Israeli Lobby - The Report
Israeli Lobby - The Report
by Ted Lang
3-25-6
"Mearsheimer and Walt's paper leaves absolutely no doubt that Israel not
only controls our entire U.S. government, our Pentagon, our foreign policy and
our political parties, but our media as well."
It's all coming together so quickly now, but never should we even
remotely consider relaxing our assault. In federal government circles,
selection by upper management of a candidate to attend the senior
management program offered to upwardly mobile government executives as
offered by the John F. Kennedy School of Government of Harvard University,
is in and of itself a high privilege and an honor. It clearly signifies to
all that an attendee and graduate of the program is destined for the
highest ranks of government service; namely, the Senior Executive
Service.
During my employment with the federal government, virtually every
high-level executive I reported to was an SES that graduated from this
high-power school. The John F. Kennedy School of Government of Harvard
University is, therefore, a very prestigious center of learning, both in
terms of academic ranking and in terms of its ranking by the highest levels
of management within the United States government. Professor Stephen M.
Walt is a professor at JFK, while John J. Mearsheimer is a professor in the
Department of Political Science at the University of Chicago.
As with all institutions of higher learning, professors at these
colleges and universities are continuously urged, if not actually
pressured, to produce essays, technical reports, and books expounding upon
their respective areas of expertise based on their concentration of
educational and research disciplines. The JFK School provides just such a
vehicle for technical reporting and essay writing in their "Faculty
Research Working Papers Series." It was through this venue, that
Mearsheimer and Walt published their latest eye-opening report, entitled:
"The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy." Needless to say, at this time
in our nation's history, it couldn't come at a more critical time.
As Americans feverishly attempt to understand the workings of the
twisted mind of a totally out-of-control genocidal lunatic and
mass-murdering warmongering buffoon and his gang that has hijacked the
government of the United States, explanations for his unilateral and
unnecessary invasion abound in limitless speculation and inquiry. However,
the most frequently offered rationale, if that is what it can be called, is
that it was primarily about oil. But considering the hostility of Israel,
its penchant and perfected planning and execution of terror, it becomes
increasingly clear that the foreign policy of the United States is dictated
by Israel. I have often pointed out that assessment in this space.
Mearsheimer and Walt's paper leaves absolutely no doubt that Israel not
only controls our entire government, our Pentagon, our foreign policy and
our political parties, but our media as well. Digressing a moment from the
natural order of topics in their magnificent paper, let's move immediately
to the report's treatment of Israeli control of the American corporate
mainstream establishment media, as it will be the intention of that
un-American element and institution to work hard and feverishly to spike
and cover up this damaging report that exposes the motivational madness of
the Bush regime.
Addressing the section, "Manipulating the Media," Mearsheimer and Walt
offer: "In addition to influencing government policy directly, the Lobby
[AIPAC] strives to shape public perceptions about Israel and the Middle
East. It does not want an open debate on issues involving Israel, because
an open debate might cause Americans to question the level of support that
they currently provide. Accordingly, pro-Israel organizations work hard to
influence the media, think tanks, and academia, because these institutions
are critical in shaping popular opinion."
The report goes on: "The Lobby's perspective on Israel is widely
reflected in the mainstream media in good part because most American
commentators are pro-Israel. The debate among Middle East pundits,
journalist Eric Alterman writes, is dominated by people who cannot imagine
criticizing Israel., He lists 61 columnists and commentators who can be
counted upon to support Israel reflexively and without qualification.,
Conversely, Alterman found just five pundits who consistently criticize
Israeli behavior or endorse pro-Arab positions. Newspapers occasionally
publish guest op-eds challenging Israeli policy, but the balance of opinion
clearly favors the other side."
Certain key elements of the Alternative Media, this site among them,
have consistently exposed the one-sidedness of the MSM in protecting Israel
and extending this protection therefore to the Bush administration. That is
precisely what empowers the administration as a regime. And what it doesn't
say in the report, is the astonishing control that Jews sympathetic to
Israel, and therefore supportive of the Bush crime machine, overwhelming
own, manage and operate print and TV and cable electronic news reporting.
This subject wasn't even touched on.
The report then turns to a brief analysis of the New York Times. This is
"America's newspaper of record" and as Bernie Goldberg has revealed, is the
national editorial gatekeeper and assessor of what is newsworthy and what
is not. It is the Times that decides what news will be on TV and cable
later in the evening, and you may rest comfortably sure that this
Mearsheimer and Walt report will not make it, nor will Charlie Sheen. It is
the Times, that blocked the Downing Street Memo report and is now also
dedicated to blocking a full, open investigation of the Bush 9-11 plot.
Concerning the Times, Mearsheimer and Walt offer: "Editorial bias is
also found in papers like the New York Times. The Times occasionally
criticizes Israeli policies and sometimes concedes that the Palestinians
have legitimate grievances, but it is not even-handed. In his memoirs, for
example, former Times executive editor Max Frankel acknowledged the impact
of his own pro-Israel attitude had on his editorial choices. In his words:
I was much more deeply devoted to Israel than I dared to assert., He goes
on: Fortified by my knowledge of Israel and my friendships there, I myself
wrote most of our Middle East commentaries. As more Arab than Jewish
readers recognized, I wrote them from a pro-Israel perspective.,"
The report goes on to give examples of the organized manner in which the
Israeli Lobby encourages the supportive consumers of newspaper, radio and
television news, to literally bombard news entities with protest letters
and e-mails in the true and time-worn fashion of Zionist agitation to
stifle news and views they don't like, and to urge for propaganda favoring
Israel. Examples of Zionist rank and file pressure on CNN and NPR are
cited. The report concludes this section on the media offering, "These
factors help explain why the American media contains few criticisms of
Israeli policy, rarely questions Washington's relationship with Israel, and
only occasionally discusses the Lobby's profound influence on U.S.
policy."
It should be crystal clear that my labeling of the MSM as being "The
Zionist Media" is now virtually proven fact, especially coming from this
highly regarded institution of government studies and from trainers of
candidates for the Senior Executive Service. And you can count on the fact
that the Zionist media is burning the midnight oil to feverishly suppress
this critical exposé.
The report's opening remarks now: "U.S. foreign policy shapes events in
every corner of the globe. Nowhere is this truer than in the Middle East, a
region of recurring instability and enormous strategic importance. Most
recently, the Bush Administration's attempt to transform the region into a
community of democracies has helped produce a resilient insurgency in Iraq,
a sharp rise in world oil prices, and terrorist bombings in Madrid, London,
and Amman. With so much at stake for so many, all countries need to
understand the forces that drive U.S. Middle East policy.
The U.S. national interest should be the primary object of American
foreign policy. For the past several decades, however, and especially since
the Six Day War in 1967, the centerpiece of U.S. Middle East policy has
been its relationship with Israel. The combination of unwavering U.S.
support for Israel and the related effort to spread democracy throughout
the region has inflamed Arab and Islamic opinion and jeopardized U.S.
security.
This situation has no equal in American political history. Why has the
United States been willing to set aside its own security in order to
advance the interests of another state? One might assume that the bond
between the two countries is based on shared strategic interests or
compelling moral imperatives. As we show below, however, neither of those
explanations can account for the remarkable level of material and
diplomatic support that the United States provides to Israel." Now we may
all rest more than comfortably assured that virtually all organized Jewry,
and all levels of American government, political parties, and especially
the media, will violently explode with outrage and spring into overwhelming
unified and coordinated action over this 83-page unabashed truthful report
which exposes the horrific damage Zionism has already perpetrated against
our once free and beautiful nation. This Zionism required "the Pearl Harbor
of the 21st Century," and it is becoming increasingly clear that such an
amount of plotting and execution as serves the immediate interests of
Israel likely generated the compliant action on the part of the traitors in
our own government that engineered and made 9-11 happen. It makes the
likelihood of 9-11 less an act of random terrorism and more a deliberate
action considering all the key Pentagon players who have dual citizenship
with Israel.
How could any thinking American anywhere in our government entrust our
most powerful military might and its top secret sensitivity to individuals
with dual citizenship with the 106th ranking nation in terms of population,
and a ranking as fourth as a world-leading nuclear power, a rogue nation
that is actively waging terrorism upon other nations? How can such power be
turned over to citizens of a nation that lusts for the destruction of the
entire Arab world and Islam, a race, people and nations that control the
Earth's most vital oil supplies? How can politicians calling themselves
"Americans" put their entire nation at risk of reprisal for the terrorist
outrages that Zionist criminals in Israel have perpetrated against all the
peoples of the Middle East? How? Ask Bush!!!
Need one raise more obvious questions? Where did WE learn how to become
terrorists and turn on our own? Why did we turn against the whole world and
ignore human decency and morality, and ignore the Geneva Conventions and
begin campaigns of torture and mass terror, and slaughter unarmed captive
men, women and children? Who showed US how to do this and get away with it?
Who? Ask Israel!!!
Mearsheimer and Walt summarize: "It is not surprising that Israel and
its American supporters want the United States to deal with any and all
threats to Israel's security. If their efforts to shape U.S. policy
succeed, then Israel's enemies get weakened or overthrown, Israel gets a
free hand with the Palestinians, and the United States does most of the
fighting, dying, rebuilding, and paying.
But even if the United States fails to transform the Middle East and
finds itself in conflict with an increasingly radicalized Arab and Islamic
world, Israel still ends up protected by the world's only superpower. This
is not a perfect outcome from [AIPAC's] perspective, but it is obviously
preferable to Washington distancing itself from Israel, or using its
leverage to force Israel to make peace with the Palestinians."
The report concludes: "Can the
[Israeli-AIPAC] Lobby's power be curtailed? One would like to think so,
given the Iraq debacle, the obvious need to rebuild America's image in the
Arab and Islamic world, and the recent revelations about AIPAC officials
passing U.S. government secrets to Israel. One might also think that
Arafat's death and the election of the more moderate Abu Mazen would cause
Washington to press vigorously and evenhandedly for a peace agreement. In
short, there are ample grounds for U.S. leaders to distance themselves from
the Lobby and adopt a Middle East policy more consistent with broader U.S.
interests. In particular, using American power to achieve a just peace
between Israel and the Palestinians would help advance the broader goals of
fighting extremism and promoting democracy in the Middle East.
But that is not going to happen anytime soon. AIPAC and its allies
[including Christian Zionists] have no serious opponents in the lobbying
world. They know it has become more difficult to make Israel's case today,
and they are responding by expanding their activities and staffs. Moreover,
American politicians remain acutely sensitive to campaign contributions and
other forms of political pressure and major media outlets are likely to
remain sympathetic to Israel no matter what it does." <<Theodore E.
Lang
3/25/06 © THEODORE E. LANG 3/25/06 All rights reserved
Ted Lang is a political analyst and freelance writer.
The Israeli Lobby Unmasked And Exposed
Council For The National Interest Foundation
3-20-6
Two professors from Harvard
University and the University of Chicago have just released an 81-page
study on "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy" that concludes that the
"overall thrust of U.S. policy in the [Middle East] is due almost entirely
to U.S. domestic politics, and especially to the activities of the 'Israel
Lobby.'"
