I’m somewhat reluctant to enter into the debate started by the John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt article in the LRB about the pro-Israel lobby in the United States. Certainly I don’t know enough to judge the accuracy of many of their claims. But I can read, so I can read both what the article says and what hostile critics say about it. Norman Geras reprints a letter of protest to the LRB by Jeffrey Herf and Andrei S. Markovits. Here is Geras’s comment on the letter:
I add just one comment of my own relating to this sentence: ‘American Jewish citizens have a right to express their views without being charged with placing the interests of Israel ahead of those of the United States.’ Yes, and Jewish citizens anywhere and everywhere likewise, mutatis mutandis. It is high time that the suggestion that somehow Jews are especially disqualified from having a voice in the affairs of whatever nation they belong to (lest they come to be a sinister cabal) was banished from acceptable political discourse. By that I don’t mean it should become a criminal offence; I mean merely that it should be regarded and roundly condemned by everyone of progressive democratic outlook for what it is: at best, a disgraceful exercise in the operation of double standards; at worst, anti-Semitism.
One might get the impression from all that that Mearsheimer and Walt had asserted that “Jews are especially disqualified from having a voice ….” In their article, however, they write the following:
In its basic operations, the Israel Lobby is no different from the farm lobby, steel or textile workers’ unions, or other ethnic lobbies. There is nothing improper about American Jews and their Christian allies attempting to sway US policy: the Lobby’s activities are not a conspiracy of the sort depicted in tracts like the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. For the most part, the individuals and groups that comprise it are only doing what other special interest groups do, but doing it very much better.
Mearsheimer and Walt are entitled to take the view that US foreign policy is biased towards Israel and that part of the explanation for that is the effectiveness of the pro-Israeli lobby. Critics might legitimately counter by saying that such a bias is justified, or that there is no such bias, or that the lobby is not as effective as they say it is, or some combination of those thoughts. (One might have similar arguments, of course, about the historical influence of the Irish diaspora on US policy and attitudes towards the British in Northern Ireland. Again, it was entirely legitimate for US citizens of Irish descent to lobby their elected representatives as they did. Similarly there might have been good reasons to deplore the effects of that influence, reasons that might be embraced by people not in the grip of visceral anti-Irish prejudice.)
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Another parallel, besides the Irish one, is the influence of Cubans in Florida on US foreign policy towards the island, which policy is considerably more hard-line than that of any other country in the world. And this is at least partly because a significant population in a swing state endorses the hard line of that policy, based in significant part more on their interests in Cuba than in the best interest of the US.
Of course the intensity and quality of the criticism in this case will only support some of the points the authors make…
I agree with both Chris and Aidan. But I’m afraid that logic and close reading, and the attempts at rational discourse built thereupon, are quite beside the point.
One piece of evidence that the pro-Israel lobby’s battle over the Mearsheimer and Walt article is already won lies in the first line of Chris’s post: “I’m somewhat reluctant to enter into the debate …”
Well, the complete paper does contain this weird statement in fn. 1:
M&W: “Indeed, the mere existence of the Lobby suggests that unconditional support for Israel is not in the American national interest. If it was, one would not need an organized special interest group to bring it about. But because Israel is a strategic and moral liability, it takes relentless political pressure to keep U.S. support intact.”
Do they really believe that the existence of a lobbying group marks the issues propounded by that group as harmful to the national interest? I.e., that all organized lobbying is bad? Or do they only make this point in the context of lobbying by pro-Israel interests?
Indeed, the mere existence of the Lobby suggests that unconditional support for steel interests is not in the American national interest. If it was, one would not need an organized special interest group to bring it about. But because steel protection causes economic loss and damages international trading regime, it takes relentless political pressure to keep U.S. support intact.
The basic logic of the American political system is that extremely small organised groups can impose massive externalities on the rest of American society. That’s why pharmaceutical and insurance companies can make such huge profits out of healthcare, why auto and sugar producers can impose enormous cost increases on consumers, and why lobbyists for policies on Israel, Cuba and for that matter the protection of whales can force US policies to coerce other states.
Tom T:
In short, yes, they really do believe that the existence of a lobbying group marks the issues propounded by that group as harmful to the national interest. Waltzian neo-realists have some strange views about how the world works, and chief among them is the (untenable) view that all nations have an obvious self-interest that they would default to if it weren’t for annoying things like domestic politics. It’s not at all a view specific to this issue, but is most often deployed in the context of dismissing human rights and other non-security concerns as invalid considerations in the formation of foreign policy.
By the way, it takes an odd set of priorities within the context of criticising policies or statements which make ethnic generalisations to be more outraged by possible implication that ethnic lobbying drives foreign policy, viz Israeli lobby impact on US ME policy, than by explicit ethnic cleaning and racist settler colonialism, viz Israel’s 30 year plus behaviour in the West Bank and around Jerusalem.
