Some have fingered Bill Kristol. Enter MJ Rosenberg:

"The treason letter [to Iran] is an AIPAC production," charges MJ Rosenberg, who warns, "thanks to this ugly bipartisanship, America could find itself dragged into another Middle East war, a war that will make the Iraq debacle look like a day in the park." Continues Rosenberg:



"On all matters relating to Israel and the Middle East in general, AIPAC writes the legislation (or letters, resolutions, etc) which are then handed over to legislators to drop in the hopper, gather cosponsors, and get it passed or sent. Not only that, the ideas for these initiatives come out of AIPAC... AIPAC does it all, from soup to nuts. I know this because back in my days working as a Congressional aide, I participated in that process." [emphasis mine, not Rosenberg's]

"I suppose it is possible that the Senators treason letter was written without AIPAC. I mean, it’s possible that a meteor will destroy all human life tomorrow, But, believe me, 47 senators are not going to undertake an initiative this serious on AIPAC’s #1 issue without the lobby’s approval. The letter would have disappeared into the ether if AIPAC did not want to undermine the president this way. No senator, let alone 47, would ever treat AIPAC like that. Never. Can I swear that AIPAC wrote the letter. No. I can only say that in the years I either worked for AIPAC (1973-1975,1982-1986), for Members of Congress or State Department’s USAID (1982-1986,1987-1995,1995-1998) or at Israel Policy Forum (1998-2009), no Israel initiative ever moved in Congress without AIPAC in the lead. Not one... The only thing that has changed since is that AIPAC is more aggressive and Congress is even more in its thrall." [emphasis mine]

Drawing on his career experience, MJ Rosenberg attests,This is not a casual declaration. Be assured that in writing this, MJ Rosenberg has chosen to burn bridges, and sacrifice political relationships. The issue is that important.

And, it is. Rosenberg is correct; terrible though the outcome of the US invasion of Iraq was, an American war against Iran would be many times worse. The widening out of such a conflict into a regional or even a world war is possible.

In the process, much that America must confront would be set aside.

For example, American resources that must be committed to weaning our economy off oil, to slash greenhouse gas emissions and slow the globe's ongoing spiral towards catastrophic climate change, would instead be spent on death and destruction.

Truly, we could become locked into a global religious war: Christianity and Judaism v. Islam. From there, a spiral leading towards catastrophic global destabilization, even nuclear war, becomes possible.

The terrible irony is that, in such catastrophic scenarios, it is unlikely that the geographically tiny nation of Israel would fare well.

Evangelical Christians sometimes refer to the "Kairos moment": a pivotal moment that can determine broad sweeps of human history.

This push - by Netanyahu and Likud, by Senate Republicans, by John Hagee and his Christian Zionists, by AIPAC (or factions within AIPAC), and by a handful of Jewish billionaires - notably Sheldon Adelson (who has advocated a nuclear first-strike on Iran) and Paul Singer (both of whom have helped bankroll the political career of Senator Tom Cotton, ringleader behind the "treason letter") - to force America towards war with Iran represents an existential threat to collective human prospects, not only for Jews in Israel but for all humankind.

Sheldon Adelson seems to believe that his efforts to provoke conflict with Iran can prevent a second Holocaust.

[image, right: packaging of John Hagee's 2003 3-sermon VHS set Iraq: The Final War]

But who is Adelson's evangelical ally in that project ? - a leader who claims that Hitler was a was a "half-breed Jew" and in 2005 broadcast to the nations his claim that Hitler was sent by God to persecute the Jewish people; a pastor whose mass-marketed VHS cassettes, CDs and DVDs have on their covers pictures of nuclear mushroom clouds looming over the Middle East; an evangelical leader who blames the Holocaust, and anti-Semitism on Jews themselves; a man who has distributed Hitler's favorite anti-Jewish conspiracy theory to millions; a man who supported the U.S. invasion of Iraq and predicted it would be "the gateway to the apocalypse" that would "destabilize the Middle East and produce an Islamic army of millions, willing to fight to the death, in a massive all out Holy War" [against Israel].

Last summer, on July 21, 2014, Sheldon Adelson accepted an award from John Hagee at Hagee's Christians United for Israel annual Washington D.C. summit.

Hagee's and CUFI's ceaseless lobbying for war with Iran, and his longstanding, close alliance with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is a matter of record undoubtedly known to Adelson.

But what Sheldon Adelson may not know is the established fact, which I have worked for years to document, that John Hagee has also spread anti-Jewish hate speech to all corners of the globe. And, Hagee's hate speech even includes a key charge employed by Hitler's propagandists to incite hatred of Jews and so enable the Holocaust: the claim that Jewish bankers, led by European Rothschilds, are manipulating global finance to impoverish common people.

The war Mr. Adelson is now pushing for could cause economic chaos that would finish off America's fast-dwindling middle class and consign most Americans to poverty.

People would ask, who had caused such misery ? America would want answers, and answers would be readily at hand - long ago seeded into America's ideological and cultural soil by demagogues such as John Hagee - it was Jews.

Jews who had pushed for the catastrophic war - in AIPAC, or Adelson and Singer, or Netanyahu - would be safely insulated by their wealth and power. They would not suffer. Nor would John Hagee. Or Republican Senators who had pushed for war. And the military industrial complex would enjoy a financial windfall.

Meanwhile, average Americans would financially suffer; and as a consequence average Jewish-Americans would likely be targeted and scapegoated amidst rising wave of anti-Jewish bigotry and hatred. Thus could Sheldon Adelson help bring about that which he fears.

Someone should suggest to Mr. Adelson; he needs new friends.