Since its publication in the London Review
of Books in March, John Mearsheimer's and Steve
Walt's article "The Israel lobby and US foreign
policy" - and the longer version published as a
working paper for Harvard University's John F
Kennedy School of Government - has received
widespread attention from across the political
spectrum.
These noted professors put
forward two major arguments: the first is the very
legitimate and widely acknowledged (outside of
official Washington) concern that US Middle East
policy, particularly US support for the more
controversial policies of the Israeli government,
is contrary to the long-term strategic interests
of the
United States. Their second,
and far more questionable, argument is that most
of the blame for this misguided policy rests with
the " Israel lobby" rather than with the more
powerful interests that actually drive US foreign
policy.
The Mearsheimer/Walt article has
been met by unreasonable criticism from a wide
range of rightist apologists for US support of the
Israeli occupation, including Democratic
Congressman Eliot Engel (who accused the authors
of being "anti-Semites"), Harvard Law Professor
Alan Dershowitz (who falsely claimed that the
authors gathered materials from websites of
neo-Nazi hate groups), pundits such as Martin
Kramer and Daniel Pipes, and publications such as
the New York Sun and The New Republic. The authors
have also been unfairly criticized for supposedly
distorting the history of the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict, though their overview is generally quite
accurate. The problem is in their analysis.
The article has garnered unreasonable
praise from many in progressive circles, who have
posted it on websites, circulated it on listservs,
and lauded it as an example of speaking truth to
power. Though critiques in establishment circles
of the bipartisan US support for the Israeli
occupation are unusual and welcome, progressive
promoters of the article have largely failed to
assess the ideological agenda of its authors and
the validity of their specific arguments.
It should be noted that Mearsheimer and
Walt are prominent figures in the realist school
of international relations, which discounts
international law, human rights, and other legal
and moral concerns in foreign policy. The realist
tradition plays down diplomacy not backed by
military force, belittles the United Nations and
other intergovernmental organizations, and
dismisses the growing role of international
non-governmental organizations and popular
movements.
With some notable exceptions,
Mearsheimer and Walt were largely supportive of US
foreign policy during the Cold War and
subsequently. For example, during the 1980s,
Mearsheimer - a graduate of the United States
Military Academy at West Point, New York - opposed
both a nuclear-weapons freeze and a no-first-use
nuclear policy. A critic of non-proliferation
efforts, Mearsheimer has defended India's atomic
arsenal and has even called for the spread of
nuclear weapons to non-nuclear states such as
Germany and Ukraine. He was also an outspoken
supporter of the 1991 US-led Gulf War.
It
is ironic, then, that these two men have suddenly
found themselves lionized by many progressive
critics of US foreign policy as a result of their
article. Any adulation should be tempered by the
authors' blind acceptance of a number of naive
assumptions regarding America's role in the world,
such as their assertion that the foreign policy of
the United States - the world's No 1 arms supplier
for dictatorial regimes - is designed "to promote
democracy abroad".
It is always welcome
and significant when traditional conservatives,
hawks, and others in the foreign-policy
establishment speak out against specific
manifestations of US foreign policy, such as when
Mearsheimer and Walt joined other prominent
conservatives in academia in opposing the 2003 US
invasion of Iraq. However, such realist opposition
grows not out of concern over any of the important
moral or legal questions but out of a rational
calculation that a particular war could lead to
greater instability and thereby run counter to
America's national-security interests. Indeed,
Israel's violation of international legal norms
and its impact on the civilian population in the
occupied territories are mentioned in the article
primarily as a way to counter claims that US
policy in support of the Israeli government is
based on a moral imperative.
What
progressive supporters of Mearsheimer's and Walt's
analysis seem to ignore is that both men have a
vested interest in absolving from responsibility
the foreign-policy establishment that they have
served so loyally all these years. Israel and its
supporters are in essence being used as convenient
scapegoats for America's disastrous policies in
the Middle East. And though they avoid falling
into simplistic, anti-Semitic, conspiratorial
notions regarding Jewish power and influence for
the failures of US Middle East policy, it is
nevertheless disturbing that the primary culprits
they cite are largely Jewish individuals and
organizations.
Also problematic are the
article's references to US Middle East policy
resulting in part from the influence of "Jewish
voters", since most American Jews take more
moderate positions regarding Iraq, Iran and
Palestine than does Congress or the administration
of President George W Bush. Similarly, while
Mearsheimer and Walt do not claim that the Israel
lobby is monolithic or centrally directed, they
fail to emphasize how not all pro-Israel groups
support the policies of the Israeli government,
particularly its right-wing administrations.
Groups such as Americans for Peace Now, the Tikkun
Community, Brit Tzedek v'Shalom, and the Israel
Policy Forum all identify themselves as pro-Israel
but oppose the occupation, the settlements, the
separation wall, and Washington's unconditional
support for Israeli policies.
Perhaps the
most twisted argument in their article is the
authors' claim that the 2003 invasion of Iraq "was
motivated in good part by a desire to make Israel
more secure". This is ludicrous on several
grounds. First of all, Israel is far less secure
as a result of the rise of Islamist extremism,
terrorist groups, and Iranian influence in
post-invasion Iraq than it was during the final
years of Saddam Hussein's rule, when Iraq was no
longer a strategic threat to Israel or actively
involved in anti-Israeli terrorism. Indeed, it had
been more than a decade since Iraq had posed any
significant threat to Israel, and some of Israel's
biggest supporters on Capitol Hill were among the
most outspoken voices against the US invasion of
Iraq. Within the Bush administration, although
the neo-conservatives who championed the invasion
of Iraq were supporters of Israel's rightist
governments, they had for many years also been
supporters of rightist governments in Latin
America, Southeast Asia and elsewhere out of a
belief that such alliances strengthened US
hegemony. More fundamentally, the United States
has had strong strategic interests in the Persian
Gulf region predating the establishment of modern
Israel. Indeed, oil companies and the arms
industry exert far more economic and ideological
influence over Washington's policy in the Persian
Gulf than does the Israel lobby.