Yes, Otto. That’s so. Organized groups have power because they leverage the power of many individuals through…uh…organization!
Your point is?
Prohibit individuals from meeting and organizing?
I ask in all seriousness as I was just about to rewrite the same quote from the article as you did but I was going to substitute advocates of accomodation for the disabled. The quote from Walt/Mearsheimer is a bizarre in the context of legislative democracy.
Actually, the article does strike me as a thinly veiled piece of anti-semitic garbage. There were quite a few good points in the article, but too much over the top rhetoric and outright mistruths make it less than academic in nature. Here are a few examples:
Yeah, because the US hasn’t given anyone else such bleeding edge tech as these 20 year old items, except maybe most of their other allies. The US often hands out these military goodies, only extremely dumbed down. If Pakistan can get F-16’s, is it remarkable that Israel does?Perhaps because the US has the same kind of self-interest in Israel as it does in say Taiwan, S. America, the Philippines, or S. Korea (to name just a few).And is it the Sudan, the Congo, Cambodia, China, USSR, Vietnam, Syria, Jordon or some other country responsible for massive genocides that is the number one target of the UN security council? No, it is Israel who receives the most attention from this “fair and judicious” body, and their crimes are small brushfires compared to the more appropriate countries I named.I agree that there is no such thing as well-defined “American national interest”; otoh, I don’t think it would be difficult to name a number of events or policies uncontroversially harmful to the American national interests. Allowing a small interest group to control foreign policy in the middle-east (and to dominate the discussion of it) is obviously harmful to the American national interests. How could it not be?
It’s also harmful to allow Cuban exile dictate the US policy towards Cuba, but the damage here is much, much smaller.
No, it is Israel who receives the most attention from this “fair and judicious” body
You may want to try to examine why your opinion in this case so radically different from that of a majority of the world.
Unless you’re satisfied by being the single sane person in the world filled by insane anti-semites.
Otto 5.”Indeed, the mere existence of the Lobby suggests that unconditional support for steel interests is not in the American national interest. If it was, one would not need an organized special interest group to bring it about”
Yeah sure, like the many civil rights groups – all working against ‘the American national interest’.
[Moderator: I’ve deleted the second half of this comment since the heavy sarcasm contained an unwarranted accusation of bigotry against otto. Keep it polite people, and keep it more or less justified by what other people actually say, or get deleted or disemvowelled. CB]
Abb1,
You appear just the chap to help me out with this one. Sudan is being vastly more efficient with their ethnic cleansing program than Israel (why the Israelis are so inefficent that the Palestinian populatin is actually growing). So why is it that the UN can barely bring themselves to say a bad word about the Sudan, but Israel gets condemation after order after condemnation?
Mearsheimer and Walt do not claim that American Jews have undue influence. They claim that AIPAC and a few other Jewish organizations have undue influence. As they say, “The bulk of US Jewry, meanwhile, is more inclined to make concessions to the Palestinians…”
Take me, for instance. I am an American Jew. I’m a supporter of Israel. I have a job that brings me into contact with Britons, and I find that casual anti-Semitism is the norm. Like jet, I find the obsessive interest of some people in the fate of the Palestinians to be suspicious. And I do find this sort of anti-Semitism in the Mearsheimer/Walt article (as does jet).
BUT- AIPAC does not speak for me. I think that Likud policies are bad for Israel and that US support for them is bad for the United States. I think that the settlements are disasterously counterproductive and should be evacuated and that the Wall, which has worked admirably to diminish terror bombings, should have been built along the Green Line. I think that the Israeli approach to the PA has stengthened the hand of Hamas and has made peaceful resolution much more difficult. I think that AIPAC’s influence in the US strengthens the right wing in Israel and distorts and coarsens Israeli society. And I am very disturbed by the alliance of Israel’s supporters with fundamentalist religious groups that are bent on destroying American democracy and replacing it with a “Christian Reconstructionist” theocracy. I think this alliance is a terrribly destructive force in America, and I think that most American Jews are uneasy about it, and that many are strongly opposed to it.
So I wonder how this powerful lobbying group, which is unrepresentative of the views of most American Jews, has come to influence US policy in the way that it does. Mearsheimer and Walt have done a service in attempting to answer that question.
Not all critics of Mearsheimer and Walt have failed to notice that they say what they say in the quote I reproduced. Here’s Robert Fine, a sociologist at Warwick University on the Engage website:
It is hard to imagine how it might be possible to conduct a sensible argument with someone like Fine.
Jr.
You make it sound like a big deal. It’s simple. AIPAC etc etc is organized and they have a simple clear story. Liberal groups (which espouse chanting Kumbaya as their central foreign policy stance) simply have not convinced the American people that liberals have a better story.
Btw, are you really active in any groups which espouse your perspective? If not, you have your answer.
