[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.Despite the poor investment quality of43 The Power of Israel in the United States / James PetrasIsrael Bonds, some of the largest US trade unions, employee pension funds,and major multi-national corporations have collectively loaned billions of dol-lars to the Israeli regime.In all cases, the decisions to purchase a foreigngovernment's bonds were made by the trade union bosses and corporatefund managers without consulting the membership or stockholders.39 NathanZirkin, a financial director of the Retail, Wholesale and Department StoreUnion, when asked if his union would continue to purchase Israel Bondsdespite Israel's repression and arrest of Palestinian trade unionists and ac-tivists, replied "Absolutely.The Palestinians didn't have a damn thing untilIsrael came in."40Many of the trade unions, which are purchasers of Israeli bonds, arecontrolled or influenced by the Mafia.The Teamsters Union is the biggestpurchaser of Israel Bonds; it is also the union which has seen more seniorofficials indicted for Mafia ties, illicit use of union funds, and massive robbery ofmembership pension funds.In this case the trade union Mafioso werebuying favorable propaganda from the mass media and support from the"respectable" Jewish organizations via the purchase of Israel Bonds.Union pension funds have also been used by trade union bureau-crats to purchase Israel Bonds.The most notorious case is the formerInternational Ladies Garment Workers Unions (ILGWU), now called UNITE, aunion whose workers are 95% Black, Hispanic, and Chinese, most earning ator below the minimum wage.UNITE's leadership and staff is overwhelmingJewish and earning between $100,000 to $350,000 a year plus expenses.41 Bychanneling over $25 million in pension funds to Israel, the US workers aredeprived of access to loans for housing, social services, legal defense, etc.Clearly the Jewish trade union bosses have a greater affinity for the State ofIsrael and its oppression of Palestinian workers than they have with their ownpoorly organized workers, employed under some of the worst working condi-tions in the US.Israel Bond promoters, with support from Mafia-influenced corrupttrade union bosses, have sold vast holdings of Israel bonds to 1500 labororganizations at interest rates belowThe American labor community those of other available securities andholds $5 billion in Israel Bonds.well below what most investors wouldexpect from loans to an economically troubled foreign government like Israel.On March 22, 2002, the Jewish weekly Forward actually put a figure on thatamount, quoting the director of the National Committee for Labor Israel asestimating that "the American labor community holds $5 billion in IsraelBonds."Many factors accounted for the US trade union bosses channelingtheir members pension funds and union dues into Israel Bonds: politicalprotection and respectability in being associated with Israel and its lobby-ists this was especially important to Mafia-linked and corrupt officials.44 US-lraq-lsrael-Zionist ConnectionIdeological and ethnic ties between Jewish trade union leaders and Israelhas been a second factor.While Israel bonds may represent a diminishing factor in the con-temporary Israeli economy perhaps because the $US 10 billion loanguarantee terminated in 1998?42 they are nonetheless still purchased andheld, inter alia, by state and city governments, teachers, universities, andpolice in the United States, as well as 100,000 individuals.Accomplices to GenocideIn April 2002, over 100,000 people, mostly Jews and Christian funda-mentalists, marched in support of the Sharon regime in the midst of thesiege of Jenin, and were addressed, inter alia, by Paul Wolfowitz, WilliamBennett, Hillary Clinton, Dick Armey, Rudy Giuliani, Dick Gephardt, and AFL-CIO president John Sweeney.In Israel two out of three Israelis (65 percent)polled in late April 2002 supported Sharon and almost 90 percent believedthe regime's propaganda that the UN commission to investigate Israeli dev-astation of the Occupied Territories "will not be fair to Israel." The Israelipublic, the US trade union bosses, and the American political and financialelites who financed Sharon thereby became accomplices to the crimes againstthe Palestinian people.Obviously the shrinking minority of Jews in Israel whooppose the military machine have little or no influence in policy, in the media, orin securing overseas financial support.Interestingly, the US did vote in favor of the resolution creating a UNinvestigatory commission of Israel's near total destruction of Jenin in thespring of 2003.But the UN investigation got no further than its creation.Itevoked the hostility of the entire Israeli political class.Shimon Perez (thenthe self-styled labor moderate in Sharon's government) accused the 170-plus member United Nations Organization of "blood libel".The Israeli securitycabinet decided that Kofi Annan, the UN Secretary General, had not met itsdemands for amending the mission's mandate, "so there is no possibility ofbeginning the inquiry." As Alan Philips of the Daily Telegraph put it:Apparently having lost his trial of strength with Ariel Sharon, the Israeliprime minister, Mr Annan recommended to the UN Security Councilthat the team which has been waiting in Geneva for three days forpermission to go to Israel should be sent home.43Wealthy and powerful reactionary Jews in the Diaspora also gravi-tated toward Sharon.Seven of the eight billionaire Russian Mafia Oligarchshave donated generously to the Israeli state, were on excellent terms withSharon and Shimon Peres, and have no use for dissident military reservists
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]