The Virginia Israel Advisory Board's super-secret "Project Jonah"



Project Jonah is a secret fish farm project developed by VIAB to grow tilapia. The Israeli company behind the venture has now been unmasked. It is Aquamaof which plans to open a massive plant at a formerly secret location: the environs surrounding the Richlands water treatment plant.



Project Jonah's taxpayer funded consultant, Lala Korall, now an executive, has arranged a series of sweetners to the proposed $10 million loan from the Virginia Coalfield Economic Development Authority. The latest may be that Aquamaof and investors nolonger have to show proof of $25 million in on-the ground development before the loan is released. Similar secret land and training dealings are ongoing with the Southwest Virginia Community College Foundation. Aquamaof's possible target? The successful, innovative, home grown tilapia grower Blue Ridge Aquaculture, which has painstakenly invested since the 1980s to become a market leader.

New Book! The Israel Lobby Enters State Government: Rise of the Virginia Israel Advisory Board



This This free web and audio book chronicles the formation, rise and secret activities of the Virginia Israel Advisory Board (VIAB). While other books have focused on the Israel lobby’s influence over the federal government and U.S. foreign policy, there has been little research on Israel lobbying at the state level. Using sensitive documents acquired under Virginia’s sunshine law, this book argues that in Virginia the Israel lobby is no longer on the outside, but has now entered state government. The Virginia Israel Advisory Board (VIAB) is presently the only state government entity in the U.S. focused entirely on bringing corporations in from a single foreign country. The book explores how millions in taxpayer and other state funds are quietly being diverted from multiple sources to establish profitable Israeli companies in Virginia. The corporations are involved in military contracting, food and beverage manufacturing, energy generation, waste management and aquaculture. The author analyzes how VIAB projects displace workers and put home-grown market leaders out of business. By unmasking Israeli businesses launching operations that VIAB protects under code-names and opaque shell companies to secretly transact business in Virginia, the book exposes the reason behind some of the secrecy—their extensive business dealings in territory illegally occupied by Israel.



The author delves into the establishment of VIAB by the state’s Jewish federations, and their continued involvement as VIAB board members, as well as their attempts to rewrite school textbooks and quash through new laws speech critical of Israel. Smith exposes who is running VIAB, how they leverage political campaign contributions, and the bankruptcy of VIAB’s many claims that their dealings are advancing the prosperity of working Virginians—as opposed to Israeli companies and VIAB insiders. He probes the true nature of the Virginia Israel Advisory Board and the future threat if similar Israel lobby entities proliferate within other state governments.

Israel advocacy groups demand questionable changes to Virginia textbooks



A consortium of state and national Israel advocacy groups has sent a detailed set of requested changes to textbooks and teaching guides used in the Commonwealth of Virginia. Requested changes include:



1. Deletion of references to Israel “occupying” territories captured during the 1967 Six-Day War and substituting “controlled.” International conventions clearly outline the responsibility of occupying powers and the illegality of collective punishment and population transfers.

2. Changes to maps to recognize Israel’s declared “annexation” of East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights. The U.S. and most other countries do not officially recognize Israeli annexation of either territory.

3. Substitution of references to “occupied territories” to “captured areas.”

4. Substitution of references to “Jewish settlers” and “settlements” with “building of homes and communities.”

5. Deletion of a lesson reviewing a video documentary by Iranian-American religious studies scholar, author, producer and television host Reza Aslan.

6. Deletion of an activity based on reading the biography and work of Palestinian legislator Hanan Ashrawi.

7. Substitution of an editorial cartoon titled “The Mideast Peace Game Rules” with a cartoon of an Arab suicide terrorist holding a “Road Map to Peace” game hostage.

The Israel Lobby's Impact on America-Video



Guest lecturer Grant F. Smith discusses key points developed in his new book, Big Israel: How Israel's Lobby Moves America , while providing insight into likely Israel lobby demands on the next administration. Smith is the director of the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy, Inc.



Agenda items included:



1. Where did the Israel lobby come from? Before they evolved into a lobby for Israel, what social welfare needs did key organizations address and how?

2. What function does each major category of the Israel lobby serve? Which organizations lobby congress for foreign aid, and how do they work with hundreds of state-level lobbies to secure U.S. economic, diplomatic, financial and military support for Israel?

3. What Israel lobby organizations influence the media and what are their tactics? What core messaging and issue framing campaigns have they launched, and how have these changed over time?

4. Which Israel lobbying organizations work to sanction and punish domestic opposition to pro-Israel policies? What are their tactics?

5. Why has the United States provided more foreign aid to Israel than any other foreign country? How has American public opinion about aid changed over time?

