[images and
captions added by this website]Nader defends
Israel ‘puppeteer’ comments

By Janine Zacharia

WASHINGTON — Independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader (below) stood by his characterization of the White House and Congress as “puppets” of the Israeli government, in a letter sent to
Anti-Defamation
League national director
Abraham Foxman this week.

[Ralph Nader]In early July, after Nader made the “puppet” comment,
Foxman and Barbara Balser, ADL’s national chairman, wrote to Nader, saying, “the image of the
Jewish State as a ‘puppeteer,’ controlling the powerful US Congress feeds into many age-old stereotypes which have no place in legitimate public discourse.”

In a three-page letter dated August 5, Nader responded to Foxman by noting, “The Israelis have a joke for the obvious — that the United States is the second state of Israel.” “How often, if ever, has the United States — either the Congress of the
White House — pursued a course of action, since
1956, that contradicted the Israeli government’s position?”

Nader lamented what he described as the lack of freedom in the US to debate and discuss the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and he attacked the
American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the pro-Israel lobby, for its influence on Capitol
Hill.

Foxman

Abraham
Foxman, incorruptible and beloved long-term chief of The Anti Defamation
League (annual pay: $750,000) whose strategies have led to a global decrease in anti-Semitism. Not.

“Citizen groups are in awe of AIPAC’s ditto machine
on Capitol Hill as are many members of Congress
who, against their private judgment, resign
themselves to sign on the dotted line,” he
wrote.

Attached to Nader’s letter were copies of an article that appeared in the Nation magazine about pro-peace movements in the US, and a letter signed by hundreds of IDF reservists who refuse to serve in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Foxman (right) said Nader was continuing to spread a “canard” about the Jews. “He fuels the conspiracy theory that the Jews control the White
House and the Congress. And it’s a lot more sinister after Iraq,” Foxman said, adding that
Nader’s comments “border on anti-Semtism.”

© Jerusalem
Post