The Israel Lobby
Last week I finished the new, controversial book by political scientists John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt entitled The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy. It was an extremely provocative and informative read. The two authors provide substantial evidence and analysis to back up their claim that the unwavering and unconditional support that the U.S. provides to Israel is both counterintuitive and counterproductive for both nations.
In the first part of the book the two authors make a solid case as to why the favorite-nation status the U.S. has for Israel is neither justified by a moral argument or a strategic one. The unwavering support that the U.S. provides to Israel damages the prestige and international legitimacy of both countries. The authors make a compelling case that the primary enabler to this American-Israeli connection is the Israel Lobby.
The term the Israel Lobby is somewhat misleading, because the many individuals and some of the groups identified as part of the Lobby do not partake in formal lobbying activities. Rather the various parts of the lobby work to influence U.S. policy and influence decision-making, much in the same way that other interest groups do. Some of the more prominent organizations identified are groups like the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA), and the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations are some of the more obvious groups.
Other groups that lobby for support for Israel within the American political landscape are groups such as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), a research fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), or the leadership of organizations like the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), and Christians United for Israel (CUFI).
The Israel Lobby is shown to have a dominating effect on the Policy Process. Their political clout is, according to the authors, powerful enough to alter the discourse of any one politician or an entire administration, regardless of whether or not it is morally acceptable or strategically sound.
In the Second part of the book Mearsheimer and Walt offer critical analysis about the U.S.’s foreign policy in the Middle East and how the Israel Lobby’s influence is inextricably linked to its the formation and implementation. A number of high-ranking government officials, congressmen, and senators linked with the politically powerful Israel Lobby combined to produce a highly Israeli-favored foreign policy.
The combined influence of the neo-conservatives in Washington, influence by groups like the AIPAC and pro-Israel interest groups are proven to have had an detrimental influence upon policy making formulations and decisions made towards internationally salient countries like Syria, Iraq, and Iran. The influence of the lobby (and its Israeli connections through organizations like the Mossad) upon the decision to invade Iraq in 2003 and the hard-liner approaches taken towards the countries of Syria and Iran are extremely traceable and quite scathingly reproached by Mearsheimer and Walt.
This book makes many alarming connections between the obviously falling strategy in Iraq and the current perilous and confrontational policies towards other Middle Eastern nations. It seems at the end as if the U.S. caters to the interests of the state of Israel and the wishes of the Israeli’s most favorite mistress, the American neo-conservatives. The efforts by the current administration to make radical transformations in the Middle East have strong Israeli overtures towards a more Israeli-friendly region.
The current Palestinian situation along with the ongoing conflict in Lebanon are portrayed — and rightfully so — as situations driven by selfish and highly questionable Israeli policies of domination and subjugation, nothing short of colonial type domination. Quite possibly more disturbing and vexing is the American political support, or ambivalence, towards these dire situations. The lack of criticism towards questionable Israeli policy comes from the insurmountable political influence that the Lobby has over Washington and the support it enjoys for pro-Israel neo-con politicians. The immense influence that these groups have over Washington makes it politically impossible to be anything other than pro-Israel, unless one wishes to be coined an anti-Semite and Israel hater.
The Israel Lobby is a good read for anyone wishing to take a critical and analytical look at the strikingly close relationship between the U.S. and Israel. This provocative study reveals the falsities of the U.S.-Israeli connection and provides in-depth analysis of the groups and individuals who have influenced American foreign policy — to the detriment of America, Israel, and the Middle East.
I’m really glad for you that you are backing Mearsheimer & Walt’s stand on the “Israel Lobby” activity. But you have to know that this doesn’t mean you are correct in your stand.
I must say that Mearsheimer & Walt’s investigation and analysis is rather shadowed and biased and leaning towards the interests of the oily Arab countries in the ME.
John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt give a strikingly inaccurate account of Middle Eastern history. Arab resentment of America originates from a long pattern of British and French imperialism in the region. This resentment evolved into a more generalised anti-Westernism perpetuated and exploited by the USSR and Soviet allies like Nasser. The distrust of the West including America was further exacerbated by a feeling in the region that the United States often favoured pro-American dictators over more democratic leaders. Over the past two decades, anti-Western militancy in the Middle East has evolved from a Marxist movement into one built on a twisted religious extremism. At the same time, the Arab world has been afflicted with extreme anti-semitism reminiscent of Nazism. A lost war by Israel or a significant poison gas attack on Tel Aviv could easily translate into another holocaust. Finally, support for Israel does not seem quite so extensive when one considers the massive level of manpower America has deployed over the past six decades to defend Western Europe, South Korea and Japan.
Accusations of powerful Jews behind the scenes are part of the most dangerous traditions of modern anti-semitism. So it is with dismay that we read John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt’s ‘The Israel Lobby’. We have known and respected John Mearsheimer for over twenty years, which makes the essay all the more unsettling.
First, it is not true that the American relationship with Israel has been ‘the centrepiece of US Middle Eastern policy’. That centrepiece has been and remains access to oil for the United States and for the global economy. As it became apparent since the 1950s that Israel was not merely the only democracy in the region but also a supporter of the West in the Cold War, I would call it a silence partnership and a source for precious intelligence, the American relationship intensified. At that point, support for Israel, which had been strongest among liberals who supported a Jewish state in the wake of the Holocaust, expanded to include the previously less than enthusiastic military and diplomatic foreign policy establishment, some of which was deeply hostile to Israel and suspicious of Jews, to put it mildly. This was not due to the efforts of the Jewish Lobby or the power of the five million Jews (in a country of almost 300 million). It was due to an assessment of American national interest made by an overwhelmingly non-Jewish political and military establishment long before Christian fundamentalism became a factor in the Republican Party mainly from the 1970s. It coincided with increasingly close ties with the Saudi regime.