The study is currently available as a Harvard "working paper" with
extensive footnotes or as a shorter version published in the London Review
of Books.
The authors systematically examine the facts of the U.S.-Israel
relationship, concluding that Israel is neither a strategic asset nor a
"compelling moral case for sustained U.S. backing," and point a finger
squarely at the Israel lobby for "[managing] to divert U.S. foreign policy
as far from what the American national interest would otherwise suggest,
while simultaneously convincing Americans that U.S. and Israeli interests
are essentially identical."
The authors examine the entire scope of the Israel lobby's efforts, from
its intimidation of the press, think tanks and academia into presenting a
misleading image of Israel to its success at co-opting the Congress and the
Executive Branch into implementing Israel's policy aims.
The paper is significant not just for its substance but also for the
fact that it was published at all. The authors note in their section on the
lobby's intimidation of the press: "Newspapers occasionally publish guest
op-eds challenging Israeli policy, but the balance of opinion clearly
favours the other side. It is hard to imagine any mainstream media outlet
in the United States publishing a piece like this one."
Stephen Walt is Academic Dean and Professor of International Affairs at
the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. His latest
book is "Taming American Power: The Global Response to U.S. Primacy" (W. W.
Norton & Co., 2005). According to his faculty website, he has
previously worked at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and as
a Guest Scholar at the Brookings Institution, in addition to consulting for
the Institute of Defense Analyses, the Center for Naval Analyses, and the
National Defense University.
John Mearsheimer is a Professor of Political Science and the co-director
of the Program on International Security Policy at the University of
Chicago, where he is an authority on security affairs and international
politics. He graduated from West Point in 1970 and served five years as an
officer in the U.S. Air Force.
Both authors previously wrote "An Unnecessary War," which argued against
invading Iraq, in the January/February 2003 edition of Foreign Policy
magazine.
Council for the National Interest Foundation
1250 4th Street SW, Suite WG-1
Washington, District of Columbia 20024
http://www.cnionline.org/
http://www.rescuemideastpolicy.com/
Phone 202-863-2951
Fax 202-863-2952
Comment
Bob - Wyoming
3-20-6
Now here is a real shocker!!! And, you will not see this on the CBS
evening news. Five years ago, who would have ever thought that control of
American foreign policy had been hijacked by a foreign power, and for the
purpose of advancing an alien agenda? I mean who knew?
All along I thought we were over there killing Arabs because "they hate
our freedom." This was supposed to be all about the "war on terror."
Whatever that means. And, then let's not forget all those scary weapons of
mass destruction. (Those must be the ones we gave to Iraqis to use on the
Iranians?) Now, we are told that that we have to teach the Iraqis about
democracy? What's next? Well, what's behind door number three? Those darned
Iranians, we are told, are building an atomic bomb. Whew!!!! You know what
that means.
Hundreds of thousands of innocent people have been slaughtered, and it
will be generations before this nation recovers, if ever, from this
madness. Soon the bombs will be falling on Iran like a spring rain and
thousands more innocents will die. More of our sons will come home in
rubber bags.
And I can't help but wonder whether anyone in Washington will have the
moral courage to tell the truth? Perhaps we should take a stab at it right
now: "They gave their lives advancing the cause of International
Zionism."
The Israel Lobby And Its Choke-Hold On America
John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt
For the past several decades, and
especially since the Six-Day War in 1967, the centrepiece of US Middle
Eastern policy has been its relationship with Israel. The combination of
unwavering support for Israel and the related effort to spread 'democracy'
throughout the region has inflamed Arab and Islamic opinion and jeopardised
not only US security but that of much of the rest of the world. This
situation has no equal in American political history. Why has the US been
willing to set aside its own security and that of many of its allies in
order to advance the interests of another state? One might assume that the
bond between the two countries was based on shared strategic interests or
compelling moral imperatives, but neither explanation can account for the
remarkable level of material and diplomatic support that the US
provides.
Instead, the thrust of US policy in the region derives almost entirely
from domestic politics, and especially the activities of the 'Israel
Lobby'. Other special-interest groups have managed to skew foreign policy,
but no lobby has managed to divert it as far from what the national
interest would suggest, while simultaneously convincing Americans that US
interests and those of the other country -- in this case, Israel -- are
essentially identical.
Since the October War in 1973, Washington has provided Israel with a
level of support dwarfing that given to any other state. It has been the
largest annual recipient of direct economic and military assistance since
1976, and is the largest recipient in total since World War Two, to the
tune of well over $140 billion (in 2004 dollars). Israel receives about $3
billion in direct assistance each year, roughly one-fifth of the foreign
aid budget, and worth about $500 a year for every Israeli. This largesse is
especially striking since Israel is now a wealthy industrial state with a
per capita income roughly equal to that of South Korea or Spain.
Other recipients get their money in quarterly installments, but Israel
receives its entire appropriation at the beginning of each fiscal year and
can thus earn interest on it. Most recipients of aid given for military
purposes are required to spend all of it in the US, but Israel is allowed
to use roughly 25 per cent of its allocation to subsidise its own defence
industry. It is the only recipient that does not have to account for how
the aid is spent, which makes it virtually impossible to prevent the money
from being used for purposes the US opposes, such as building settlements
on the West Bank. Moreover, the US has provided Israel with nearly $3
billion to develop weapons systems, and given it access to such top-drawer
weaponry as Blackhawk helicopters and F-16 jets. Finally, the US gives
Israel access to intelligence it denies to its Nato allies and has turned a
blind eye to Israel's acquisition of nuclear weapons.
Washington also provides Israel with consistent diplomatic support.
Since 1982, the US has vetoed 32 Security Council resolutions critical of
Israel, more than the total number of vetoes cast by all the other Security
Council members. It blocks the efforts of Arab states to put Israel's
nuclear arsenal on the IAEA's agenda. The US comes to the rescue in wartime
and takes Israel's side when negotiating peace. The Nixon administration
protected it from the threat of Soviet intervention and resupplied it
during the October War. Washington was deeply involved in the negotiations
that ended that war, as well as in the lengthy 'step-by-step' process that
followed, just as it played a key role in the negotiations that preceded
and followed the 1993 Oslo Accords. In each case there was occasional
friction between US and Israeli officials, but the US consistently
supported the Israeli position. One American participant at Camp David in
2000 later said: 'Far too often, we functioned . . . as Israel's
lawyer.' Finally, the Bush administration's ambition to transform the
Middle East is at least partly aimed at improving Israel's strategic
situation.
This extraordinary generosity might be understandable if Israel were a
vital strategic asset or if there were a compelling moral case for US
backing. But neither explanation is convincing. One might argue that Israel
was an asset during the Cold War. By serving as America's proxy after 1967,
it helped contain Soviet expansion in the region and inflicted humiliating
defeats on Soviet clients like Egypt and Syria. It occasionally helped
protect other US allies (like King Hussein of Jordan) and its military
prowess forced Moscow to spend more on backing its own client states. It
also provided useful intelligence about Soviet capabilities.
Backing Israel was not cheap, however, and it complicated America's
relations with the Arab world. For example, the decision to give $2.2
billion in emergency military aid during the October War triggered an Opec
oil embargo that inflicted considerable damage on Western economies. For
all that, Israel's armed forces were not in a position to protect US
interests in the region. The US could not, for example, rely on Israel when
the Iranian Revolution in 1979 raised concerns about the security of oil
supplies, and had to create its own Rapid Deployment Force instead.
The first Gulf War revealed the extent to which Israel was becoming a
strategic burden. The US could not use Israeli bases without rupturing the
anti-Iraq coalition, and had to divert resources (e.g. Patriot missile
batteries) to prevent Tel Aviv doing anything that might harm the alliance
against Saddam Hussein. History repeated itself in 2003: although Israel
was eager for the US to attack Iraq, Bush could not ask it to help without
triggering Arab opposition. So Israel stayed on the sidelines once
again.
Beginning in the 1990s, and even more after 9/11, US support has been
justified by the claim that both states are threatened by terrorist groups
originating in the Arab and Muslim world, and by 'rogue states' that back
these groups and seek weapons of mass destruction. This is taken to mean
not only that Washington should give Israel a free hand in dealing with the
Palestinians and not press it to make concessions until all Palestinian
terrorists are imprisoned or dead, but that the US should go after
countries like Iran and Syria. Israel is thus seen as a crucial ally in the
war on terror, because its enemies are America's enemies. In fact, Israel
is a liability in the war on terror and the broader effort to deal with
rogue states.
'Terrorism' is not a single adversary, but a tactic employed by a wide
array of political groups. The terrorist organisations that threaten Israel
do not threaten the United States, except when it intervenes against them
(as in Lebanon in 1982). Moreover, Palestinian terrorism is not random
violence directed against Israel or 'the West'; it is largely a response to
Israel's prolonged campaign to colonise the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
More important, saying that Israel and the US are united by a shared
terrorist threat has the causal relationship backwards: the US has a
terrorism problem in good part because it is so closely allied with Israel,
not the other way around. Support for Israel is not the only source of
anti-American terrorism, but it is an important one, and it makes winning
the war on terror more difficult. There is no question that many al-Qaida
leaders, including Osama bin Laden, are motivated by Israel's presence in
Jerusalem and the plight of the Palestinians. Unconditional support for
Israel makes it easier for extremists to rally popular support and to
attract recruits.
As for so-called rogue states in the Middle East, they are not a dire
threat to vital US interests, except inasmuch as they are a threat to
Israel. Even if these states acquire nuclear weapons -- which is obviously
undesirable -- neither America nor Israel could be blackmailed, because the
blackmailer could not carry out the threat without suffering overwhelming
retaliation. The danger of a nuclear handover to terrorists is equally
remote, because a rogue state could not be sure the transfer would go
undetected or that it would not be blamed and punished afterwards. The
relationship with Israel actually makes it harder for the US to deal with
these states. Israel's nuclear arsenal is one reason some of its neighbours
want nuclear weapons, and threatening them with regime change merely
increases that desire.
A final reason to question Israel's strategic value is that it does not
behave like a loyal ally. Israeli officials frequently ignore US requests
and renege on promises (including pledges to stop building settlements and
to refrain from 'targeted assassinations' of Palestinian leaders). Israel
has provided sensitive military technology to potential rivals like China,
in what the State Department inspector-general called 'a systematic and
growing pattern of unauthorised transfers'. According to the General
Accounting Office, Israel also 'conducts the most aggressive espionage
operations against the US of any ally'. In addition to the case of Jonathan
Pollard, who gave Israel large quantities of classified material in the
early 1980s (which it reportedly passed on to the Soviet Union in return
for more exit visas for Soviet Jews), a new controversy erupted in 2004
when it was revealed that a key Pentagon official called Larry Franklin had
passed classified information to an Israeli diplomat. Israel is hardly the
only country that spies on the US, but its willingness to spy on its
principal patron casts further doubt on its strategic value.
Israel's strategic value isn't the only issue. Its backers also argue
that it deserves unqualified support because it is weak and surrounded by
enemies; it is a democracy; the Jewish people have suffered from past
crimes and therefore deserve special treatment; and Israel's conduct has
been morally superior to that of its adversaries. On close inspection, none
of these arguments is persuasive. There is a strong moral case for
supporting Israel's existence, but that is not in jeopardy. Viewed
objectively, its past and present conduct offers no moral basis for
privileging it over the Palestinians.
