Breaking the silence: the overwrought response to Walt-Mearsheimer's brave paper only confirms its thesis.
Arash
April 18, 2006
Breaking the silence
The overwrought response to John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt's brave paper only
confirms its thesis.
http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2006/04/18/taboo/story.jpg
Israeli Lobby
Dr. Juan Cole
John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Stephen Walt of Harvard
University's Kennedy School of Government have put their hands into a hornet's nest
with their paper in the London Review of Books, titled "The Israel Lobby and U.S.
Foreign Policy". As political scientists who routinely analyze U.S. foreign policy,
they have gained a reputation for lucid and principled argument, but outside the
halls of academia are not exactly household names. In daring to simply describe the
well-known operations of the Israel lobby, however, they have made themselves targets
of a massive smear campaign. Ironically, this reaction is just what their paper
predicted.
Fair and gentlemanly to a fault, and widely respected in their discipline, the two
professors are impossible to imagine as fire-breathing racial bigots, devious
purveyors of blatant falsehoods or wild-eyed conspiracy theorists prone to ignore
obvious evidence, but these are the sort of epithets being hurled at them by their
critics.
In "The Israel Lobby", Mearsheimer and Walt argue that U.S. policy toward the Middle
East has been dangerously skewed by a powerful pro-Israel lobby, which inhibits free
discussion of the issues and has made the pro-Israeli position a political sacred
cow. Congress, they point out, virtually never criticizes Israel: It is an
untouchable subject. And this taboo has had enormous consequences, which are
themselves off limits for discussion. Because America's blank-check support for
Israel arouses enormous Arab and Muslim rage, Israel is a strategic liability, not an
asset.
Nor, Mearsheimer and Walt argue, is there any moral reason for America to act against
its own interests by supporting Israel come what may. Citing distinguished Israeli
historians and journalists, they demythologize Israel's history, demonstrating that
the root of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is the historical fact that "the
creation of Israel entailed a moral crime against the Palestinian people" -- a crime
that Israel's founders explicitly acknowledged, and that has never been rectified.
They discuss Israel's illegal, almost 40-year-old occupation and colonization of
Palestinian land, and its flawed democracy, which explicitly discriminates against
Arabs.
They do not raise these points to smear Israel or single it out for special
criticism -- as political realists, they are well aware that no state is perfect --
but simply to argue that it is not entitled to special treatment. America's
self-interest dictates that the Jewish state should be approached like any other
nation, which it manifestly is not.
Mearsheimer and Walt are at pains to point out that there is nothing sinister or
conspiratorial about the Israel lobby: Lobbying is a legitimate political practice
and Israel is entitled to be defended by interest groups as much as any other nation.
What they do argue is that the Israel lobby has extraordinary power, and that some of
the policies it espouses are inimical to America's national interests. Above all,
they seek to end the taboo, enforced by knee-jerk accusations of anti-Semitism, that
has prevented a full and open discussion of these issues.
The paper is not without its flaws. The authors' use of the term "Israel lobby" is at
times too broad, simultaneously trying to encompass classic pressure politics and
much fuzzier belief systems and taboos. Their tendency to use the term in this
slightly elastic, one-size-fits-all way explains the caveats of even some outspoken
critics of the Israel lobby, like the Nation's Eric Alterman.
Their insistence that America's Middle East policies are centered on Israel ignores
the importance of oil. Nor do they explore the history of the "special relationship"
between Israel and the U.S. and the way that Israel has become a myth in the American
mind, to the point where it is perceived by many as being actually part of America.
The belief in the "special relationship", which is a powerful force, is not entirely
the product of the Israel lobby. And on pressure politics, they could have been more
specific in detailing examples of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee's
clout in Congress and the executive branch. (Journalist Michael Massing has
documented this clout in pieces in the New York Review of Books and the Nation, among
other places.) But these weaknesses are comparatively minor, and certainly do not
justify the vitriol that has been directed against them.
That a powerful pro-Israel lobby exists and plays a significant role in determining
America's Middle East policies may be controversial here, but everywhere else in the
world, it is taken as virtually axiomatic. As Geoffrey Wheatcroft noted in a piece on
the controversy over the paper in the Boston Globe, "On the eastern side of the
Atlantic, it has long been recognized that there is an intimate connection between
the United States and Israel, in which AIPAC clearly plays a major role. The degree
to which this has affected American policy, up to and including the war in Iraq, has
been discussed calmly by sane British commentators -- though also, to be sure, played
up maliciously by bigots.