Mearsheimer and Walt also claim that the
Israel lobby has urged Washington to put "very
heavy" pressure on Syria. In reality, the Israeli
government - fearing instability and a rise of
Islamic fundamentalism should the Bashar Assad
regime be toppled - has been encouraging the
United States to back off from putting too much
pressure on Syria. Furthermore, dozens of US House
of Representatives members who voted in favor of
the Syria Accountability Act in 2003 have opposed
a number of resolutions supporting Israeli
policies.
The authors' claim that the
Israel lobby is a major factor in the formulation
of overall US Middle East policy is plainly false.
Indeed, US policy in the Middle East over the past
several decades - orchestrating military
interventions and coups, backing right-wing
dictatorships, peddling neo-liberal economic
policies through the International Monetary Fund
and other international financial institutions,
undermining the United Nations and international
law, and imposing sanctions against nationalist
governments - is remarkably similar to US policy
toward Latin America, Africa and Southeast Asia.
If the United States can pursue such policies
elsewhere in the world without pressure from the
Israel lobby, why is its presence necessary to
explain US policies in the Middle East?
If
the agenda advocated by the Israel lobby were
substantially at variance with US foreign policy
elsewhere in the world, one could make a strong
case that these lobbyists were influential.
However, that is simply not the case. This is why
some of the most outspoken opponents of US foreign
policy in general and of US support for Israel in
particular - such as Noam Chomsky, Phyllis Bennis,
Mitchell Plitnick, Simona Sharoni, Joseph Massad,
Steve Niva and Norman Finkelstein - have raised
serious questions about the supposed power of the
Israel lobby, noting that it is responsible, in
the words of Professor Massad, for "the details
and intensity but not the direction, content or
impact of such policies".
When it comes to
US policy toward Israel and Palestine, such groups
as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee
(AIPAC) and its related political action
committees (PACs) have certainly influenced some
members of Congress as well as some
decision-makers in Republican and Democratic
administrations. Moreover, mainstream and
conservative Jewish organizations have mobilized
considerable lobbying resources, financial
contributions from the Jewish community, and
citizen pressure on the news media and other
forums of public discourse in support of the
Israeli government. At times, they have even
created a climate of intimidation against many who
speak out for peace and human rights or who
support the Palestinians' right of
self-determination. But all this is very different
from claiming that the Israel lobby is primarily
responsible for US policy in the Middle East, even
when it comes to Israel.
What motivates
US support for the Israeli government? The
unfortunate reality is that the US government is
perfectly capable of supporting right-wing allies
in efforts to invade, repress, and colonize weaker
neighbors without a well-organized ethnic minority
somehow forcing Congress or the administration to
do so. To claim otherwise is to assume that
without the pro-Israel lobby, the United States
would be supportive of international law and human
rights in its foreign policy.
Given that
US foreign policy has rarely been supportive of
international law and human rights, except when it
corresponds with short-term political interests,
why should the Middle East be an exception? There
was no Indonesian-American lobby responsible for
the bipartisan support for Indonesia's
quarter-century of brutal occupation in East
Timor, nor is there a Moroccan-American lobby
responsible for the bipartisan support for the
ongoing Moroccan occupation of Western Sahara.
It is certainly true that the United
States is, in the words of Mearsheimer and Walt,
"out of step" with the vast majority of the
international community on the question of Israel
and Palestine. Yet the United States is also out
of step with the vast majority of the
international community regarding the treaty
banning land mines, the International Criminal
Court, the Kyoto Protocol on global warming, and
the embargo against Cuba. Similarly, two decades
ago the United States was also out of step with
the vast majority of the international community
in regard to the mining of Nicaraguan harbors and
support for the Contra terrorists, as well as
opposition to sanctions against the apartheid
regime in South Africa and allying with Pretoria
in supporting the UNITA (National Union for the
Total Independence of Angola) rebels.
Mearsheimer's and Walt's observation that
US support of Israel runs contrary to US strategic
interests by stimulating anti-Americanism in the
Arab/Islamic world is not an unprecedented
dissenting position. During any US administration,
there are elements within establishment circles
that come to conclusions challenging the
prevailing mindset. For example, Mearsheimer and
Walt joined Zbigniew Brzezinski, Jacek Krugler,
and other realists who recognized that the
invasion of Iraq was contrary to US
national-security interests, but the Bush
administration and a sizable majority of Congress
(including the leadership of both parties)
believed otherwise.
Similarly, some
leading realists of the 1960s, such as Hans
Morgenthau, opposed the Vietnam War, but that
didn't stop an overwhelming bipartisan majority in
Washington from mistakenly believing, at least
until the late 1960s, that the war was somehow in
America's best interests. In other words,
administrations of both parties have repeatedly
proved themselves capable of acting contrary to
long-term national interests without the Israel
lobby forcing them to do so.
In certain
narrowly defined, short-term ways, US support for
the Israeli government does enhance US interests.
