Dennis Ross - Jew and Israel's agent on Iran

Dennis Ross - Jew and former leader of "mission of four Jews" to handle Iran affairs
By Freedom Research, May 2009

Underlines in the article below added by Radio Islam for sake of emphasis.

Dennis Ross Joins State Dept
as Special Adviser to Clinton

by Hana Levi Julian

IsraelNationalNews.com, 02/24/2009

Former senior U.S. diplomat Dennis Ross has been pressed back into service as Special Adviser on Persian Gulf affairs to U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. The position includes advising Clinton on issues surrounding Iran, the Gulf region, the broader Middle East region, and southwest Asia.

The appointment was announced Monday by State Department spokesman Robert Wood, who noted,"This is a region in which America is fighting two wars and facing challenges of ongoing conflict, terror, proliferation, access to energy, economic development and strengthening democracy and the rule of law."

He added that "Ambassador Ross brings a wealth of experience not just to issues within the region but also to larger political-military challenges that flow from the area and have an impact outside of the Gulf and Southwest Asia, and the secretary looks forward to drawing on that experience and diplomatic perspective."

U.S. Senator George Mitchell was appointed last month as the Obama administration's special envoy to the Middle East. Equally seasoned diplomat Richard Holbrooke was appointed as special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Seen in U.S. as Pro-Israel Appointment

Ross helped write the speech delivered at the AIPAC convention by President Barack Obama during his campaign last year, and served as an official adviser to the campaign.

The long-time diplomat has said he believes that negotiations between the Jewish State and the Palestinian Authority should be contingent on the PA taking responsibility for preventing violence in any location vacated by Israel.

Ross has said he is opposed to unilateral withdrawals and noted in the past that Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000 strengthened the position of the Hizbullah terrorist organization there. He also opposes setting a timeline for creation of a PA state, according to Who Runs Government.

The new Special Adviser supports Israel's right to build a security barrier for self-defense, but believes it should be temporary.

He also reportedly supports peace talks between Syria and Israel and negotiations over the Golan Heights.

In addition, Ross has said he believes that Iran must be stopped at all costs from "going nuclear."

No Novice to Middle East Diplomacy

The appointment returns Ross to a forum with which he is exceedingly familiar, having served in a similar capacity under Clinton's husband Bill when he was president.

As Middle East coordinator during the Clinton administration, Dennis Ross served from 1993 to 2001 as the top negotiator for the U.S. between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, headed at that time by Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) chairman Yasser Arafat.

Ross also served under President Ronald Reagan in 1981 as the director of Near East and South Asian Affairs for the administration's national security staff.

In addition, Ross served the Bush administration as well – that is, the administration of President George H. Bush, former President George W. Bush's father. During those years, Ross worked as the director of the State Department's Policy Planning office under then-U.S. Secretary of State James Baker.

Ross left government service in the year 2000 to head the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a think tank described by Who Runs Government as "hawkish" and "with a pro-Israeli bent." Together with New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman, Ross founded the Kol Shalom synagogue in Rockville, Maryland in 2002.

Dennis Ross is also chairman of the Jewish People Policy Planning Institute. The Institute writes on its homepage about its mission:

The Jewish People Policy Planning Institute (JPPPI) is an independent think tank incorporated in Israel as a non-profit corporation. The mission of the Institute is to promote the thriving of the Jewish people via professional strategic thinking and planning on issues of primary concern to world Jewry. JPPPI's work is based on deep commitment to the future of the Jewish people with Israel as its core state.

Israel Shahak, Israeli Jew, former Professor of Chemistry at Hebrew University in Jerusalem and Chairman of the Israeli League for Human and Civil Rights, writes in his book "Open Secrets", Pluto Press, pp130-131, on Dennis Ross when Ross was heading the so-called "US" mission for the Middle East:

A deeper, but still unsatisfactory insight came from the pen of Meron Benvenisti writing for Haaretz (15 July). His opinions deserve to be quoted at length. After noting that 'the Jewish American community' bears no less responsibility than anybody else for 'the status quo' in the Territories, Benvenisti proceeds to describe this community's ways of influencing US policies. He recalls that 'when the [US] mission headed by Denis Ross came to Jerusalem, a Hebrew paper [Maariv] described it as "the mission of four Jews" and gloated with pride while talking about the Jewish and even Israeli roots of all its members.' Other papers did likewise. The 'Israeli roots' of those US diplomats comprising what went under the name of a 'Peace mission' included the fact that a son of one of them was said to be studying in a Hesder Yeshiva, to receive military training there. He was also said to be a sympathizer of Gush Emunim and was awaiting the opportunity to serve in the Israeli Army in the Territories. Benvenisti's comment is that 'the ethnic origin of American diplomats sent here to promote peace may be irrelevant, but it is hard to ignore the fact that manipulation of the peace process was entrusted by the US in the first place to American Jews, and that at least one member of the State Department team was selected for the task because he represented the views of American Jewish establishment. The tremendous influence of the Jewish establishment upon the Clinton administration found its clearest manifestation in redefining the "occupied territories" as "territories in dispute". The Palestinians are understandably angry. But lest they be accused of anti-Semitism, they cannot, God forbid, talk about Clinton's "Jewish connection". After all, for its own purposes, the PLO wants anything as much as to keep its lines of communication with the Jewish community in the US open, because it perceives that community as so formidably powerful. Let it be recalled that Arafat chose in 1988 a delegation of American Jews as a channel to publicize his decision to recognize Israel, because he believed that only via them might he gain some legitimacy for himself.'

