Daniel Levy writes from Israel: I have not commented thus far on the publication of the Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer book on the Israel lobby. The reason is simple – I agreed to review the book for Haaretz and so have waited for that to be published. Well the review came out yesterday in the monthly Haartetz book supplement and should be on the website any day (it is being delayed by the Succot holiday). I have though decided to post that review here below. (I will provide the Haaretz link once it’s available.)
It is a long piece, but I hope that you stick with it. Allow me to set out my stall in this kind of pre-amble. While I certainly take issue with the specific recent policy examples in the book (Iraq and Syria in particular), I am convinced that the relationship between the US, Israel and the lobby that speaks in its name needs to change for everyone’s sake, that this book contributes to a re-think and that the authors are not driven by prejudice.
A key distinction to draw for instance is that it is not Israel per se that has become a strategic liability for the US, but rather Israel as an occupier (which is indeed, a liability to itself). To quote Walt and Mearsheimer, “if the conflict were resolved, Israel might become the sort of strategic asset that its supporters often claim it is.”
I am not an American Jew (despite the valiant and appreciated efforts of Matt Yglesias to enfranchise me as such). I can at best empathize with the sensitivities of American Jews and the raw nerves that the book and the debate surrounding it have touched. Some of the commentary, including from people I respect, admire and personally like – JJ Goldberg, Jeffrey Goldberg and Leonard Fein (I had to find a non-Goldberg) for example, pushes back powerfully against the book and comes from a place that is undoubtedly sincere and, I believe, often emotional. It is an emotive subject for me also, but my emotions are those of an Israeli (by choice admittedly) who has witnessed the devastating consequences of the lobby-mediated US policy towards Israel, on our ability to build an Israel of hope, peace, decency and dare I say, longevity.
Without himself being an Israeli, my friend MJ Rosenberg probably captures the essence of this position best when he writes: “There is nothing pro-Israel about supporting policies that promise only that Israeli mothers will continue to dread their sons’ 18th birthdays for another generation.”
Some of the commentary, by the way, has just been plain shoddy – a word hurled too often at Messrs. Walt and Mearsheimer. Leslie Gelb, reviewing the book in the NY Times is the most disappointing and inexcusable example of this. Gelb for instance claims that the official American policy against settlements and in favor of a Palestinian state proves the limitations of the lobby. Hardly! If anything it suggests the opposite – 40 years and over 400,000 Israelis living beyond the green line later – there is perhaps a disconnect and might this not require an explanation.
Understandably, Walt and Mearsheimer’s chapter about the Iraq war has drawn the most fire and ire – and with no small degree of justification. Yes, as Leonard Fein argues, the book does go too far in conflating the Israel lobby with neocons. But that act of conflating does not exist only in the minds of Walt and Mearsheimer. As I argue, the mainstream lobby allowed itself to be co-opted and it moved so far to the right and made such dubious alliances, that the co-option gave the impression of being almost seamless.
Yes, the ingredients of Middle East policy post 9/11 are characterized by elements of exceptionalism, not just continuity. But Israel and the lobby speaking in its name, out-sourced their policy to neo-cons (and even the Christian Right and also Islamo-phobes) with devastating effect. And Walt and Mearsheimer are not to blame for this unfortunate reality.
The more important challenges though concern the future. Freedom’s Watch and the push for a military attack on Iran has an eerie familiarity about it. Just look at who the prime donor and mover behind Freedom’s Watch is – Sheldon Adelson – close ally of Bibi Netanyahu who has poured millions into a pro-Bibi daily paper in Israel (read this Jim Lobe piece for more).
Will Jewish and non-Jewish Americans who care about and understand the connection between American security, Middle East stability and Israeli well-being stand up, speak out and be a counter-weight this time?
Ok, here goes – the full book review:
Two authors from the elite of American academia, an attempted answer to the what-went-wrong-for-the-U.S.-in-the-Middle-East question, and a controversy that has been brewing for over a year no wonder this book is on the New York Times Best-Seller list. Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer's book is far more expansive in scope, detailed in argument, and thoroughly sourced (106 pages of footnotes) than their 2006 article on the same subject, although their methodology still eschews firsthand interviews. This is a difficult and challenging book. It is also an important book that deserves to be keenly debated.
The book has generally elicited three types of response since its release. The first: Ignore it. Controversy, after all, breeds attention, debate and even sales, all of which, for some, are undesirable. Second: Take it seriously and deal with the substance, something this review will do in a moment. But before that, one must note the third type of response: To vilify, delegitimize and discredit the book and its authors. "Anti-Jewish bias" (Jeff Robbins, Wall Street Journal); "inspired by the Nuremburg Laws" (Tim Rutten, Los Angeles Times); "a bigoted attack" (Alan Dershowitz) these are just a few of the Pavlovian responses to the book. Despite the accusations, this a not a hateful screed. Painful, yes. Prejudiced, no. As the authors close off each possible avenue of anti-Semitic intent or effect, they come across as thorough, not ritualistic or tokenistic.
According to Walt and Mearsheimer, both political scientists, the former at Harvard, the latter at the University of Chicago, "the Israel lobby is the antithesis of a cabal or conspiracy." Interest group politics, including ethnic lobbies, are for them central to America's democracy and pluralistic society "as American as apple pie." Multiple loyalties are also very American, and not confined to Jews. To specifically question the dual loyalty of Israel's supporters would be "wrong," say the authors, as they "have every right to advocate their positions." Walt and Mearsheimer argue that, far from controlling the media, the Israel lobby has to work hard to ensure that its position wins out. Perhaps unexpectedly, the authors even describe themselves as "pro-Israel," and declare, "we are not challenging Israel's right to exist, or questioning the legitimacy of a Jewish state." Hardly very radical stuff. Their gripe is with where the lobby, effective as they claim it is, has taken U.S. foreign policy. Yes, they recognize it would be easier and more comfortable to discuss the pharmaceutical, gun or Free Cuba lobbies. Alas, their theme is the Middle East.
Their more shrill detractors have either not read the book, are emotionally incapable of dealing with harsh criticism of something they hold so close (certainly a human tendency), or are intentionally avoiding a substantive debate on the issues. The authors' challenge is "to convince readers that the United States provides Israel extraordinary material aid and diplomatic support, the lobby is the principal reason for that support, and this uncritical and unconditional relationship is not in the American national interest." Proving the first point does not make for particularly arduous labor. Israel became the largest single annual recipient of U.S. foreign assistance in 1976 and has topped the league ever since. We receive approximately $500 every year for every Israeli (it's $5 per Pakistani). All this is rather nice. In fact, it is a remarkable achievement that few Israelis would prefer to do without. But is it a consequence of the Israel lobby's work? Rather than replying with an "obviously it is," and moving on, Walt and Mearsheimer treat us to an unforgiving debunking of the alternative explanations. This entails holding a mirror up to Israel and highlighting all the warts. We all know they exist, but still, it's not a pretty sight.
Punch to the gut Chapter Three, "A Dwindling Moral Case," is their punch to the gut of any Israeli claim to extraordinary U.S. support on the basis of merit alone. It is hardly unfair that they give us the most egregious examples of Israel behaving badly, that is precisely what clinches their argument. Just for good measure, the vast majority of their sources are Israeli. Many will recoil at this chapter, especially when the criticism comes from outsiders. By the time the authors ask "which group [Israelis or Palestinians] now has a stronger moral claim to U.S. sympathy?,” the question is clearly rhetorical.