Political science is about this very subject—the power of organization.
Chris: “It is hard to imagine how it might be possible to conduct a sensible argument with someone like Fine.”
Actually, it’s quite easy – simply conduct your argument Fine’s terms, on his grounds, by his rules. I’m sure that he wouldn’t mind.
I’m somewhat reluctant
[heavy sarcasm deleted]
I vote jr. head of the Israel
CabalLobby.Jet, that’s because Israel is the worst violator of the international law in the post-war period, that’s all there is to it.
The main, most often mentioned crime is military occupation of the territories taken in 1967 – what does it have to do with the situation in Sudan?
Are you trying to tell me that Israel’s leaders are somehow less deplorable than Sudan’s leaders? Maybe they are, but what does it have to do with the international law?
OK Jet, abb1, we’ve been through these moves a million times on a thousand different comments threads. No need to do it again. This thread isn’t primarily about Israel/Palestine but about whether it is possible to have such a debate without people being smeared as bigots.
Two comments:
I am not convinced by their arguments that Israel is a strategic liability. After all, states in the Middle East are now substantially less hostile to us than they were 20 or 30 years ago. And that trend is likely to continue, whatever shape Iraq’s government takes, especially if the Iranian government begins to represent the feelings of its citizens. One reason for that is the military superiority of Israel and the pressure its friendship with the US has had on the surrounding states. Egypt is now an ally of the US - compare to what it was like 20 or 30 years ago, when it was a client of the Soviet Union. They are going to have to work harder to prove their case.
They also seem to ignore the existence of other lobbies vis a vis the Middle East. I’m thinking of the Saudi lobby, which is in many ways more powerful than the Israeli one. After all, we still support Saudi Arabia to the hilt, even after it has become clear that their aims and values are very much opposed to ours, much more than in the case of Israel. The Egypt lobby definitely exists, as does the Morrocan lobby (which seems extremely effective, actually). They seem to assume that under natural circumstances the US would cut Israel loose and support Arab states, but I don’t see how this would be true.
Abb1, that is kind of a circle argument. Israel is the worst violator of international law because the UN keeps passing laws aimed at Israel? What do you mean by worst? If you mean has not complied with the most number of resolutions, then you’re being silly and bureaucratic? Or do you mean, by worst, that Israel’s crimes are worse than Sudan’s?
Okay Chris, you’re the boss. Pardon the last comment, I hadn’t seen your new instruction.
A comment about Fine. It is hard to have a sensible argument with someone who doubts your good intentions and believes you have secret intentions that you wish to conceal. That is true. But it is a perfectly common position on this issue, and thus should not be dismissed. Whether Chris Bertram likes it or not, a substantial number of people do believe that arguments of this sort are motivated by anti-Semitism, and it affects their behavior, fears, and political choices. Ideally, one would try to somehow overcome this attitude rather than dismiss it.
I’m not sure precisely how these kind of attitudes can be surmounted to have a decent argument, but just wishing for a decent argument means ignoring large numbers of people on both sides.
Sigh.
I was going to post “but only opposition to the Israeli lobby is automatically accused of racism” and then I decided not to,
And then I read number 14 (JR) and realised I had to,
JR: I am a British Jew. I am “obsessively” concerned with the treatement of Palestinians, because Halacha tells me it is wrong to deprive people of life, liberty and the right to earn a living.
Go on then… call me anti-semitic.
I’ve lived in the UK all my life. I have had experiences with anti-semitism (have in fact been beaten up). But I can count the instances of “caual antisemitism” on the fingers of one hand.
The very first poster beat me to the Cuban lobby analogy. You can criticize the excessive rightwing influence of the Cuban lobby on her foreign policy without being accused of racism against Hispanics. You can’t do the same with the Israel lobby without being accused of antisemitism.
Complicating this is the fact that there really are antisemites around who criticize Israel’s behavior and mean it as a criticism of Jews. But then on the other hand, you’ve got the Israel-defenders who say that if you criticize Israel or Zionism in its current form then you are antisemitic.
So what do good little liberals do? They pull their punches when talking about Israel’s behavior, for fear of either encouraging antisemites or of being accused of antisemitism themselves.
Donald Johnson,
The complicating factor for the Cuban lobby is that the right-wing leadership of the Cuban lobby is lily-white, and (along with much of the right-wing exile community) has problematic relations with non-white and mixed-race Cubans. So for anyone laying the charge of racism against critics of the Cuban lobby leadership, it’s pretty easy to laugh at the argument out of hand.
After all, states in the Middle East are now substantially less hostile to us than they were 20 or 30 years ago.
That’s states, though, not people; people are substantially more hostile. That’s the contradiction, the conundrum.
Yes….can we please stay away from the subject of Israel’s right to exist, ‘48, ‘67 and so forth? We all know where we all stand on these issues, and let’s face it, none of us are likely to change our minds anytime soon so……
Anyway, back to the article. I have four main problems with it.
