.

In making fun of the pathetic Congresspersons, Lebanese-American academic As'ad Abukhalil captured it best, "Think about it. If Netanyahu vomits before the US Congress members would line up to get a taste."

wo af701 usisra g 20110524200516 3tuvH 19672

The pack of dipshits line up and ask Netanyahu if he would honor them by spitting in their face.