Media silence on Epstein-Israel ties

A thought experiment – imagine detailed emails surfacing of a suicided ¹ blackmailer, pimp and all round pervert with ‘friends’ in the highest echelons of Western government having had close ties with – even procuring cyberweaponry for – Russia.

Wouldn’t corporate media be all over it?

Yesterday I introduced Lowkey, on the media silence (since it is not Russia but a genocidal Ally which comes up repeatedly in the Epstein documents now in the public domain) thusly:

One aspect our systemically compromised corporate media stay well away from in their otherwise wall to wall coverage – salacity with schadenfreude, what editor could resist?  – is the Israel connection.

Some of us were old enough to be walking England’s green and pleasant when the Profumo Affair did for a prime minister. It was bad enough, in fifties Britain, ² that cabinet minister John Profumo was ‘seeing’ call girl Christine Keeler.  His head had to roll, but it was the fact Christine was also ‘seeing’ a Soviet naval attaché which forced Macmillan – his own offence being that of believing Profumo’s denials ³ – to resign.

Park that thought.

I keep insisting that contrary to the views of many otherwise invaluable commentators (and many unabashed antisemites) Israel does not dictate US foreign policy. Rather, its expansionist goals align with those of a US oligarchy masquerading as a democracy and determined to keep control – by bloodshed and chaos, regime change, balkanisation or whatever ese works – an oil rich and geostrategically pivotal West Asia.

As Brian Berletic put it:

When people tell me Israel controls the US, I ask how. They tell me AIPAC. But the arms industry spends far more. So do the Banks, Big Pharma, Big Agriculture … if Israel truly controlled the US, all its forces would be in the Middle East. But they’re also in Ukraine and South Asia because the US is waging proxy war in all three.

Against that viewpoint, which I largely endorse, two things have to be conceded. One, Brian glides over a hidden category confusion in tacitly assuming The Lobby, Banks, Big Pharma, Fossil Fuel, Big Agri and Military Industrial Complex to be orthogonal entities. He makes no room for the very high likelihood of a Lobby deep embedded in those other players.

Two, The Lobby has shown itself capable of punching above its weight. Whether or not it has pockets as deep, its capacity for organising pressure, and ruthlessness in applying the same, is a fact too well and diversely documented for serious contention.

Park that thought too. Those who question the media silence on Epstein’s Israeli links now find in last Friday’s fresh revelations ample reason – hence my invoking Profumo – for asking how deeply successive US Administrations, and America’s deep state, have been John Edgar Hoovered. ⁴

Here to consider that question are Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian at The Young Turks.

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1. For a study in clueless media condescension, in this case by Guardian columnist Jill Filipovic, see my sarcastically titled 2019 post, Epstein suicided? Come on, grow up!  To believe Jeffrey Epstein freely took his own life in that New York jail cell is like believing Lee Harvey Oswald a lone wolf. (I see no useful distinction between murder, and a forcefully presented ‘suggestion’ that death by bed sheet noose might be an easier one than others on offer.)
2. Actually it was early 60s but I’ve long thought that decade a three-in-one. Early 60s was 50s, with the rest of the decade dividing into swinging Carnaby and post-acid progressive.
3. Profumo’s denials extended from 10 Downing Street to the Old Bailey stand from which Mandy Rice-Davies uttered the immortal words, “well he would say that, wouldn’t he?”
4. We should also leave room for the very distinct possibility of European politicians having been “John Edgar Hoovered” by Mossad through Epstein. Since the likes of Keir Starmer, Yvette Cooper and Rachel Reeves have shown to all with eyes in their heads they are not guided, for all their protestations to the contrary, by inner conviction, it’s a plausible albeit partial explanation – the bigger part being decades of Washington grooming – for their pursuit of electorally unpopular but Israel friendly policies.