6. How representative of the American Jewish community is the Israel lobby?

7. What key objectives will the Israel lobby try to achieve during the next administration?

8. What opposition has been mounted against Israel lobby programs, and how has this opposition changed over time?



Video Courtesy St Olaf College. Used by Permission.



IRS thwarts inquiry into why it granted tax-exempt status to Israel lobby organizations - 1962-1964



After AIPAC's parent organization was ordered to register as a foreign agent in 1962, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee asked the IRS to explain why various Israel lobby organizations received tax-exempt status. Under IRS Commissioner Caplin, the agency prematurely reaffirmed that—despite highly questionable activities—the organizations would retain all of their enormous U.S. tax preferences. The IRS never investigated.

The Jewish Telegraphic Agency offered to spy for the FBI leveraging its own information-gathering network in Latin America. JTA also offered to spy on groups inside the United States, including Ukrainian immigrants..

FBI espionage and counter-intelligence files on Israel Aerospace Industries founder Adolph "Al" Schwimmer released



After conviction for a felony in 1950 Al Schwimmer, at David Ben-Gurion's invitation, went on to run Israel Aircraft Industries (later Israel Aerospace Industries).



According to testimony, IAI ruthlessly recruited American military engineers to advance Israel's development programs. The FBI file reveals missed counter-intelligence opportunities. Although an American AIA employee physically threatened for insufficient loyalty to Israel tipped off the FBI that another American—Ehud Kadish—was involved in missile development, not until 2008 would the FBI collar "America's second Jonathan Pollard"—brother Ben-Ami Kadish—for missile espionage against America.



Israel Bonds: the FBI File



Founders of the U.S.-based sales corporation for Israel Bonds included the unindicted ringleader of conventional arms smuggling fronts and the financier for Israel's nuclear weapons program.

Presidential pardon of a felony committed for Israel Why did the AJC, Jewish Federation, members of Congress and another convicted smuggler lobby for the pardon of a dead felon?

The FBI and the Anti-Defamation League Since the 1940's, the ADL has attempted to ingratiate itself with the FBI by offering its network of undercover agents as informants, sending confidential reports of people and organizations the ADL felt should receive special scrutiny, and attempting to form special educational liaisons. This archive of declassified documents chronicles the many successes and failures of the ADL's most important secret initiative.

AIPAC lobbies the Reagan administration.

Special trade preferences, integration into the U.S. military-industrial complex, grant money rather than loans, restrictions on US weapons sales to Arab states, hinted help in the Iran-Contra scheme. In the 1980s, AIPAC lobbying only slowed down when the FBI investigated AIPAC for espionage and theft of gov't property.

ZOA ordered to register as a foreign agent seven times Declassified internal Justice Department files reveal an unsuccessful but long-running effort to compel the Zionist Organization of America to openly register and declare its activities as an Israeli foreign agent.

Weizmann Institute for Science Israeli nuclear weapons designer taps US tax-deductible funding, patronizes US political and scientific leadership. FBI counterespionage investigation files.

Divert!: NUMEC, Zalman Shapiro and the diversion of US weapons grade uranium into the Israeli nuclear weapons program Based on an exhaustive review of formerly classified government documents-as well as previously unexplored corporate filings, office diaries and unguarded interviews-Grant F. Smith has written a riveting story of the 1960s diversion of US weapons-grade nuclear material from an Israeli front company in Pennsylvania into the clandestine Israeli atomic weapons program.

US State Department investigates AIPAC Director Morris Amitay's acquisition of classified Hawk missile data US Department of State investigation files reveal the American Israel Public Affairs Committee's (AIPAC) director received classified US national defense information in 1975. Despite public calls for accountability, the Justice Department failed to prosecute.



Nahum Bernstein AKA Ned Bernay A fter leaving the OSS, Nahum Bernstein quickly deployed his covert operations skills—forming front organizations to smuggle arms and wire-tap opponents in the United States—for Israel. Mastermind Bernstein escaped the felony charges and prison sentences awaiting lower level operatives through his prosecutorial immunity network—which stretched from New York City police officers on his payroll, his District Attorney law partner, up to the President of the United States (through associate Abraham Feinberg).

Abraham Feinberg's FBI File



He funded US presidents and Israel's clandestine nuclear weapons program. Declassified FBI files follow super-lobbyist Abraham Feinberg's meetings with Israeli intelligence, Soviet agents and US politicians from the 1940's to the 1960's.

USA v Jonathan J. Pollard - Key Filings As a new effort to free Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard gets underway, the Israel Lobby Archive releases 175 court documents that have never appeared on the Internet. They include the original indictment, an anonymous appeal for clemency from Israel, government memoranda to aid sentencing, and Pollard's last ditch effort to secure tightly held government case files about a broader Israeli espionage ring operating in the US.

