The Israel of the Bible is DEAD

List of Goods Banned from Gaza by Big Brother Israel

I looked into the mirror and realized it is we who are the MONSTERS

PHR Library
June 7, 2010
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Evidence Indicates that the Bush Administration Conducted
Experiments and Research on Detainees to Design Torture Techniques and
Create Legal Cover

Illegal Activity Would Violate Nuremberg Code and Could Open Door to Prosecution

---

Media Contacts:
Benjamin Greenberg bgreenberg [at] phrusa [dot] org Tel: 617-301-4237 Cell: 617-510-3417	Valerie Holford Cell: 301-926-1298

Download the report, learn more and take action

phrtorturepapers.org

(Cambridge, MA) In the most comprehensive investigation to date of

health professionals' involvement in the CIA's "enhanced" interrogation
program (EIP), Physicians For Human Rights has uncovered evidence that
indicates the Bush administration apparently conducted illegal and
unethical human experimentation and research on detainees in CIA
custody. The apparent experimentation and research appear to have been
performed to provide legal cover for torture, as well as to help
justify and shape future procedures and policies governing the use of
the "enhanced" interrogation techniques. The PHR report, Experiments in
Torture: Human Subject Research and Evidence of Experimentation in the
'Enhanced' Interrogation Program, is the first to provide evidence that
CIA medical personnel engaged in the crime of illegal experimentation
after 9/11, in addition to the previously disclosed crime of torture.

This evidence indicating apparent research and experimentation on
detainees opens the door to potential additional legal liability for
the CIA and Bush-era officials. There is no publicly available evidence
that the Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel determined
that the alleged experimentation and research performed on detainees
was lawful, as it did with the "enhanced" techniques themselves.

"The CIA appears to have broken all accepted legal and ethical
standards put in place since the Second World War to protect prisoners
from being the subjects of experimentation," said Frank Donaghue, PHR's
Chief Executive Officer. "Not only are these alleged acts gross
violations of human rights law, they are a grave affront to America's
core values."

Physicians for Human Rights demands that President Obama direct the
Attorney General to investigate these allegations, and if a crime is
found to have been committed, prosecute those responsible.
Additionally, Congress must immediately amend the War Crimes Act (WCA)
to remove changes made to the WCA in 2006 by the Bush Administration
that allow a more permissive definition of the crime of illegal
experimentation on detainees in US custody. The more lenient 2006
language of the WCA was made retroactive to all acts committed by US
personnel since 1997.

"In their attempt to justify the war crime of torture, the CIA
appears to have committed another alleged war crime – illegal
experimentation on prisoners," said Nathaniel A. Raymond, Director of
PHR's Campaign Against Torture and lead report author. "Justice
Department lawyers appear to never have assessed the lawfulness of the
alleged research on detainees in CIA custody, despite how essential it
appears to have been to their legal cover for torture."

PHR's report, Experiments in Torture, is relevant to present-day
national security interrogations, as well as Bush-era detainee
treatment policies. As recently as February, 2010, President Obama's
then director of national intelligence, Admiral Dennis Blair, disclosed
that the US had established an elite interrogation unit that will
conduct "scientific research" to improve the questioning of suspected
terrorists. Admiral Blair declined to provide important details about
this effort.

"If health professionals participated in unethical human subject
research and experimentation they should be held to account," stated
Scott A. Allen, MD, a medical advisor to Physicians for Human Rights
and lead medical author of the report. "Any health professional who
violates their ethical codes by employing their professional expertise
to calibrate and study the infliction of harm disgraces the health
profession and makes a mockery of the practice of medicine."

Several prominent individuals and organizations in addition to PHR
will file a complaint this week with the US Department of Health and
Human Services' Office for Human Research Protections (OHRP) and call
for an OHRP investigation of the CIA's Office of Medical Services.