Israel is often portrayed as David confronted by Goliath, but the
converse is closer to the truth. Contrary to popular belief, the Zionists
had larger, better equipped and better led forces during the 1947-49 War of
Independence, and the Israel Defence Forces won quick and easy victories
against Egypt in 1956 and against Egypt, Jordan and Syria in 1967 -- all of
this before large-scale US aid began flowing. Today, Israel is the
strongest military power in the Middle East. Its conventional forces are
far superior to those of its neighbours and it is the only state in the
region with nuclear weapons. Egypt and Jordan have signed peace treaties
with it, and Saudi Arabia has offered to do so. Syria has lost its Soviet
patron, Iraq has been devastated by three disastrous wars and Iran is
hundreds of miles away. The Palestinians barely have an effective police
force, let alone an army that could pose a threat to Israel. According to a
2005 assessment by Tel Aviv University's Jaffee Centre for Strategic
Studies, 'the strategic balance decidedly favours Israel, which has
continued to widen the qualitative gap between its own military capability
and deterrence powers and those of its neighbours.' If backing the underdog
were a compelling motive, the United States would be supporting Israel's
opponents.
That Israel is a fellow democracy surrounded by hostile dictatorships
cannot account for the current level of aid: there are many democracies
around the world, but none receives the same lavish support. The US has
overthrown democratic governments in the past and supported dictators when
this was thought to advance its interests -- it has good relations with a
number of dictatorships today.
Some aspects of Israeli democracy are at odds with core American values.
Unlike the US, where people are supposed to enjoy equal rights irrespective
of race, religion or ethnicity, Israel was explicitly founded as a Jewish
state and citizenship is based on the principle of blood kinship. Given
this, it is not surprising that its 1.3 million Arabs are treated as
second-class citizens, or that a recent Israeli government commission found
that Israel behaves in a 'neglectful and discriminatory' manner towards
them. Its democratic status is also undermined by its refusal to grant the
Palestinians a viable state of their own or full political rights.
A third justification is the history of Jewish suffering in the
Christian West, especially during the Holocaust. Because Jews were
persecuted for centuries and could feel safe only in a Jewish homeland,
many people now believe that Israel deserves special treatment from the
United States. The country's creation was undoubtedly an appropriate
response to the long record of crimes against Jews, but it also brought
about fresh crimes against a largely innocent third party: the
Palestinians.
This was well understood by Israel's early leaders. David Ben-Gurion
told Nahum Goldmann, the president of the World Jewish Congress:
If I were an Arab leader I would never make terms with Israel. That is
natural: we have taken their country . . . We come from Israel,
but two thousand years ago, and what is that to them? There has been
anti-semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault?
They only see one thing: we have come here and stolen their country. Why
should they accept that?
Since then, Israeli leaders have repeatedly sought to deny the
Palestinians' national ambitions. When she was prime minister, Golda Meir
famously remarked that 'there is no such thing as a Palestinian.' Pressure
from extremist violence and Palestinian population growth has forced
subsequent Israeli leaders to disengage from the Gaza Strip and consider
other territorial compromises, but not even Yitzhak Rabin was willing to
offer the Palestinians a viable state. Ehud Barak's purportedly generous
offer at Camp David would have given them only a disarmed set of Bantustans
under de facto Israeli control. The tragic history of the Jewish people
does not obligate the US to help Israel today no matter what it does.
Israel's backers also portray it as a country that has sought peace at
every turn and shown great restraint even when provoked. The Arabs, by
contrast, are said to have acted with great wickedness. Yet on the ground,
Israel's record is not distinguishable from that of its opponents.
Ben-Gurion acknowledged that the early Zionists were far from benevolent
towards the Palestinian Arabs, who resisted their encroachments -- which is
hardly surprising, given that the Zionists were trying to create their own
state on Arab land. In the same way, the creation of Israel in 1947-48
involved acts of ethnic cleansing, including executions, massacres and
rapes by Jews, and Israel's subsequent conduct has often been brutal,
belying any claim to moral superiority. Between 1949 and 1956, for example,
Israeli security forces killed between 2700 and 5000 Arab infiltrators, the
overwhelming majority of them unarmed. The IDF murdered hundreds of
Egyptian prisoners of war in both the 1956 and 1967 wars, while in 1967, it
expelled between 100,000 and 260,000 Palestinians from the newly conquered
West Bank, and drove 80,000 Syrians from the Golan Heights.
During the first intifada, the IDF distributed truncheons to its troops
and encouraged them to break the bones of Palestinian protesters. The
Swedish branch of Save the Children estimated that '23,600 to 29,900
children required medical treatment for their beating injuries in the first
two years of the intifada.' Nearly a third of them were aged ten or under.
The response to the second intifada has been even more violent, leading
Ha'aretz to declare that 'the IDF . . . is turning into a killing
machine whose efficiency is awe-inspiring, yet shocking.' The IDF fired one
million bullets in the first days of the uprising. Since then, for every
Israeli lost, Israel has killed 3.4 Palestinians, the majority of whom have
been innocent bystanders; the ratio of Palestinian to Israeli children
killed is even higher (5.7:1). It is also worth bearing in mind that the
Zionists relied on terrorist bombs to drive the British from Palestine, and
that Yitzhak Shamir, once a terrorist and later prime minister, declared
that 'neither Jewish ethics nor Jewish tradition can disqualify terrorism
as a means of combat.'
The Palestinian resort to terrorism is wrong but it isn't surprising.
The Palestinians believe they have no other way to force Israeli
concessions. As Ehud Barak once admitted, had he been born a Palestinian,
he 'would have joined a terrorist organisation'.
So if neither strategic nor moral arguments can account for America's
support for Israel, how are we to explain it?
The explanation is the unmatched power of the Israel Lobby. We use 'the
Lobby' as shorthand for the loose coalition of individuals and
organisations who actively work to steer US foreign policy in a pro-Israel
direction. This is not meant to suggest that 'the Lobby' is a unified
movement with a central leadership, or that individuals within it do not
disagree on certain issues. Not all Jewish Americans are part of the Lobby,
because Israel is not a salient issue for many of them. In a 2004 survey,
for example, roughly 36 per cent of American Jews said they were either
'not very' or 'not at all' emotionally attached to Israel.
Jewish Americans also differ on specific Israeli policies. Many of the
key organisations in the Lobby, such as the American-Israel Public Affairs
Committee (AIPAC) and the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish
Organisations, are run by hardliners who generally support the Likud
Party's expansionist policies, including its hostility to the Oslo peace
process. The bulk of US Jewry, meanwhile, is more inclined to make
concessions to the Palestinians, and a few groups -- such as Jewish Voice
for Peace -- strongly advocate such steps. Despite these differences,
moderates and hardliners both favour giving steadfast support to
Israel.
Not surprisingly, American Jewish leaders often consult Israeli
officials, to make sure that their actions advance Israeli goals. As one
activist from a major Jewish organisation wrote, 'it is routine for us to
say: "This is our policy on a certain issue, but we must check what the
Israelis think." We as a community do it all the time.' There is a strong
prejudice against criticising Israeli policy, and putting pressure on
Israel is considered out of order. Edgar Bronfman Sr, the president of the
World Jewish Congress, was accused of 'perfidy' when he wrote a letter to
President Bush in mid-2003 urging him to persuade Israel to curb
construction of its controversial 'security fence'. His critics said that
'it would be obscene at any time for the president of the World Jewish
Congress to lobby the president of the United States to resist policies
being promoted by the government of Israel.'
Similarly, when the president of the Israel Policy Forum, Seymour Reich,
advised Condoleezza Rice in November 2005 to ask Israel to reopen a
critical border crossing in the Gaza Strip, his action was denounced as
'irresponsible': 'There is,' his critics said, 'absolutely no room in the
Jewish mainstream for actively canvassing against the security-related
policies . . . of Israel.' Recoiling from these attacks, Reich
announced that 'the word "pressure" is not in my vocabulary when it comes
to Israel.'
Jewish Americans have set up an impressive array of organisations to
influence American foreign policy, of which AIPAC is the most powerful and
best known. In 1997, Fortune magazine asked members of Congress and their
staffs to list the most powerful lobbies in Washington. AIPAC was ranked
second behind the American Association of Retired People, but ahead of the
AFL-CIO and the National Rifle Association. A National Journal study in
March 2005 reached a similar conclusion, placing AIPAC in second place
(tied with AARP) in the Washington 'muscle rankings'.
The Lobby also includes prominent Christian evangelicals like Gary
Bauer, Jerry Falwell, Ralph Reed and Pat Robertson, as well as Dick Armey
and Tom DeLay, former majority leaders in the House of Representatives, all
of whom believe Israel's rebirth is the fulfilment of biblical prophecy and
support its expansionist agenda; to do otherwise, they believe, would be
contrary to God's will. Neo-conservative gentiles such as John Bolton;
Robert Bartley, the former Wall Street Journal editor; William Bennett, the
former secretary of education; Jeane Kirkpatrick, the former UN ambassador;
and the influential columnist George Will are also steadfast
supporters.
The US form of government offers activists many ways of influencing the
policy process. Interest groups can lobby elected representatives and
members of the executive branch, make campaign contributions, vote in
elections, try to mould public opinion etc. They enjoy a disproportionate
amount of influence when they are committed to an issue to which the bulk
of the population is indifferent. Policymakers will tend to accommodate
those who care about the issue, even if their numbers are small, confident
that the rest of the population will not penalise them for doing so.
In its basic operations, the Israel Lobby is no different from the farm
lobby, steel or textile workers' unions, or other ethnic lobbies. There is
nothing improper about American Jews and their Christian allies attempting
to sway US policy: the Lobby's activities are not a conspiracy of the sort
depicted in tracts like the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. For the most
part, the individuals and groups that comprise it are only doing what other
special interest groups do, but doing it very much better. By contrast,
pro-Arab interest groups, in so far as they exist at all, are weak, which
makes the Israel Lobby's task even easier.
The Lobby pursues two broad strategies. First, it wields its significant
influence in Washington, pressuring both Congress and the executive branch.
Whatever an individual lawmaker or policymaker's own views may be, the
Lobby tries to make supporting Israel the 'smart' choice. Second, it
strives to ensure that public discourse portrays Israel in a positive
light, by repeating myths about its founding and by promoting its point of
view in policy debates. The goal is to prevent critical comments from
getting a fair hearing in the political arena. Controlling the debate is
essential to guaranteeing US support, because a candid discussion of
US-Israeli relations might lead Americans to favour a different policy.
A key pillar of the Lobby's effectiveness is its influence in Congress,
where Israel is virtually immune from criticism. This in itself is
remarkable, because Congress rarely shies away from contentious issues.
Where Israel is concerned, however, potential critics fall silent. One
reason is that some key members are Christian Zionists like Dick Armey, who
said in September 2002: 'My No. 1 priority in foreign policy is to protect
Israel.' One might think that the No. 1 priority for any congressman would
be to protect America. There are also Jewish senators and congressmen who
work to ensure that US foreign policy supports Israel's interests.