The American Jewish journalist Robert Deyfuss writes in The Nation on Dennis Ross (underlines in the article below added by Radio Islam for sake of emphasis):

Dennis Ross's Iran Plan
by Robert Dreyfuss

This article appeared in the April 27, 2009 edition of The Nation

When Dennis Ross, a hawkish, pro-Israel adviser to Barack Obama's presidential campaign, was elevated in February to the post of special adviser on "the Gulf and Southwest Asia"--i.e., Iran--Ross's critics hoped that his influence would be marginal. After all, unlike special envoys George Mitchell (Israel-Palestine) and Richard Holbrooke (Afghanistan-Pakistan), whose appointments were announced with fanfare, Ross's appointment was long delayed and then announced quietly, at night, in a press release.

But diplomats and Middle East watchers hoping Ross would be sidelined are wrong. He is building an empire at the State Department: hiring staff and, with his legendary flair for bureaucratic wrangling, cementing liaisons with a wide range of US officials. The Iran portfolio is his, says an insider. "Everything we've seen indicates that Ross has completely taken over the issue," says a key Iran specialist. "He's acting as if he's the guy. Wherever you go at State, they tell you, 'You've gotta go through Dennis.'"

It's paradoxical that Obama, who made opening a dialogue with Iran into a crucial plank in his campaign, would hand the Iran file to Ross. Since taking office, Obama has taken a number of important steps to open lines to Iran, including a remarkable holiday greeting by video in which the president spoke directly to "the leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran," adding, "We seek engagement that is honest and grounded in mutual respect." He invited Iran to attend an international conference on Afghanistan, where a top Iranian diplomat shook hands with Holbrooke; he's allowing American diplomats to engage their Iranian counterparts; and he's reportedly planning to dispatch a letter directly to Iran's leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Yet Ross, like his neoconservative co-thinkers, is explicitly skeptical about the usefulness of diplomacy with Iran.

Widely viewed as a cog in the machine of Israel's Washington lobby, Ross was not likely to be welcomed in Tehran--and he wasn't. Iran's state radio described his appointment as "an apparent contradiction" with Obama's "announced policy to bring change in United States foreign policy." Kazem Jalali, a hardline member of the Iranian parliament's national security committee, joked that it "would have been so much better to pick Ariel Sharon or Ehud Olmert as special envoy to Iran." More seriously, a former White House official says that Ross has told colleagues that he believes the United States will ultimately have no choice but to attack Iran in response to its nuclear program.

Not quite a neoconservative himself, Ross has palled around with neocons for most of his career. In the 1970s and '80s he worked alongside Paul Wolfowitz at the Defense and State Departments, and with Andrew Marshall, a neoconservative strategist who leads the Pentagon's Office of Net Assessments. In 1985 Ross helped launch the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), the Israel lobby's leading think tank.

From the late 1980s through 2000, Ross served as point man on Arab-Israeli issues for George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, acquiring a reputation as a highly skilled diplomat, albeit one with a pronounced pro-Israel tilt. He led the US side at the July 2000 Camp David summit, but he was deeply mistrusted by Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat, and the feeling was mutual. At a crucial moment in the negotiations, Ross threw a tantrum, hurling a briefing book into a table full of juice and fruit. Not surprisingly, when Arafat rejected the Israelis' less-than-generous offer, Ross heaped blame on the Palestinians for scuttling the talks, the failure of which led directly to Ariel Sharon's rise to power and the second intifada. Daniel Kurtzer, an Orthodox Jew who served as US ambassador to Israel and Egypt and who was one of Obama's top Middle East advisers last year, co-wrote a book in which he explained, "The perception always was that Dennis started from the Israeli bottom line, that he listened to what Israel wanted and then tried to sell it to the Arabs."

From 2001 until his appointment in February, Ross was at WINEP, where he helped to oversee a series of reports designed to ring alarm bells about Iran's nuclear research and to support closer US-Israeli ties in response. Last summer, while advising Obama, he co-chaired a task force that produced a paper titled "Strengthening the Partnership: How to Deepen U.S.-Israel Cooperation on the Iranian Nuclear Challenge." That report opted for an alarmist view of Iran's nuclear program and proposed that the next president set up a formal US-Israeli mechanism for coordinating policy toward Iran (including any future need for "preventive military action"). Along with Holbrooke, Ross also helped found United Against Nuclear Iran, a group established to publicize warnings about Iran to the American public and the media. UANI's advisory board includes former CIA director James Woolsey and Fouad Ajami, perhaps the top Middle East expert for the neoconservative movement.