First, as Hektor Bim points out, the idea that there is no countervailing Arab lobby movement is simply false: the Saudi lobby is as strong (or maybe stronger) than the Israel lobby. Moreover, links between the States and Saudi go back further than the links between the US and Israel. The US only really began to back Israel after ‘67 (something the LRB article does not really mention or deal with, despite the problems it poses for their thesis). The links with Saudi on the other hand go back to February 11, 1945 and the meeting at Great Bitter Lake. Ever since then US foreign policy has been explicitly devoted to propping up the Saudi theocracy. The US could manage without Israel just fine, and in fact, famously, over Suez it told the Israelis to get knotted (they duly backed down, as well they might). But it would suffer extremely serious economic damage if Saudi Arabia decided to crack the whip.
The second problem (linked to this first problem) is that in arguing, essentially, that this was a ‘war for Israel’ then the crucial relation between the US and Saudi Arabia, and the reason for that relationship (oil) are ignored. In fact, as the writers say:
‘Some Americans believe that this was a war for oil, but there is hardly any direct evidence to support this claim.’
To which I can only say oh yeah? If by ‘direct evidence’ you mean George Bush saying ‘This was a war for oil’ then of course they are right, but he hasn’t said ‘this was a war for Israel’ either. There is a huge amount of indirect evidence (not least from common sense) that oil played at least a part in the calculations of the planners in the Pentagon and White House. Moreover, we know for a fact that the first Gulf War was about Saudi Arabia and oil, and had nothing to do with Israel. But the second gulf war could not have happened but for the first. Again this is a major problem for the LRB thesis.
Thirdly, the authors point out that many of the most aggressive proponents of the war are also fanatical Zionists. This is true, but proves nothing. Correlation is not causation. You cannot infer that just because the neocons back Israel that therefore the main CAUSE of the war was to protect Israel (and another point is that if it was to protect Israel it hasn’t been much of a success has it?).
Finally, the article only really deals with Congress and implies that George Bush is in fact desperate to create a meaningful state for the Palestinians and would do so were it not for those devious Zionists, a thesis I can only describe as fantastic. Bush is a fundamentalist
loonyChristian who believes that Israel has a part to play in the Rapture, which he believes is coming soon (he also, of course, believes that atheists should not be allowed to vote). A Palestinian state plays no major part in these calculations.Zionism is important in the modern world, but it is dwarfed in importance when compared to the alliance between radical Islam and fundamentalist Christianity that that we see in the Bush/Saudi alliance. Which is all about oil.
fjm- I have no interest in calling you anti-Semitic. I’m sure you’re not. But I note that many Britons (the AUT for example) seem to find the Palestinian situation much more distressing than far worse situations. It’s clear that their preferred solution is for Israel to go away. (The current formulation is that there should be a single state west of the Jordan- as if this is remotely a possibility. People who well understand that Iraq is in the midst of a sectarian inter-Muslim civil war say with a straight face that Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs should be ordered to form a peaceful civil society.)
One reason for AIPAC’s power is that objectively, anti-Semitism is very real and very widespread- and also that subjectively, fear of anti-Semitism (and fear of gentiles generally) is much more deeply ingrained in Jews, both culturally and religiously, than non-Jews could possibly imagine. So yes, abb1, Jews have no difficulty at all in believing that the world is filled with insane anti-Semites. And this fear of anti-Semitism is one of the forces that keeps many American Jews, who do not agree with AIPAC, from vocally opposing its influence.
One more comment to Donald Johnson’s post.
Everyone pulls their punches when states or groups they otherwise sympathize with engage in what they view as reprehensible actions.
Watch Noam Chomsky and his admirers tie himself in knots trying to show the Serbs weren’t totally reponsible for Srebrenica and how the death toll in Kosovo was exaggerated and how air strikes somehow mystically “forced” Serbs to ethnically cleanse the Kosovo Albanians, and anyway, what about East Timor?
Read Robison on the Soviet Union and try to avoid the sick feeling in your stomach.
I don’t want to just pick on leftists – there are reams of pages in the National Review on how apartheid wasn’t that bad or how we shouldn’t work too hard against Southern “exceptionalism”.
Watch British citizens hem and haw when the potato famine and the treatment of Catholics in British-ruled Ireland (and later Northern Ireland) is brought up. You can even see a little bit of that in Chris Bertram’s post.
Americans get uncomfortable when the eradication of the Native Americans is raised or American government actions in South America are brought up.
To be more germane to this thread, notice how resistant Palestinian supporters are to the extremely well-documented and widespread anti-Semitism (largely inherited from European tropes) in the Arab world.
It’s universal.
Political science is about this very subject—the power of organization.
I don’t know what political science is about, but the essay explains it really well: a small determined single-issue group will always prevail over a large but fairly ambivalent JR-like majority.
