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 Milton Viorst on ‘The Israel Lobby’Posted on Oct 4, 2007
(Page 2) That is not to say that Mearsheimer and Walt do not leave a great deal of room for disagreement: for example, their contention, presented in a discussion of Israel’s role in instigating the invasion of Iraq, that “absent the lobby’s influence, there almost certainly would not have been a war.” Surely the American decision to invade Iraq, like most of history’s grand events, arose out of a confluence of causes, no single one of which would have sufficed to bring it about. Here are just a few of those causes: oil, the rebound to 9/11, President Bush’s relations with his father, concern over free navigation in the Persian Gulf, a sense of Christian mission, the Pentagon’s hunger for Middle East bases to provide “forward thrust” for American power. Moreover, many in decision-making circles swallowed Bush’s claim that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, and a few may even have believed that we had a moral duty to liberate Iraqis from Saddam’s heartless tyranny. Though we know now there were no WMD, much less plans to improve the life of the Iraqis, each of these considerations played a part in generating the momentum to invade. As for the Israel lobby, no doubt it weighed in during the deliberations. Israel’s fears of Iraq, though exaggerated, were surely real. But the lobby’s power was only marginal on President Bush and his entourage of neocons who long before had made up their minds. On this matter, the authors overstate their case. The Israel lobby was a player in the discussion on going to war, but there is little evidence to regard its role as decisive. Indeed, it is not clear whether Mearsheimer and Walt fully understand what the Israel lobby is. At its apex, of course, is the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the Washington-based organization whose power strikes fear in the executive branch and, even more so, in Congress. AIPAC is complemented by a constellation of satellites, among them the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, the American Jewish Committee and Foxman’s own Anti-Defamation League. Their agenda seeks not only to assure Israel’s survival but to pursue particular partisan policies. They function, in effect, as the U.S. arm of Likud, serving Israel’s right wing in rejecting the exchange of land for peace with the Arabs, in standing up for the Jewish settlements that blanket the territories conquered in 1967, in condoning the mistreatment of the Palestinians of the occupied lands, whose life grows more onerous each day.
The Israel Lobby
By John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 496 pages
The Deadliest Lies
By Abraham H. Foxman Palgrave Macmillan, 256 pages
But Mearsheimer and Walt go on to add to their taxonomic mix such groups as Americans for Peace Now, the Israel Policy Forum and the Tikkun Community, on the grounds that they also support Israel. They do, of course, but their values are precisely the opposite of the AIPAC coalition’s. They argue for peace with the Arabs, while casting doubt on the hard-line position—encouraged by the Bush administration—that only military superiority will guarantee Israel’s security. Their point of departure, to be sure, is not so much America’s strategic interests as Zionism in the old-fashioned sense, i.e. the survival of a humane, secular and democratic Jewish state. But their politics lead them to conclusions about relations with Israel’s U.S. patron that are much like those of Mearsheimer and Walt. These groups are much smaller than the AIPAC coalition, and have far more modest budgets, but most polls suggest their goals are consistent with the vision held by a majority of American Jews. Despite the ceaseless efforts of Foxman and his allies, many Jews who have thought hard about how best to assure Israel’s survival have rejected the call to march in lock step with Israel’s hard-liners. I would add that Mearsheimer and Walt, by calling the AIPAC alliance the “Israel lobby” or the “pro-Israel lobby,” perpetuate a misnomer in all but ignoring the peace groups. It would be more accurate to call AIPAC’s coalition the “right-wing Israel lobby,” which might at least provoke Israel’s friends, Jewish and non-Jewish, to examine whether AIPAC’s effort might not actually be harmful to Israel’s long-term well-being. What is impossible to dispute is that the AIPAC coalition, by its own standards, has been hugely successful, starting with imposing a kind of political omerta in the consideration of Israeli policies. Its promotion of silence zeroes in heavily on Congress, whose members seem especially vulnerable to its muscle. A prominent senator once told me he long ago gave up arguing against AIPAC’s orthodoxy and now signs on to anything it puts on his desk. Over the decades, AIPAC has used the money at its disposal to influence electoral campaigns that have defeated more than a few senators and congressmen who have had the temerity to break the taboo. Their loss has served as a lesson that intimidates the rest. But money is not AIPAC’s only weapon. Brilliantly organized, AIPAC counts on sympathizers nationwide to deluge Congress, as well as the media, with its messages. It is an adage of democratic politics that intensity of feeling trumps the sentiments of passive majorities, as revealed by polls. In this, AIPAC is not alone. The gun lobby is another example. The producer of an evening news program in which I made a critical remark about Israeli policy informed me that the next morning the station had received a record number of denunciatory e-mails. He has since stopped inviting me on the show. Today, a campaign is being waged against Rep. James Moran, an anti-war Democrat from Virginia, who has occasionally questioned Israel’s course. Moran, said to hold a “safe” seat, dared in a recent interview on Iraq to say that “Jewish Americans as a voting bloc and as an influence on foreign policy are overwhelmingly opposed to the war. ... But AIPAC is the most powerful lobby and has pushed this war from the beginning. ... Their influence is dominant in the Congress.” Then, in a zinger, he added that AIPAC’s members were often “quite wealthy,” a characterization that makes Jews wince. Moran’s words elicited attacks by both Republicans and Democrats, demonstrating not that he had conveyed any falsehood but that neither political party, with an eye to the next election, is willing to provoke AIPAC’s ire. Elsewhere: . CommentsAre you a Truthdig member yet? Login now, or register with Truthdig.