Jewish Agency funds campaign to Subvert Freedom of Speech



Jewish Agency payments to the American Zionist Council and its lobbying division AIPAC undermines the free speech rights of ideological opponents in the US.

Declassified Senate Investigation Files Reveal Clandestine Israeli PR Campaign in America Declassified files from a Senate investigation into Israeli-funded covert public relations and lobbying activity in the United States were released by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) on July 23rd, 2010. The subpoenaed documents reveal Israel's clandestine programs for "cultivation of editors," the "stimulation and placement of suitable articles in the major consumer magazines" as well as U.S. reporting about sensitive subjects such as the Dimona nuclear weapons facility.



Senator Pressures NRC to Clear NUMEC President of Illegal Uranium Diversions to Israel The office of Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania attempted to obtain a statement from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission according to documents newly released under the Freedom of Information Act. On August 27, 2009, Arlen Specter wrote to Rebecca Schmidt asking that the NRC "issue a formal public statement confirming that he [constituent Zalman Shapiro] was not involved in any activities related to the diversion of uranium to Israel."

AIPAC Incorporates while Parent Under DOJ Order to Register as a Foreign Agent AIPAC is incorporated 6 weeks after its parent organization, the American Zionist Council, is ordered to register as a foreign agent of the quasi-governmental Jewish Agency. AIPAC then applies for—and receives—a backdated federal exemption from taxes from the US Treasury Department.

Print Publication Spy Trade: How Israel's Lobby Undermines America's Economy Israel and its American lobby have committed audacious but generally unknown crimes against the United States. Government secrecy across the CIA, FBI, Department of Justice and Pentagon long kept files about Israeli espionage, weapons smuggling and covert operations on American soil classified...until now Spy Trade is much more than a groundbreaking dissection of the tactics Israel and its American lobby repeatedly use to evade justice. The book also provides stunningly simple strategies for ending criminal immunity and subversion of law enforcement that may someday restore American governance.

Prosecution Seeks Dismissal of Rosen and Weissman



May 1, 2009 Citing the "unexpectedly higher evidentiary threshold in order to prevail at trial" the prosecution asks ruling judge T.S. Ellis to drop the Espionage Act prosecution of Keith Weissman and Steve Rosen.

AIPAC, Espionage and the US-Israel Free Trade Agreement February 23, 2009 In 1983 the Israeli Prime Minister and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) lobbied the Reagan administration for preferential access to the US market. The US Trade Representative (USTR) commissioned the US International Trade Commission (ITC) to conduct an investigation to advise the President about the probable economic effect of providing duty free entry of Israeli imports on January 31, 1984. The ITC compiled "business confidential" information and intellectual property solicited from US corporations and industry associations into a classified report for the negotiations. But on August 3, 1984 the Washington Post broke the news that the FBI was investigating how AIPAC obtained one of the fifteen numbered and tightly controlled copies of the classified report. The ITC later confirmed it was also obtained by the Israeli government. Since the agreement was signed in 1985, US trade with Israel shifted from surplus to a cumulative $71 billion deficit (adjusted for inflation). The 2008 $7.8 billion deficit with Israel was equivalent to 126,000 US manufacturing related jobs. It is the only bilateral FTA producing multi-billion dollar deficits to the US every year for the last decade but total losses are still unknown.

DOJ and Treasury Refuse to Investigate $60 Billion US-Israel Money Laundering Ring December 22, 2008 Almost four years have passed since former prosecutor Talia Sasson released an Israeli government commissioned report detailing a massive money laundering scheme to finance and build illegal settlements in the West Bank. But leadership of the US Treasury Department and Department of Justice have refused to show investigatory interest in publicly substantiated money laundering that originates in the US while actively blocking FOIA requests into agency regulatory activity.

November 12, 2008 Cartoons about Arabs and Islam from AIPAC's "Near East Report" Presenting cartoons appearing in Isaiah Kenen's "Near East Report" newsletter, financed by the Jewish Agency in Jerusalem.

October 17, 2008

AIPAC Founder Ordered to Re-register as a Foreign Agent DOJ asks AIPAC founder Isaiah L. Kenen to re-register as a foreign agent of the Israeli government if he leaves the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs - Declassified and released under FOIA on March 13, 2008.

September 1, 2007 The Senate Foreign Relations Committee Investigates Israel's Foreign Agents In 1962 the Senate Foreign Relations Committee investigated the Jewish Agency and the American Zionist Council. Their funding flows from Israel as well as lobbying and public relations campaigns in the United States were explored during sworn testimony on May 23, and August 1, 1963.