The PHR report indicates that there is evidence that health
professionals engaged in research on detainees that violates the Geneva
Conventions, The Common Rule, the Nuremberg Code and other
international and domestic prohibitions against illegal human subject
research and experimentation. Declassified government documents
indicate that:

• Research and medical experimentation on detainees was used to
  measure the effects of large- volume waterboarding and adjust the
  procedure according to the results. After medical monitoring and
  advice, the CIA experimentally added saline, in an attempt to prevent
  putting detainees in a coma or killing them through over-ingestion of
  large amounts of plain water. The report observes: "'Waterboarding 2.0'
  was the product of the CIA's developing and field-testing an
  intentionally harmful practice, using systematic medical monitoring and
  the application of subsequent generalizable knowledge."
• Health professionals monitored sleep deprivation on more
  than a dozen detainees in 48-, 96- and 180-hour increments. This
  research was apparently used to monitor and assess the effects of
  varying levels of sleep deprivation to support legal definitions of
  torture and to plan future sleep deprivation techniques.
• Health professionals appear to have analyzed data, based on
  their observations of 25 detainees who were subjected to individual and
  combined applications of "enhanced" interrogation techniques, to
  determine whether one type of application over another would increase
  the subject's "susceptibility to severe pain." The alleged research
  appears to have been undertaken only to assess the legality of the
  "enhanced" interrogation tactics and to guide future application of the
  techniques.

Experiments in Torture: Human Subject Research and Experimentation
in the 'Enhanced' Interrogation Program is the most in-depth expert
review to date of the legal and medical ethics issues concerning health
professionals' involvement in researching, designing and supervising
the CIA's "enhanced" interrogation program. The Experiments in
Torture report is the result of six months of investigation and the
review of thousands of pages of government documents. It has been
peer-reviewed by outside experts in the medical, biomedical and
research ethics fields, legal experts, health professionals and experts
in the treatment of torture survivors.

The lead author for this report was Nathaniel Raymond, Director of
the Campaign Against Torture, Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) and the
lead medical author was Scott Allen, MD, Co-Director of the Center for
Prisoner Health and Human Rights at Brown University and Medical
Advisor to PHR. They were joined in its writing by Vincent Iacopino,
MD, PhD, PHR Senior Medical Advisor; Allen Keller, MD, Associate
Professor of Medicine, NYU School of Medicine, Director, Bellevue/NYU
Program for Survivors of Torture; Stephen Soldz, PhD, President-elect
of Psychologists for Social Responsibility and Director of the Center
for Research, Evaluation and Program Development at the Boston Graduate
School of Psychoanalysis; Steven Reisner, PhD, PHR Advisor on Ethics
and Psychology; and John Bradshaw, JD, PHR Chief Policy Officer and
Director of PHR's Washington Office.

The report was extensively peer reviewed by leading experts in
related medical, legal, ethical and governmental fields addressed in
the document.

Birds fly above and sit on a shoal surrounded by oil booms on Breton Sound Island on the southern most tip of the Chandeleur Islands in the Gulf of Mexico south of Louisiana where oil leaking from the Deepwater Horizon wellhead continues to spread on April 29, 2010.

Spain Has a World Court. Hope we see indictments for Bush and Cheney one of these days.

Prosecutors attached to the Audiencia Nacional in Madrid are reportedly requesting that Judge Ismael Moreno issue an order for the arrest of thirteen CIA agents involved in an extraordinary rendition operation from 2004, the newspaper El País reports this afternoon, citing sources within the court.

Brilliant!

Republican Tyranny

Unlawful phone bugging? Go ahead!
Illegal searches and seizures? What the heck? It ain't me! (this time)
Sneak and Peek? Why not!
Taking the right to hear evidence against you and to have a speedy trial? Who makes these things up anyway? Who needs it?
Torture if one is accused of being a terrorists, even if one is not and is proven to not be. Go ahead! Kill all of them and let god sort them out.
This is tyranny and these right-wing fools will let them take our liberty one giant leap at a time until we have NO FREEDOMS at all. If the government that they want to babysit us but which they hate so much they'd like to drown it in a bathtub, asked these idiots to put two way monitors in every room in their house so they can make sure that no terrorists are plotting against us, or no mexicans are living with us, they'd say.. "How big would you like those screens massa?!" Fools and their liberties soon go separate ways.
These right wing idiots call Obama a tyrant when it is they who are the tyrants.