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By bardofbyte, December 11, 2007 at 7:38 pm # While much is made ofWhile much is made of the seven hundred thousand or so arabs who were displaced in 1948, little is mentioned about the eight hundred fifty thousand
By 1drees, November 27, 2007 at 4:03 am # JabberNow : Also I note that these days everyone is saying that SHARON advised not to attack IRAQ as WMDs had been moved to SYRIA, ( myself a reader of Israeli papers too , never saw that before) Could it be that after IRAN they want SYRIA to be the CHASER? and now they are slowly moving towards that ...
By 1drees, November 27, 2007 at 3:07 am # #107443 by Hawkwind on 10/16 at 7:42 am “Baloney. If—as was long ago proposed—the Jewish state had been established in Uganda, the Twin Towers still would be rubble.” YEAH! true, Larry Silverstein the Jew might still want top collect $#3 Billion in claims even then. seems Hawkwind is just pure WIND from the rear
By Shecky, October 17, 2007 at 4:10 pm # Shecky, “Peaceful process” - what? Whether they called themselves “Palestinians” or not, there were still some 800,000 Arab people expelled from their homes within months of the time the partition was granted by the U.N., and the process by which this was done was anything but peaceful. This Nakba denial is no better than Holocaust denial. Israel must indeed take responsibility for what it has done and still is doing, instead of blaming everything on “terrorists”. Tony, You are very quick to leave out some facts! The UN partition plan included a two state solution! The Arab refugees were roughly 725,000 people who fled because
By Shecky, October 16, 2007 at 1:17 pm # The Arab version of the tragic fate of Arab refugees who fled
By Jabbernow, October 16, 2007 at 8:10 am # Well we see once again Roberta is posting the usual BS only this time he uses Finkelstein as a source for Haaretz. Reuters, a British News orgainization which has the positively worst bias against Israel so this is not surprising coming from Roberta. In fact, the BBC and Reuters have in the past been so fast in critisizing Israel they have had to make retractions because of false news reporting.
By Hawkwind, October 16, 2007 at 7:42 am # Tim Rutten, LA Times: “Anyone familiar with the tortured history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will have a hard time recognizing the history Mearsheimer and Walt rehearse. Every hoary old Israeli atrocity tale is trotted out, and the long story of Palestinian terrorism is rendered entirely as a reaction to Israeli oppression. The failure of every peace negotiation is attributed to Israeli deviousness under the shield of the American Israel lobby. There is nothing here of Palestinian corruption, division and duplicity or even of this unhappy people’s inability to provide a reliable secular partner with whom peace can be negotiated. At times, the authors simply contradict themselves, asserting—rather remarkably—at one point that the United States has nothing to fear from a nuclear-armed Iran and, at another, that the dangerous prospect of a nuke-equipped Tehran is the Israel lobby’s fault. Similarly, they write, Al Qaeda would hammer its swords into ploughshares and Osama bin Laden would lay down with the lamb if only the United States would come out from under Israel’s thrall and create by coercion a Palestinian state. Baloney. If—as was long ago proposed—the Jewish state had been established in Uganda, the Twin Towers still would be rubble.” David Remnick, The New Yorker: “Where many accounts identify Osama bin Laden’s primary grievances with American support of “infidel” authoritarian regimes in Islamic lands, Mearsheimer and Walt align his primary concerns with theirs: America’s unwillingness to push Israel to end the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. (It doesn’t matter that Israel and the Palestinians were in peace negotiations in 1993, the year of the first attack on the World Trade Center, or that during the Camp David negotiations in 2000 bin Laden’s pilots were training in Florida.) Mearsheimer and Walt give you the sense that, if the Israelis and the Palestinians come to terms, bin Laden will return to the family construction business. Steve Huntley, Chicago Sun Times: “The two go to lengths to try to rebut any suggestion of anti-Semitism in their criticism of the American Israeli Political Action Committee and other pro-Israel groups. But you can’t read The Israel Lobby without realizing that whenever two interpretations exist for some action by Israel or its supporters, Mearsheimer and Walt automatically default to the darker view.” William Grimes, The New York Times: “The general tone of hostility to Israel grates on the nerves, however, along with an unignorable impression that hardheaded political realism can be subject to its own peculiar fantasies. Israel is not simply one country among many, for example, just as Britain is not. Americans feel strong ties of history, religion, culture and, yes, sentiment, that the authors recognize, but only in an airy, abstract way. Mark LeVine, Asia Times: “Mearsheimer and Walt seem to know little about the Middle East, Israel’s role in US foreign policy, and what are core US goals and strategic interests in the region. They argue that this is a case of the “tail wagging the dog” - a small client state and its allies in the US leading the US government to engage in policies that are manifestly against its interests because of undue political power. But this is nonsense. In fact, it is the other way around.” Richard Cohen, The Washington Post: “In the end, Mearsheimer and Walt disappoint. They had an observation worth making and a position worth debating. But their argument is so dry, so one-sided—an Israel lobby that leads America around by the nose—they suggest that not only do they not know Israel, they don’t know America, either.”