But what about Israel's value as a strategic ally? Walt and Mearsheimer are having none of it, and here the American elite consensus is probably on their side. If Israel was of "limited strategic value" during the Cold War, it has become a veritable "liability" in the war on terror. The alliance with Israel does not serve American Middle East interests as defined by these authors: It doesn't help keep Gulf oil flowing to markets; doesn't discourage the spread of weapons of mass destruction; and certainly doesn't reduce anti-American terrorism originating in the region. Last year's bipartisan Iraq Study Group of wise American policy elders may have put it more politely, but they essentially reached the same conclusion. For Walt and Mearsheimer, support for an Israel that is at war with its neighbors "has fueled anti-Americanism … gives Islamic terrorists a powerful recruiting tool, and contributes to the growth of radical Islam." It is not Israel per se that is a liability, but Israel as an occupier: "If the conflict were resolved, Israel might become the sort of strategic asset that its supporters often claim it is." The distinction should be on the radar screen of Israel's strategic planners. The authors argue that current Israeli policy is a liability to the U.S., and many would argue (the authors actually do) that it is also a liability to Israel itself. This is the first half of their argument often debatable, sometimes flawed, always compelling.
I would argue for instance that they understate at least three factors in popular culture that embellish U.S. support for Israel. First, there is a significant element of emotion, sentiment and identification in the way Americans relate to Israel; manufactured or not, it exists. Just witness the response to Shahar Peer at this year's U.S. Tennis Open. Second they refer to but underestimate the role of the Christian evangelical Zionists and their impact at the local level, especially in the media. The main Christian pro-Israel lobby group, Christians United for Israel (CUFI), has grown exponentially in recent years. It is fanatical in its devotion and politically way over to the right, channeling millions annually to support settlements. A third and not unconnected phenomenon requires a closer look at America's warts namely, the prevalence of popular Islamophobia. Pro-Israel sentiment is strengthened not by Israel's moral case, but by an immoral negative stereotyping of Arabs and Muslims by many mainstream media outlets since 9/11. But Walt and Mearsheimer are less good at seeing America's warts, and totally overlook this trend.
Having set out their own stall, that this extraordinary state of affairs is explained by the influence of the Israel lobby, the authors then describe what the lobby is and how it operates. The lobby, they say, is a "loose coalition of individuals and organizations," not all of whom are lobbyists, with "fuzzy" boundaries. Their definition is interesting and probably over-inclusive, ranging from obvious groupings, such as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), and Christian Zionists, to think tanks, certain journalists and scholars, and the neoconservative movement (neocons), of whom more in a moment. It is not synonymous with American Jewry. Their description of how the policy process is "guided" would have most interest groups green with envy, and makes for entertaining, if at times disturbing reading. Former House Speaker Richard Armey's eminently quotable "my number one priority in foreign policy is to protect Israel," from 2002, does get you thinking how it would be received were the Speaker of the Knesset to opine that "my number one priority in foreign policy is to protect America." The tools and tactics used include: draft legislation, speeches, talking points; tours of Israel for politicians and radio talk-show hosts; cultivation of congressional staffers; campaign contributions. Their analysis of campaign financing is weak and leaves one feeling somewhat short-changed.
Finally and not surprisingly, given their own treatment, the authors turn the spotlight on the ugliest face of supposedly pro-Israel activism-smear campaigns and silencing tactics, often perpetrated by organizations masquerading as watchdog groups. The attacks, for instance, on Kenneth Roth and Human Rights Watch, after they criticized Israel's offensive activity in Lebanon in 2006, were not only unjustified, undemocratic and un-Jewish, they are also a big turn-off for an increasing number of young American Jews.
Bad for U.S., bad for Israel The second half of the book is devoted to concrete examples, with which the authors make their case that the lobby influences foreign policy in ways that are detrimental to the U.S. national interest, "and," the authors add, "although these policies were intended to benefit Israel, many of them have damaged Israeli interests." All of the examples are taken from the Bush era, post 9/11 and this brings us to the book's core weakness. Walt and Mearsheimer see too much continuity and not enough exceptionalism in this period. At the center of their argument stand the neocons, and their interplay with the Israel lobby.
The neocons are a tight-knit group of ultra-hawks, favoring unilateral projection of U.S. power as a benign hegemon. They are predominantly, though not exclusively, Jewish, congregate around certain think tanks and publications (notably the American Enterprise Institute and The Weekly Standard, respectively) and are most associated with the Project for a New American Century (PNAC), which set out their goals in the 1990s. After 2000, neocons took up key positions in the Bush administration. Walt and Mearsheimer place them four-square inside the Israel lobby. The reality seems more complicated than that. Many leading neocons, by their own admission, care greatly about Israel, but they want to impose their policy, not follow Jerusalem's. Unlike, for instance, AIPAC, which takes its lead from the Israeli government, and then tends to give it an extra twist to the right, the neocons adhere to a rigid ideological dogma and are not afraid to confront a government in Jerusalem they view as too "soft."
The view that sees neocons as spearheading the Israel lobby position under Bush has serious flaws. It is more likely that the neocons co-opted the Israel lobby, and Israel itself, to their own vision of regional transformation. This is more PNAC than AIPAC. Still, most of the Israel lobby were willing accomplices, and this represents their historic error. The gradual and consistent ideological drift to the right of key Israel lobby elements since the 1970s, and the hawkish excess of mainstream groups, made this cooperation not only possible, but natural, almost seamless. The picture is complete when the role of Ariel Sharon, then Israeli premier, is added. Sharon was a hawk, but no neocon. He viewed dreams of regional transformation, democratization and regime change with scorn and disdain, but he could spot a useful political ally when he saw one. The neocons would be his bulwark against being dragged into a negotiating process with the Palestinians or Syrians, as America re-calibrated its approach to the Middle East post-9/11. Negotiations were Sharon's "Room 101." The Dov Weissglas-Elliott Abrams channel saved him the trouble. Walt and Mearsheimer describe a damning end product, policies that are a disaster for America and Israel alike, but in over-conflating the neocons with the Israel lobby they overlook a dynamic and nuance that might have implications for the future.
Outsourcing regional policy In recent years the Israel lobby, and even Israel itself, largely outsourced regional policy to the neocons, and this is crucial for better understanding all the issues that "The Israel Lobby" looks at: Iraq, Iran, Syria, the Palestinians and the Second Lebanon War. Walt and Mearsheimer devote a chapter to each of these, but there is no space here for a detailed discussion of the entire region. "Removing Saddam Hussein from power" was, to quote Walt and Mearsheimer, a neocon "obsession," and it is more likely that Israel and the lobby fell into line in promoting the Iraq war than that they drove the agenda. Israeli leaders much too publicly went to bat for the war in American media outlets, and this is well documented in the book, even embarrassingly so (Ehud Barak, in The Washington Post: "Once he [Saddam] is gone there will be a different Arab world"), but there are also suggestions of senior Israelis urging caution in private. Democratic support for the war was propelled by the post-9/11 mood and a political fear of appearing weak on national security issues, and if the Israel lobby played a role it was not the leading one.
On Iran, the authors draw our attention to two missed opportunities, both under former-president Mohammad Khatami, for a comprehensive U.S.-Iranian dialogue, and suggest a diplomatic way forward out of the current impasse. They contend that Israel and the lobby are driving policy in the opposite direction. If that is true, and evidence is certainly out there, then it suggests the neocon world view is still in the driver's seat, and that Israel and the lobby have learned nothing from the last years. Israel, declaratively at least, prefers a diplomatic solution, and both Israel and her friends should be pushing actively for enhanced diplomacy, not the ratcheting up of military threats that so play into the hands of Ahmadinejad.
Syria is the arena in which the neocon-inspired U.S. position and the Israeli position seem most at odds: a policy of promoting regime change versus one that says, we are ready to negotiate with you (when we're not conducting military missions inside your territory). The book also makes the case that in the Second Lebanon War, the Israel lobby helped prevent early U.S. intervention to end the war. If that is true, it would present a particularly glaring example of the lobby working against the Israeli interest, and another reason why Israelis should follow this issue closely. Analysis of key ministerial testimonies to the Winograd Committee and the Interim Winograd Report itself suggests that very senior Israelis based their calculations and decisions on an expectation that the U.S. would pursue an early diplomatic solution. The neocons implacably opposed this, the lobby fell into line and Israel "reaped the rewards," all the way to the cemeteries.