Heart-warming Story..

This is an Incredible story!

In 1986, Peter Davies was on holiday in Kenya after graduating from Northwestern
University ....

On a hike through the bush, he came across a young bull elephant standing with one leg raised in the air.

The elephant seemed distressed, so Peter approached it very carefully.

He got down on one knee, inspected the elephants foot, and found a large piece of wood deeply embedded in it.

As carefully and as gently as he could, Peter worked the wood out with his knife,
after which the elephant gingerly put down its foot.


The elephant turned to face the man, and with a rather curious look on its face, stared at him for several tense moments. Peter stood frozen, thinking of nothing else but being trampled.

Eventually the elephant trumpeted loudly, turned, and walked away.


Peter never forgot that elephant or the events of that day.


Twenty years later, Peter was walking through the Chicago Zoo with his teenage son.
As they approached the elephant enclosure, one of the creatures turned and walked over to near where Peter and his son Cameron were standing.


The large bull elephant stared at Peter, lifted its front foot off the ground, then put it down.


The elephant did that several times then trumpeted loudly, all the while staring at the man.


Remembering the encounter in 1986, Peter could not help wondering if this was the same elephant.


Peter summoned up his courage, carefully climbed over the railing, and made his way into the enclosure.


He walked right up to the elephant and stared back in wonder.


The elephant trumpeted again, wrapped its trunk around one of Peter legs and slammed him against the railing, killing him instantly.



Probably wasn't the same elephant.


This is for everyone who sends me those heart-warming bullshit stories .

Our Foreign Policy

Look out, Obama seems to be planning
for a lot more war

by Jack A Smith, Asia Times
Posted

on May 8, 2010

http://www.alternet .org/story/ 146787/

There's more war in America's future - a great deal more, judging
by the Barack Obama administration' s reports, pronouncements and
actions in recent months.



These documents and deeds include the Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR),
the Nuclear Posture Review (NPR), the Ballistic Missile Defense Report,
the nuclear security summit in New York and the May 3-28 United Nations
nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty review conference, as well as the
continuing wars in the Middle East and Central Asia, and the 2011
Pentagon war budget request.



The United States government presides as a military colossus of
unrivalled dimension, but the QDR, which was published in February,
suggests Washington views America as being constantly under the threat
of attack from a multitude of fearsome forces bent on its destruction.
As such, trillions more dollars must be invested in present and future
wars - ostensibly to make safe the besieged homeland.



The NPR says the long-range US goal is a "nuclear-free" world, but
despite token reductions in its arsenal of such weapons, the Pentagon is
strengthening its nuclear force and bolstering it with a devastating
"conventional deterrent" intended to strike any target in the world
within one hour. In addition this document, published in April, retains
"hair-trigger" nuclear launch readiness, refuses to declare its nuclear
force is for deterrence only (suggesting offensive use) and for the
first time authorizes a nuclear attack, if necessary, on a non-nuclear
state (Iran).



Meanwhile, Obama is vigorously expanding the George W Bush
administration' s wars, and enhancing and deploying America's
unparalleled military power.



The Obama administration' s one positive achievement in terms of
militarism and war was the April 9 signing in Prague of the new
Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty with Russia that reduces deployed
strategic nuclear weapons to 1,550 warheads each. It was a step forward,
but all agree it was extremely modest, and it does not even faintly
diminish the danger of nuclear war.



The QDR is a 128-page Defense Department report mandated by congress to
be compiled every four years to put forward a 20-year projection of US
military planning. A 20-member civilian panel, selected by the Pentagon
and congress, analyzes the document and suggests changes in order to
provide an "independent" perspective. Eleven of the members, including
the panel’s co-chairmen - former defense secretary William Perry and
former national security adviser Stephen Hadley - are employed by the
defense industry.