Another source of the Lobby's power is its use of pro-Israel
congressional staffers. As Morris Amitay, a former head of AIPAC, once
admitted, 'there are a lot of guys at the working level up here' -- on
Capitol Hill -- 'who happen to be Jewish, who are willing . . .
to look at certain issues in terms of their Jewishness . . .
These are all guys who are in a position to make the decision in these
areas for those senators . . . You can get an awful lot done just
at the staff level.'
AIPAC itself, however, forms the core of the Lobby's influence in
Congress. Its success is due to its ability to reward legislators and
congressional candidates who support its agenda, and to punish those who
challenge it. Money is critical to US elections (as the scandal over the
lobbyist Jack Abramoff's shady dealings reminds us), and AIPAC makes sure
that its friends get strong financial support from the many pro-Israel
political action committees. Anyone who is seen as hostile to Israel can be
sure that AIPAC will direct campaign contributions to his or her political
opponents. AIPAC also organises letter-writing campaigns and encourages
newspaper editors to endorse pro-Israel candidates.
There is no doubt about the efficacy of these tactics. Here is one
example: in the 1984 elections, AIPAC helped defeat Senator Charles Percy
from Illinois, who, according to a prominent Lobby figure, had 'displayed
insensitivity and even hostility to our concerns'. Thomas Dine, the head of
AIPAC at the time, explained what happened: 'All the Jews in America, from
coast to coast, gathered to oust Percy. And the American politicians --
those who hold public positions now, and those who aspire -- got the
message.'
AIPAC's influence on Capitol Hill goes even further. According to
Douglas Bloomfield, a former AIPAC staff member, 'it is common for members
of Congress and their staffs to turn to AIPAC first when they need
information, before calling the Library of Congress, the Congressional
Research Service, committee staff or administration experts.' More
important, he notes that AIPAC is 'often called on to draft speeches, work
on legislation, advise on tactics, perform research, collect co-sponsors
and marshal votes'.
The bottom line is that AIPAC, a de facto agent for a foreign
government, has a stranglehold on Congress, with the result that US policy
towards Israel is not debated there, even though that policy has important
consequences for the entire world. In other words, one of the three main
branches of the government is firmly committed to supporting Israel. As one
former Democratic senator, Ernest Hollings, noted on leaving office, 'you
can't have an Israeli policy other than what AIPAC gives you around here.'
Or as Ariel Sharon once told an American audience, 'when people ask me how
they can help Israel, I tell them: "Help AIPAC."'
Thanks in part to the influence Jewish voters have on presidential
elections, the Lobby also has significant leverage over the executive
branch. Although they make up fewer than 3 per cent of the population, they
make large campaign donations to candidates from both parties. The
Washington Post once estimated that Democratic presidential candidates
'depend on Jewish supporters to supply as much as 60 per cent of the
money'. And because Jewish voters have high turn-out rates and are
concentrated in key states like California, Florida, Illinois, New York and
Pennsylvania, presidential candidates go to great lengths not to antagonise
them.
Key organisations in the Lobby make it their business to ensure that
critics of Israel do not get important foreign policy jobs. Jimmy Carter
wanted to make George Ball his first secretary of state, but knew that Ball
was seen as critical of Israel and that the Lobby would oppose the
appointment. In this way any aspiring policymaker is encouraged to become
an overt supporter of Israel, which is why public critics of Israeli policy
have become an endangered species in the foreign policy establishment.
When Howard Dean called for the United States to take a more
'even-handed role' in the Arab-Israeli conflict, Senator Joseph Lieberman
accused him of selling Israel down the river and said his statement was
'irresponsible'. Virtually all the top Democrats in the House signed a
letter criticising Dean's remarks, and the Chicago Jewish Star reported
that 'anonymous attackers . . . are clogging the email inboxes of
Jewish leaders around the country, warning -- without much evidence -- that
Dean would somehow be bad for Israel.'
This worry was absurd; Dean is in fact quite hawkish on Israel: his
campaign co-chair was a former AIPAC president, and Dean said his own views
on the Middle East more closely reflected those of AIPAC than those of the
more moderate Americans for Peace Now. He had merely suggested that to
'bring the sides together', Washington should act as an honest broker. This
is hardly a radical idea, but the Lobby doesn't tolerate
even-handedness.
During the Clinton administration, Middle Eastern policy was largely
shaped by officials with close ties to Israel or to prominent pro-Israel
organisations; among them, Martin Indyk, the former deputy director of
research at AIPAC and co-founder of the pro-Israel Washington Institute for
Near East Policy (WINEP); Dennis Ross, who joined WINEP after leaving
government in 2001; and Aaron Miller, who has lived in Israel and often
visits the country. These men were among Clinton's closest advisers at the
Camp David summit in July 2000. Although all three supported the Oslo peace
process and favoured the creation of a Palestinian state, they did so only
within the limits of what would be acceptable to Israel. The American
delegation took its cues from Ehud Barak, co-ordinated its negotiating
positions with Israel in advance, and did not offer independent proposals.
Not surprisingly, Palestinian negotiators complained that they were
'negotiating with two Israeli teams -- one displaying an Israeli flag, and
one an American flag'.
The situation is even more pronounced in the Bush administration, whose
ranks have included such fervent advocates of the Israeli cause as Elliot
Abrams, John Bolton, Douglas Feith, I. Lewis ('Scooter') Libby, Richard
Perle, Paul Wolfowitz and David Wurmser. As we shall see, these officials
have consistently pushed for policies favoured by Israel and backed by
organisations in the Lobby.
The Lobby doesn't want an open debate, of course, because that might
lead Americans to question the level of support they provide. Accordingly,
pro-Israel organisations work hard to influence the institutions that do
most to shape popular opinion.
The Lobby's perspective prevails in the mainstream media: the debate
among Middle East pundits, the journalist Eric Alterman writes, is
'dominated by people who cannot imagine criticising Israel'. He lists 61
'columnists and commentators who can be counted on to support Israel
reflexively and without qualification'. Conversely, he found just five
pundits who consistently criticise Israeli actions or endorse Arab
positions. Newspapers occasionally publish guest op-eds challenging Israeli
policy, but the balance of opinion clearly favours the other side. It is
hard to imagine any mainstream media outlet in the United States publishing
a piece like this one.
'Shamir, Sharon, Bibi -- whatever those guys want is pretty much fine by
me,' Robert Bartley once remarked. Not surprisingly, his newspaper, the
Wall Street Journal, along with other prominent papers like the Chicago
Sun-Times and the Washington Times, regularly runs editorials that strongly
support Israel. Magazines like Commentary, the New Republic and the Weekly
Standard defend Israel at every turn.
Editorial bias is also found in papers like the New York Times, which
occasionally criticises Israeli policies and sometimes concedes that the
Palestinians have legitimate grievances, but is not even-handed. In his
memoirs the paper's former executive editor Max Frankel acknowledges the
impact his own attitude had on his editorial decisions: 'I was much more
deeply devoted to Israel than I dared to assert . . . Fortified
by my knowledge of Israel and my friendships there, I myself wrote most of
our Middle East commentaries. As more Arab than Jewish readers recognised,
I wrote them from a pro-Israel perspective.'
News reports are more even-handed, in part because reporters strive to
be objective, but also because it is difficult to cover events in the
Occupied Territories without acknowledging Israel's actions on the ground.
To discourage unfavourable reporting, the Lobby organises letter-writing
campaigns, demonstrations and boycotts of news outlets whose content it
considers anti-Israel. One CNN executive has said that he sometimes gets
6000 email messages in a single day complaining about a story. In May 2003,
the pro-Israel Committee for Accurate Middle East Reporting in America
(CAMERA) organised demonstrations outside National Public Radio stations in
33 cities; it also tried to persuade contributors to withhold support from
NPR until its Middle East coverage becomes more sympathetic to Israel.
Boston's NPR station, WBUR, reportedly lost more than $1 million in
contributions as a result of these efforts. Further pressure on NPR has
come from Israel's friends in Congress, who have asked for an internal
audit of its Middle East coverage as well as more oversight.
The Israeli side also dominates the think tanks which play an important
role in shaping public debate as well as actual policy. The Lobby created
its own think tank in 1985, when Martin Indyk helped to found WINEP.
Although WINEP plays down its links to Israel, claiming instead to provide
a 'balanced and realistic' perspective on Middle East issues, it is funded
and run by individuals deeply committed to advancing Israel's agenda.
The Lobby's influence extends well beyond WINEP, however. Over the past
25 years, pro-Israel forces have established a commanding presence at the
American Enterprise Institute, the Brookings Institution, the Center for
Security Policy, the Foreign Policy Research Institute, the Heritage
Foundation, the Hudson Institute, the Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis
and the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA). These think
tanks employ few, if any, critics of US support for Israel.
Take the Brookings Institution. For many years, its senior expert on the
Middle East was William Quandt, a former NSC official with a well-deserved
reputation for even-handedness. Today, Brookings's coverage is conducted
through the Saban Center for Middle East Studies, which is financed by Haim
Saban, an Israeli-American businessman and ardent Zionist. The centre's
director is the ubiquitous Martin Indyk. What was once a non-partisan
policy institute is now part of the pro-Israel chorus.
Where the Lobby has had the most difficulty is in stifling debate on
university campuses. In the 1990s, when the Oslo peace process was
underway, there was only mild criticism of Israel, but it grew stronger
with Oslo's collapse and Sharon's access to power, becoming quite
vociferous when the IDF reoccupied the West Bank in spring 2002 and
employed massive force to subdue the second intifada.
The Lobby moved immediately to 'take back the campuses'. New groups
sprang up, like the Caravan for Democracy, which brought Israeli speakers
to US colleges. Established groups like the Jewish Council for Public
Affairs and Hillel joined in, and a new group, the Israel on Campus
Coalition, was formed to co-ordinate the many bodies that now sought to put
Israel's case. Finally, AIPAC more than tripled its spending on programmes
to monitor university activities and to train young advocates, in order to
'vastly expand the number of students involved on campus . . . in
the national pro-Israel effort'.
The Lobby also monitors what professors write and teach. In September
2002, Martin Kramer and Daniel Pipes, two passionately pro-Israel
neo-conservatives, established a website (Campus Watch) that posted
dossiers on suspect academics and encouraged students to report remarks or
behaviour that might be considered hostile to Israel. This transparent
attempt to blacklist and intimidate scholars provoked a harsh reaction and
Pipes and Kramer later removed the dossiers, but the website still invites
students to report 'anti-Israel' activity.
Groups within the Lobby put pressure on particular academics and
universities. Columbia has been a frequent target, no doubt because of the
presence of the late Edward Said on its faculty. 'One can be sure that any
public statement in support of the Palestinian people by the pre-eminent
literary critic Edward Said will elicit hundreds of emails, letters and
journalistic accounts that call on us to denounce Said and to either
sanction or fire him,' Jonathan Cole, its former provost, reported. When
Columbia recruited the historian Rashid Khalidi from Chicago, the same
thing happened. It was a problem Princeton also faced a few years later
when it considered wooing Khalidi away from Columbia.