Walt and Mearsheimer explain Bush Middle East policy as Israel-lobby driven. Another way to look at it would be: This is the first Republican administration since the Christian evangelical Zionists emerged as a potent force in the GOP; since the mainstream pro-Israel community planted itself firmly on the Likud right, and with an executive that contained a sizeable and senior neocon presence. At the same time a hawk was ensconced in the Israeli Prime Minister's residence (Sharon). Then came the shock of 9/11, followed by the swagger and hubris that followed an apparently easy military victory in Afghanistan. This was a potent mix. These actors can all be described with some accuracy as pro-Israel, but they are also all different, and charting a future course is helped by recognizing that difference.
Prescriptions on what to do next are precisely how Walt and Mearsheimer end their book. They come from the realist school of American foreign policy, and their policy advice combines off-shore balancing (deploy militarily only when under direct threat; maintain a military presence in, but do not own, the region) with broad diplomatic engagement and a push to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This last point is crucial, given the conflict's mobilizing and recruiting role for radicals, and its potency as a symbol for anti-American PR in the era of the Internet and Al Jazeera.
On addressing the lobby, the authors consider four options. They reject weakening the lobby via campaign finance reform as impractical, and countering it via an anti-Israel lobby as unwelcome, given that it might lead to anti-Semitism. They prefer countering the lobby with a more open debate on the Middle East and encouraging the evolution of a more moderate Israel lobby (building, for instance, on the work of Americans for Peace Now, Brit Tzedek veShalom and the Israel Policy Forum). For liberal American Jews who care about Israel, that means ending the outsourcing contract with neocons and right-wing evangelicals. It also means disowning the McCarthyite hate-mongering tactics used by groups like Campus Watch, and accepting dissenting voices. On his delightfully named and popular blog, "Rootless Cosmopolitan," Tony Karon has spoken of the beginnings of a "Jewish glasnost." It will take though a greater commitment of time and resources from liberal Jews who pursue multi-issue agendas. This debate would become acutely relevant were the Democrats to re-take the White House in next year's election.
And finally, what about our role, in Israel? Three powerful conclusions emerge. First, as exposed in the Lebanon war and understood by the Winograd Committee, there is a dire lack of Israeli strategic planning capacity. How to respond to a weakened America in the region, occupation or peace with the Palestinians and Syrians, whether to outsource our policy to the neocons? For Israel, the answer seems to be: No comment. Israel lacks a definition of strategic objectives and their articulation to our friends across the pond. Second, alongside the undoubted benefits, the agenda pursued by the lobby in America has come at a great cost to Israel. NIS 45 billion could not have been wasted on settlements without U.S. complicity. As the book's authors argue, "Washington has helped insulate it [Israel] from some of the adverse consequences of its own actions," and that is a very dubious luxury indeed.
Finally, while the right was busy investing in building allies and alliances in the U.S., the left was asleep or intimidated or both. A small number of center-left Israeli politicians display an active interest in events States-side, but very few display sufficient courage and conviction to challenge the self-defeating orthodoxy of the current mainstream Israel lobby. It is an absence sorely felt. Walt and Mearsheimer suggest that "it is time to treat Israel like a normal country." Presumably unintentionally, they echo the classical Zionist goal of creating a normal country. The two are linked. Absent a different discussion with the U.S. and our friends there, Israel is unlikely to become normal. Perhaps this difficult book can help advance that discussion.
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There are books that change people’s consciousness and change history. Some tell a story, like Harriet Beech Stowe’s 1851 “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”, which gave a huge impetus to the campaign for the abolition of slavery. Others take the form of a political treatise, like Theodor Herzl’s “Der Judenstaat”, which gave birth to the Zionist movement. Or they can be scientific in nature, like Charles Darwin’s “The Origin of Species”, which changed the way humanity sees itself. And perhaps political satire, too, can shake the world, like “1984” by George Orwell.
The impact of these books was amplified by their timing. They appeared exactly at the right time, when a large public was ready to absorb their message.
It may well turn out that the book by the two professors, John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, “The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy”, is just such a book.
It is a dry scientific research report, 355 pages long, backed by 106 further pages containing some thousand references to sources.
It is not a bellicose book. On the contrary, its style is restrained and factual. The authors take great care not to utter a single negative comment on the legitimacy of the Lobby, and indeed bend over backwards to stress their support for the existence and security of Israel. They let the facts speak for themselves. With the skill of experienced masons, they systematically lay brick upon brick, row upon row, leaving no gap in their argumentation.
This wall cannot be torn down by reasoned argument. Nobody has tried, and nobody is going to. Instead, the authors are being smeared and accused of sinister motives. If the book could be ignored altogether, this would have been done – as has happened to other books which have been buried alive.
(Some years ago, there appeared in Russia a large tome by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the world-renowned laureate of the Nobel Prize for Literature, about Russia and its Jews. This book, called “200 Years Together”, has been completely ignored. As far as I know, it has not been translated into any language, certainly not into Hebrew. I asked several of Israel’s leading intellectuals, and none of them had even heard of the book. Neither does it appear on the list of Amazon.com, which includes all the author’s other works.)
The two professors take the bull by the horns. They deal with a subject which is absolutely taboo in the United States, a subject nobody in his right mind would even mention: the enormous influence of the pro-Israel lobby on American foreign policy.
In a remorselessly systematical way, the book analyzes the Lobby, takes it apart, describes its modus operandi, discloses its financial sources and lays bare its relations with the White House, the two houses of Congress, the leaders of the two major parties and leading media people.
The authors do not call into question the Lobby’s legitimacy. On the contrary, they show that hundreds of lobbies of this kind play an essential role in the American democratic system. The gun and the medical lobbies, for example, are also very powerful political forces. But the pro-Israel lobby has grown out of all proportion. It has unparalleled political power. It can silence all criticism of Israel in Congress and the media, bring about the political demise of anyone who dares to break the taboo, prevent any action that does not conform to the will of the Israeli government.
In its second part, the book shows how the Lobby uses its tremendous power in practice: how it has prevented the exertion of any pressure on Israel to for peace with the Palestinians, how it pushed the US into the invasion of Iraq, how it is now pushing for wars with Iran and Syria, how it supported the Israeli leadership in the recent war in Lebanon and blocked calls for a ceasefire when it didn’t want it.
Each of these assertions is backed up by so much undeniable evidence and quotations from written material (mainly from Israeli sources) that they cannot be ignored.
Most of these disclosures are nothing new for those in Israel who deal with these matters.
I myself could add to the book a whole chapter from personal experience.
In the late 50s, I visited the US for the first time. A major New York radio station invited me for an interview. Later they cautioned me: “You can criticize the President (Dwight D. Eisenhower) and the Secretary of State (John Foster Dulles) to your heart’s content, but please don’t criticize Israeli leaders!” At the last moment the interview was cancelled altogether, and the Iraqi ambassador was invited instead. Criticism was apparently tolerable when it came from an Arab, but absolutely not coming from an Israeli.
In 1970, the respected American “Fellowship of Reconciliation” invited me for a lecture tour of 30 universities, under the auspices of the Hillel rabbis. When I arrived in New York, I was informed that 29 of the lectures had been cancelled. The sole rabbi who did not cancel, Balfour Brickner, showed me a secret communication of the “Anti-Defamation League” that proscribed my lectures. It said: “While Knesset Member Avnery can in no way be considered a traitor, his appearance at this time would be deeply divisive…” In the end, all the lectures took place under the auspices of Christian chaplains.