Although the Pentagon is working on preparations for a possible World
War III and beyond, the new report is largely focused on the relatively
near future and only generalizes about the longer term. Of the QDR's
many priorities three stand out.



# The first priority is to "prevail in today's wars" in Afghanistan,
Pakistan, Iraq, Yemen and wherever else Washington's post-9/11 military
intrusions penetrate in coming years. Introducing the report February 1,
Bush-Obama Defense Secretary Robert Gates issued this significant
statement: "Success in wars to come will depend on success in these wars
in progress." The "wars to come" were not identified. Further, the QDR
states that military victory in Iraq and Afghanistan is "only the first
step toward achieving our strategic objectives".

# Second, while in the past the US concentrated on the ability to fight
two big wars simultaneously, the QDR suggests that's not enough. Now,
the Obama administration posits the "need for a robust force capable of
protecting US interests against a multiplicity of threats, including two
capable nation-state aggressors."



Now it's two-plus wars - the plus being the obligation to "conduct
large-scale counter-insurgency, stability and counter-terrorism
operations in a wide range of environments" , mainly in small, poor
countries like Afghanistan. Other "plus" targets include "non-state
actors" such as al-Qaeda, "failed states" such as Somali, and
medium-size but well-defended states that do not bend the knee to Uncle
Sam, such as Iran or the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, and some
day perhaps Venezuela.

# Third, it's fairly obvious from the QDR, though not acknowledged, that
the Obama government believes China and Russia are the two possible
"nation-state aggressors" against which Washington must prepare to
"defend" itself. Neither Beijing nor Moscow has taken any action to
justify the Pentagon's assumption that they will ever be suicidal enough
to attack the far more powerful United States.



After all, the US, with 4.54% of the world's population, invests more on
war and war preparations than the rest of the world combined. Obama's
2010 Pentagon budget is US$680 billion, but the real total is double
that when all Washington's national security expenditures in other
departmental budgets are also included, such as the cost of nuclear
weapons, the 16 intelligence agencies, Homeland Security and interest on
war debts, among other programs.



Annual war-related expenditures are well over $1 trillion. In calling
for a discretionary freeze on government programs in January's state of
the union address, Obama specifically exempted Pentagon/national
security expenditures from the freeze. Obama is a big war spender. His
$708 billion Pentagon allotment for fiscal 2011 (not counting a pending
$33 billion Congress will approve for the Afghan "surge") exceeds Bush's
highest budget of $651 billion for fiscal 2009.



At present, US military power permeates the entire world. As the QDR
notes: "The United States is a global power with global
responsibilities. Including operations in Afghanistan and Iraq,
approximately 400,000 US military personnel are forward-stationed or
rotationally deployed around the world."



The Pentagon presides over 1,000 overseas military bases (including
those in the war zones), great fleets in every ocean, a globe-spanning
air force, military satellites in space and nuclear missiles on hair trigger
alert pre-targeted on "enemy" or potential "enemy" cities and military
facilities. A reading of the QDR shows none of this will change except
for upgrading, enlarging (the Pentagon just added six new bases in
Colombia) and adding new systems such as Prompt Global Strike, an
important new offensive weapon system, which we shall discuss below.



The phrase "full spectrum military dominance" - an expression concocted
by the neo-conservatives in the 1990s that was adopted by the Bush
administration to define its aggressive military strategy - was cleverly
not included in the 2010 QDR, but retaining and augmenting dominance
remains the Pentagon's prime preoccupation.



The QDR is peppered with expressions such as "America’s interests and
role in the world require armed forces with unmatched capabilities" and
calls for "the continued dominance of America’s Armed Forces in
large-scale force-on-force warfare". Gates went further in his February 1
press conference: "The United States needs a broad portfolio of
military capabilities, with maximum versatility across the widest
possible spectrum of conflicts." Obama bragged recently that he
commanded "the finest military in the history of the world".