In a region where radical nationalism and Islamist
extremism could threaten US control of oil and
other strategic interests, Israel has played a
major role in preventing victories by radical
movements, not just in Palestine but in Lebanon
and Jordan as well. Israel has kept Syria, with
its radical nationalist government once allied
with the Soviet Union, in check, and the Israeli
Air Force is predominant throughout the region.
Israel's frequent wars facilitate
battlefield testing of US weapons, and Israel's
arms industry has provided weapons and munitions
for governments and opposition movements supported
by the United States. Moreover, during the 1980s,
Israel served as a conduit for US arms to
governments and movements too unpopular in the
United States to receive overt military
assistance, including South Africa under the
apartheid regime, Iran's Islamic Republic,
Guatemala's rightist military juntas, and the
Nicaraguan Contras. Israeli military advisers
assisted the Contras, the Salvadoran junta, and
other movements and governments backed by the
United States.
The Israeli intelligence
agency Mossad has cooperated with the Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA) and other US agencies in
gathering intelligence and spearheading covert
operations. Israel possesses missiles capable of
striking targets thousands of kilometers from its
borders and has collaborated with the US
military-industrial complex in research and
development for new jet fighters and anti-missile
defense systems, a relationship that is growing
every year.
As one Israeli analyst
described it during the Iran-Contra scandal, where
Israel played a crucial intermediary rule, "It's
like Israel has become just another [US] federal
agency, one that's convenient to use when you want
something done quietly." Former US secretary of
state Alexander Haig once described Israel as the
largest and only unsinkable US aircraft carrier in
the world.
One of the most fundamental
principles in the theory of international
relations is that the most stable military
relationship between adversaries (besides
disarmament) is strategic parity. Such a
relationship provides each opponent with an
effective deterrent against the other launching a
preemptive attack. If the United States was
concerned simply with Israel's security,
Washington would maintain Israeli defenses only to
a level approximately equal to any combination of
Arab armed forces. Instead, leaders of both US
political parties have called for ensuring
qualitative Israeli military superiority.
When Israel was less dominant militarily,
there was less consensus in Washington for backing
Israel. The continued high level of US aid to
Israel stems less out of concern for Israel's
survival than from a desire for Israel to continue
its political dominion over the Palestinians and
its military dominance of the region.
The
enormous amount of military aid received by Israel
annually has been cited by Mearsheimer and Walt,
among others, as indicative of the power of the
Israel lobby. Yet the pattern of this aid merely
reflects the importance of Israel to US interests.
Immediately after Israel's spectacular
victory in the 1967 war, when it demonstrated its
military superiority in the region, US aid
skyrocketed by 450%. Part of this increase,
according to the New York Times, apparently was
related to Israel's willingness to provide the
United States with examples of new Soviet weapons
captured during the war. After the 1970-71 civil
war in Jordan, when Israel exhibited its ability
to deter Syrian intervention in support of the
uprising against the pro-Western monarchy and thus
curb revolutionary movements outside its borders,
US aid expanded still further. When Israel further
proved its strength in successfully countering a
surprisingly strong Arab military assault in
October 1973, US military aid burgeoned once
again.
These aid increases paralleled the
British decision to withdraw its forces from areas
east of the Suez Canal. Along with the shah of
Iran, who also received massive arms and
logistical cooperation as a key component of the
Nixon Doctrine, Israel emerged as an important
allied force in the wake of the British
withdrawal.
This pattern continued when
aid shot up yet again in 1977, after the election
of the first right-wing Likud government in
Israel. Subsequent aid boosts coincided with the
fall of the shah of Iran and the ratification of
the Camp David Treaty with Egypt. US aid swelled
still further soon after the 1982 Israeli invasion
of Lebanon. In 1983 and 1984, when the United
States and Israel signed memoranda of
understanding on strategic cooperation and
military planning and conducted their first joint
naval and air military exercises, Israel was
rewarded with an additional US$1.5 billion in
economic aid and another half-billion dollars for
the development of a new jet fighter. During and
immediately after the Gulf War, US aid
strengthened by $650 million. In the decade
following - as concerns arose regarding the threat
of terrorist groups, Islamic extremists, and
so-called "rogue states" - US aid to Israel grew
further still. A peace treaty with Jordan and a
series of disengagement agreements with the
Palestinians led to still additional arms
transfers, despite the resulting enhanced security
for Israel.
Rather than being a liability,
as Mearsheimer and Walt claim, the 1991 Gulf War
once again proved Israel to be a strategic asset:
Israeli developments in air-to-ground warfare were
integrated into allied bombing raids against Iraqi
missile sites and other targets; Israeli-designed
conformal fuel tanks for F-15 fighter-bombers
greatly enhanced their range; Israeli-provided
mine plows were utilized during the final assaults
on Iraqi positions; Israeli mobile bridges were
used by US marines; Israeli targeting systems and
low-altitude warning devices were employed by US
helicopters; and Israel developed key components
for the widely used Tomahawk missiles. Israel is
also the fifth-largest supplier of high-tech
military hardware to the United States. Not
surprisingly, US aid to Israel intensified still
further in the 1990s, even as military support for
Israel's key Arab adversaries plummeted because of
the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Since
the September 2001 terrorist attacks, the
perception of Israel as a natural ally in
President George W Bush's "war on terror" has
cemented the strategic partnership still further,
as the Pentagon pre-positions equipment in Israel
to enhance military readiness for intervention
elsewhere in the Middle East. Israel has also been
supportive of US military operations in Iraq by
helping to train US Special Forces in aggressive
counter-insurgency techniques and sending
urban-warfare specialists to the US Army facility
in Fort Bragg, North Carolina, to instruct
assassination squads targeting suspected Iraqi
guerrilla leaders.
