It is about time for Congress to start to show interest in climate change.

"The scientific evidence is now overwhelming: climate change is a serious global threat, and it demands an urgent global response......Using the results from formal economic models, the Review estimates that if we don’t act, the overall costs and risks of climate change will be equivalent to losing at least 5% of global GDP each year, now and forever. If a wider range of risks and impacts is taken into account, the estimates of damage could rise to 20% of GDP or more. In contrast, the costs of action – reducing greenhouse gas emissions to avoid the worst impacts of climate change – can be limited to around 1% of global GDP each year. The investment that takes place in the next 10-20 years will have a profound effect on the climate in the second half of this century and in the next."

- Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change (comissioned by the UK Government)

You are right in that most Americans are sympathetic toward Israel, based on their perceptions of its history.

However, research by the "new Israeli historians" such as Ilan Pappe, Tom Segev and Benny Moris, based on the archives of the Israeli army (and the pre-army Jewish militias) has shown that much of this history is little more than propaganda.

For example, prior to the creation of the state of Israel in 1948, there was a massive violent process of ethnic cleasing of Palestinians - including many massacres by terrorist gangs such as those led by Yitzhak Shamir and Menachem Begin to "encourage" Palestinians to leave to create a state with a Jewish majority. Also, contrary to common belief, the Israeli army in 1948 was numerically superior and better equipped than the Arab armies combined (most of which were still under colonial rule) so Israel's existence was not in jeopardy. Also the 1967 war -again contrary to common belief- was initiated by a pre-emptive strike on Egypt which had no intent in attacking Israel according to senior Israeli military sources at the time (I can provide references).

Now that the stakes are too high for America with what is going on in Iraq, it is time to closely examine these and some of the other "modern myths" about Israel. You may want to read the landmark essay "the Israel Lobby" published by professors John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt for the London Review of Books (you can download it from Harvard's Kennedy School of Government at http://ksgnotes1.harvard.edu/Research/wpaper.nsf/rwp/RWP06-011/$File/rwp_06_011_walt.pdf

I would add the significant role played by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) which is run by Colonel Yigal Carmon, a former officer (22 years) in the Israeli military intelligence.

MEMRI feeds Congress, politicians and the media, on a regular basis, highly selective translations from the Arab Press which seek to smear the Arabs and advance the interests of Israel. MEMRI's co-founder is Meyrav Wurmser who is also director of the centre for Middle East policy at the Hudson Institute and a co-author of the Clean Break study (the plot thickens!).

You may want to read more about MEMRI in the Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/elsewhere/journalist/story/0,7792,773258,00.html

Hey Realname, I noticed that recently you have been calling people who criticise the neocons, the Israel Lobby or the Israeli government "racists" instead of your previous favorite smear term of "anti-Semites".

What is going on? Did the term "anti-Semite" lose some of its potency after being used to smear the likes of Jimmy Carter, Desmond Tutu and Walt/Mearsheimer for having dared expose the aparthied policies of Israel and the destructive role of the neocons/Israel Lobby in bringing about the Iraq war and distorting American foreign policy in the Middle East?

I would suspect most national journalists would agree with Gary's thought-provoking analysis of the Iraq war and the media's many failures. Many journalists would be too intimidated, though, to highlight the role of the neocons and Israel Lobby in bringing about the war.

This is shame, not only because it is critical for the media to be able to report the truth if American democracy is to function, but also because the neocons and the Lobby are working overtime to bring us another disasterous war, this time with Iran!

For Krauthammer and his buddies in the Israel Lobby, every violent act is an opportunity to stoke the fear and hatred that they use to feed their wars in the Middle East; the Iraq war and now the war they hope to start on Iran.

Thank God for the internet... Without it very little of the American democracy - which has been damaged by the environment of fear mongering, demagoguery and media control- would be left.

http://whatreallyhappened.com/

The victims here are hardly the neocons, the Israel Lobby or Mr. Krauthammer. These are the people who manufactured the Iraq war through lies and deceit.

The victims are:

1) The truth

2) The young American soldiers in Iraq dying in a manufactured war

2) The Palestinians

3) The Iraqis

After all, these kind of smear tactics have very limited credibility having been used ad infinitum on such notable "anti-Semites" as Desmond Tutu, Jimmy Carter and Daniel Barenboim.

It is interesting how the Israel Lobby uses these smear tactics to silence any criticism of the neocons' role in Iraq or of the brutal Israeli occupation/apartheid and ethnic cleansing of Palestine.

You may also want to take note of the fact, as I mentioned previously, that the victims here are hardly the neocons, the Israel Lobby or Mr. Krauthammer. The victims are:

1) The truth, first and foremost

2) The young American soldiers in Iraq dying in a manufactured war

3) The Palestinians being ethnically cleansed from their land every day by the brutal Israeli occuaption

4) The Iraqis being killed in their thousands.

Stop the lies and hypocrisy!

www.whatreallyhappened.com