In America, by contrast, there has been an unmistakable tendency to shy away from
this subject". Wheatcroft quotes Michael Kinsley, who noted in Slate in 2002 that
"the connection between the invasion of Iraq and Israeli interests had become 'the
proverbial elephant in the room. Everybody sees it, no one mentions it' ".
Predictably, most of paper's harshest critics have avoided engaging its key
arguments. Instead, they have raised straw men, attempted to shift the debate to the
question of whether it is even acceptable to raise the subject, and either hinted or
outright alleged that Mearsheimer and Walt are bigots. These tactics allow critics to
sidestep all the crucial questions raised by the paper, while at the same time
signaling to others tempted to comment that if they stick their heads up, they will
be cut off.
The logical fallacy of guilt by association characterizes many of the more strident
responses. For example, the staunchly pro-Israel paper the New York Sun gleefully
pounced on white supremacist David Duke's endorsement of "The Israel Lobby". But in
1989, Duke ran as a Republican for a seat in the Louisiana House of Representatives.
Would it be fair to tar the Republican Party with Duke? It isn't important with whom
Duke agrees -- he is a crank. It is important who agrees with him. No one in his or
her right mind would accuse Walt and Mearsheimer of doing so.
Other critics have accused the authors of anti-Semitism, which is to say, of racial
bigotry. Eliot A. Cohen of the School of Advanced International Studies of Johns
Hopkins University published an emotional attack on the authors in the Washington
Post, saying "yes, it's anti-Semitic".
Harvard professor and torture-loving Alan Dershowitz also accused Mearsheimer and
Walt of bigotry. The Harvard Crimson reported that "Dershowitz, who is one of
Israel's most prominent defenders, vehemently disputed the article's assertions,
repeatedly calling it 'one-sided' and its authors 'liars' and 'bigots' ".
Torture-loving Alan Dershowitz went so far as to allege that the paper paralleled
texts at neo-Nazi sites. No one who actually knows either Mearsheimer or Walt, as
this author does, could possibly find Dershowitz's charges plausible. Again, such
arguments are red herrings, implying guilt by association. Because he cannot refute
the substance of the paper, Dershowitz must compare his academic colleagues to
neo-Nazis. (And he has the gall to actually deny that critics of Israel tend to be
smeared as anti-Semites).
The charge of anti-Semitism (where what is really meant is any criticism of Israeli
policy and/or the Israel lobby) is unacceptable and antidemocratic. I have suffered
from it a fair amount because I have written critically about Israel, in particular
its creeping colonization of the West Bank -- a US-backed policy that is largely
responsible, along with George W. Bush's Iraq war, for America's record-low
popularity in the Arab and Muslim world.
Torture-loving Alan Dershowitz penned a quick response, which he elbowed onto the Web
page of the Kennedy School at Harvard. No other working paper has been treated this
way, with instant rebuttals being posted to it. Both Dershowitz's attempt to impugn
the characters of the authors and the fact that he was given privileges not granted
others only confirm some of the main allegations of the original paper. (In contrast,
Harvard has not rushed to put up a response from, say, a pro-Palestinian academic).
After clearly implying that Mearsheimer and Walt are driven by anti-Semitic motives,
he attempts to impugn their scholarship. Dershowitz identifies a few minor errors,
but he cannot obscure the actual history of Palestinian displacement and
dispossession at the hands of Israelis.
For example, Dershowitz makes much of the fact that the authors quote Israeli
founding father David Ben-Gurion misleadingly, creating the impression that in the
late 1930s he was advocating the violent expulsion of the Palestinians.
In fact, as Dershowitz points out, in the quote Ben-Gurion was not calling for
expulsion, but expressing a bizarre conviction that the small Zionist state he then
envisaged would persuade the Palestinians to relinquish their claim on an independent
state in the rest of Palestine.
