Philip Giraldi at AntiWar. com has some comments on the Congressional Junkets to Israel this summer and then discusses a State Department Grant to MEMRI (Middle East Media Research Institute). Whole thing here:"Clinton describes herself as a liberal Democrat, but MEMRI is a neocon stronghold, so what gives? What we are seeing is the neoconization of foreign policy across the board and in both political parties, much of it driven by Israeli citizens or dual nationals. MEMRI was founded by former Israeli intelligence officers and once included Meyrav Wurmser, an Israeli-born Zionist who is now ensconced at the Hudson Institute, a leading neocon think tank. Her husband, David, who was born in Switzerland, was a foreign policy adviser to former Vice President Dick Cheney. Many believe that MEMRI has been agenda-ridden from the start, occasionally mistranslating and cherry-picking the most extreme press reports to support an anti-Arab agenda. Thanks to Hillary Clinton, it is now being funded by the United States government to begin a hunt for anti-Semites and Holocaust deniers worldwide. It will certainly find them, even if it has to be inventive to do so. One might well ask why the State Department is wasting money tracking such people all over the globe and what benefit the American people will derive from the search, but dont expect an answer any time soon."Americans who like Israel and everything that pertains to it are certainly free to express their views, but there is something unseemly and even grotesque about the continuous promotion of foreign interests ahead of those of the United States. MEMRI produces material that supports the propaganda line of the Israeli government as well as domestic Islamophobes, while AIPAC is a lobby dedicated to maintaining uncritical U.S. government support for a foreign country."

Margaret O’Brien Steinfels is a former editor of Commonweal. 

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