A classic illustration of the effort to police academia occurred towards
the end of 2004, when the David Project produced a film alleging that
faculty members of Columbia's Middle East Studies programme were
anti-semitic and were intimidating Jewish students who stood up for Israel.
Columbia was hauled over the coals, but a faculty committee which was
assigned to investigate the charges found no evidence of anti-semitism and
the only incident possibly worth noting was that one professor had
'responded heatedly' to a student's question. The committee also discovered
that the academics in question had themselves been the target of an overt
campaign of intimidation.
Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of all this is the efforts Jewish
groups have made to push Congress into establishing mechanisms to monitor
what professors say. If they manage to get this passed, universities judged
to have an anti-Israel bias would be denied federal funding. Their efforts
have not yet succeeded, but they are an indication of the importance placed
on controlling debate.
A number of Jewish philanthropists have recently established Israel
Studies programmes (in addition to the roughly 130 Jewish Studies
programmes already in existence) so as to increase the number of
Israel-friendly scholars on campus. In May 2003, NYU announced the
establishment of the Taub Center for Israel Studies; similar programmes
have been set up at Berkeley, Brandeis and Emory. Academic administrators
emphasise their pedagogical value, but the truth is that they are intended
in large part to promote Israel's image. Fred Laffer, the head of the Taub
Foundation, makes it clear that his foundation funded the NYU centre to
help counter the 'Arabic [sic] point of view' that he thinks is prevalent
in NYU's Middle East programmes.
No discussion of the Lobby would be complete without an examination of
one of its most powerful weapons: the charge of anti-semitism. Anyone who
criticises Israel's actions or argues that pro-Israel groups have
significant influence over US Middle Eastern policy -- an influence AIPAC
celebrates -- stands a good chance of being labelled an anti-semite.
Indeed, anyone who merely claims that there is an Israel Lobby runs the
risk of being charged with anti-semitism, even though the Israeli media
refer to America's 'Jewish Lobby'. In other words, the Lobby first boasts
of its influence and then attacks anyone who calls attention to it. It's a
very effective tactic: anti-semitism is something no one wants to be
accused of.
Europeans have been more willing than Americans to criticise Israeli
policy, which some people attribute to a resurgence of anti-semitism in
Europe. We are 'getting to a point', the US ambassador to the EU said in
early 2004, 'where it is as bad as it was in the 1930s'. Measuring
anti-semitism is a complicated matter, but the weight of evidence points in
the opposite direction. In the spring of 2004, when accusations of European
anti-semitism filled the air in America, separate surveys of European
public opinion conducted by the US-based Anti-Defamation League and the Pew
Research Center for the People and the Press found that it was in fact
declining. In the 1930s, by contrast, anti-semitism was not only widespread
among Europeans of all classes but considered quite acceptable.
The Lobby and its friends often portray France as the most anti-semitic
country in Europe. But in 2003, the head of the French Jewish community
said that 'France is not more anti-semitic than America.' According to a
recent article in Ha'aretz, the French police have reported that
anti-semitic incidents declined by almost 50 per cent in 2005; and this
even though France has the largest Muslim population of any European
country. Finally, when a French Jew was murdered in Paris last month by a
Muslim gang, tens of thousands of demonstrators poured into the streets to
condemn anti-semitism. Jacques Chirac and Dominique de Villepin both
attended the victim's memorial service to show their solidarity.
No one would deny that there is anti-semitism among European Muslims,
some of it provoked by Israel's conduct towards the Palestinians and some
of it straightforwardly racist. But this is a separate matter with little
bearing on whether or not Europe today is like Europe in the 1930s. Nor
would anyone deny that there are still some virulent autochthonous
anti-semites in Europe (as there are in the United States) but their
numbers are small and their views are rejected by the vast majority of
Europeans.
Israel's advocates, when pressed to go beyond mere assertion, claim that
there is a 'new anti-semitism', which they equate with criticism of Israel.
In other words, criticise Israeli policy and you are by definition an
anti-semite. When the synod of the Church of England recently voted to
divest from Caterpillar Inc on the grounds that it manufactures the
bulldozers used by the Israelis to demolish Palestinian homes, the Chief
Rabbi complained that this would 'have the most adverse repercussions on
. . . Jewish-Christian relations in Britain', while Rabbi Tony
Bayfield, the head of the Reform movement, said: 'There is a clear problem
of anti-Zionist -- verging on anti-semitic -- attitudes emerging in the
grass-roots, and even in the middle ranks of the Church.' But the Church
was guilty merely of protesting against Israeli government policy.
Critics are also accused of holding Israel to an unfair standard or
questioning its right to exist. But these are bogus charges too. Western
critics of Israel hardly ever question its right to exist: they question
its behaviour towards the Palestinians, as do Israelis themselves. Nor is
Israel being judged unfairly. Israeli treatment of the Palestinians elicits
criticism because it is contrary to widely accepted notions of human
rights, to international law and to the principle of national
self-determination. And it is hardly the only state that has faced sharp
criticism on these grounds.
In the autumn of 2001, and especially in the spring of 2002, the Bush
administration tried to reduce anti-American sentiment in the Arab world
and undermine support for terrorist groups like al-Qaida by halting
Israel's expansionist policies in the Occupied Territories and advocating
the creation of a Palestinian state. Bush had very significant means of
persuasion at his disposal. He could have threatened to reduce economic and
diplomatic support for Israel, and the American people would almost
certainly have supported him. A May 2003 poll reported that more than 60
per cent of Americans were willing to withhold aid if Israel resisted US
pressure to settle the conflict, and that number rose to 70 per cent among
the 'politically active'. Indeed, 73 per cent said that the United States
should not favour either side.
Yet the administration failed to change Israeli policy, and Washington
ended up backing it. Over time, the administration also adopted Israel's
own justifications of its position, so that US rhetoric began to mimic
Israeli rhetoric. By February 2003, a Washington Post headline summarised
the situation: 'Bush and Sharon Nearly Identical on Mideast Policy.' The
main reason for this switch was the Lobby.
The story begins in late September 2001, when Bush began urging Sharon
to show restraint in the Occupied Territories. He also pressed him to allow
Israel's foreign minister, Shimon Peres, to meet with Yasser Arafat, even
though he (Bush) was highly critical of Arafat's leadership. Bush even said
publicly that he supported the creation of a Palestinian state. Alarmed,
Sharon accused him of trying 'to appease the Arabs at our expense', warning
that Israel 'will not be Czechoslovakia'.
Bush was reportedly furious at being compared to Chamberlain, and the
White House press secretary called Sharon's remarks 'unacceptable'. Sharon
offered a pro forma apology, but quickly joined forces with the Lobby to
persuade the administration and the American people that the United States
and Israel faced a common threat from terrorism. Israeli officials and
Lobby representatives insisted that there was no real difference between
Arafat and Osama bin Laden: the United States and Israel, they said, should
isolate the Palestinians' elected leader and have nothing to do with
him.
The Lobby also went to work in Congress. On 16 November, 89 senators
sent Bush a letter praising him for refusing to meet with Arafat, but also
demanding that the US not restrain Israel from retaliating against the
Palestinians; the administration, they wrote, must state publicly that it
stood behind Israel. According to the New York Times, the letter 'stemmed'
from a meeting two weeks before between 'leaders of the American Jewish
community and key senators', adding that AIPAC was 'particularly active in
providing advice on the letter'.
By late November, relations between Tel Aviv and Washington had improved
considerably. This was thanks in part to the Lobby's efforts, but also to
America's initial victory in Afghanistan, which reduced the perceived need
for Arab support in dealing with al-Qaida. Sharon visited the White House
in early December and had a friendly meeting with Bush.
In April 2002 trouble erupted again, after the IDF launched Operation
Defensive Shield and resumed control of virtually all the major Palestinian
areas on the West Bank. Bush knew that Israel's actions would damage
America's image in the Islamic world and undermine the war on terrorism, so
he demanded that Sharon 'halt the incursions and begin withdrawal'. He
underscored this message two days later, saying he wanted Israel to
'withdraw without delay'. On 7 April, Condoleezza Rice, then Bush's
national security adviser, told reporters: '"Without delay" means without
delay. It means now.' That same day Colin Powell set out for the Middle
East to persuade all sides to stop fighting and start negotiating.
Israel and the Lobby swung into action. Pro-Israel officials in the
vice-president's office and the Pentagon, as well as neo-conservative
pundits like Robert Kagan and William Kristol, put the heat on Powell. They
even accused him of having 'virtually obliterated the distinction between
terrorists and those fighting terrorists'. Bush himself was being pressed
by Jewish leaders and Christian evangelicals. Tom DeLay and Dick Armey were
especially outspoken about the need to support Israel, and DeLay and the
Senate minority leader, Trent Lott, visited the White House and warned Bush
to back off.
The first sign that Bush was caving in came on 11 April -- a week after
he told Sharon to withdraw his forces -- when the White House press
secretary said that the president believed Sharon was 'a man of peace'.
Bush repeated this statement publicly on Powell's return from his abortive
mission, and told reporters that Sharon had responded satisfactorily to his
call for a full and immediate withdrawal. Sharon had done no such thing,
but Bush was no longer willing to make an issue of it.
Meanwhile, Congress was also moving to back Sharon. On 2 May, it
overrode the administration's objections and passed two resolutions
reaffirming support for Israel. (The Senate vote was 94 to 2; the House of
Representatives version passed 352 to 21.) Both resolutions held that the
United States 'stands in solidarity with Israel' and that the two countries
were, to quote the House resolution, 'now engaged in a common struggle
against terrorism'. The House version also condemned 'the ongoing support
and co-ordination of terror by Yasser Arafat', who was portrayed as a
central part of the terrorism problem. Both resolutions were drawn up with
the help of the Lobby. A few days later, a bipartisan congressional
delegation on a fact-finding mission to Israel stated that Sharon should
resist US pressure to negotiate with Arafat. On 9 May, a House
appropriations subcommittee met to consider giving Israel an extra $200
million to fight terrorism. Powell opposed the package, but the Lobby
backed it and Powell lost.
In short, Sharon and the Lobby took on the president of the United
States and triumphed. Hemi Shalev, a journalist on the Israeli newspaper
Ma'ariv, reported that Sharon's aides 'could not hide their satisfaction in
view of Powell's failure. Sharon saw the whites of President Bush's eyes,
they bragged, and the president blinked first.' But it was Israel's
champions in the United States, not Sharon or Israel, that played the key
role in defeating Bush.
The situation has changed little since then. The Bush administration
refused ever again to have dealings with Arafat. After his death, it
embraced the new Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, but has done little to
help him. Sharon continued to develop his plan to impose a unilateral
settlement on the Palestinians, based on 'disengagement' from Gaza coupled
with continued expansion on the West Bank. By refusing to negotiate with
Abbas and making it impossible for him to deliver tangible benefits to the
Palestinian people, Sharon's strategy contributed directly to Hamas's
electoral victory. With Hamas in power, however, Israel has another excuse
not to negotiate. The US administration has supported Sharon's actions (and
those of his successor, Ehud Olmert). Bush has even endorsed unilateral
Israeli annexations in the Occupied Territories, reversing the stated
policy of every president since Lyndon Johnson.