Evidently, the Pentagon is planning to engage in numerous future wars
interrupted by brief periods of peace while preparing for the next war.
Given that the only entity expressing an interest in attacking the
United States is al-Qaeda - a non-government paramilitary organization
of extreme religious fanatics with about a thousand reliable active
members around the world - it is obvious that America's unprecedented
military might is actually intended for another purpose.



In our view that "other purpose" is geopolitical - to strengthen even
further the Pentagon's military machine to assure that the United States
retains its position as the dominant

global hegemon at a time of acute indebtedness, the severe erosion of
its manufacturing base, near gridlock in domestic politics, and the
swift rise to global prominence of several other nations and blocs.



The QDR touches on this with admirable delicacy: "The distribution of
global political, economic and military power is shifting and becoming
more diffuse. The rise of China, the world’s most populous country, and
India, the world’s largest democracy, will continue to reshape the
international system. While the United States will remain the most
powerful actor, it must increasingly cooperate with key allies and
partners to build and sustain peace and security. Whether and how rising
powers fully integrate into the global system will be among this
century’s defining questions, and are thus central to America’s
interests."



At the moment, the QDR indicates Washington is worried about foreign
"anti-access" strategies that limit its "power projection capabilities"
in various parts of the world. What this means is that certain countries
such as China and Russia are developing sophisticated new weapons that
match those of the US, thus "impeding" the deployment of American forces
to wherever the Pentagon desires. For instance:


China is developing and fielding large numbers of advanced
medium-range ballistic and cruise missiles, new attack submarines
equipped with advanced weapons, increasingly capable long-range air
defense systems, electronic warfare and computer network attack
capabilities, advanced fighter aircraft and counter-space systems. China
has shared only limited information about the pace, scope and ultimate
aims of its military modernization programs, raising a number of
legitimate questions regarding its long-term intentions.



To counter this trend in China and elsewhere, the Pentagon is planning,
at a huge and unannounced cost, the following enhancements: "Expand
future long-range strike capabilities; Exploit advantages in subsurface
operations; Increase the resiliency of US forward posture and base
infrastructure; Assure access to space and the use of space assets;
Enhance the robustness of key ISR (Intelligence, Surveillance, and
Reconnaissance) capabilities; Defeat enemy sensors and engagement
systems; and Enhance the presence and responsiveness of US forces
abroad."



In addition, the US not only targets China with nuclear missiles and
bombs, it is surrounding the country (and Russia as well, of course)
with anti-ballistic missiles. The purpose is plain: In case the US finds
it "necessary" to launch ballistic missiles toward China, the ABMs will
be able to destroy its limited retaliatory capacity.



According to an article in the February 22 issue of China Daily, the
country's English-language newspaper: "Washington appears determined to
surround China with US-built anti-missile systems, military scholars
have observed ... Air force colonel Dai Xu, a renowned military
strategist, wrote in an article released this month that 'China is in a
crescent-shaped ring of encirclement. The ring begins in Japan,
stretches through nations in the South China Sea to India, and ends in
Afghanistan' ."



Compared to the Bush administration' s 2006 QDR, there has been a
conscious effort to tone down the anti-China rhetoric in the current
document. But it is entirely clear that China is number one in the QDR's
references to "potentially hostile nation states".



According to the February 18 Defense News, a publication that serves the
military-industrial complex, "Analysts say the QDR attempts to address
the threat posed by China without further enraging Beijing. 'If you look
at the list of further enhancements to US forces and capabilities ...
those are primarily capabilities needed for defeating China, not Iran,
North Korea or Hezbollah,' said Roger Cliff, a China military specialist
at Rand. 'So even though not a lot of time is spent naming China ...
analysis of the China threat is nonetheless driving a lot of the
modernization programs described in the QDR'."