The US civil
administration in Iraq, established after the 2003
invasion, was modeled after Israel's civil
administration in the occupied Arab territories
after the 1967 Israeli invasion. US officers have
traveled to Israel and Israeli officers have
traveled to Iraq for additional consulting. What's
more, Israelis have helped arm and train
pro-American Kurdish militias and have assisted US
officials in interrogation centers for suspected
insurgents under detention near Baghdad. Israeli
advisers have shared helpful tips on erecting and
operating roadblocks and checkpoints, have
provided training in mine-clearing and
wall-breaching methods, and have suggested
techniques for tracking suspected insurgents using
drone aircraft. Israel has also provided aerial
surveillance equipment, decoy drones, and armored
construction equipment. In return, Israel has
reaped ever-greater US support.
In short,
the stronger, more aggressive, and more compliant
with US interests that Israel has become, the
higher the level of aid and strategic cooperation
it receives. A militant Israel is seen to advance
US interests. Indeed, an Israel in a constant
state of war - technologically sophisticated and
militarily advanced, yet lacking an independent
economy and dependent on the United States - is
far more willing to perform tasks unacceptable to
other allies than an Israel at peace with its
neighbors. As former US secretary of state Henry
Kissinger once put it, in reference to Israel's
reluctance to make peace, "Israel's obstinacy ...
serves the purposes of both our countries best."
In contrast, Washington's Arab allies -
still suspicious of US intentions and lacking the
Israeli advantages of well-trained armed forces,
political stability, technological sophistication,
and ability to mobilize human and material
resources - could never substitute for America's
alliance with Israel. Since continued support of
Israel - despite its ongoing repression of the
Palestinians - has not precluded unprecedented US
cooperation with Egypt, Morocco and the Persian
Gulf monarchies, few policymakers have expressed
concern that the US-Israeli alliance will
interfere with cultivating even closer strategic
relationships with authoritarian Arab regimes.
In short, though counterproductive in the
long term, US support for the Israeli government
is rooted in the same strategic considerations
that have led Washington to bolster other
governments that violate international legal
norms. Indeed, it strains credibility to assume
that such an overwhelming bipartisan consensus of
lawmakers would knowingly pursue policies they
believed to be contrary to the national-security
interests of the United States. There is plenty of
historic precedent, however, for a wide bipartisan
consensus of lawmakers myopically pursuing
policies that end up hurting US interests. While
the Israel lobby certainly contributes to this
myopia through its distortions of the historical
narrative and the current situation, there are
plenty of other cultural, political and related
factors also at work.
As leading Israeli
academic and peace activist Jeff Halper observed,
"Israel is able to pursue its occupation only
because of its willingness to serve Western
[mainly US] imperial interests" and has in essence
become "a handmaiden of American Empire". In other
words, the Israel lobby appears powerful because
Israel supports US global interests. By contrast,
if Israel had a genuinely leftist government or an
anti-imperialist foreign policy, the Israel lobby
would not appear to be so powerful.
The
lobby's influence on policymakers The
Israel lobby appears more powerful than it really
is because its agenda normally parallels the
interests of those who really hold power in
Washington. When its agenda conflicts with those
interests, its weakness becomes apparent.
US presidents are hardly powerless when it
comes to pressure by the Israel lobby. Evidence
suggests that whenever US presidents have come to
the conclusion that policies advocated by the
Israel lobby were not in America's best interests,
the administration has generally won. During the
Suez Crisis of 1956, just days before the US
presidential election, president Dwight Eisenhower
- fearing a radical backlash in the Arab world if
the United States failed to do otherwise -
strongly condemned the Israeli/French/British
invasion of Egypt. Threatening to end the
tax-exempt status for Israeli bonds and related
private contributions to Israel, Eisenhower forced
the Israeli government to withdraw completely from
Egyptian territory within months.
Similarly, when Israeli forces invaded
southern Lebanon in 1978, advancing as far north
as the Litani River, president Jimmy Carter forced
Israeli troops back to within a few kilometers of
the border by threatening a suspension of some US
aid. In 1981, president Ronald Reagan successfully
defeated a concerted effort by AIPAC to get
Congress to block the proposed sale of advanced
AWACS (Airborne Warning and Control System) planes
to Saudi Arabia. Ten years later, president George
H W Bush successfully fought off enormous pressure
from AIPAC and delayed a $10 billion loan
guarantee to Israel until after the Israeli
election, thereby ensuring the defeat of rightist
prime minister Yitzhak Shamir, who had been
stonewalling the peace process, much to the
chagrin of the Bush administration. In 2004, the
current Bush administration successfully pressured
Israel to renege on a deal with China to upgrade
Harpy surveillance aircraft and forced the ouster
of the Israeli Defense Ministry's director
general, Amos Yaron.
In short, the Israel
lobby hardly has a "stranglehold" on US Middle
East policy, as Professors Walt and Mearsheimer
claim.