I especially remember a depressing experience in Baltimore. A good Jew, who had volunteered to host me, was angered by the cancellation of my lecture in this city and obstinately insisted on putting it on. We combed the streets of the Jewish quarters – mile upon mile of signs with Jewish names – and did not find a single hall whose manager would agree to let the lecture by a member of the Israeli Knesset take place. In the end, we did hold the lecture in the basement of the building of my host’s apartment – and functionaries of the Jewish community came to protest.
That year, during Black September, I held a press conference in Washington DC, under the auspices of the Quakers. It seemed to be a huge success. The journalists came straight from a press conference with Prime Minister Golda Meir, and showered me with questions. Almost all the important media were represented – TV networks, radio, the major newspapers. After the planned hour was up, they would not let me go and kept me talking for another hour and a half. But the next day, not a single word appeared in any of the media. Thirty-one years later, in October 2001 I held a press conference on Capitol Hill in Washington, and exactly the same thing happened: many of the media were there, they held me for another hour – and not a word, not a single word, was published.
In 1968, a very respected American publishing house (Macmillan) brought out a book of mine’ “Israel Without Zionists”, which was later translated into eight other languages. The book described the Israeli-Arab conflict in a very different way and proposed the establishment of a Palestinian state next to Israel – a revolutionary idea at the time. Not a single review appeared in the American media. I checked in one of the most important book stores in New York and did not find the book. When I asked a salesman, he found it buried under a heap of volumes and put it on top. Half an hour later it was hidden again.
The book dealt with the “Two States for Two peoples” solution long before it became a world-wide consensus, and with my proposal for Israel’s integration in “the Semitic Region”. True, I am an Israeli patriot and was elected to the Knesset by Israeli voters. But I criticized the Israeli government – and that was enough.
The book by the two professors, who criticize the Israeli government from a different angle, cannot be buried anymore. This fact, by itself, speaks volumes.
The book is based on an essay by the two that appeared last year in a British journal, after no American publication dared to touch it. Now a respected American publishing house has released it – an indication that something is moving. The situation has not changed, but it seems that it is now possible at least to talk about it.
Everything depends on timing – and apparently the time is now ripe for such a book, which will shock many good people in America. It is now causing an uproar.
The two professors are, of course, accused of anti-Semitism, racism and hatred of Israel. What Israel? It is the Lobby itself that hates a large part of Israel. In recent years is has shifted even more to the Right. Some of its constituent groups – such as the neo-cons who pushed the US into the Iraq war – are openly connected with the right-wing Likud, and especially with Binyamin Netanyahu. The billionaires who finance the Lobby are the same people who finance the extreme Israeli Right, and most of all the settlers.
The small, determined Jewish groups in the US who support the Israeli peace movements are remorselessly persecuted. Some of them fold after a few years. Members of Israeli peace groups who are sent to America are boycotted and slandered as “self-hating-Jews”.
The political views of the two professors, which are briefly stated at the end of the book, are identical with the stand of the Israeli peace forces: the Two-State Solution, ending the occupation, borders based on the Green Line, and international support for the peace settlement.
If this is anti-Semitism, then we here are all anti-Semites. And only the Christian Zionists – those who openly demand the return of the Jews to this country but secretly prophesy the annihilation of the unconverted Jews at the Second Coming of Jesus Christ – are the true Lovers of Zion.
Even if not a single bad word about the pro-Israel lobby can be uttered in the US, it is far from being a secret society, hatching conspiracies like the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion”. On the contrary, AIPAC, the Anti-Defamation League, the Zionist Federation and the other organizations vociferously boast about their actions and publicly proclaim their incredible successes.
Quite naturally, the diverse components of the Lobby compete with each other – Who has the biggest influence on the White House, Who scares the most senators, Who controls more journalists and commentators,. This competition causes a permanent escalation – because every success by one group spurs the others to redouble their efforts.
This could be very dangerous. A balloon that is inflated to monstrous dimensions can one day burst in the face of American Jews (who, by the way, according to the polls, object to many positions adopted by the Lobby that claims to speak in their name.)
Most of the American public now opposes the Iraq war and considers it a disaster. This majority still does not connect the war with the actions of the pro-Israel lobby. No newspaper and no politician dares to hint at such a connection – yet. But if this taboo is broken, the result may be very dangerous for the Jews and for Israel.
Beneath the surface, a lot of anger directed against the Lobby is accumulating. The presidential candidates, who are compelled to grovel at the feet of AIPAC, the senators and congressmen, who have become slaves of the Lobby, the media people, who are forbidden to write what they really think – all these secretly detest the Lobby. If this anger explodes, it may hurt us, too.
This lobby has become a Golem. And like the Golem in legend, in the end it will bring disaster on its maker.
If I may be permitted to voice some criticism of my own:
When the original article by the two professors appeared, I argued that “the tail is wagging the dog and the dog is wagging the tail”. The tail, of course, is Israel.
The two professors confirm the first part of the equation, but emphatically deny the second. The central thesis of the book is that the pressure of the Lobby causes the United States to act against its own interests (and, in the long run, also against the true interests of Israel.) They do not accept my contention, quoted in the book, that Israel acted in Lebanon as “America’s Rottweiler” (to Hizbullah as “Iran’s Doberman”).
I agree that the US is acting against its true interest (and the true interests of Israel) – but the American leadership does not see it that way. Bush and his people believe – even without the input of the Lobby – that it would be advantageous for the US to establish a permanent American military presence in the middle of this region of huge oil reserves. In my view, this counter-productive act at was one of the main objectives of the war, side by side with the desire to eliminate one of Israel’s most dangerous enemies. Unfortunately, the book deals only very briefly with this issue.
That does not diminish in any way my profound admiration for the intellectual qualities, integrity and courage of Mearsheimer and Walt, two knights who, like St. George, who have sallied forth to face the fearful dragon.
Critics of “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy” by John J. Mearsheimer and Steven M. Walt (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), cannot be surprised that the attacks on the book prior to publication helped propel it as high as no. 10 on Amazon’s best-seller list. Not only that, the names “Mearsheimer-Walt” have become almost People-magazine famous, odd for two mild-mannered political scientists from the University of Chicago and Harvard, respectively.
It just shows you what a little “buzz” will do – and a lot of buzz surrounds this book.
And why not? It’s an important, heavily sourced and documented book (108 pages of footnotes) by two distinguished professors at two of our best universities. It deals with Middle East policymaking at a time when America’s problems in that region surpass our problems anywhere else. And it is a serious book about a subject that is decidedly provocative, a much improved and expanded version of the original London Review of Books article.
The book asks the question: How much power does the pro-Israel lobby have? The authors answer: Too much, and both America and Israel suffer as a result.
It’s an arguable question, and people are definitely arguing about it. It is also the kind of book you do not have to agree with on every count (I certainly don’t) to benefit from reading it.
The authors do not say that there is anything intrinsically wrong with the existence of a pro-Israel lobby. As political scientists, they understand that lobbies are as American as corn in Kansas. They know that lobbies play a major role in virtually all areas of American policy-making, domestic and foreign. Nor do they suggest that the pro-Israel community is out of bounds when it uses its influence on Israel’s behalf.
Their question is whether or not that influence is used to promote policies that are in America’s interest, or even Israel’s.
The authors’ answer is “no.” They believe that the interests of both countries would be better served by aggressive American involvement intended to produce an Israeli-Palestinian agreement along the lines of the so-called Clinton parameters. Israel would withdraw more or less to the ’67 lines, a Palestinian state would be established, Israel’s security would be guarded by ironclad guarantees, and the Palestinians would abandon any future claims on Israeli territory. They believe that it is the influence of the lobby that has prevented the U.S. from vigorously pursuing this goal, despite the fact that both presidents Clinton and George W. Bush have endorsed it.