In September, Ross served as a key member of another task force organized by the Bipartisan Policy Center. The group assembled a flock of hawks under the leadership of Michael Makovsky, brother of WINEP's David Makovsky, who served in the Office of the Secretary of Defense in the heyday of the Pentagon neocons from 2002 to 2006. Its report, "Meeting the Challenge: U.S. Policy Toward Iranian Nuclear Development"--written by Michael Rubin, a neoconservative hardliner at the American Enterprise Institute--read like a declaration of war.

The core of the Bipartisan Policy Center report predicted that diplomacy with Iran is likely to fail. Anticipating failure, Ross and his colleagues recommended "prepositioning military assets" by the United States--i.e., a military buildup--coupled with a US "show of force" in the Gulf. This would be followed almost immediately by a blockade of Iranian gasoline imports and oil exports, meant to paralyze Iran's economy, followed by what they call, not so euphemistically, "kinetic action."

That "kinetic action"--a US assault on Iran--should, in fact, be massive, suggested the Ross-Rubin task force. It should hit dozens of sites alleged to be part of Iran's nuclear research program, along with other targets, including Iranian air defense sites, Revolutionary Guard facilities, much of Iran's military-industrial complex, communications systems, munitions storage facilities, airfields and naval facilities. Eventually, the report concluded, the United States would also have to attack Iran's ground forces, electric power plants and electrical grids, bridges and "manufacturing plants, including steel, autos, buses, etc."

Like virtually all of his neoconservative confreres, Ross does not argue that negotiations with Iran should not proceed. Surrendering to the inevitability of a US-Iran dialogue, they insist instead that any such talks proceed according to a strict time limit, measured in weeks or, at most, a few months. In November, Iran specialist Patrick Clawson, Ross's colleague at WINEP, described any US-Iran dialogue that might emerge as mere theater. "What we've got to do is...show the world that we're doing a heck of a lot to try and engage the Iranians," he said. "Our principal target with these offers [to Iran] is not Iran. Our principal target with these offers is, in fact, American public opinion [and] world public opinion." Once that's done, he implied, the United States would have to take out its big stick.

The reality, however, is that negotiations between Iran and the United States might take many, many months, perhaps years. Putting US-Iran diplomacy on a short fuse, as Ross and his colleagues want to do, guarantees its failure, setting the stage for harsher sanctions, embargoes and the "kinetic action" that Ross has suggested might follow.

Jewish Ambassador Dennis Ross co-authored with fellow Jew Daniel Kurtzer the report "Tracking Obama's positions on Israel" for San Diego Jewish World, August 24, 2008. They write: "As Senator Obama’s Middle East Policy Advisors, we were honored to accompany him on his trip, and we are eager to share with you a recap of his historic visit." Where "Senator Obama traveled to Israel to meet with Israel’s leaders, to express his unequivocal commitment to Israel’s security and to strengthening the U.S.-Israel relationship" - "In his meetings with Israeli officials, Senator Obama reaffirmed his longstanding belief that Israel's security is 'sacrosanct,' and reiterated his commitment to the steadfast relationship between the United States and Israel."

Zionist Jews Dennis Ross and Daniel Kurtzer end their report with the following advice to its Jewish readers: "We encourage you to forward this column to everyone you know who may have missed the coverage of Senator Obama’s historic visit so they can read and see for themselves the strong connection he has forged with the people of Israel and their leaders."

Dennis Ross speaks at Congregation of Reform Judaism in Orlando, FL, on 10-19-2008, the Israeli flag handy in place behind him.

Dennis Ross with the yarmulke - the Jewish skullcap - on his head in deep and friendly talks with his Jewish brethren.

Dennis Ross in friendly interaction with Israeli Likudnik
Benjamin Netanyahu.

Dennis Ross this time enjoying the friendship of Ehud
Olmert, the man behind the 2006 war on Lebanon.

Dennis Ross seated with Israeli Labourist Ehud Barak, Israeli flag in place as usual.

Dennis Ross the way he enjoys himself, lecturing his Zionist opinions, skullcap on the head, and the Israeli flag in the back.

Dennis Ross in Montgomery County, PA; 2008

Dennis Ross speech on Middle East, Obama, October 19th 2008 at South Florida Jewish Temple

Notice that Ross cannot even pronounce the name of the Iranian President, calling him "Ahmadinejan", instead of the correct ending "jad". And this is the man who will take care of the Iranian issues in the US administration!

Notice also when Ross uses the term "we" - pure schizophrenia.

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