Though the US bias in supporting
the Israeli government and Washington's double
standards regarding Israeli behavior are
undeniable, such official US conduct is not
uniquely applicable to Israel. For example,
Mearsheimer and Walt correctly observe how
Washington's support for Israel despite its
human-rights abuses against the Palestinians
"makes it look hypocritical when it presses other
states to respect human rights", but there is no
mention of the equally hypocritical US support for
Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Oman, Morocco and other
repressive Arab regimes. Similarly, the authors
are accurate in observing how "US efforts to limit
nuclear proliferation appear equally hypocritical
given its willingness to accept Israel's nuclear
arsenal". But is this any more hypocritical than
signing a nuclear cooperation agreement with India
or selling sophisticated nuclear-capable
fighter-bombers to the Pakistani government in
spite of those countries' nuclear arsenals?
The Israel lobby, like most lobbying
groups, is most influential when it comes to
Congress. Yet Congress only rarely plays a crucial
role in the development of foreign policy and, in
recent decades, foreign policy has become even
more the prerogative of the executive branch.
Congress generally plays a reactive role regarding
foreign policy.
In any case, it is
incorrect to assume that most members of Congress
stridently defend the policies of the Israeli
government because their careers would be at stake
if they did otherwise. Indeed, the majority of the
most outspoken congressional champions of the
Israeli government are from some of the safest
districts in the country and need no support from
pro-Israel PACs or Jewish donors to be re-elected.
For example, my congresswoman, Nancy Pelosi,
routinely wins re-election with 80% of the vote
and could easily stave off any challenge from the
right in her very liberal district. (After more
than a decade of communicating with her office on
Middle East issues, I am convinced that her
hardline anti-Palestinian position is the result
of her anti-Arab racism, not any fear that
evenhandedness would harm her chances of
re-election.)
Many of the cases frequently
cited as evidence of the Israel lobby's power to
defeat incumbents who challenge the extent of US
support for Israeli policies are not as clear-cut
as their proponents make them out to be. For
example, Illinois Republican congressman Paul
Findley was indeed targeted by pro-Israel PACs in
his unsuccessful re-election bid in 1982, but he
was also targeted by pro-union,
pro-environmentalist, pro-feminist, and
pro-Democratic PACs. He represented a rural
district at a time when farm prices were low and
he was the nominee of the incumbent party in the
White House in an off-year election. Not
surprisingly, several other Republican incumbents
from rural Midwestern districts, who were not
targeted by pro-Israel PACs, were also defeated
that year.
Similarly, when Georgia
congresswoman Cynthia McKinney was defeated in the
Democratic primary for renomination in 2002, there
were some pro-Israel PACs that contributed to her
challenger's campaign. The bulk of her
challenger's contributions, however, came from
downtown Atlanta business interests and right-wing
groups incensed at McKinney's outspoken opposition
to the Bush administration on other issues.
Georgia is one of the few states that allow
crossover voting, and thousands of Republicans in
her district voted in the Democratic primary that
year, providing the margin for her defeat. In
recapturing her seat two years later, McKinney
acknowledged the diversity of interests
responsible for her failed renomination in 2002.
Yet despite this, some still blame her defeat,
like Findley's, primarily on the Israel lobby.
Throughout most of the 1950s and '60s, it
was widely assumed in Washington that there could
never be diplomatic relations between the United
States and China because of the supposed power of
the anti-communist "China lobby". Those who raised
the possibility of normalized relations were
believed to be putting their political careers at
risk. (There were even efforts undertaken to
impeach Supreme Court justice William O Douglas
when he suggested recognizing the reality of the
communist government in Beijing.) However, once
president Richard Nixon, secretary of state Henry
Kissinger and others among the national-security
elites realized that it was in America's interest
to open up to "Red China", there was little the
pro-Taiwan lobbyists could do about it. Similarly,
if there ever came a time when those in power in
Washington decided that a major shift in policy
toward Israel was necessary, they could likely
effect such a shift, how ever the Israel lobby
might react.
Mearsheimer and Walt
correctly note the bias in the mainstream media,
particularly among leading columnists and other
pundits, in their defense of Israeli government
policies and US support for such policies. It is
unclear, however, whether this bias is any
stronger than in other conflict regions or
international policy issues in which the US
government is heavily invested.
During the
1980s, for example, it was extremely rare to read
or hear anything positive in the mainstream media
about the Sandinista government of Nicaragua.
Articles documenting that leftist regime's
human-rights abuses were more prominent than
accounts of the far greater human-rights abuses by
rightist regimes in Guatemala and El Salvador.
Today, negative press coverage regarding Cuba and
Venezuela outweighs any negative stories regarding
pro-US governments with poor human-rights records,
such as Colombia and Mexico. Similarly, rarely is
there serious critical analysis of the neo-liberal
model of globalization or the Pentagon's bloated
budget, nor are there many positive news stories
or opinion pieces regarding groups challenging
corporate greed and militarization.
This
is not to say that those who challenge US policy
regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict haven't
been subjected to enormous pressure from organized
right-wing forces. I have often been on the
receiving end of such attacks. As a result of my
opposition to US support for the Israeli
government's policies of occupation, colonization
and repression, I have been deliberately
misquoted, subjected to slander and libel, and
falsely accused of being "anti-Semitic" and
"supporting terrorism"; my children have been
harassed and my university's administration has
been bombarded with calls for my dismissal. I have
also had media appearances and speaking
engagements canceled, even by groups generally
supportive of the right to dissent.