So yes, abb1, Jews have no difficulty at all in believing that the world is filled with insane anti-Semites.
I know that very well, but it’s a mistake; some kind of ghetto syndrome, often bordering on paranoia. An old friend of mine living in NY wrote to me about the recent car-burning riots in France – he has no doubt whatsoever that they were motivated exclusively by anti-semitism.
The sooner it’s overcome the better.
Like chris, I’m loath to jump into this, but abb1’s comment really got my goat.
How come Jews are the only people to whom it is acceptable to say “get over it”?
I think tom t. and not an ir guy both raise serious points about the deficiencies of the style of neo-realist analysis practiced by Walt and Mearsheimer. Much of their empirical argument for the power of the pro-Israel lobby rests on (i) the correct observation of the centrality of the defense of Israel in US foerign policy, together with (ii) an argument that the strength of this relationship is not justified by either powerful strategic considerations or compelling moral imperatives.
Let us assume, for the sake of argument, that they are right about (ii). The suggestion seems to be that if the defense of Israel were justified by strategic implications or compelling moral imperatives, then we wouldn’t need to posit the influence of a powerful lobby to explain the direction of US policy. Their assumption seems to be that motives deriving from strategic interests and compelling moral imperatives make themselves felt in US policy without benefit of a lobby or other kinds of domestic political pressure. That seems dubious to me.
But to accept this point, it seems to me, is to accept the conclusion that the vigorous and uniform congressional and executive branch support of Israel derives from other sources than manifest strategic necessity or moral imperatives. One alternative hypothesis is that the uncompromising and intense government stance just reflects the attitudes of a majority of the voting public – a majority that is so substantial, and so passionate about the defense of Israel, that they are either able to influence to influence national policy without needing any help from a lobby. Put another way, one could argue that we don’t need to posit strong lobbying pressure as the major factor in US support for Israel, since the lobby’s positions reflect the attitudes of a substantial electoral majority in America.
My own sense, however, is that the influence of the pro-Israel lobby – particularly AIPAC - is absolutely crucial here, and that its overall stance does not at all reflect the views of most Americans, most of whom (i) do not have anything close to the level of passionate commitment about Israel that is shown by our Congress, even where they roughly agree with the policy; and (ii) most of whom would certainly not prioritize foreign policy values and aims in the way they are prioritized by our national government.
I agree with the point that others have made – that the fact that some cause is represented by a lobby to organize political support, does not necessarily mean that the cause lacks broad popular support. But I do think that the most powerful lobbies have a common trait: They represent interests of groups in the US that are (i) minorities, but (ii)large enough and committed enough to influence policy decisively. For example, we don’t have a large and powerful pro-prosperity lobby, since most voters vote their pocketbooks and support prosperity, and government officials do not need the influence of a lobby to push them in that direction.
And we also have the direct testimony of the congressional representatives themselves about the power of AIPAC.
I suppose the most important issue in all this is not whether the lobby has influence, but whehter it currently influences US policy in a direction that is contrary to the “national interest” or contrary to the individual interests – practical or moral – of a majority of Americans. I think that is in fact the case.
They are?
Hey Americans – that post-colonial inferiority complex you have towards the Brits – get over it!
Hey Brits – 1966 was 40 years ago – get over it!
Hey Irish – the potato famine was 160 years ago – get over it!
I’m not convinced that Geras has smeared or distorted M&W.
It should be clear that M&W think of the “Israel Lobby” mainly as the “Jewish Lobby” (“The core of the Lobby is comprised of American Jews who make a significant effort in their daily lives to bend U.S. foreign policy …”), with some help from the Christian right (and, by implication, no one else?). In light of the equation of the “Israel Lobby” with American Jews, you might read M&W as claiming that American Jews mistakenly believe that providing support for Israel is in America’s interest, when it isn’t. Or, what seems natural given M&W’s realism, you can read them as saying that (a significant percentage of powerful) American Jews have placed Israel’s interest above that of the United States. The latter interpretation is a trope of modern anti-semitism (and structually similar to the powerful anti-Catholic trope that Catholics are subservient to the Vatican), and H&M and Geras are right to worry about it. Even if M&W are making the former point (and I’m not sure they are), they are easily read as making the latter. And to the extent that Geras is amplifying criticism of the latter reading, he’s got a point.
None of this is to say that American foreign policy toward Israel, or its formation, is somehow off limits for discussion. (Do you think Geras thinks that?) It’s just to point out that M&W are easily read as accusing the American Jewish community (or, again, significant portions of it) as being disloyal to U.S. interests.