I spent almost 20 years as a Congressional aide and can testify from repeated personal experience that senators and House members are under constant pressure to support status-quo policies on Israel. It is no accident that members of Congress compete over who can place more conditions on aid to the Palestinians, who will be first to denounce the Saudi peace plan, and who will win the right to be the primary sponsor of the next pointless Palestinian-bashing resolution. Nor is it an accident that there is never a serious Congressional debate about policy toward Israel and the Palestinians. Moreover, every president knows that any serious effort to push for an Israeli-Palestinian agreement based on compromise by both sides will produce loud (sometimes hysterical) opposition from the Hill.
Walt and Mearsheimer mostly limit themselves to exploring whether all this is good for the United States (and to a lesser extent, Israel). The question I ask today, and not for the first time, is whether this type of behavior is good for Israel. Forty years after the Six-Day War, the occupation continues, the resistance to it intensifies, and Israelis in increasing numbers question whether they have a future in the Jewish state.
Has “pro-Israel” advocacy consistently produced “pro-Israel” ends? At several critical moments, it most certainly has not.
Was it pro-Israel to lobby the Nixon administration in 1971 to support Israel’s rejection of Anwar Sadat’s offer of peace in exchange for a three-mile pullback from the banks of the Suez Canal? Nixon capitulated to the pressure and backed off, leaving Israel free to reject Sadat’s offer. Two years later, Sadat attacked and Israel lost 3,000 soldiers in a war that would have been prevented had Israel accepted the Sadat initiative. Israel gained nothing in that war, and ended up giving Sadat all the territory he sought in 1971, and much more.
Was it pro-Israel to urge the Reagan administration to back Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982? That war, and its bloody aftermath, lasted for 18 years, with the last Israeli soldier not leaving Lebanon until 2000 – after a thousand soldiers were killed. Just days after Israel’s invasion, Lebanese Christian forces massacred almost a thousand Palestinians at the Sabra and Chatila refugee camps. And 241 United States Marines, serving as post-war peace keepers, were killed (the most on any single day since Iwo Jima) when Hezbollah blew up their barracks. In the end, the war accomplished nothing and Israel withdrew unconditionally.
Was it pro-Israel to press Congress to attach so many onerous conditions to aid to President Mahmoud Abbas’ Palestinian Authority that Abbas was unable to demonstrate to his people that a moderate president, who fully accepted Israel, would produce benefits that they would not achieve by choosing Hamas. The U.S. (and Israeli) policies of all sticks and no carrots led predictably to Abbas’ defeat by Hamas and a Hamas-controlled Gaza that has resumed its attacks on Israeli towns.
Was it pro-Israel to prevent the Reagan, Bush I, Clinton and Bush II administrations from insisting on a permanent freeze on settlements or, at the very least, the immediate removal of the illegal settlements? Wouldn’t Israel be infinitely better off if the United States had used friendly persuasion to end the settlement enterprise right from the get-go? After all, the vast majority of Israelis consider the settlements to be impediments to peace and so has every president since the first settlement was erected.
Similar questions could be asked about the arguments favoring the Iraq war as good for both the United States and Israel (when critics correctly predicted that it would be disastrous for both), and should be asked about some future attack on Iran.
These questions are especially urgent with a presidential election coming up.
Once again, presidential candidates are being told that in order to earn the “pro-Israel” label, they must heartily endorse the status quo. That means that when asked what they would do about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, they must state unequivocal support for Israeli policies. They must put the onus for the failed diplomacy of recent years on the Palestinians. They must indicate that although they support peace, they will not adopt the kind of proactive peacemaking engaged in by presidents Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush, and Bill Clinton. They must never use the words “even-handed” or “honest broker.” There is a script and the candidates must not deviate from it.
For the vast majority of us who care deeply about Israel, the politically correct (and safe) approach to Israel is insulting. Sure, it keeps candidates out of trouble with that small minority of the pro-Israel community which believes that Israel can survive as a Jewish state while holding on to the territories. But that isn’t most American Jews, not by a long shot.
Candidates who avoid saying what they believe out of fear of offending lobbyists and activists who have been proven wrong over and over again are not doing Israel any favors. And they should not be rewarded for it by being granted the label of “pro-Israel.”
There is nothing pro-Israel about supporting policies that only promise that Israeli mothers will continue to dread their sons’ 18th birthdays for another generation. For that we are supposed to be grateful? M.J. Rosenberg is director of Israel Policy Forum’s Washington Policy Center.
Posted inAmerica, Israel, Jews|Comments Off on It’s Lobbying, but Is It Really pro-Israel?
John J. Mearsheimer writes in 2010: The United States has been the most powerful state on the planet for many decades, and has
deployed robust military forces in the Asia-Pacific region since the early years of the second world war. The American presence has had significant consequences for Australia and for the wider region. This is how the Australian government sees it, at least according to the 2009 Defence White Paper: ‘Australia has been a very secure country for many decades, in large measure because the wider Asia-Pacific region has enjoyed an unprecedented era of peace and stability underwritten by US strategic primacy.’ The US, in other words, has acted as a pacifier in this part of the world.
However, according to the very next sentence in the White Paper, ‘That order is being transformed as economic changes start to bring about changes in the distribution of strategic power.’ The argument here, of course, is that the rise of China is having a significant effect on the global balance of power. In particular, the power gap between China and the United States is shrinking and in all likelihood ‘US strategic primacy’ in this region will be no more. This is not to say that the US will disappear; in fact, its presence is likely to grow in response to China’s rise. But the US will no longer be the preponderant power in the Asia-Pacific region, as it has been since 1945.
The most important question that flows from this discussion is whether China can rise peacefully. It is clear from the Defence White Paper — which is tasked with assessing Australia’s strategic situation out to the year 2030 — that policymakers in Canberra are worried about the changing balance of power in Asia. Consider these comments from that document: ‘As other powers rise, and the primacy of the United States is increasingly tested, power relations
will inevitably change. When this happens there will be the possibility of miscalculation. There is a small but still concerning possibility of growing confrontation between some of these powers.’ At another point in the White Paper, we read that, ‘Risk resulting from escalating strategic competition could emerge quite unpredictably, and is a factor to be considered in our defence planning.’ In short, the Australian government seems to sense that the shifting balance of power between China and the US may not be good for peace in the neighbourhood.
Now, Australians should be worried about China’s rise, because it is likely to lead to intense security competition between China and the US, with considerable potential for war. Moreover, most of China’s neighbours, to include India, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Russia, Vietnam, and, yes, Australia, will join with the US to contain China’s power. To put it bluntly: China cannot rise peacefully.
Posted inAmerica, Australia, China|Comments Off on Australians should fear the rise of China
Published on Apr 1, 2013:
Dr. John Mearsheimer, the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago, presents his recent theories on the rise of China. The lecture took place at the Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security and Law on March 26, 2013.
John Mearsheimer says: “The best any country can do is to be a regional hegemon. The United States is a regional hegemon in the Western hemisphere. Your second goal is to make sure you do not have a peer competitor.”
“Most of you have probably never wondered why it is that the United States is roaming all over God’s little green acre, sticking its nose into other people’s business. A principle reason is that we have no security risks in the western hemisphere, so we are free to roam. The United States does not want another power to so thoroughly dominate its part of the world that it is free to roam into the Western hemisphere.
“The United States wants a Germany to have to worry about Russia and France and Britain. It does not want a Germany to so dominate Europe that it is free to wander into the western hemisphere.”