(For
example, in 2003, just two weeks prior to its
annual meeting at which I had been scheduled to
speak on US foreign policy and international law,
the State Bar Association of Arizona rescinded its
invitation after the president and board received
a flurry of e-mails claiming that I was
"anti-Israel". A few years earlier, the Oregon
Peace Institute canceled an invitation for me to
speak at a forum in Portland after similar
pressure from the campaign of the First District's
Democratic nominee for Congress. And a recent
peace-studies conference at Hofstra University
insisted at the last minute on adding a right-wing
supporter of the Israeli government to its plenary
program to counter my scheduled "anti-Israel"
presentation, wherein I raised concerns about
Washington's role in the Israeli-Palestinian peace
process; at no other plenary session, even those
involving other left-leaning speakers on
controversial issues, did the organizers at
Hofstra insist upon such "balance" from the
right.)
It is important to remember,
however, that those who challenge US policy
anywhere are going to be subjected to
intimidation. Recent attacks against US professors
specializing in the Middle East and criticism of
the Middle East Studies Association are very
disturbing, but no more disturbing than similar
attacks against professors specializing in Latin
America and the Latin American Studies Association
during the 1980s. Right-wing criticism during the
1960s targeting Southeast Asia scholars was also
widespread. In other words, intellectuals with
empirical knowledge of any world region who dare
challenge the lies and distortions of a given US
administration relevant to their area of research
are going to be subjected to intimidation.
This is not to belittle the exceptional
nature of the challenges faced by critics of US
support for the Israeli government. Given that
Israel is the world's only Jewish state and that
some criticism of Israel really is rooted in
anti-Semitism, organized attacks against those
opposing Israeli policies tend to carry more
resonance, since they involve alleged
manifestations of prejudice against a minority
group. If a Jewish state were not the focus, many
liberals would dismiss such attacks as passe
McCarthyism and would not take them seriously. As
a result, assaults on critics of Israeli policies
have been more successful in limiting open debate,
but this gagging censorship effect stems more from
ignorance and liberal guilt than from any
all-powerful Israel lobby.
A related
problem is that progressive movements in the
United States have failed to challenge US policy
toward Israel and Palestine in an effective
manner. For years, many mainstream peace and
human-rights groups have avoided taking a public
position on Israel and Palestine, even while doing
exemplary work regarding other injustices. Such
prominent liberal groups as the Coalition for a
New Foreign Policy, National Impact, and
Demilitarization for Democracy have refused to
include Israel in their otherwise-ambitious
lobbying agenda linking arms transfers with
respect for human rights.
And groups that
do take a progressive position on
Israeli-Palestinian issues rarely make it a
legislative priority. For example, Peace Action,
the largest and most influential peace
organization in the US, routinely endorses House
and Senate candidates who take extreme
anti-Palestinian positions and defend Israeli
occupation policies. Ironically, the group
recently posted a link to the Mearsheimer/Walt
article on its home webpage. Like many groups on
the left, Peace Action is more prone to complain
about the power of the Israel lobby and its
affiliated PACs than to do serious lobbying on
this issue or condition its own PAC contributions
on support for a more moderate US policy.
Meanwhile, some groups that do challenge
US policy on this issue have accepted funding from
autocratic Arab regimes, thereby damaging their
credibility. Some others have taken hardline
positions that not only oppose the Israeli
occupation but challenge Israel's very right to
exist, and are therefore not taken seriously by
most policymakers.
In the absence of an
effective counter-lobby, the Israel lobby appears
more powerful than it really is. In addition, the
myth of an all-powerful Israel lobby is so
pervasive that it has often scared off progressive
funding and organizing that could conceivably
challenge it. As a result, exaggerating the power
of the Israel lobby leads to a self-fulfilling
prophecy.
The real lobby: The
military-industrial complex When examining
the power of the Israel lobby in negatively
influencing US Middle East policy, it is important
to recognize the role of other lobbies that have
an interest in encouraging the dangerous direction
of current US policy. Placing so much emphasis on
AIPAC and its allied groups ignores other special
interests and ideologies that also play a role in
urging US support for the Israeli government.
Such allied groups include fundamentalist
Christians, who believe that a militarily dominant
Israel is necessary for the Second Coming of
Christ. However, Mearsheimer and Walt mention them
only in passing in their article. The authors
recount, as an example of the power of the Israel
lobby, how - after President Bush's initial call
on Israel to back off from its bloody spring 2002
re-conquest of West Bank cities was rebuffed by
former Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon - the
US administration backed down and threw its
support behind the offensive. However, most
accounts of Bush's backtracking attribute it not
primarily to pressure from AIPAC and other Jewish
groups but rather to the more than 100,000 e-mails
received by the White House from Christian
conservatives defending the Israeli offensive.
Indeed, these Christian Zionists exercise
a much more influential role in the current
administration than do Jewish Zionists. During his
two presidential election campaigns, George W Bush
was less dependent on Jewish voters than any
modern president, but no president has ever been
more beholden to the Christian Right.
Other ideological factors impact US-Israel
policy as well. Some older liberals maintain an
overly sentimental conception of Israel and are
defensive - out of sympathy for a historically
oppressed minority and respect for Israel's
democratic institutions - regarding any criticism
of the Jewish state. And then there are anti-Arab
racists and Islamophobes who simply hate
Palestinians. The American psyche also identifies
with a poor, embattled Israel, consciously or
subconsciously. Both states were founded by
European pioneers, both peoples aspired to
progressive democratic principles, and both
nations' histories are replete with ethnic
cleansing and widespread repression of the
indigenous populations.