I don’t want to be lumped in with Fine, but I also read the paragraph in which M&W say that the “Israel Lobby” is like all other lobbies as a hedge, which M&W qualify by summarily concluding that the “Israel Lobby” is much better at what it does than other lobbies. And since support for Israel is so antithetical to American interests, the implication is that American Jews are working harder, and doing a better job, than other special interests at defeating national interests to advance their loyalty to Israel. Given what M&W say (mostly through highly selective quotation) about how American Jews (or at least those in the “Israel Lobby”) form their policy views—not by asking whether some action is consistent with the national interest (whatever that may be), but by blindly following Israeli political leadership—there seems to me ample ground on which to dismiss the charitable view described above.
Seeing as Chris is back on his Normblog hobbyhorse again…
From Shalom Lappin (on, yes, Normblog: http://normblog.typepad.com/normblog/2006/03/more_on_mearshe.html)
They (Walt and Mearsheimer) do not offer a critical examination of a particular lobbying agency, like AIPAC, but a general indictment of Jewish and pro-Israel influence in American public life, which they portray as a cohesive, well-oiled lobby, their weak caveats notwithstanding. Therefore, despite their stated intentions to avoid Zionist conspiracy-theory-mongering, this is precisely what they engage in.
And (Jeffrey Herf and Andrei Markovits)… http://normblog.typepad.com/normblog/2006/03/a_reply_to_mear.html...
Mearsheimer and Walt stand in a long tradition of “realist” political scientists known for naivete regarding the power and import of ideological fanaticism in international affairs. This naivete is the reason that radical Islam and the enduring crises of modernization in the region that produced it receive hardly a word in their long attack.
Franco, the fact that a list of people with similar axes to grind all characterize M&W in the same way as one another hardly gives us additional reason to believe that they should be so characterized.
But Dan Kervick, the difference between AIPAC and, say, the expatriate Cuban lobby or the fundamentalists, is that AIPAC can’t deliver the votes. In spite of the heavy presence of Jews among the neo-conservatives, the fact remains that most American Jews are liberals and vote Democratic. So if AIPAC doesn’t bring voters to the Republicans, why are Republican politicians so supportive of Israel?
Mearsheimer/Walt write:
“Thanks in part to the influence Jewish voters have on presidential elections, the Lobby also has significant leverage over the executive branch. Although they make up fewer than 3 per cent of the population, they make large campaign donations to candidates from both parties. The Washington Post once estimated that Democratic presidential candidates ‘depend on Jewish supporters to supply as much as 60 per cent of the money’. And because Jewish voters have high turn-out rates and are concentrated in key states like California, Florida, Illinois, New York and Pennsylvania, presidential candidates go to great lengths not to antagonise them.”
But look at what this means: Democrats need money from Jewish contributors, and Democrats need Jewish voters to win. In 2204, for example, Kerry took 76% of the Jewish vote. So why are Republicans so willing to accomodate AIPAC? The answer must be that there is NO political downside- zero, none- to going along with AIPAC’s position. Therefore, if Republicans can pick up perhaps one or two percent of the Jewish vote in Florida by falling in line with AIPAC, they will do it. If there were significant votes to be had anywhere in the US in taking a different position, some politician somewhere would do so.
Chris Bertram is right, I think, about the influence of oil politics on US Middle East policy. It is at least as important a factor as Israel. However, I think the oil factor does a much better job at explaining US policy in the Gulf, for example, than its policy toward Syria and the rest of the Eastern Mediterranean. Oil-related matters play a role there too, but not enough in my view to explain the occasional obessions of US policy with the affairs in those countries.
I think it is also worth speculating about the oscillatory and two-track nature of some US relations in the region. My sense in the case of a place like Syria, for example, much of the relationship develops along a quiet strategic track, but with occasional outbursts of hard line public rhetoric from each side designed to placate various domestic constituencies – the pro-Israel hawks in the US, to take one example.
But this is a dangerous game, of course. And in the Bushg administration, the policy seems in reality to have passed several times from the hands of one group to those of another.
Micah,
In light of the equation of the “Israel Lobby” with American Jews
But M&W don’t make such an equation do they? (I was initially puzzled by your quotation because it doesn’t appear in the LRB text btw.) They do indeed say that the core of the lobby is Jewish but the very same paragraph continues with a disidentification of the lobby from Jewish-Americans as a whole. Hardly an “equation”.
I’m also troubled by your passive constructions here: “you can read them as saying” and “they are easily read as”. Better, as I said in my original post, to focus on what they say and whether it is justified or not.
And, by the way, I do think that Geras believes that some topics are off limits for discussion, but I guess I’d risk coming across like Bob Fine on that one: if he says “it isn’t off limits” he means “that’s off-limits.”
“It is hard to imagine how it might be possible to conduct a sensible argument with someone like Fine.”
True, because he takes the idea too far, not because the idea is worthless. He says “When an unwanted voice on the telephone says ‘I am not trying to sell you anything’, it usually means that he has some wildly expensive kitchen units or plastic windows up his sleeve. In this piece there are classic examples of denial. ‘There is nothing improper about American Jews and their Christian allies attempting to sway US policy’ means that there is everything improper.”