US officials have offered mild criticisms of a few Israeli actions, but
have done little to help create a viable Palestinian state. Sharon has Bush
'wrapped around his little finger', the former national security adviser
Brent Scowcroft said in October 2004. If Bush tries to distance the US from
Israel, or even criticises Israeli actions in the Occupied Territories, he
is certain to face the wrath of the Lobby and its supporters in Congress.
Democratic presidential candidates understand that these are facts of life,
which is the reason John Kerry went to great lengths to display unalloyed
support for Israel in 2004, and why Hillary Clinton is doing the same thing
today.
Maintaining US support for Israel's policies against the Palestinians is
essential as far as the Lobby is concerned, but its ambitions do not stop
there. It also wants America to help Israel remain the dominant regional
power. The Israeli government and pro-Israel groups in the United States
have worked together to shape the administration's policy towards Iraq,
Syria and Iran, as well as its grand scheme for reordering the Middle
East.
Pressure from Israel and the Lobby was not the only factor behind the
decision to attack Iraq in March 2003, but it was critical. Some Americans
believe that this was a war for oil, but there is hardly any direct
evidence to support this claim. Instead, the war was motivated in good part
by a desire to make Israel more secure. According to Philip Zelikow, a
former member of the president's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, the
executive director of the 9/11 Commission, and now a counsellor to
Condoleezza Rice, the 'real threat' from Iraq was not a threat to the
United States. The 'unstated threat' was the 'threat against Israel',
Zelikow told an audience at the University of Virginia in September 2002.
'The American government,' he added, 'doesn't want to lean too hard on it
rhetorically, because it is not a popular sell.'
On 16 August 2002, 11 days before Dick Cheney kicked off the campaign
for war with a hardline speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars, the
Washington Post reported that 'Israel is urging US officials not to delay a
military strike against Iraq's Saddam Hussein.' By this point, according to
Sharon, strategic co-ordination between Israel and the US had reached
'unprecedented dimensions', and Israeli intelligence officials had given
Washington a variety of alarming reports about Iraq's WMD programmes. As
one retired Israeli general later put it, 'Israeli intelligence was a full
partner to the picture presented by American and British intelligence
regarding Iraq's non-conventional capabilities.'
Israeli leaders were deeply distressed when Bush decided to seek
Security Council authorisation for war, and even more worried when Saddam
agreed to let UN inspectors back in. 'The campaign against Saddam Hussein
is a must,' Shimon Peres told reporters in September 2002. 'Inspections and
inspectors are good for decent people, but dishonest people can overcome
easily inspections and inspectors.'
At the same time, Ehud Barak wrote a New York Times op-ed warning that
'the greatest risk now lies in inaction.' His predecessor as prime
minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, published a similar piece in the Wall Street
Journal, entitled: 'The Case for Toppling Saddam'. 'Today nothing less than
dismantling his regime will do,' he declared. 'I believe I speak for the
overwhelming majority of Israelis in supporting a pre-emptive strike
against Saddam's regime.' Or as Ha'aretz reported in February 2003, 'the
military and political leadership yearns for war in Iraq.'
As Netanyahu suggested, however, the desire for war was not confined to
Israel's leaders. Apart from Kuwait, which Saddam invaded in 1990, Israel
was the only country in the world where both politicians and public
favoured war. As the journalist Gideon Levy observed at the time, 'Israel
is the only country in the West whose leaders support the war unreservedly
and where no alternative opinion is voiced.' In fact, Israelis were so
gung-ho that their allies in America told them to damp down their rhetoric,
or it would look as if the war would be fought on Israel's behalf.
Within the US, the main driving force behind the war was a small band of
neo-conservatives, many with ties to Likud. But leaders of the Lobby's
major organisations lent their voices to the campaign. 'As President Bush
attempted to sell the . . . war in Iraq,' the Forward reported,
'America's most important Jewish organisations rallied as one to his
defence. In statement after statement community leaders stressed the need
to rid the world of Saddam Hussein and his weapons of mass destruction.'
The editorial goes on to say that 'concern for Israel's safety rightfully
factored into the deliberations of the main Jewish groups.'
Although neo-conservatives and other Lobby leaders were eager to invade
Iraq, the broader American Jewish community was not. Just after the war
started, Samuel Freedman reported that 'a compilation of nationwide opinion
polls by the Pew Research Center shows that Jews are less supportive of the
Iraq war than the population at large, 52 per cent to 62 per cent.'
Clearly, it would be wrong to blame the war in Iraq on 'Jewish influence'.
Rather, it was due in large part to the Lobby's influence, especially that
of the neo-conservatives within it.
The neo-conservatives had been determined to topple Saddam even before
Bush became president. They caused a stir early in 1998 by publishing two
open letters to Clinton, calling for Saddam's removal from power. The
signatories, many of whom had close ties to pro-Israel groups like JINSA or
WINEP, and who included Elliot Abrams, John Bolton, Douglas Feith, William
Kristol, Bernard Lewis, Donald Rumsfeld, Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz,
had little trouble persuading the Clinton administration to adopt the
general goal of ousting Saddam. But they were unable to sell a war to
achieve that objective. They were no more able to generate enthusiasm for
invading Iraq in the early months of the Bush administration. They needed
help to achieve their aim. That help arrived with 9/11. Specifically, the
events of that day led Bush and Cheney to reverse course and become strong
proponents of a preventive war.
At a key meeting with Bush at Camp David on 15 September, Wolfowitz
advocated attacking Iraq before Afghanistan, even though there was no
evidence that Saddam was involved in the attacks on the US and bin Laden
was known to be in Afghanistan. Bush rejected his advice and chose to go
after Afghanistan instead, but war with Iraq was now regarded as a serious
possibility and on 21 November the president charged military planners with
developing concrete plans for an invasion.
Other neo-conservatives were meanwhile at work in the corridors of
power. We don't have the full story yet, but scholars like Bernard Lewis of
Princeton and Fouad Ajami of Johns Hopkins reportedly played important
roles in persuading Cheney that war was the best option, though
neo-conservatives on his staff -- Eric Edelman, John Hannah and Scooter
Libby, Cheney's chief of staff and one of the most powerful individuals in
the administration -- also played their part. By early 2002 Cheney had
persuaded Bush; and with Bush and Cheney on board, war was inevitable.
Outside the administration, neo-conservative pundits lost no time in
making the case that invading Iraq was essential to winning the war on
terrorism. Their efforts were designed partly to keep up the pressure on
Bush, and partly to overcome opposition to the war inside and outside the
government. On 20 September, a group of prominent neo-conservatives and
their allies published another open letter: 'Even if evidence does not link
Iraq directly to the attack,' it read, 'any strategy aiming at the
eradication of terrorism and its sponsors must include a determined effort
to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq.' The letter also reminded Bush
that 'Israel has been and remains America's staunchest ally against
international terrorism.' In the 1 October issue of the Weekly Standard,
Robert Kagan and William Kristol called for regime change in Iraq as soon
as the Taliban was defeated. That same day, Charles Krauthammer argued in
the Washington Post that after the US was done with Afghanistan, Syria
should be next, followed by Iran and Iraq: 'The war on terrorism will
conclude in Baghdad,' when we finish off 'the most dangerous terrorist
regime in the world'.
This was the beginning of an unrelenting public relations campaign to
win support for an invasion of Iraq, a crucial part of which was the
manipulation of intelligence in such a way as to make it seem as if Saddam
posed an imminent threat. For example, Libby pressured CIA analysts to find
evidence supporting the case for war and helped prepare Colin Powell's now
discredited briefing to the UN Security Council. Within the Pentagon, the
Policy Counterterrorism Evaluation Group was charged with finding links
between al-Qaida and Iraq that the intelligence community had supposedly
missed. Its two key members were David Wurmser, a hard-core
neo-conservative, and Michael Maloof, a Lebanese-American with close ties
to Perle. Another Pentagon group, the so-called Office of Special Plans,
was given the task of uncovering evidence that could be used to sell the
war. It was headed by Abram Shulsky, a neo-conservative with long-standing
ties to Wolfowitz, and its ranks included recruits from pro-Israel think
tanks. Both these organisations were created after 9/11 and reported
directly to Douglas Feith.
Like virtually all the neo-conservatives, Feith is deeply committed to
Israel; he also has long-term ties to Likud. He wrote articles in the 1990s
supporting the settlements and arguing that Israel should retain the
Occupied Territories. More important, along with Perle and Wurmser, he
wrote the famous 'Clean Break' report in June 1996 for Netanyahu, who had
just become prime minister. Among other things, it recommended that
Netanyahu 'focus on removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq -- an
important Israeli strategic objective in its own right'. It also called for
Israel to take steps to reorder the entire Middle East. Netanyahu did not
follow their advice, but Feith, Perle and Wurmser were soon urging the Bush
administration to pursue those same goals. The Ha'aretz columnist Akiva
Eldar warned that Feith and Perle 'are walking a fine line between their
loyalty to American governments . . . and Israeli interests'.
Wolfowitz is equally committed to Israel. The Forward once described him
as 'the most hawkishly pro-Israel voice in the administration', and
selected him in 2002 as first among 50 notables who 'have consciously
pursued Jewish activism'. At about the same time, JINSA gave Wolfowitz its
Henry M. Jackson Distinguished Service Award for promoting a strong
partnership between Israel and the United States; and the Jerusalem Post,
describing him as 'devoutly pro-Israel', named him 'Man of the Year' in
2003.
Finally, a brief word is in order about the neo-conservatives' prewar
support of Ahmed Chalabi, the unscrupulous Iraqi exile who headed the Iraqi
National Congress. They backed Chalabi because he had established close
ties with Jewish-American groups and had pledged to foster good relations
with Israel once he gained power. This was precisely what pro-Israel
proponents of regime change wanted to hear. Matthew Berger laid out the
essence of the bargain in the Jewish Journal: 'The INC saw improved
relations as a way to tap Jewish influence in Washington and Jerusalem and
to drum up increased support for its cause. For their part, the Jewish
groups saw an opportunity to pave the way for better relations between
Israel and Iraq, if and when the INC is involved in replacing Saddam
Hussein's regime.'
Given the neo-conservatives' devotion to Israel, their obsession with
Iraq, and their influence in the Bush administration, it isn't surprising
that many Americans suspected that the war was designed to further Israeli
interests. Last March, Barry Jacobs of the American Jewish Committee
acknowledged that the belief that Israel and the neo-conservatives had
conspired to get the US into a war in Iraq was 'pervasive' in the
intelligence community. Yet few people would say so publicly, and most of
those who did -- including Senator Ernest Hollings and Representative James
Moran -- were condemned for raising the issue. Michael Kinsley wrote in
late 2002 that 'the lack of public discussion about the role of Israel
. . . is the proverbial elephant in the room.' The reason for the
reluctance to talk about it, he observed, was fear of being labelled an
anti-semite. There is little doubt that Israel and the Lobby were key
factors in the decision to go to war. It's a decision the US would have
been far less likely to take without their efforts. And the war itself was
intended to be only the first step. A front-page headline in the Wall
Street Journal shortly after the war began says it all: 'President's Dream:
Changing Not Just Regime but a Region: A Pro-US, Democratic Area Is a Goal
that Has Israeli and Neo-Conservative Roots.'