But the most
important special interest pressing for strong US
support of the Israeli government is the arms
industry. The military-industrial complex has a
considerable stake in encouraging massive arms
shipments to Israel and other Middle Eastern US
allies and can exert enormous pressure on members
of Congress who do not support a
weapons-proliferation agenda. This clout is due in
part to the sheer size of the Middle East military
contracts. It is far easier, for example, for a
member of Congress to challenge a $60 million arms
deal to Indonesia than the more than $2 billion in
weapons sent annually to Israel, particularly when
so many congressional districts include factories
that produce this military hardware.
The
arms industry contributes more than $7 million
each election cycle to congressional campaigns,
twice that of pro-Israel groups. In terms of
lobbying budgets, the difference is even more
profound: Northrop Grumman alone spends seven
times as much money in its lobbying efforts
annually than does AIPAC, and Lockheed Martin
outspends AIPAC by a factor of four. Similarly,
the lobbying budget of AIPAC is dwarfed by those
of General Electric, Raytheon, Boeing and other
corporations with substantial military contracts.
Contrary to many predictions, the end of
the Cold War and the significant advances in the
Middle East peace process in the 1990s did not
lessen US military and economic aid to Israel. US
aid to Israel is higher now than 30 years ago,
when Egypt's massive and well-equipped armed
forces threatened war, when Syria's military was
expanding rapidly with advanced Soviet weaponry,
when armed factions of the Palestine Liberation
Organization (PLO) were launching terrorist
attacks inside Israel, when Jordan still claimed
the West Bank and stationed large numbers of
troops along its lengthy border and demarcation
line with Israel, and when Iraq was embarking upon
an ambitious militarization effort.
Today,
Israel's borders are far less threatened. Egypt
has honored a long-standing peace treaty that
established a large demilitarized and
internationally monitored buffer zone in the Sinai
Peninsula, Syria's military has been severely
weakened by the collapse of its Soviet patron, the
PLO is supporting the peace process, a peace
treaty has achieved fully normalized Israeli
relations with Jordan, and Iraq's offensive
military capabilities have been destroyed by wars,
crippling sanctions, internationally monitored
disarmament, and US occupation. And yet high
levels of military aid to Israel continue.
Noteworthy is the often-repeated
insistence by successive administrations and
leaders of both US political parties that aid to
Israel should be increased or "kept at current
levels". If the real objective was providing
adequate support for Israeli defense, US officials
would instead be focused upon maintaining Israel's
security requirements, and aid levels would vary
according to those needs. However, Israel's actual
defense needs are not Washington's bottom-line
concern.
Matti Peled, the late Israeli
major-general and Knesset member, reported that as
far as he could tell, the $2.2 billion figure of
annual US military support of Israel at that time
was conjured up "out of thin air". Such a figure,
he argued, was far more than necessary to
replenish stocks, was not apparently related to
any specific security requirements, and had
remained relatively constant during the previous
several years, reinforcing his impression that
"aid to Israel" was little more than a US
government subsidy for US munitions manufacturers.
This benefit to US defense contractors is
multiplied by the fact that every major arms
transfer to Israel creates a new demand by Arab
states - most paying in petrodollar cash - for
additional US weapons to challenge Israel's
increased military capacity. Indeed, Israel
announced its acceptance of a proposed freeze on
arms exports to the Middle East back in 1991, but
the administrations of George H W Bush and Bill
Clinton, under pressure from the defense industry,
in effect blocked it.
In 1993, 78 senators
wrote to president Clinton insisting that the
United States send even more military aid to
Israel. The lawmakers justified their request by
citing massive weapons procurement by Arab states,
neglecting to note that 80% of this military
hardware was of US origin. If they were really
concerned about Israeli security, they would have
voted to block these arms transfers. Yet this was
clearly not their purpose. Even AIPAC did not
actively oppose the sale of 72 highly
sophisticated F-15E jet fighters to Saudi Arabia
in 1992, since the George H W Bush administration
offered yet another boost in US weapons transfers
to Israel in return for Israeli acquiescence.
In many respects, US aid policy serves the
interests of both Israel and autocratic
pro-Western Arab regimes in that all share an
interest in curbing radical nationalism and
Islamism and preserving the regional status quo -
if necessary, by military force. In addition, for
the Israelis, Arab militarism serves as an excuse
for continued repression in the occupied
territories and resistance to demands for greater
territorial compromise. For autocratic Arab
leaders, Israeli military power serves as an
excuse for their lack of internal democracy and
unwillingness to implement badly needed social and
economic reforms. (It is noteworthy that until
1993, the United States refused even to talk with
the Palestinians, while sending billions of
dollars' worth of military equipment to autocratic
Arab monarchies in the Persian Gulf region, which
took a much harder line toward Israel than did the
PLO.) The resulting arms race has been a bonanza
for US munitions manufacturers, whose hopes for
continued prosperity provide a major explanation
for US aid policy.
Though Mearsheimer and
Walt observe that US foreign aid to Israel comes
out to "about $500 a year for every Israeli", they
ignore the fact that virtually all of the military
assistance goes directly to US arms merchants and
the economic aid is barely more than what Israel
pays annually for interest on loans from US banks
for previous weapons purchases. In other words,
ordinary Israelis never see that money.
Furthermore, for every dollar of US military aid,
Israeli taxpayers are forced to pay $2 or $3 to
cover personnel, training and spare parts.
The functions of blaming the Israel
lobby Columbia University Professor Joseph
Massad - who regularly endures attacks by the
Israel lobby for his defense of Palestinian rights
- contends that the attraction of Mearsheimer's
and Walt's argument is that "it exonerates the
United States government from all the
responsibility and guilt that it deserves for its
policies in the Arab world".