“When the United States started, it was 13 measly colonies strung out along the Atlantic seaboard. We marched across North America to the Pacific Ocean. We murdered huge numbers of native Americans. We stole their land. We went to war with Mexico and stole what is now the Southwest of the United States. We invaded Canada in 1812. We were deeply interested throughout the 19th Century in making Canada part of the United States. The reason that Toronto is not the capital of Canada and Ottawa is the capital, is that the British and Canadians expected us to make a return visit and they did want their capital overrun in the initial stages of the war, so they picked a city farther from the border with the United States. We were deeply interested in conquering more territory south of our border, especially in the Caribbean. The chief reason we didn’t is because of the slavery issue.”
“The United States had a voracious appetite for conquering territory. There is no state in modern times with a better record for conquest than the United States. Adolf Hitler, right after launching Operation Barbarossa on June 22, 1941, into the Soviet Union, often talked about the United States as his model for creating lebensraum (open space). The United States is a highly aggressive state. We call it manifest destiny.”
From Breitbart: Donald Trump has a better shot at the presidency than Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) and is just as likely to win the 2016 election as Jeb Bush, say two embarrassed political scientists.
We know they’re embarrassed by their discovery because their Washington Post article buried that news far, far into their math-heavy, thumb-sucking, 20-paragraph, Sept. 25 perambulation.
In their article, the two academics first did some tricks with numbers, multiplied some percentages, added a few assumptions — and then subtracted their interesting conclusion from the lede.
Weird — why would they subtract their conclusion?
Because they concluded that Donald Trump “has a 54 percent chance of being elected president if he is the GOP nominee… [and] he is as electable as [Jeb] Bush and [John] Kasich and more electable than [Carly] Fiorina and [Marco] Rubio.”
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I was impressed by this presentation by the two political scientists. At the end, John J. Mearsheimer says: “The United States would care about Iran acquiring nuclear weapons even if there was no state of Israel. There are two reasons for that. One, we care greatly about nuclear proliferation. Two, the Persian Gulf is an area of great strategic interest to the United States and the United States cares greatly about the balance of power in that region. There is one state we care about more than any other — Iran, because it is the one state that is capable of becoming a regional hegemon.”
“The state of Israel and parts of the [Israel] are the main driving forces behind using military force to deal with the Iranian nuclear problem… It’s the same cast of characters who are pushing to go to war against Iran who pushed the United States to go to war against Iraq. If you could take Israeli pressure and pressure from the Lobby, especially the neo-conservatives, out of the equation, there would be little talk in the United States today about using force against Iran.”
“Regarding the gentleman’s comments about negative reviews of our work in the United States, there is no question that the book has gotten nearly universal condemnation here in the United States and the response to the article that came out in March of 2006 was not much different. Steve and I wrote [in 2006] an 80 page response to all of the criticisms laid out. Anybody who reads our book would predict that we would be clobbered in the United States and that we would get good reviews outside of the United States and that’s what’s happened… Where is the most favorable review? Israel. It was written by Uri Avnery. Two of the best reviews we have gotten have been in Haaretz, the New York Times of Israel — Daniel Levy and MJ Rosenberg… We get slammed in the United States and treated differently overseas and you all know the reason — the [Israel] Lobby.”
Earlier, Stephen Walt said: “Is Israel in jeopardy? Israel has the strongest conventional army in the Middle East and it has hundreds of nuclear weapons. The famous statement of Ahmadinejad [in 2005] is often mistranslated as wiping Israel off the map. What he actually said that the Jewish state of Israel should be erased from the page of time, that the Jewish state of Israel should go out of existence in the same way that the Soviet Union went out of existence, the same way the Iranian Shah fell. He was not saying Iran would attack Israel… He was saying the [Jewish] state should go out of existence and replaced with another government there and he was not calling for the physical destruction of Israel. I’ve seen no evidence that any Iranian wants the entire Iranian society to commit suicide which is what an attack on Israel would entail, given Israel’s own nuclear deterrent and given that we are allied with Israel and have thousands of nuclear weapons of our own. I don’t think Israel’s survival is in jeopardy.”
“Many of our conflicts [with the Muslim world] are not based on irrational hatreds of the United States but on real conflicts of interest… Iran is not seeking nuclear weapons because it is has some deep religious or cultural conflict with the United States or the West. If any of us were in Iran’s position, we would thinking seriously about having a nuclear deterrent because the world’s most powerful country has declared they want regime change in that country.”
Ahmadinejad was the subject of controversy in 2005 when one of his statements, given during “The World Without Zionism” conference in Tehran, was translated to suggest Israel should be “wiped off the map,”[77] an English idiom which means to “cause a place to stop existing,”[78] or “destroy completely”.[79] The story was picked up by Western news agencies and quickly made headlines around the world.[80][citation needed] On 30 October, The New York Times published a full transcript of the speech in which Ahmadinejad was quoted:
“
Our dear Imam (referring to Ayatollah Khomeini) said that the occupying regime must be wiped off the map and this was a very wise statement. We cannot compromise over the issue of Palestine. Is it possible to create a new front in the heart of an old front. This would be a defeat and whoever accepts the legitimacy of this regime has in fact, signed the defeat of the Islamic world. Our dear Imam targeted the heart of the world oppressor in his struggle, meaning the occupying regime. I have no doubt that the new wave that has started in Palestine, and we witness it in the Islamic world too, will eliminate this disgraceful stain from the Islamic world.[81]
”
The Iranian presidential website stated: “the Zionist Regime of Israel faces a deadend and will under God’s grace be wiped off the map,” and “the Zionist Regime that is a usurper and illegitimate regime and a cancerous tumor should be wiped off the map.” [82]
The “wiped off the map” translation originated from the state-controlled Islamic Republic News Agency.[83] This translation’s use in the media has been criticized.[84] Arash Norouzi, artist and co-founder of The Mossadegh Project, says the statement “wiped off the map” did not exist in the original speech and that Ahmadinejad directed his comment toward the “regime occupying Jerusalem”. Norouzi’s translation of the Persian quote reads; “the Imam said this regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time.”[85]Juan Cole, historian of the Middle East and South Asia, concurs; Ahmadinejad’s statement should be translated as, “the Imam said that this regime occupying Jerusalem(een rezhim-e eshghalgar-e qods, Persian: این رژیم اشغالگر قدس) must [vanish from] the page of time (bayad az safheh-ye ruzgar mahv shavad, Persian: باید از صفحه روزگار محو شود),” noting that there is no Persian idiom to wipe something off the map.[86] Shiraz Dossa, a professor of Political Science at St. Francis Xavier University in Nova Scotia, Canada, also believes the text is a mistranslation.
Ahmadinejad was quoting the Ayatollah Khomeini in the specific speech under discussion: what he said was that “the occupation regime over Jerusalem should vanish from the page of time.” No state action is envisaged in this lament; it denotes a spiritual wish, whereas the erroneous translation – “wipe Israel off the map” – suggests a military threat. There is a huge chasm between the correct and the incorrect translations. The notion that Iran can “wipe out” U.S.-backed, nuclear-armed Israel is ludicrous.[88][89][90]
[T]ranslators in Tehran who work for the president’s office and the foreign ministry disagree with them. All official translations of Mr. Ahmadinejad’s statement, including a description of it on his website, refer to wiping Israel away. Sohrab Mahdavi, one of Iran’s most prominent translators, and Siamak Namazi, managing director of a Tehran consulting firm, who is bilingual, both say “wipe off” or “wipe away” is more accurate than “vanish” because the Persian verb is active and transitive.