He misses something in the translation of his analogy into the instant case. That something is “usually means”. When you get an unsolicited telephone call that says ‘I am not trying to sell you anything’ it really is true that it usually means they are about to try to sell you something. But if you end the conversation there, you can’t be sure they were employing denial. Assuming you have time, you can find out if they were employing unwarranted denial by listening to the rest of their pitch. If they try to sell you things later you have strong evidence that they were. Fine is clearly wrong to say that “There is nothing improper about American Jews and their Christian allies attempting to sway US policy’ means that there is everything improper”. The phrase by itself obviously doesn’t mean that. But in the context of the rest of the article, it isn’t hard to argue that the language you quote exists not so much to help us gain a deeper understanding of their views, but rather to deflect criticism of their views. They argue that the Israel Lobby (capitalization theirs) is the preeminent force in shaping Middle East policy. They don’t look at the force of the Saudi lobby which any neutral observer would surely admit is at least worth considering as a strong influence in shaping Middle East policy. They ask stupid questions about “Why has the US been willing to set aside its own security and that of many of its allies in order to advance the interests of another state?” as if they were unaware that the US offered its own cities in a nuclear standoff to help protect Europe during the Cold War—Newsflash the US sometimes thinks that protecting the interests of another state advances our security concerns. Whether or not that correct in this particular case is the debate, but pretending that the idea is unthinkable is just stupid. They omit strategic concerns, like oil, that have shaped Middle East policy. They omit strategic concerns, like fear of the USSR, that have shaped Middle East policy (remember their time period of ‘analysis’ goes back into the 1950s and 1960s). In short they appear to be incompetent analysts. The article as a whole suggests that “In its basic operations, the Israel Lobby is no different from the farm lobby, steel or textile workers’ unions, or other ethnic lobbies. There is nothing improper about American Jews and their Christian allies attempting to sway US policy: the Lobby’s activities are not a conspiracy of the sort depicted in tracts like the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. For the most part, the individuals and groups that comprise it are only doing what other special interest groups do, but doing it very much better.” can be interpreted as defensive denial of what the rest of what they say. Fine is wrong to suggest that the words of the denial prove the denial. They don’t. The rest of their words prove (or strongly suggest) that the words you quote are a denial instead of a further explanation of their views.
Chris Bertram is right, I think, about the influence of oil politics on US Middle East policy.
Huh? I didn’t say anything about oil.
Just one more comment,
Just once, could we have some actual discussion of foreign subjects aside from Israel, Iraq, and Iran on this blog? (I don’t count the UK and Ireland, since it seems some of the people actually live there.) After all, ETA just declared a permanent ceasefire today, there’s a developing situation between Ukraine and Transdniestria over custom enforcement, NATO developments in Afghanistan and possibly Darfur, etc. I realize that the topics chosen reflect people’s competencies and interests, but I would ask as a favor more effort be undertaken to pick topics on countries besides the I’s. (All of Eszter’s articles about Hungary are very interesting, for example.)
“can be interpreted as defensive denial of what the rest of what they say.”
hmm an extra what got in there somehow and made the sentence very weird. I’m not blaming the Lobby for that one.
:)
“can be interpreted as defensive denial of the rest of what they say.” makes more sense.
The more I think about the LRB article actually the more I think it’s bollocks. As someone pointed out earlier even if it was all true, it would only explain why the Democrats were biased towards Israel. But what would the Republicans have to gain from being pro-Israel?
Now, a sane answer to this would be that in many respects the Republicans ARE less biased towards Israel than the Democrats. But of course Mearsheimer and Walt want to make the (in my view incredible and unbelievable) claim that this war was in some way ‘about Israel’. So they therefore tie themselves in knots in attempting to show that the Israel lobby has ‘more’ influence on Bush than the Democrats (few people, surely, would argue that if Al Gore had won the 2000 election then the US would have gone to war with Iraq). How?
Secondly, they have an incredibly narrow view of ‘the national interest’ which they don’t even bother to define. As a matter of fact they don’t even bother to define ‘Israel’s interests’. In what way, precisely, was Saddam Hussein’s dying and collapsing regime a ‘threat’ to Israel? What were they going to do? Invade Israel? Iraq couldn’t even invade Kuwait. Develop a nuclear weapon? They tried that, and that didn’t work and everybody sane (this does not include Bush) knew that it would not happen again.
It probably is true that the Israeli’s are nervous about losing their nuclear monopoly in the region (more for reasons of political power than because this would genuinely threaten them)and would quite like Iran’s nuclear power programme ‘taken out’ (just to be on the safe side). This is very different from saying that it is in Israel’s interests for Iran to actually be invaded, especially after we have all seen what a disaster the Iraqi fiasco was.