What Dershowitz does not mention is that Ben-Gurion's "plan" was so fantastic as to
bring into question his sincerity in stating it as he did. Israeli historian Benny
Morris noted, Ben-Gurion "always refrained from issuing clear or written expulsion
orders; he preferred that his generals 'understand' what he wanted done. He wished to
avoid going down in history as the 'great expeller' ". And in fact, when push came to
shove in 1947 and 1948, Ben-Gurion did explicitly order expulsions, as at Lydda and
Ramla, and was implicated in others by virtue of being in command at the time.
Ben-Gurion also kept the 700,000 expelled Palestinian refugees from ever returning or
being given reparations: Their villages were razed, their houses bulldozed or taken
over, their orchards seized.
Dershowitz insists that, contra Mearsheimer and Walt's assertions, the mainstream
American media offers full and critical coverage of Israel. This is a laughable
contention to anyone who has compared American press coverage of Israel with that
offered by the rest of the world. Even some American officials have noted the
extremely limited nature of U.S. coverage of Israel.
In an April 9 Op-Ed in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette titled "Of Course There Is an
Israel Lobby", ambassador Edward Peck wrote, "Knowing the fiercely negative reactions
to accurate, detailed reporting of controversies surrounding Israel, the media fail
to cover Israel's violations of every principle for which the United States -- and
Israel -- loudly proclaim they stand. There is only rare, skimpy coverage of the
ongoing Israeli mass punishments, house demolitions, illegal settlements,
assassinations, settler brutality, curfews and beatings. On the other hand, the blind
Palestinian rage generated by decades of receiving humiliating, savage suppression in
their homeland is reported in lurid, bloody detail".
Above all, Dershowitz sets up the straw man that the authors claim that a central
"cabal" of "Jews" tightly controls the U.S. press and the U.S. government and
prevents them from criticizing Israel. Like other critics, including noted warmonger
Max Boot, Dershowitz charges that Mearsheimer and Walt are conspiracy theorists who
subscribe to what Dershowitz calls "a paranoid worldview" shared by the likes of
David Duke and Pat Buchanan.
This charge -- with its obvious implications that Mearsheimer and Walt are
anti-Semites in the Henry Ford/Protocols of the Elders of Zion tradition -- is
refuted by every word they have written. In fact, Mearsheimer and Walt are at pains
to make clear that there is no "cabal", and that the pro-Israel lobby is a lobby like
any other (although more powerful and sacrosanct than most.)
Here's their definition: "We use 'the Lobby' as shorthand for the loose coalition of
individuals and organizations who actively work to steer U.S. foreign policy in a
pro-Israel direction. This is not meant to suggest that 'the Lobby' is a unified
movement with a central leadership, or that individuals within it do not disagree on
certain issues. Not all Jewish Americans are part of the Lobby, because Israel is not
a salient issue for many of them. In a 2004 survey, for example, roughly 36 per cent
of American Jews said they were either 'not very' or 'not at all' emotionally
attached to Israel.
"Jewish Americans also differ on specific Israeli policies. Many of the key
organizations in the Lobby, such as the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee
(AIPAC) and the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, 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 favor giving steadfast support to Israel".
It should be noted that it was Mearsheimer and Walt's publisher who capitalized the
word "Lobby". But in any case, they make numerous distinctions. They are not talking
about Jews as a whole or about a unified phenomenon. They acknowledge that Christian
Zionists are a key element of the lobby. They depict no conspiracy. Insofar as they
talk about the lobby's "manipulation", its "influence" and its "stranglehold" over
American policy -- words that Dershowitz cites as indicating their conspiratorial and
unsavory bent -- well, that is what powerful lobbies do. They manipulate, influence
and, in best-case scenarios, achieve a stranglehold over policy.
The storm over the authors' characterization of the lobby has shifted attention from
the most unassailable part of their paper: Their contention that America's
unqualified support for Israel has enraged the Arab and Muslim world, served as an
important source of anti-American terrorism and hurt America's ability to pursue the
war on terror.
Anyone who has spent any time in the Arab or Muslim world knows that the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and America's support for Israel's unjust treatment of
the Palestinians, are the main sources of anger at America and have been for decades.
In a recent Zogby poll, one question that was asked of Arab publics was whether their
dislike of the United States was because of its values or its policies. Here are the
percentages that said it was because of U.S. policies in the region: Jordan, 76;
Morocco, 79; Lebanon, 80; Saudi Arabia, 86; United Arab Emirates, 75; Egypt, 90.