”
Bronner continued: “..it is hard to argue that, from Israel’s point of view, Mr. Ahmadinejad poses no threat. Still, it is true that he has never specifically threatened war against Israel. So did Iran’s president call for Israel to be ‘wiped off the map’? It certainly seems so. Did that amount to a call for war? That remains an open question.”[92] This elicited a further response from Jonathan Steele, who noted that Bronner agreed that “map” or any other place noun had not been used and criticized this Wikipedia entry (as it was on 14 June 2006) for “claiming falsely” that Ethan Bronner had “concluded that Ahmadinejad had in fact said that Israel was to be wiped off the map“.[93]
Iranian government sources denied that Ahmadinejad issued any sort of threat. On 20 February 2006, Iran’s foreign minister Manouchehr Mottaki told a news conference: “How is it possible to remove a country from the map? He is talking about the regime. We do not recognize this regime legally.”[94][95][96] Ahmadinejad himself stated that Iran is not a threat to any country, including Israel.[97] At a gathering of foreign guests marking the 19th anniversary of the death of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 2008, Ahmadinejad said:
“
“You should know that the criminal and terrorist Zionist regime which has 60 years of plundering, aggression and crimes in its file has reached the end of its work and will soon disappear off the geographical scene.”[98]
At a news conference on 14 January 2006, Ahmadinejad stated his speech had been exaggerated and misinterpreted.[99] “There is no new policy, they created a lot of hue and cry over that. It is clear what we say: Let the Palestinians participate in free elections and they will say what they want.” Speaking at a D-8 summit meeting in July 2008, he denied that his country would ever instigate military action. Instead he claimed that “the Zionist regime” in Israel would eventually collapse on its own.[100][101]
“
Asked if he objected to the government of Israel or Jewish people, he said that “creating an objection against the Zionists doesn’t mean that there are objections against the Jewish”. He added that Jews lived in Iran and were represented in the country’s parliament.[100]
”
Ahmadinejad said that the issue with Palestine would be over “the day that all refugees return to their homes [and] a democratic government elected by the people comes to power”,[102] and denounced attempts to normalise relations with Israel, condemning all Muslim leaders who accept the existence of Israel as “acknowledging a surrender and defeat of the Islamic world.”
In a September 2008 interview Ahmadinejad was asked: “If the Palestinian leaders agree to a two-state solution, could Iran live with an Israeli state?” He replied:
“
If they [the Palestinians] want to keep the Zionists, they can stay … Whatever the people decide, we will respect it. I mean, it’s very much in correspondence with our proposal to allow Palestinian people to decide through free referendums.[103]
”
Interviewer Juan Gonzalez called the reply “a tiny opening”.[103] Another observer however dubbed it an “astonishing” admission “that Iran might agree to the existence of the state of Israel,” and a “softening” of Ahmadinejad’s “long-standing, point-blank anti-Israeli stance”. Australian-born British human rights activist Peter Tatchell asked whether the statement reflected opportunism on Ahmadinejad’s part, or an openness by Iran “to options more moderate than his reported remarks about wiping the Israeli state off the map.”[104]
The speech was interpreted by some as a call for genocide. Canada‘s then Prime MinisterPaul Martin said, “this threat to Israel’s existence, this call for genocide coupled with Iran’s obvious nuclear ambitions is a matter that the world cannot ignore.”[105]
Juan Cole interprets the speech as a call for the end of Jewish rule of Israel, but not necessarily for the removal of Jewish people:
“
His statements were morally outrageous and historically ignorant, but he did not actually call for mass murder (Ariel Sharon made the “occupation regime” in Gaza “vanish” last summer [sic]) or for the expulsion of the Israeli Jews to Europe.[108]
”
On ‘Qods Day‘ in 2007, Iranian government IRIB News in English reported that the president ‘repeated an earlier suggestion to Europe on settlement of the Zionists in Europe or big lands such as Canada and Alaska so they would be able to own their own land.’[109]
Gawdat Bahgat, a professor of political science at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, said: “The fiery calls to destroy Israel are meant to mobilize domestic and regional constituencies. Iran has no plan to attack Israel with its [Israel’s] nuclear arsenal and powerful conventional military capabilities.[110] Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khameni summed up his country’s stand on the Arab-Israeli conflict by stressing, ‘[The] Palestine issue is not Iran’s jihad.'” In fact, Bahgat says that according to most analysts a military confrontation between Iran and Israel is unlikely.[111]
Ahmadinejad gave the examples of Iran under the Shah, the Soviet Union and Saddam Hussein‘s regime in Iraq as examples of apparently invincible regimes that ceased to exist, using them to justify his belief that the United States and the State of Israel can also be defeated: “They say it is not possible to have a world without the United States and Zionism. But you know that this is a possible goal and slogan.”
President Bush attempted to sell the American public and the international community on the need for a war in Iraq, America’s most important Jewish organizations rallied as one to his defense. In statement after statement community leaders stressed the need to rid the world of Saddam Hussein and his weapons of mass destruction. Some groups went even further, arguing that the removal of the Iraqi leader would represent a significant step toward bringing peace to the Middle East and winning America’s war on terrorism.
Now, however, with questions mushrooming about the basis for war and America’s occupation of Iraq, Jewish groups are staying low. Their newfound silence is both strategically misguided and morally alarming.
The question here is not whether the Jewish organizations were somehow responsible for America’s entry into the war. Conspiracy theories of a Jewish-Israeli cabal dragging America into war for Jerusalem’s benefit do not deserve serious attention. It is true that concern for Israel’s safety rightfully factored into the deliberations of the main Jewish groups. But they did not send troops into Iraq; the Bush administration did, for a host of its own reasons. Its main premise was that so long as Saddam remained in power, he would be a destabilizing force threatening the United States and its allies. The administration’s view resonated widely, even with liberal Jewish organizations that would have had no stomach for a war fought solely to cement Israel’s hold on the territories.
There’s no need to question the motivations of those who endorsed the war. Fair-minded communal leaders of many political and religious stripes ended up supporting the war. The problem arises now, one year later, when those Jewish groups that spoke out for the war refuse to wrestle with the consequences of an invasion that so far has cost the lives of more than 700 U.S. troops and hampered the fight against terrorism, while failing to turn up a single weapon of mass destruction.
Jewish community leaders need not issue any apologies for taking the administration at its word on the immediacy of Saddam’s threat. But, having done so, they should now be leading the push for an investigation into why America’s pre-war intelligence was so flawed and whether the country was misled by a White House bent on war. They should be encouraging a national debate over whether the war has hurt or helped the war against Al Qaeda. And, finally, as reports of poor planning, cronyism and prisoner abuse in Iraq mount, Jewish leaders have an obligation to call for an accounting from the administration. They took a stand a year ago. They owe it to their constituency to speak out now.
The Jewish communal leadership has a credibility on the national and world stage because of its presumed moral stature as the voice of a community of conscience. Its silence now represents a betrayal of that trust.
London Review of Books Vol. 28 No. 6, March 23, 2006
John Mearsheimer is the Wendell Harrison Professor of Political Science at University of Chicago, and the author of The Tragedy of Great Power Politics.
Stephen Walt is the Robert and Renee Belfer Professor of International Affairs at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. His most recent book is Taming American Power: The Global Response to US Primacy.
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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.
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?
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.
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 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.
The US has a terrorism problem in good part because it is so closely allied with Israel, not the other way around.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
Not all Jewish Americans are part of the Lobby.
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.’
In 1997, Fortune magazine asked members of Congress and their staffs to list the most powerful lobbies in Washington. AIPAC was ranked second.
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.
The Israel Lobby is no different from the farm lobby, steel or textile workers’ unions, or other ethnic lobbies.
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’.
AIPAC, a de facto agent for a foreign government, has a stranglehold on Congress.
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.
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 doesn’t want an open debate, of course, because that might lead Americans to question the level of support they provide.
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.
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 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.
Anyone who merely claims that there is an Israel Lobby runs the risk of being charged with anti-semitism.
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.
Sharon and the Lobby took on the president of the United States and triumphed.
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.’
‘Israel is urging US officials not to delay a military strike against Iraq’s Saddam Hussein.’- Washington Post
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.
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.
Ha’aretz columnist Akiva Eldar warned that Feith and Perle ‘are walking a fine line between their loyalty to American governments . . . and Israeli interests’.