Incidentally, according to the Center for Arms Control and
Non-Proliferation, this year's Chinese defense budget, for a country
four times larger than the United States, is $78 billion, compared to
the $664 billion for the Pentagon (without all the national security
extras harbored in other department budgets). China possesses 100-200
nuclear warheads compared to America's 9,326 (when both deployed and
stored weapons are included). China is contemplating the construction of
an aircraft carrier; the US Navy floats 11 of them. China has no
military bases abroad.



In our view, China appears to be constructing weapons for defense, not
offense against the US - and its foreign policy is based on refusing to
be pushed around by Washington while doing everything possible to avoid a
serious confrontation.



Russia as well is treated better in the new QDR than in 2006, but it is
included with China in most cases. Despite Moscow's huge nuclear
deterrent and abundant oil and gas supplies, it's only "potential enemy"
number two in terms of the big powers. Washington feels more threatened
by Beijing. This is largely because of China's size, rapid development,
fairly successful state-guided capitalist economy directed by the
Communist Party, and the fact that it is on the road to becoming the
world's economic leader, surpassing the US in 20 to 40 years.



It seems fairly obvious, but hardly mentioned publicly, that this is an
extremely dangerous situation. China does not seek to dominate the
world, nor will it allow itself to be dominated. Beijing supports the
concept of a multipolar world order, with a number of countries and
blocs playing roles. At issue, perhaps, is who will be first among
equals.



Washington prefers the situation that has existed these 20 years after
the implosion of the Soviet Union and much of the socialist world left
the United States as the remaining military superpower and boss of the
expanded capitalist bloc. During this time Washington has functioned as
the unipolar world hegemon and doesn't want to relinquish the title.



This is all changing now as other countries rise, led by China, and the
US appears to be in gradual decline. How the transition to
multi-polarity is handled over the next couple of decades may determine
whether or not a disastrous war will be avoided.

World Oil Consumption by Country represented as foot height per barrel per day (divided by 10 to keep it from shooting off the screen) according to CI

So, for example, the 20,000,000 or so barrels per day consumed by the USA according to the CIA Factbook are represented as a 2,000,000 foot high red prism.

(...the data is from 2007)

The Truth About Republicans by...George Carlin

t r u t h o u t | Was the Gulf Oil Spill an Act of War? You Betcha

The Los Angeles Times subsequently reported that members of Congress have called on Halliburton "to provide all documents relating to 'the possibility or risk of an explosion or blowout at the Deepwater Horizon rig and the status, adequacy, quality, monitoring and inspection of the cementing work' by May 7." A YouTube video (which is actually mostly audio) more bluntly asserts that "Halliburton Caused Oil Spill," and noted the fact - confirmed by Halliburton's own press release - that its employees had worked on the final cementing "approximately 20 hours prior to the incident." Interestingly, one commenter on the YouTube video noted how "that would conveniently explain the North Korean story; [Halliburton] may have leaked this story to the press to divert attention away from alleged negligence." Wouldn't that just be the ultimate? Halliburton spawns the calamity, but pins it on North Korea and then the nation goes to war whereby Halliburton "cleans up" through billions in war-servicing contracts. It's almost too perfect and might be funny if it didn't seem so plausible. (The only thing funnier is picturing Dick Cheney in the role of Exxon Valdez fall guy Joseph Hazelwood.)
t r u t h o u t | Was the Gulf Oil Spill an Act of War? You Betcha

Andy Borowitz: Goldman Sachs Reveals it Shorted Gulf of Mexico

Andy Borowitz: Goldman Sachs Reveals it Shorted Gulf of Mexico

NEW YORK (The Borowitz Report) - In what is looming as another public relations predicament for Goldman Sachs, the banking giant admitted today that it made "a substantial financial bet against the Gulf of Mexico" one day before the sinking of an oil rig in that body of water.

The new revelations came to light after government investigators turned up new emails from Goldman employee Fabrice "Fabulous Fab" Tourre in which he bragged to a girlfriend that the firm was taking a "big short" position on the Gulf.