Pro-Israel forces have long been interested in getting the US military
more directly involved in the Middle East. But they had limited success
during the Cold War, because America acted as an 'off-shore balancer' in
the region. Most forces designated for the Middle East, like the Rapid
Deployment Force, were kept 'over the horizon' and out of harm's way. The
idea was to play local powers off against each other -- which is why the
Reagan administration supported Saddam against revolutionary Iran during
the Iran-Iraq War -- in order to maintain a balance favourable to the
US.
This policy changed after the first Gulf War, when the Clinton
administration adopted a strategy of 'dual containment'. Substantial US
forces would be stationed in the region in order to contain both Iran and
Iraq, instead of one being used to check the other. The father of dual
containment was none other than Martin Indyk, who first outlined the
strategy in May 1993 at WINEP and then implemented it as director for Near
East and South Asian Affairs at the National Security Council.
By the mid-1990s there was considerable dissatisfaction with dual
containment, because it made the United States the mortal enemy of two
countries that hated each other, and forced Washington to bear the burden
of containing both. But it was a strategy the Lobby favoured and worked
actively in Congress to preserve. Pressed by AIPAC and other pro-Israel
forces, Clinton toughened up the policy in the spring of 1995 by imposing
an economic embargo on Iran. But AIPAC and the others wanted more. The
result was the 1996 Iran and Libya Sanctions Act, which imposed sanctions
on any foreign companies investing more than $40 million to develop
petroleum resources in Iran or Libya. As Ze'ev Schiff, the military
correspondent of Ha'aretz, noted at the time, 'Israel is but a tiny element
in the big scheme, but one should not conclude that it cannot influence
those within the Beltway.'
By the late 1990s, however, the neo-conservatives were arguing that dual
containment was not enough and that regime change in Iraq was essential. By
toppling Saddam and turning Iraq into a vibrant democracy, they argued, the
US would trigger a far-reaching process of change throughout the Middle
East. The same line of thinking was evident in the 'Clean Break' study the
neo-conservatives wrote for Netanyahu. By 2002, when an invasion of Iraq
was on the front-burner, regional transformation was an article of faith in
neo-conservative circles.
Charles Krauthammer describes this grand scheme as the brainchild of
Natan Sharansky, but Israelis across the political spectrum believed that
toppling Saddam would alter the Middle East to Israel's advantage. Aluf
Benn reported in Ha'aretz (17 February 2003):
Senior IDF officers and those close to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, such
as National Security Adviser Ephraim Halevy, paint a rosy picture of the
wonderful future Israel can expect after the war. They envision a domino
effect, with the fall of Saddam Hussein followed by that of Israel's other
enemies . . . Along with these leaders will disappear terror and
weapons of mass destruction.
Once Baghdad fell in mid-April 2003, Sharon and his lieutenants began
urging Washington to target Damascus. On 16 April, Sharon, interviewed in
Yedioth Ahronoth, called for the United States to put 'very heavy' pressure
on Syria, while Shaul Mofaz, his defence minister, interviewed in Ma'ariv,
said: 'We have a long list of issues that we are thinking of demanding of
the Syrians and it is appropriate that it should be done through the
Americans.' Ephraim Halevy told a WINEP audience that it was now important
for the US to get rough with Syria, and the Washington Post reported that
Israel was 'fuelling the campaign' against Syria by feeding the US
intelligence reports about the actions of Bashar Assad, the Syrian
president.
Prominent members of the Lobby
made the same arguments. Wolfowitz declared that 'there has got to be
regime change in Syria,' and Richard Perle told a journalist that 'a short
message, a two-worded message' could be delivered to other hostile regimes
in the Middle East: 'You're next.' In early April, WINEP released a
bipartisan report stating that Syria 'should not miss the message that
countries that pursue Saddam's reckless, irresponsible and defiant
behaviour could end up sharing his fate'. On 15 April, Yossi Klein Halevi
wrote a piece in the Los Angeles Times entitled 'Next, Turn the Screws on
Syria', while the following day Zev Chafets wrote an article for the New
York Daily News entitled 'Terror-Friendly Syria Needs a Change, Too'. Not
to be outdone, Lawrence Kaplan wrote in the New Republic on 21 April that
Assad was a serious threat to America.
Back on Capitol Hill, Congressman Eliot Engel had reintroduced the Syria
Accountability and Lebanese Sovereignty Restoration Act. It threatened
sanctions against Syria if it did not withdraw from Lebanon, give up its
WMD and stop supporting terrorism, and it also called for Syria and Lebanon
to take concrete steps to make peace with Israel. This legislation was
strongly endorsed by the Lobby -- by AIPAC especially -- and 'framed',
according to the Jewish Telegraph Agency, 'by some of Israel's best friends
in Congress'. The Bush administration had little enthusiasm for it, but the
anti-Syrian act passed overwhelmingly (398 to 4 in the House; 89 to 4 in
the Senate), and Bush signed it into law on 12 December 2003.
The administration itself was still divided about the wisdom of
targeting Syria. Although the neo-conservatives were eager to pick a fight
with Damascus, the CIA and the State Department were opposed to the idea.
And even after Bush signed the new law, he emphasised that he would go
slowly in implementing it. His ambivalence is understandable. First, the
Syrian government had not only been providing important intelligence about
al-Qaida since 9/11: it had also warned Washington about a planned
terrorist attack in the Gulf and given CIA interrogators access to Mohammed
Zammar, the alleged recruiter of some of the 9/11 hijackers. Targeting the
Assad regime would jeopardise these valuable connections, and thereby
undermine the larger war on terrorism.
Second, Syria had not been on bad terms with Washington before the Iraq
war (it had even voted for UN Resolution 1441), and was itself no threat to
the United States. Playing hardball with it would make the US look like a
bully with an insatiable appetite for beating up Arab states. Third,
putting Syria on the hit list would give Damascus a powerful incentive to
cause trouble in Iraq. Even if one wanted to bring pressure to bear, it
made good sense to finish the job in Iraq first. Yet Congress insisted on
putting the screws on Damascus, largely in response to pressure from
Israeli officials and groups like AIPAC. If there were no Lobby, there
would have been no Syria Accountability Act, and US policy towards Damascus
would have been more in line with the national interest.
Israelis tend to describe every threat in the starkest terms, but Iran
is widely seen as their most dangerous enemy because it is the most likely
to acquire nuclear weapons. Virtually all Israelis regard an Islamic
country in the Middle East with nuclear weapons as a threat to their
existence. 'Iraq is a problem . . . But you should understand, if
you ask me, today Iran is more dangerous than Iraq,' the defence minister,
Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, remarked a month before the Iraq war.
Sharon began pushing the US to confront Iran in November 2002, in an
interview in the Times. Describing Iran as the 'centre of world terror',
and bent on acquiring nuclear weapons, he declared that the Bush
administration should put the strong arm on Iran 'the day after' it
conquered Iraq. In late April 2003, Ha'aretz reported that the Israeli
ambassador in Washington was calling for regime change in Iran. The
overthrow of Saddam, he noted, was 'not enough'. In his words, America 'has
to follow through. We still have great threats of that magnitude coming
from Syria, coming from Iran.'
The neo-conservatives, too, lost no time in making the case for regime
change in Tehran. On 6 May, the AEI co-sponsored an all-day conference on
Iran with the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies and the Hudson
Institute, both champions of Israel. The speakers were all strongly
pro-Israel, and many called for the US to replace the Iranian regime with a
democracy. As usual, a bevy of articles by prominent neo-conservatives made
the case for going after Iran. 'The liberation of Iraq was the first great
battle for the future of the Middle East . . . But the next great
battle -- not, we hope, a military battle -- will be for Iran,' William
Kristol wrote in the Weekly Standard on 12 May.
The administration has responded to the Lobby's pressure by working
overtime to shut down Iran's nuclear programme. But Washington has had
little success, and Iran seems determined to create a nuclear arsenal. As a
result, the Lobby has intensified its pressure. Op-eds and other articles
now warn of imminent dangers from a nuclear Iran, caution against any
appeasement of a 'terrorist' regime, and hint darkly of preventive action
should diplomacy fail. The Lobby is pushing Congress to approve the Iran
Freedom Support Act, which would expand existing sanctions. Israeli
officials also warn they may take pre-emptive action should Iran continue
down the nuclear road, threats partly intended to keep Washington's
attention on the issue.
One might argue that Israel and the Lobby have not had much influence on
policy towards Iran, because the US has its own reasons for keeping Iran
from going nuclear. There is some truth in this, but Iran's nuclear
ambitions do not pose a direct threat to the US. If Washington could live
with a nuclear Soviet Union, a nuclear China or even a nuclear North Korea,
it can live with a nuclear Iran. And that is why the Lobby must keep up
constant pressure on politicians to confront Tehran. Iran and the US would
hardly be allies if the Lobby did not exist, but US policy would be more
temperate and preventive war would not be a serious option.
It is not surprising that Israel and its American supporters want the US
to deal with any and all threats to Israel's security. If their efforts to
shape US policy succeed, Israel's enemies will be weakened or overthrown,
Israel will get a free hand with the Palestinians, and the US will do most
of the fighting, dying, rebuilding and paying. But even if the US fails to
transform the Middle East and finds itself in conflict with an increasingly
radicalised Arab and Islamic world, Israel will end up protected by the
world's only superpower. This is not a perfect outcome from the Lobby's
point of view, but it is obviously preferable to Washington distancing
itself, or using its leverage to force Israel to make peace with the
Palestinians.
Can the Lobby's power be curtailed? One would like to think so, given
the Iraq debacle, the obvious need to rebuild America's image in the Arab
and Islamic world, and the recent revelations about AIPAC officials passing
US government secrets to Israel. One might also think that Arafat's death
and the election of the more moderate Mahmoud Abbas would cause Washington
to press vigorously and even-handedly for a peace agreement. In short,
there are ample grounds for leaders to distance themselves from the Lobby
and adopt a Middle East policy more consistent with broader US interests.
In particular, using American power to achieve a just peace between Israel
and the Palestinians would help advance the cause of democracy in the
region.
But that is not going to happen -- not soon anyway. AIPAC and its allies
(including Christian Zionists) have no serious opponents in the lobbying
world. They know it has become more difficult to make Israel's case today,
and they are responding by taking on staff and expanding their activities.
Besides, American politicians remain acutely sensitive to campaign
contributions and other forms of political pressure, and major media
outlets are likely to remain sympathetic to Israel no matter what it
does.
The Lobby's influence causes trouble on several fronts. It increases the
terrorist danger that all states face -- including America's European
allies. It has made it impossible to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,
a situation that gives extremists a powerful recruiting tool, increases the
pool of potential terrorists and sympathisers, and contributes to Islamic
radicalism in Europe and Asia.
Equally worrying, the Lobby's campaign for regime change in Iran and
Syria could lead the US to attack those countries, with potentially
disastrous effects. We don't need another Iraq. At a minimum, the Lobby's
hostility towards Syria and Iran makes it almost impossible for Washington
to enlist them in the struggle against al-Qaida and the Iraqi insurgency,
where their help is badly needed.