By Mo, October 16, 2007 at 6:45 am # The Covenant of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas)
By Jabbernow, October 15, 2007 at 11:24 am # I watched the video with Galloway interviewing Ilan Pappe. So what! Ilan Pappe said outright there were good things that came from Zionism or did your fragile mind miss it? I never heard anything about Jewish history only his opinion on ethnic cleansing. You want history!
By Jabbernow, October 15, 2007 at 10:26 am # Robert, I am not a hardcore Zionist and you still haven’t impressed anyone here but yourself! Even the Palestinians acknowledge Res.242. Apparently you would rather not discuss it because you know nothing about the peace process. All you know is the word Zionist. Tell me genius where did it come from? Who coined it?
By Jabbernow, October 15, 2007 at 8:30 am # Hey Robert! this really isn’t impressing in the least! This is all redundant BS! I have read these posts, Non Credo and Cyrene use this forum for nothing but calling people stupid or putting someone down who have an opionion other than their own. Real intellectuals here! Instead they only show their immaturity! Why not start off with answering this question. What is it you know about resolution 242? Feel free to post a link for 242. Lets read it together and see what comes up! This is something even Amira Hass can do!
By Jabbernow, October 15, 2007 at 4:23 am # ILAN PAPPE, A BRAVE JEWISH ISRAELI HISTORIAN, TALKS ABOUT ISRAEL’S ETHNIC CLEANSING OF THE PALESTINIANS! FANATIC HARDCORE ZIONISTS WILL NOT LIKE WHAT ILAN PAPPE HAS TO SAY ABOUT ISRAEL AND ITS RACISM! George Galloway talks about Israel and Palestine with the Israeli historian Ilan Pappe. Click on the links for a total squence of 3 parts:
By ray, October 15, 2007 at 2:59 am # hi You just have to look at australia a jewish business man has robbed the australian people of billions, whats going to happen nothing. He is the biggest supportor with cash and gifts to the national government.He is protected, what can you say grant
By Inherit The Wind, October 14, 2007 at 5:30 pm # Non Credo on 10/14 at 4:04 pm Howie, Howie. Would it be OK for Germany to grab Poland, kicking out the Poles who live there, explaining, “You are Slavic people; so are the Russians. So you should be happy to leave your homes and go to Russia. Russia is much bigger than Germany and Poland put together. You Slavic people have plenty of room. We Germans just want little bitty Poland. If you resist this reasonable request with violence, you are terrorists. And if the Russians don’t welcome you, it just shows that the Slavic people don’t care for their own kind. They should learn from the admirable ethnic solidarity that we Germans show towards each other.” Howard - you can’t kick people off their lend on the basis of ethnicity, just because to YOU they’re “the same” as some other people who live nearby. “You’re Arabs, so you should just go live in that other Arab country over there!” - Howie explains. Is Howard stupid, or does he just hope that we are? As usual, Non Credible doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Following WWII, the Soviet Union did EXACTLY THAT in reverse to Poland and Germany, shifting Poland west, and chopping off the eastern 1/3 for the Soviet Union. What used to be East Prussia and the Free City of Danzig is now western Poland and the Polish City of Gdansk (Where Lech Walesa got his start). Poles were forcibly removed from eastern Poland and Germans from East Prussia. The world accepted it in silence. I know Non Credible and Saran Wrap don’t believe me, but I don’t ask them to or care--simply study modern history. Or even simpler: Look at a map of Europe prior to September 1, 1939, and again in 1950. My point (for those with brains and the ability to use them)? Non Credible’s example is useless and meaningless.
By Inherit The Wind, October 14, 2007 at 3:37 pm # He has NOT given up yet! He is laying LOW now, but he will surface back up when things sort of cool down and seems safe enough to blend back in the forum’s crowd. Those have been his habits...illusive but still there monitoring all comments/posts. He and his ilk are professional zionist hecklers and most likely ADL members/volunteers. Ah, Abu, you genius--you found me out....How am I EVER going to get away from my guilt in causing Hurricane Katrina...And, yes, I caused Mt. St. Helens to explode. You can blame me for causing the tsunami, and the melting of the Arctic. Yes, I admit--Krakatoa? That was my nefarious doing as well...I very cleverly have hidden that I was alive in the mid 1800’s. You are such a crackpot tin-foil-hat paranoid nazi sonuvabitch that I’m sure you’ll believe all that fantasy. How? Doesn’t matter to you paranoia types. |
UN Envoy Heads to Burma with Urgent Relief Message
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