"One oil rig goes down and we're going to be rolling in dough," Mr. Tourre wrote in one email. "Suck it, fishies and birdies!"

The news about Goldman's bet against the Gulf comes on the heels of embarrassing revelations that the firm had taken a short position on Lindsay Lohan's acting career. More here.

On Israel, Jews and Leaders Often Disagree - NYTimes.com

FARMINGTON HILLS, Mich. — Criticizing Israel has long been the equivalent of touching a third rail in many Jewish families and friendships, relegating disagreements to a conversational demilitarized zone where only the innocent and foolhardy go.

You cannot really engage in that conversation,” said Phillip Moore, a teacher in this Detroit suburb who has embraced strong opinions on many topics in his life — on politics, education, even religion — but avoids the subject of Israel at gatherings of his Jewish relatives.

“You raise a question about the security forces or the settlements and you are suddenly being compared to a Holocaust denier,” said Mr. Moore, 62. “It’s just not a rational discussion, so I keep quiet.”

But the recent tension between the Obama administration and the Israeli government over the stalled Middle East peace process have put the questions underlying those long-avoided family discussions directly in the public spotlight. They have raised serious questions about whether the traditional leadership of the American Jewish world is fully supported by the mass of American Jews.

The issues arose last month when American officials openly rebuked Israel over the announcement of new housing plans in east Jerusalem, and are likely to grow as indirect talks between Israelis and Palestinians, mediated by the Obama administration, resume this week. President Obama, working to ease those tensions, met on Tuesday with the Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel, who had criticized the administration in an advertisement last month.

Many other prominent Jews, representing the conservative organizational leadership that has been the dominant voice of the Jewish community for decades, have also recently criticized the Obama administration’s pressure on Israel. Some have even accused the White House of sabotaging the foundations of the Jewish state.

Former Mayor Edward I. Koch of New York spoke for many stalwart Israel backers last Sunday when he told an angry crowd of 500 gathered outside the Israeli Consulate in Manhattan, in a videotaped statement, that President Obama’s demand for a settlement freeze in East Jerusalem was nothing less than an orchestrated effort “to undermine the legitimacy of the state of Israel.”

But while those voices have been strong and their message unmistakable, a newly outspoken wing of Israel supporters has begun to challenge the old-school reflexive support of the country’s policies, suggesting that one does not have to be slavish to Israeli policies to love Israel.

“Most Jews have mixed feelings about Israel,” said Rabbi Tamara Kolton of the Birmingham Temple, a secular humanistic congregation in Farmington Hills. “They support Israel, but it’s complicated. Until now, you never heard from those people. You heard only from the organized ones, the ones who are 100 percent certain, we’re right, they’re wrong.”

In the 2008 election, 78 percent of Jewish voters supported Mr. Obama, and surveys have suggested that most continue to back his policies.

In a survey taken after the diplomatic skirmish of March, the American Jewish Committee — the heart of the traditional mainstream — found little change in the level of Jewish support for Mr. Obama’s handling of relations with Israel. The survey found that 55 percent approved of his handling of Israeli relations, compared with 54 percent last year. (His disapproval rating rose five points, to 37 percent.)

Jeremy Ben-Ami, the founder of a Washington lobby known as J Street, the latest of several organizations representing the voice of liberal Jews who support Israel but not all its policies, said many people have long felt ignored or silenced by the pro-Israel establishment in the United States.

“People are tired of being told that you are either with us or against us,” he said. “The majority of American Jews support the president, support the two-state solution and do not feel that they have been well represented by organizations that demand obedience to every wish of the Israeli government. If you had taken their word for it, Obama should have gotten 12 percent of the Jewish vote. But he got 80. That should say something.”

Within the vast spectrum of opinion, though, American Jews continue to have strong attachments to Israel, and the recent tensions have produced intense, often angry, debate. The rancor led delegates at the annual convention of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, an umbrella community relations group that includes almost all major American Jewish organizations, to adopt a resolution in February calling for a halt to “a level of uncivility, particularly over issues pertaining to Israel, that has not been witnessed in recent memory.”

