A small clarification is in order.

Back during Senator J.W. Fulbright’s 1963 investigation of the Israel lobby he found the JTA *was part of* the Israel lobby.

The Jewish Telegraphic Agency was *owned* and funded by the Jewish Agency, the same organization that fronted startup funding to AIPAC’s predecessor (the AZC), AIPAC’s director (first as an employee, later by buying mass quantities of his Near East Report).

Not sure who owns it now, but clearly there is no need to distinguish between the lobby and the JTA. They are one and the same.

SEE ALSO: “House Hunting in the West Bank” by GERSHOM GORENBERG, 06/04/09

(EXCERPT) It’s Benjamin Netanyahu’s fault. Because of his insistence on allowing for “natural growth” of West Bank settlements, I decided to go real-estate shopping. I called Amana, the settlement-building organization, and said I was interested in homes in Binyamin, the name used by settlers and Israeli officialdom for the piece of the West Bank directly north of Jerusalem….

…At Eli, just up the road from Shilo, she offered homes in the center of the settlement and in outlying “neighborhoods.” In Hayovel, for instance, she had a house for $115,000, with a completed first floor and the outer shell for the second floor. She didn’t mention that the “neighborhood” of Hayovel is an illegal outpost, built partly on private Palestinian land. She offered me a similar house at a settlement called Ma’aleh Mikhmash. I thanked her and said I’d talk to my wife…

…Netanyahu and his partners don’t want any of this to stop. They want settlements to keep growing, in order to block an Israeli withdrawal and a two-state solution. Obama wants a freeze as the first step toward a solution. The natural-growth argument is worse than a distraction; it’s a scam. Let the buyer beware.

ENTIRE ARTICLE – http://prospect.org/cs/articles?article=house_hunting_in_the_west_bank

This coming June 10, we will be at the Caterpillar annual shareholder meeting for the sixth time.
We will remind the Board of Directors that stopping the company’s sales of bulldozers to Israel is not only ethical but affordable for Caterpillar. We will remind them that not changing course will be increasingly more costly to Caterpillar: Hampshire College has already divested from CAT, and so has the Church of England; other churches are considering similar steps. Twenty Israeli peace and justice organizations have come in support of divestment from Caterpillar.

We want you to be with us at the meeting. Please sign a letter to Caterpillar by June 9th, and we will hand-deliver it to the Board of Directors the next day. Help us bring thousands of letters of protest!

*TO SIGN – http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/301/t/1849/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=27360

This is why people who seek justice for Palestine (justice…not peace) call for an immediate, unconditional, non-negotiable elimination of settlements.

Settlements are illegal, have always been illegal, defy the UN and international law.
So why does the “Peace Camp” play along with Hasbara in this linguistic game? When will they realize that we cannot win on their playing field: “Oh it is unrealistic to think settlements will be dismantled, so I’ll ask for them to stop building new ones.”!
“It’s unrealistic to say that refugee camps should be torn down and people given homes, so let’s just ask that they not be bombed like ducks in a barrel.”

As Malcolm X said – when the knife is in someone’s back, to pull it out halfway, and call that a “victory” is nonsense.

Is there anything that can beat the purblindness of these Masters of Chutzpah?

SEE ALSO: “Obama Confident In Taking On Settlements” – by James D. Besser, 06/03/09

(EXCERPT) The Obama administration is confident it will retain strong Jewish support even as it ratchets up the pressure on Israel and offers clues that, unlike its predecessors, it means what it says about the thorny issue of Jewish settlements on the West Bank…

ENTIRE ARTICLE – http://www.thejewishweek.com/viewArticle/c39_a15983/News/International.html