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.
Robert Weisberg writes: For over a half century government has spent billions to eliminate the race-related academic achievement gap and all to no avail. Paralleling this educational failure has been a similar frustration to reverse the pathologies plaguing the black underclass, e.g., crime, welfare dependency, drug addiction, chaotic family life, gang violence and chronic unemployment, among others. Yes, some policies such as stop and frisk may help, but nothing appears to be a long-term, politically viable cure for this Hobbesian world. Sad to say, both conditions—education and pathology—appear intractable.
Let me suggest a radically different way of solving both problems: replace the current high test score idée fixe with education as civilizing. That is, transforming under-class black youngsters into dutiful scholars is unreachable but we may be able to civilize them just as millions of Europeans were “domesticated” between the 11th and 20th century (see Steven Pinker’s The Better Angels of Our Nature, Chapter 3). Hardly a snap but certainly more feasible than boosting the test scores of blacks. Of the utmost importance, the formulae exist and can be readily applied; no need to unleash thousands of policy wonks to invent yet more expensive doomed panaceas. And, replacing the test score crusade with a civilizing mission will, in all likelihood, simultaneously improve academic performance.
Now, as per Pinker, who himself heavily relied on Norbert Elias (1897-1990) and his Civilizing Process, let’s begin with some items on the civilization menu.
First, the civil society requires people controlling their emotions, especially violent urges. As Pinker depicts the transformation, reacting to insults with immediate violence (defending one’s honor) slowly gave way to dueling that permitted multiple “honorable” escape routes which, in turn, transitioned to relying on litigation (“see you in court”). Simultaneously, the culture shifted so defending one’s reputation by drawing a sword for some trivial offense vanished thanks to the aggrieved party learning to hold his tongue, count to ten or develop a thick skin. Pinker also tells how ridicule eventually undermined the violence-soaked code that demanded a gentleman risk his life over trifling slights. Today’s civilized people see virtue in what was once spinelessness.
Second, civilization requires across-the-board delayed gratification, self-discipline and moderation. One does not eat a lunch snack at breakfast or crave the latest iPhone. Refined people now wait until all the others are served before eating. Think habits such as finishing school work before heading off to play or forgoing sex until adulthood. Most of all learn to resist crime as an alternative to employment and saving money.
Third, civilized people learn to obey authority regardless of contrary urges. When the teacher tells you to sit still and be quiet, you sit still and stop talking. As an adult one heeds police orders regardless of opinions regarding the police officer or policing more generally. In other words, civilization is impossible if “everybody does their own thing” or people can autonomously decide their own rules. Respect for the rule of law is what separates civilization from savagery.
The good news, as Pinker documents, is that history overflows with recipes to refine the unruly. Surely, even in the absence of stable families, teachers can impart these requirements if permitted to employ the traditional classroom discipline—stigma, humiliation, shame and even corporal punishment. Youngsters can certainly be taught the etiquette facilitating peaceful society—saying “excuse me” if inadvertently bumping into a classmate. Even students with room temperature IQ’s can be socialized though, to be sure, this quest may take years of punishment before avoiding fights over petty insults becomes second nature.
Moreover, it would cost almost nothing to begin teaching even kindergarten students habit such as punctuality, always being prepared and respective language—its “Mr. Smith,” not “hey teach.” Teachers could demand that youngsters tidy up after themselves so no milk and cookies until everything is neatly put away and the proper place. When I attended grade school no student could enter the building until everyone was perfectly lined up outside and absolutely silent. What about assigning books where the kindly hero outsmarts his boorish, brutal rival? Pinker tells of the many etiquette books of the Middle Ages that carefully spelled out behavior for a proper gentleman, and these can be adapted for today’s youngsters. While there might be rough and tumble sports but woe to any kid who turns a friendly dodge ball game into an exercise of taunting rivals that will almost guarantee violence. Punishment would be especially heavy if the miscreant continued this out of place behavior post game—who needs sports insults escalating into vendettas? The Battle of Waterloo may have been won on the playing fields of Eton, but if inner-city civilization is to be restored, the task must begin in thousands of violence prone schools and playgrounds.
Japanese educators have long understood the link between inculcating good behavior and academic achievement (it is called “learning to learn”). One practice requires youngsters to sit still and stare at a dot on the blackboard. Each student keeps a personal record of how long they are able to perform this patience-building task and those who excel are recognized for their accomplishment. In some classrooms the heat is turned down to 55 degrees and students wear shorts so as to learn how to work despite discomfort. Obviously there are countless other tactics, all practical, proven successful and many virtually cost-free but these examples should suffice.
Now, what is the prognosis for this civilizing mission? Alas, our advice is doomed and will surely be denounced. Clearly the basic premise underlying everything here is that young blacks (like all children) require domestication, but all the yammering will not sway critics who insist that imparting self-control, good manners, and obedience to authority is some pernicious scheme to make blacks “white.” I can already hear “are you suggesting that black youngsters are savages?” This opposition might be called Rousseauian educational philosophy with a racial twist—these youngsters naturally thirst for learning but are frustrated by rotten teachers, under-funded schools and all the rest.
But, at the same time, those who see “civilizing” as thinly disguised cultural imperialism do have a valid point, and one that must be addressed. After all, what moral justification exists for trying to turn a violence prone black dominated grade-school into one that resembles a school where classrooms are filled with quiet education-obsessed Asians? Recall the outrange from some black intellectuals when Bill Cosby suggested that young African Americans embrace more middle class “white” values. Our argument is easily reversed: perhaps these passive, dutiful Asians should lighten up a little and be more spontaneous (or, to use the PC euphemism for chaotic schools, be more “vibrant”).
The modern education establishment will also assert that learning should be fun (think Sesame Street, computer games, hands-on projects) and loathes traditional “authoritarian” practices (mastering the multiplication table is condemned as “drill and kill”). Progressive experts might admit that discipline-heavy Catholic schools graduate well-behaved youngsters who also performed well academically (including inner-city black kids), but returning to this pedagogical model is now unthinkable even if the despotic nuns of yesteryear could be lured out of retirement.
And let’s not forget today’s cult of self-esteem that dictates that black youngsters in particular should never be made to feel unworthy so who needs unremitting censure and punishment? Imagine parental reaction when told that their little angel was humiliated by the teacher by being forced to write 100 times on the blackboard, “I will not talk in class unless called upon” and similar old-fashioned commonplace civilizing practices? Why risk a Department of Justice investigation into such cruelty?
Nor will any education-minded foundation let alone the US Department of Education willingly associate itself with something so “old-fashioned” as restoring disciplinary power to teachers or forcing youngster to practice self-restraint. Today’s education reform industry is all about innovation, cutting edge technology and painless gimmicks. Will Bill Gates give millions to school to buy rulers so teachers can whack the knuckles of miscreants?
Now, for the really big obstacles to applying Pinker’s lessons: there is no money in it. Today’s reformers flourish only to the extent that their nostrums attract powerful, well-funded constituencies. It is no accident, for example, that so many doomed-to-fail nostrums call for more teachers, learning specialists or therapists—powerful teachers’ unions love it. Meanwhile, free market conservatives are easy marks for anything that contains the word “choice.” Actually, I cannot think of a single potential constituency for the school’s civilizing mission.
Worse, as contemporary schools compete harder to attract students, efforts to civilize youngsters will decimate enrollments so better to entertain than punish little barbarians. Conceivably, the millennial long progression outlined in The Better Angels has ceased, at least for portions of society (Pinker suggests that this task is more arduous when targeting the bottom). If some folk can tolerate surviving in a Detroit that resembles 14th century Europe in its anarchy, why bother? Provided that the savagery is self-inflicted and peacekeeping handouts are affordable, the Hobbesian existence is now just “an alternative lifestyle.”
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