Abraham Foxman, the national director of the Anti-Defamation League, predicted that Mr. Obama’s approval ratings among Jews would soon reflect what he called “a deep distress” over his approach.

“People are angry,” he said. “Americans do not want peace shoved down the throats of the Israelis.”

But Professor Steven M. Cohen, a sociologist at Hebrew Union College in Manhattan who co-wrote a study last year charting a steep decline in attachment to Israel among younger Jews, said the younger and liberal-leaning are frustrated at being labeled “anti-Israel” or even anti-Semitic for expressing opposition to Israel’s treatment of Palestinians in the occupied territories.

Many liberals cite a recent crackdown in San Francisco as an example. After leaders of the Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco learned that one of the film groups it supported had sponsored the screening of an Israeli documentary critical of Israeli security forces, “Rachel,” about an American woman killed in Gaza, they adopted new rules early this year prohibiting any of the cultural organizations it supports from presenting programs that “undermine the legitimacy of the state of Israel.”

Related

• Obama Tries to Mend Fences With American Jews (May 5, 2010)

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The Caucus

The latest on President Obama, his administration and other news from Washington and around the nation. Join the discussion.

• More Politics News

William Daroff, vice president for public policy of the Jewish Federations of North America, defended the San Francisco federation’s decision. “An open exchange of views within the pro-Israel community is good,” he said. “But there has to be some sort of line between constructive discussion and destructive communication that does not recognize Israel as the eternal home of the Jewish people.”

The questions that Jews are now facing are rooted not in being for or against Israel, but in the shadings of difference over how to achieve peace, and the complexities of the relationship between Israel — a state whose government is now dominated by nationalist and ultrareligious politicians — and the predominantly liberal-leaning and secular base of Jewish support in the United States.

The struggle to define the middle ground was in evidence last month among a small group of Jewish Americans who gathered in a suburban Detroit synagogue to describe the view of the recent turmoil from somewhere in the demographic middle.

They were seven people from the “more or less inactive” list of the Birmingham Temple, said Rabbi Kolton, who gathered them at the request of a reporter because they roughly matched the profile of about 60 percent of American Jews, according to various studies: They do not belong to a synagogue and do not attend services or belong to Jewish organizations, yet they consider themselves Jewish — bound in a web of history, culture and DNA to their Jewishness, and by extension, to Israel.

“My parents were Jewish, so I’m a Jew,” said Rosetta Creed, 87, a retired hospital administrator. “I get into arguments with people who knock Israel.”

All said that they had voted for Mr. Obama, supported his efforts to prod Israel and believed there would never be peace in the Middle East without determined intervention by the United States.

Nonetheless, “It makes me angry that the Israelis are always blamed for the problems and asked to make concessions,” Ms. Creed said. “You know, the Israelis are not the ones launching rockets and placing fighters in houses with children inside.”

In different ways, each referred to the history of Jewish persecution throughout the world and noted that the absence of it here and now did not spare one the occasional flash of insight and dread — when swastikas desecrate a synagogue or neo-Nazi militias appear on the six o’clock news — that Israel will always be one’s last sanctuary.

With many of their children intermarried, they pondered what meaning Israel would hold for their grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

“Let’s face it, with each generation we are getting less and less Jewish,” said Irving Hershman, an insurance agent who was raised in an Orthodox home. He predicted, with regret, that the bonds between American Jews and Israel would dissipate in 5 or 10 generations.

Mr. Moore, the headmaster, expressed frustration that the voice of Israeli advocacy in the United States was monopolized by what he called the “Israel right-or-wrong” camp.

Israel is not just the homeland of Jews but of Jewishness, he said, and should be known for its embrace of the values at the core of Judaism — truth, fairness, kindness, freedom.

That is what he would tell those hard-line relatives of his, he said, “though I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t change their minds.”

On Israel, Jews and Leaders Often Disagree - NYTimes.com