Another question was why people thought the U.S. invaded and occupied Iraq. Here are
the percentages for those who believed it was to "protect Israel": Jordan, 64;
Morocco, 82; Lebanon, 82; Saudi Arabia, 44; Egypt, 92. That is, not only are
Americans disliked for their invasion of an Arab country, but the Arab public
generally attributes the assault to a desire to protect Israel. All those instances
when the Americans vetoed UN Security Council (UNSC) censures of Israel for its
predations against Palestinians or neighbors, all those tens of billions of dollars
in aid the U.S. gave Israel, all the times it winked at atrocities such as the 1982
invasion of Lebanon and indiscriminate shelling of Beirut have added up over time.
Arabs and Muslims like Americans and democracy just fine in principle. What they
don't like is U.S. foreign policy. Their main grievance before 2003 was of U.S.
complicity in the dispossession of the Palestinians. Now they have another major
objection, the U.S. occupation of Iraq -- and they clearly see the two as related. I
am not arguing that the Arab public is correct, only that critics are blind if they
cannot see that it is knee-jerk U.S. support for the worst Israeli policies that has
soured Arabs and Muslims on the United States. To avoid accepting this conclusion, we
would have to believe that they have consistently lied to pollsters for decades, and
we would have to take it upon ourselves to represent the Arabs and Muslims, since
they cannot represent themselves.
None of this is hard to understand. The United States is not generally hated by, say,
Thais, or Paraguayans, or Cameroonians. This is because we have not done anything to
them. We have, however, abetted an epochal wrong against the Palestinian people, with
whom Arabs and Muslims feel a similar kinship to that felt by mid-19th century
Americans with the Texans trapped at the Alamo. For obvious reasons, an open
discussion of the causes and consequences of their anger against us is vital for our
national security.
The outraged and dismissive reaction to Mearsheimer and Walt's paper illustrates
their thesis. The United States faces severe challenges in the Middle East, including
issues having to do with Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, al-Qaida [al-CIA-duh] and what to
do about the Israeli-Palestinian situation now that Hamas has won the Palestinian
elections.
A debate about the best policies to achieve American interests is being made
difficult or impossible by the tactics of intimidation deployed on both sides of the
Atlantic. With a possible war against Iran being floated by the Bush administration,
the stakes are far too high not to have the full and open discussion we never had
before Iraq.
When Ben Franklin exited the Constitutional Convention, he was asked what kind of
government the United States would have. "A republic, if you can keep it", he is said
to have replied. If we cannot even discuss the shape of U.S. foreign policy toward
the Middle East without a lynch mob forming, we won't be able to keep it.
* Juan Cole is a Professor of Modern Middle East and South Asian History at the
History Department of the University of Michigan. He runs an analytical website
called "Informed Comment" (http://www.juancole.com) in which he provides a daily
round-up of news and events in Iraq and elsewhere in the Arab world. Juan Cole speaks
fluent Arabic and Parsi and has lived all over the Muslim world for extended periods
of time. http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2006/04/18/taboo/
Links
--------
John J. Mearsheimer
http://political-science.uchicago.edu/faculty/mearsheimer.html
http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/people2/Mearsheimer/mearsheimer-con0.html
Stephen M. Walt
http://ksgfaculty.harvard.edu/Stephen_Walt
http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/people5/Walt/walt-con0.html
"The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy"
http://ksgnotes1.harvard.edu/Research/wpaper.nsf/rwp/RWP06-011/$File/rwp_06_011_walt.pdf
[PDF -1.2MB]
"The Israel Lobby"
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n06/mear01_.html
The Lobby: why is U.S. policy skewed in favor of Israel?
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=8730
Keeping It Quiet: The Israel Lobby's crushing of dissent
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.iranian/msg/dd467987b30a53eb
CIA official: Does Israel conduct covert action in America? You bet it does
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.iranian/msg/d30b0748559f30a3
The significance of 'Walt-Mearsheimer Study' can not be ignored
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.iranian/msg/58bfbd5635390f52
Israel: The Dead Roach in America's Salad
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.iranian/msg/ec7edda6976dc405
Who is this Israel, and what’s all this talk of an “Israel Lobby”?
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.iranian/msg/ad15d948e4012ced