There is a moral dimension here as well. Thanks to the Lobby, the United
States has become the de facto enabler of Israeli expansion in the Occupied
Territories, making it complicit in the crimes perpetrated against the
Palestinians. This situation undercuts Washington's efforts to promote
democracy abroad and makes it look hypocritical when it presses other
states to respect human rights. US efforts to limit nuclear proliferation
appear equally hypocritical given its willingness to accept Israel's
nuclear arsenal, which only encourages Iran and others to seek a similar
capability.
Besides, the Lobby's campaign to quash debate about Israel is unhealthy
for democracy. Silencing sceptics by organising blacklists and boycotts --
or by suggesting that critics are anti-semites -- violates the principle of
open debate on which democracy depends. The inability of Congress to
conduct a genuine debate on these important issues paralyses the entire
process of democratic deliberation. Israel's backers should be free to make
their case and to challenge those who disagree with them, but efforts to
stifle debate by intimidation must be roundly condemned.
Finally, the Lobby's influence has been bad for Israel. Its ability to
persuade Washington to support an expansionist agenda has discouraged
Israel from seizing opportunities -- including a peace treaty with Syria
and a prompt and full implementation of the Oslo Accords -- that would have
saved Israeli lives and shrunk the ranks of Palestinian extremists. Denying
the Palestinians their legitimate political rights certainly has not made
Israel more secure, and the long campaign to kill or marginalise a
generation of Palestinian leaders has empowered extremist groups like
Hamas, and reduced the number of Palestinian leaders who would be willing
to accept a fair settlement and able to make it work. Israel itself would
probably be better off if the Lobby were less powerful and US policy more
even-handed.
There is a ray of hope, however. Although the Lobby remains a powerful
force, the adverse effects of its influence are increasingly difficult to
hide. Powerful states can maintain flawed policies for quite some time, but
reality cannot be ignored for ever. What is needed is a candid discussion
of the Lobby's influence and a more open debate about US interests in this
vital region. Israel's well-being is one of those interests, but its
continued occupation of the West Bank and its broader regional agenda are
not. Open debate will expose the limits of the strategic and moral case for
one-sided US support and could move the US to a position more consistent
with its own national interest, with the interests of the other states in
the region, and with Israel's long-term interests as well.
10 March
Footnotes
An unedited version of this article is available at http://ksgnotes1.harvard.edu/Research/wpaper.nsf/rwp/RWP06-011,
or at http://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=891198.
War of Words Over Paper on Israel
by Scott Jaschik - insidehighered.com
When “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy”
first appeared on the Web site of Harvard University’s John F.
Kennedy School of Government this month, the paper’s title page
featured the globe and Harvard seal that make up the Kennedy School’s
logo, and that routinely appear on papers posted there. If you download the
paper now, however, you won’t find the logo on the PDF. The Kennedy
school — with the authors’ permission — took the logo
off, a sign of just how sensitive this paper has become.
Critics — led at
Harvard by Alan Dershowitz and elsewhere by The New York Sun —
are lobbing criticism after criticism at the paper, saying that it is
bigoted, ignorant, stereotypical, uses material out of context, and borrows
from hate-oriented Web sites. Defenders of the article, meanwhile, say that
it is bringing attention to an important issue and that the reaction to the
article demonstrates one of its key themes, which questions the logic of
close ties between the United States and Israel and argues that a powerful
pro-Israel lobby make its difficult to deviate from its views.
The article itself is certainly getting unusual attention for a
scholarly work. (If you want to judge for yourself, but don’t have
time for the full version, which is 82 pages counting footnotes, the
authors have also published a shorter
version in The London Review of Books.)
The authors of the controversial article are both well respected
political scientists: Stephen M. Walt, who is academic dean and also holds an
endowed chair in international relations at the Kennedy School, and John J.
Mearsheimer, who holds a chair at the University of Chicago. Their
article argues that the United States has hurt its own security by being
too close to Israel, that Israel is not deserving of such support, and that
pro-Israel lobbyists silence anyone who would question Israeli interests.
The article uses “the Lobby” as a phrase to cover the
activities of a number of groups that work to build support for Israel.
While not a major focus of the article, the piece touches on the state
of campus debate about Israel and the Middle East. The article says that
pro-Israel groups have increased their activities on campuses, and it
specifically criticizes the David Project, which led criticism of Middle Eastern studies professors at Columbia
University. Generally, the article says that while “the Lobby has
gone to considerable lengths to insulate Israel from criticism on college
campuses,” it has failed to do so because “academic freedom is
a core value and because tenured professors are hard to threaten or
silence.”
Since the article was published, it has been the subject of repeated
articles and editorials in The New York Sun, a relatively small
daily, but one with influence in neoconservative and media circles. Among
the more embarrassing pieces there was one with the headline “David Duke
Claims to Be Vindicated by a Harvard Dean,” which quoted the
white supremacist as a fan of the new study, of which he said: “It is
quite satisfying to see a body in the premier American university
essentially come out and validate every major point I have been
making.”
Joining the criticism on Friday was the Anti-Defamation League, which
published an analysis of the article that called it an
“amateurish and biased critique of Israel, American Jews and American
policy.”
At Cambridge, meanwhile,
Dershowitz, a professor at Harvard law, has been leading the charge. In an
interview, Dershowitz said that the article took quotes out of context, was
factually inaccurate in parts, and came down to “the conspiratorial
argument that the Jews have too much power and control.”
Dershowitz said that the article was “bigoted” for implying
that Jews are monolithic in support of all of Israel’s policies and
of the Bush administration’s war in Iraq. In fact, Dershowitz said,
while he is a strong supporter of Israel, he has numerous disagreements
with Israel’s policies and opposed the war in Iraq. Asked for
examples of facts that are wrong or lack context, Dershowitz cited the
article’s reference to the “blood kinship” of Jews as the
basis for citizenship in Israel. Dershowitz noted that Israel has Arab
citizens who are Christian and Muslim. Further, he said that Israel has a
much larger percentage of non-Jews as citizens than the United States has
of non-Christians or that most countries have of minority religions.
Many donors to Harvard are furious about the article, Dershowitz said,
and with good reason. “People are outraged and embarrassed by this
trash,” he said.
Criticism has been multiplying online — some of it quite detailed in going through statements in the
article and raising questions about its fairness.
As all of this has been going on, the scholars who wrote the piece have
been largely quiet — giving a few early interviews in which they
defended their work, but declining to get into a point-by-point discussion
and also criticizing their critics for implying that their piece is
anti-Semitic. (Most of the critics do stay a bit away from that explicit
charge, and while “bigoted” is used frequently,
“anti-Semitic” is generally not, at least by the professors
discussing the article.)
Mearsheimer did not respond to messages seeking comment for this
article.
In a phone interview, Walt said that the authors stood behind their work
and looked forward to scholarly discussion of it, but he also declined to
respond to specific criticisms being raised.
He said he wasn’t surprised by the strong reaction the article is
receiving. “Anybody who writes on a controversial topic is bound to
face criticism and may also face personal attacks of various kinds,”
he said. “Our purposes in writing the piece was to open up a broader
discussion of American policy in the Middle East. We hope people will read
what we wrote and engage in a serious discussion of the
arguments.”
Variations of that response have further angered some of the
authors’ critics.
“So let me get this straight: the authors have written and
published a paper because they want to provoke an open debate — and
then decide not to respond to any of the critiques made of the
paper,” wrote Daniel W. Drezner, an assistant professor of political
science at the University of Chicago.
While the paper was written by professors at two universities —
Chicago and Harvard — the full article was published on a Harvard Web
site and many of the critical articles about it that appeared early on
called the work a “Harvard paper” or “Harvard
study” or some variation, so much of the criticism has been directed
toward Cambridge, not Hyde Park.
The Kennedy School issued a statement indicating that the institution
“stands firmly behind the academic freedom of its faculty, including
Professor Stephen Walt.”
The statement noted that papers published on the school’s Web site
always include a disclaimer reflecting Harvard’s policy of not
interfering with or dictating professors’ views. The routine
statement says: “The views expressed in the KSG Faculty Working Paper
Series are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect those of
the John F. Kennedy School of Government or Harvard University.”
The Kennedy School said that — with Walt’s approval —
the school’s logo had been removed from the paper “in an effort
to minimize the confusion” created by press accounts about the paper
being a Harvard study. Also citing “apparent confusion in the
media” about the paper, the authors added “clarifying
language” to the cover page of the study. The clarification said that
the authors were “solely responsible” for the views expressed
and that the article should not be taken to reflect the views of either
Harvard or Chicago.
Roger W. Bowen, general secretary of the American Association of
University Professors, said on Friday that in the previous 24 hours he had
received e-mail or calls from a dozen people, around the world, concerned
about the way the article’s authors were being treated, and that the
AAUP was monitoring the situation.
Bowen said that the irony over the furor is that the argument in the
paper is “not particularly new.” The reaction is largely
because of the association of the argument with Harvard, he said.
Harvard’s policy of having professors indicate that their papers
reflect their views, and not those of the institution, is not only
appropriate, but helps academic freedom, Bowen said. “No institution
can take responsibility for what one of its faculty members writes. If they
were to take responsibility that also implies that they have the right to
make changes,” he said.
What is of concern in this case, he said, is if Harvard is going beyond
its normal policies to disassociate itself from these arguments more than
it would from any argument put forward by a faculty member. At this time,
he said, he doesn’t feel he has enough information to know if
that’s the case.
Some critics of Walt have noted that because he holds an administrative
position at the Kennedy School, he is more closely associated with the
institution than other faculty members would be. Bowen said that was true,
but had no relevance on his academic freedom. “You don’t give
up your scholarly credentials” when you take on an administrative
role, Bowen said.
The AAUP recently found itself spending a lot of time on Middle Eastern
politics — when it planned, postponed, and eventually abandoned a planned conference on academic boycotts.
The conference imploded amid reports that the association had accidentally sent anti-Semitic materials from Holocaust
deniers to conference participants. But the invitation-only conference
was already being criticized for a guest list that many said gave too many
slots to professors who want to endorse boycotts of Israeli universities.
Critics of the conference say that it fell apart because it was poorly
organized with an unbalanced attendee list, but supporters of the
conference say that the association was punished for opening the meeting to
critics of Israel.
“I think there is something called the Israel lobby,” Bowen
said. “I don’t think anyone doubts that, and I think Walt and
Mearsheimer — just like any other scholar — have every reason
in the world to comment, and academic freedom guidelines protect their
right to do research in this area in the same way scholars who disagree
have every right in the world to take them to task and to do critical
research on their study.”
While academics comment on a range of controversial issues all the time,
Bowen said that dealing with the Israeli-Palestinian issues posed
particular difficulties. Bowen said that one of his “real
shocks” at the AAUP was when “a very close friend and
colleague” who is Jewish, a “strong civil libertarian,”
and has “wonderful values on academic freedom” approached him
about trying to urge Duke University to block a group there from organizing
a national conference for student supporters of the Palestinian cause.
“On that issue, there are blinders,” Bowen said.
“Any time you deal with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, even
indirectly, you need to be prepared,” he said.
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