At least a quarter of a million Israelis protested in August over the cost of living. In Tel Aviv alone, 200,000 people took to the streets. The protests, however, were over more than simply against the high cost of basic essentials and housing: "The people demand social justice!" they cried. As the Occupy Wall Street protests grow around the world, it seems clear that demands for change in the economic stratification have arrived.

I am keeping a photograph that took up two pages in a London newspaper last week. It shows a noisy demonstration in New York against Wall Street and the greed of bankers and large corporations.

Demonstrators called for a march to Wall Street; their cause is purely American, as they want jobs and a reining-in of the control that the affluent have on their daily lives. What caught my eye in the big picture, though, is that some protesters held a large banner declaring, "Stop military aid to Israel".

As good as that idea is I say stop all US aid to Israel. The United States economy is in a mess and the country is near-bankrupt, whereas Israel is doing very nicely, thank you, not least because of the direct and undeclared assistance of more than $10 billion a year it gets from American taxpayers. This huge sum is taken from increasingly poor American citizens thanks to the US Congress, which has been more or less bought by the pro-Israel Lobby. No foreign policy decisions are made by Congress without the approval of the Lobby.

The United States of America is preparing to use its veto in order to block Palestine's admission to the United Nations as an independent state. However, it is doubtful if this vote will have the effect desired by the US State Department because the Americans have renounced using the veto in this way. Not only that, but the vote for membership is based on conditions which don't allow for such a prohibitive move.

Membership of the UN has to follow a two-stage procedure: a recommendation adopted by the Security Council and then a vote at the General Assembly. In the Security Council the adoption of the proposal must be reached by a special majority of 9 to 15 voting states, including all the permanent members.

When it comes to Israel, politicians in Washington can get hysterical, making the stupidest of statements or acting idiotically. Evidence of such behaviour is common and varied; this week, for example, newly-elected Republican senator for Illinois Mark Kirk called for the US to use military means to stop Freedom Flotilla 2 heading for Gaza to break Israel's siege. He said that the United States should "provide all the necessary special operations and naval support to the Israeli naval forces in order to stop the ships before they pose a threat to Israeli coastal security or put Israeli lives in danger". When and how would or could unarmed activists and peace campaigners on ships heading for Gaza "pose a threat to Israeli coastal security or put Israeli lives in danger"?

The recent call by U.S. Senator Charles Schumer for increased rail safety funding and the creation of a "no-ride" list for Amtrak trains is yet another reminder of just who is stoking fear of Muslims in America.

In an interview last year with a Jewish radio talk show in New York, Senator Schumer said he believed that HaShem (an Orthodox Jewish term for "God") gave him the name "Schumer" — which means "guardian" — so that he could fulfill his "very important" role in the U.S. Senate as a "guardian of Israel." Presumably, Schumer's God-given role also includes turning the country he is actually paid to represent — the United States — into an Islamophobic police state.

Americans wondering what happened to their freedoms since 9/11 need to understand the key role played by ardent pro-Israelis like Schumer in undermining their civil liberties under the guise of protecting them from terrorism.

Barack Obama gave a major speech on the Middle East today and it is clear from the subsequent commentary that he impressed few people. The main reason is that he did not say much new or indicate that there would be any serious changes in US policy in the region.  It was essentially more of the same with the some tweaking here and there.  Nevertheless, he did manage to anger some people.  For example, Israel's hard-line supporters were outraged that he said, "Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps."  For them, the 1967 borders are "Auschwitz borders" and thus can never serve as a basis for negotiations.
 
Many Palestinians, on the other hand, did not like Obama's assertion that it made little sense for them to go to the UN General Assembly this September and win recognition for a Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders.  Surely they also noticed that shortly after saying that "every state has the right to self-defense, and Israel must be able to defend itself," the president said that the Palestinians would have to be content with "a sovereign non-militarized state," which means that they will not be able to defend themselves against Israel or any other state for that matter.  Hypocrisy appears to be wired into the DNA of American foreign-policy makers.

My concern for the Israeli-Arab conflict is a personal one. I was raised in a Jewish neighborhood -- three synagogues within three blocks of our home in Springfield, Mass. -- which sensitized me to Jewish culture and history. As a young student of world affairs, I closely followed the history of the Holocaust and Israel's birth in Palestine.

On the other hand, I also had a close boyhood friend whose family had roots in Syria and Lebanon; they exposed me to the local Lebanese community. The Middle East conflict was part of my global political awakening

During my 12 years in the U.S. Senate I enjoyed the support of a number of Jewish organizations, most notably the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the preeminent "pro-Israel" lobbying organization. For a time, I had a perfect voting record in support of Israel.