There is
something quite convenient and discomfortingly
familiar about the tendency to blame an allegedly
powerful and wealthy group of Jews for the overall
direction of an increasingly controversial US
policy. Indeed, like exaggerated claims of Jewish
power at other times in history, such an
explanation absolves the real power brokers and
assigns blame to convenient scapegoats. This is
not to say that Mearsheimer, Walt or anyone else
who expresses concern about the power of the
Israel lobby is an anti-Semite, but the way in
which this exaggerated view of Jewish power
parallels historic anti-Semitism should give us
all pause.
Those of us who have lobbied
for a more balanced US policy toward the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict have often, but
always off-the-record, been told by congressional
aides - and sometimes by members of Congress
themselves - that they are not to blame for
right-wing voting records on Israeli-Palestinian
issues because they are the victims of pressure
from the Israel lobby. Such claims, however, are
frequently disingenuous and self-serving.
For example, in 1991, during a meeting
with a prominent staffer of Washington Democratic
senator Brock Adams, in which I raised concerns
about the senator's hardline anti-Palestinian
voting record, the staffer insisted that the
senator took such positions to appease wealthy
Jewish campaign contributors. He advised that if I
really wanted to change the senator's position, I
should work for campaign finance reform. In early
1992, a major sex scandal forced Adams to abandon
his re-election bid and any hope of ever again
being elected to public office. In his remaining
year as a lame-duck senator, however, he continued
to vote as strongly as ever in defense of Israeli
government policies. In short, Jewish money had
little to do with Adams' anti-Palestinian
extremism. His aide, like many of his counterparts
on Capitol Hill, cynically used the age-old
anti-Semitic stereotype of "blaming the Jews"
rather than acknowledging the right-wing
militarist predilections of his boss.
To
this day, however, you still hear some peace and
human-rights activists quoting congressional aides
and members of Congress as if these influential
and (mostly) wealthy, white, Anglo-Saxon,
Protestant lawmakers were actually helpless,
innocent victims of a sinister cabal of rich and
powerful Jews. Opposing inhumane Israeli policies
is not anti-Semitic, but when those in positions
of power use an exaggerated claim of Jewish clout
to divert public attention from their own
complicity with unpopular policies, they are
indeed flirting with anti-Semitism.
Even
more disturbing is the way that blaming the Israel
lobby has been used in foreign capitals to get US
decision-makers off the hook for America's
controversial policies regarding Israel and
Palestine. Another prominent professor of
international relations, A F K Organski, observes,
"The belief that the Jewish lobby ... is very
powerful has permitted top US policymakers to use
'Jewish influence' or 'domestic politics' to
explain the policies ... that US leaders see as
working to US advantage, policies they would
pursue regardless of Jewish opinion on the
matter." Organski further notes that when Arab and
European leaders have raised concerns about US
positions, "US officials need give only a helpless
shrug, a regretful sigh, and explain how it is not
the administration's fault, but that policymakers
must operate within the constraints imposed by
powerful domestic pressures molding congressional
decisions."
My interviews with a
half-dozen Arab foreign ministers and deputy
foreign ministers in recent years have confirmed
that US diplomats routinely blame the "Jewish
lobby" as a way of diverting blame away from the
US government. This cynical excuse has contributed
to the frightening rise in recent years of
anti-Jewish attitudes in the Arab world.
Consequences could be tragic The
consequences of US policy regarding the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict could be tragic not
just for Palestinians and other Arabs, who are the
immediate victims of the diplomatic support and
largess of US aid to Israel, but ultimately for
Israel as well. The fates of US client states have
often not been positive. Though differing in many
respects, Israel could end up like El Salvador or
South Vietnam, whose leadership made common cause
with US global designs in ways that ultimately led
to untold misery and massive destruction. Israeli
leaders and their counterparts in many US Zionist
organizations have been repeating the historic
error of accepting short-term benefits for their
people at the risk of compromising long-term
security.
It has long been in Washington's
interest to maintain a militarily powerful and
belligerent Israel dependent on the United States.
Real peace could undermine such a relationship.
The United States has therefore pursued a policy
that attempts to bring greater stability to the
region while falling short of real peace.
Washington wants a Middle East where Israel can
serve a proxy role in projecting US military and
economic interests. This symbiosis requires
suppressing challenges to American-Israeli
hegemony within the region.
This also
requires suppressing challenges to this policy
within the United States, and there is no question
that the Israel lobby plays an important role in
this regard. However, this is primarily an issue
of the Israel lobby working at the behest of US
foreign policymakers, not US foreign policymakers
working at the behest of the Israel lobby.
Unfortunately, Washington's agenda
provokes a reaction that all but precludes any
kind of stable order that would enhance the
long-term national-security interests of the
United States or Israel, much less peace or
justice. US policy has resulted in dividing
Israelis from Arabs, although both are Semitic
peoples who worship the same god, love the same
land, and share a history of subjugation and
oppression. The so-called peace process is not
about peace but about imposing a Pax Americana. To
blame the current morass in the Middle East on the
Israel lobby only exacerbates animosities and
plays into the hands of the divide-and-rule
tactics of those in the US Congress and
administration whose primary objective is
ultimately not to help Israel but to advance the
American Empire.
Stephen Zunes
is a professor of politics and is Middle East
editor for the Foreign Policy In Focus project. He
is the author of Tinderbox: US Middle East
Policy and the Roots of Terrorism (Common
Courage Press, 2003).