Second, it is not true that the United States went to war in Iraq because of the pressure of a Jewish Lobby. Even if the key decision makers were Jews, this would not prove the point about the Jewish Lobby. As it happens, the primary advisers and war planners for Bush were Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell and Rice and the entirely non-Jewish military leadership, not the usual suspects now trotted out by those peddling stories about Jewish power behind the scenes. Whatever Israel or its supporters in the US may or may not have wanted, American and British leaders decided to go to war for reasons grounded in their own interpretation of their respective national interests. Saddam Hussein stunned and surprised his own military leaders three months before the US and Britain invaded by revealing to them that Iraq did not possess weapons of mass destruction. There were many officials in London and Washington – or Berlin and Paris, for that matter – who would have been just as surprised.
One need not think the decision to go to war was the correct one to remember that it was not motivated by concerns about Israel’s national security. One need not agree that oil below the ground and dictatorship above it posed an immediate threat to recall that British and American (as well as other Western) leaders believed that Saddam with weapons of mass destruction in years to come would have posed a threat to the other Arab oil-producing states as much as to Israel. Mearsheimer and Walt’s realism ignores this conventional threat in the minds of American and British policymakers.
Third, while much opinion in the Arab and Islamic world has rejected the presence of a Jewish state in its midst, anti-Americanism, hatred of Europe (including Britain) and of liberal modernity in general would exist if Israel was not there. AlQaida and Bin Laden never mentioned Isreal and the Palsetinians in their anounsments until 2003! Mearsheimer and Walt stand in a long tradition of ‘realist’ political scientists known for naivety regarding the power and import of ideological fanaticism in international affairs. This naivety is the reason that radical Islam and the enduring crises of modernisation in the region that produced it receive hardly a word in their long attack.
Fourth, American Jewish citizens have a right to express their views without being charged with placing the interests of Israel ahead of those of the US. Mearsheimer and Walt’s attack appears eight years after the terrorist war against the West declared by Osama Bin Laden; six years after Ehud Barak offered a compromise plan to end the conflict and occupation of the West Bank, and Yassir Arafat responded with a terrorist campaign of his own; after countless terrorist attacks all over the world by al-Qaida and its sympathisers, including the London Underground bombings; after repeated acts of terrorist barbarism in Iraq by radical Islamists; after the declaration by the Iranian president that Israel should be wiped out and that the Holocaust was a myth; and, most recently, after the world’s first electoral victory with a solid majority won by an openly anti-semitic terrorist organisation, Hamas. Mearsheimer and Walt further ignore that all of this happened also after Israel withdrew from Lebanon, offered the Barak plan, retaliated to the terrorist campaign as any state – including Britain or the United States – would, accepted the principle of a Palestinian state and thus agreed to withdraw from over 90 per cent of the West Bank, and then withdrew completely from Gaza. If the Palestinians had responded to these offers of a compromise peace, they would perhaps have had a functioning state before radical Islam came to dominate their politics. It was radical Islamist and secular Palestinian militants, not the Jewish Lobby that destroyed prospects for a compromise settlement.
If the US concluded that it no longer had a vital interest in the continued survival of the only democracy in the Middle East, those now attacking Western modernity might conclude that the Americans could be convinced that the defence of Europe – and Britain – was also not in the American interest.
A couple of reponses to what you have said:
“it is not true that the United States went to war in Iraq because of the pressure of a Jewish Lobby”
Yes, I agree. The neo-conservatives and a complient Bush administration are to blame. However, the Israel Lobby, Israeli intelligence and the Iraqi National Congress augmented the disinformation campaign.
“Mearsheimer and Walt stand in a long tradition of ‘realist’ political scientists known for naivety regarding the power and import of ideological fanaticism in international affairs.”
I tend to agree with this as well. Many scholars and policy makers who advocate the power politics paradigm naturally overlook the power of ideology and radicalism. However, I think that, according to a realist paradigm, fanaticism, as you put it, stems from an abused or manipulated contigent on the realist contiuum — most notably Iran and Syria.
(Neo)-Islamic fundamentalism — the kind bred out of the American presence in Iraq — is a new concept and is defintely misunderstood and possible underestimated. However, I still believe that scholars like Mearsheimer and Walt have the root of the problem pinned. That is manipulation, subjugation, and exploration spark and fuel the radical flame.
As to your fourth point, I think you may be overplaying Israel’s willingness to cooperate. Although the IFD may have withdrawn from Gaza and Barak may be offering a compromise with the West Bank, issues such as economic sanctions (in Gaza), a security wall (in the West Bank), and the denial to the Right of Return still infuriates the Palestinians. Also, the Lebanese campaign of 2006 is most defintely still fresh in the minds of the Palestinians.
I think the reason now that the Palestinians’ efforts at compromise are so stymied is due to the fact that the Palenstinians are splintered between Hamas, Moderates, Fatah, and the other politically active groups seeking change.
Overall, I am still inclined to agree with the basic premise of Mearsheimer and Walt’s book that the absolute and unconditional support for Israel makes both nations worse-off. Furthermore, I belive it is undeniable that the Israel Lobby does indeed have a powerful influence in the American Political System; the AIPAC ranking just beloew AARP as the 2nd most influential interest group (according to congressmen/women) is something to consider when evaluating the American-Israeli realtionship.
By the way, welcome to the blog, Abe. Your well put comments are indeed apperciated.
Mearsheimer appeared with Bruce Feiler on BloggingheadsTV recently and talked about the book. Though that perhaps you might be interested (sorry I’m not good at the smooth comment link hiding)
http://bloggingheads.tv/diavlogs/7689
It was an interesting interview on bloggingheads, although it seemed that Feiler relied too much on tradition contrary to “fact.”