But Dan Kervick, the difference between AIPAC and, say, the expatriate Cuban lobby or the fundamentalists, is that AIPAC can’t deliver the votes. In spite of the heavy presence of Jews among the neo-conservatives, the fact remains that most American Jews are liberals and vote Democratic. So if AIPAC doesn’t bring voters to the Republicans, why are Republican politicians so supportive of Israel?
First, support for Israel is every bit as strong among Democratic politicians as Republican politicians. The two parties battle it out incessantly these days, and in the most blatant, shameless fashion, for the mantle of Israel’s number one friend. Just take a look at the speeches that are delivered at the AIPAC conferences by the leaders of both parties. Traditionally, the Democrats were seen as the stronger of the two parties on the score of support for Israel. Republicans were more often criticized or denigrated among the partisans of Israel for the influence of “realists” and “Arabists” on their foreign policy, and for the once-decisive role of WASPy mainline Protestants in Republican circles.
In the matter of delivering votes, though, I would say support for Istrael among the Republicans skyrocketed once the pro-Israel lobby showed they could help deliver the votes of various fundamentalist Christian Zionists, as well as the votes of a whole bunch of non-descript Islamophobes and Arab-haters.
I also believe AIPAC is able to deliver decisive negative votes against a candidate, from either side, once they decide to target that candidate. You do not need to control that many votes overall in order to have this decisive impact, so long as those voters are single-minded, and will vote in a bloc. They are also able to deliver a campaign of villification that has an impact beyond AIPAC’s own constituency.
And they certainly deliver money – both directly and secondarily. The mere percepion of their power goes a long way to reinforce that power. Once the word has gotten abroad that a candidate has fallen out of AIPAC’s favor, money often dries up from other sources who, correctly or mistakenly, respect AIPAC’s power and see the targeted candidate as irremediably damamged goods.
I think the clearest difference between the power of AIPAC and the power of the Cuba lobby is that Cuba is only one country in a much larger Latin American world, and the Cuban people are themselves divided in half, so it is impossible to get away with the claim that the interests of Cuban expatriots coincide with the interests of the Latin American people, or some such construct.
Israel, on the other hand, is more convincingly portrayed as the homeland of the Jewish people, and the embodiment of their interests and aspirations. Thus it is much easier for Israel’s supporters to get away with arguing that any hostility to the policies of Israel’s government is evidence of hostility to the interests of the Jewish people collectively, i.e. anti-Semitism.
Nevertheless, one only need recall the inanities of the Elian Gonzalez flap during the 2000 campaign to see the impact of the Cuba lobby – particularly in elections in which Florida’s electoral vote is in play – is significant indeed.
Brendan,
I think you’re mistaken about the Bush Saudi alliance. The relationship between various western democracies and Arab oil producers have been fairly constant, regardless of the political or religious background of the western leaders. There may be a lot wrong with the specific Bush Saudi connection, but it essentially resulted in the continuation of existing US policy.
The point of the article is that the Israel lobby has shifted US policy against the interest of the US as seen in the realist worldview of the authors. In case of the Saudi lobby it isn’t clear how it shifted US foreign policy and whether it is against the interest of the US (again in the realist sense).
As such I don’t see any reason to conclude that the Bush Saudi relation is so important that we should ignore and not talk about the lobby of AIPAC and related organizations, as you would suggest. It looks a bit like a “Sudan is worse” type argument.
The article mentioned the relation between Israel and the Bush government, it doesn’t suggests at all that “George Bush is in fact desperate to create a meaningful state for the Palestinians”. It does say that that would be in the interest of the US to adopt a different policy.
And it does mention 1967 (in the first line). It uses these dates (‘67 ‘73 and ‘76) to note the change in policy which they think is against the interest of the US.
The long version of the LRB artice is here.
Micah,
a part of the Irish-American community was instrumental in financing the IRA for decades, contrary to American national interests. Yeah, here you have it, I said it. Does this sound like a trope of modern anti-irishism to you? Frankly, I don’t care.
Either it’s true or it’s not true, that’s all there is to it.
Chris Bertram wrote:
Huh? I didn’t say anything about oil.
Excuse me Chris, my mistake. I meant Brendan.
One thing that people suspicious of the Israel lobby might like to consider is whether there would be an equivalently-strong pro-Ireland lobby in the USA if six million Irish had been murdered just 60 years ago.
I think that the answer is obviously ‘yes.’
That there is a strong “Jewish-survival” lobby should not be a surprise. I see nothing wrong with it and no reason for Jews to be the least bit embarassed about it.
Attacks on the existence of such a lobby are not even veiled anti-Semitism.
Luc
Just before I start rambling, everyone here seems to accept that the authors of the LRB article are in fact self-proclaimed ‘realists’ in a reasonably clear neo-Kissingerean way. Given that this is the case….(and I don’t know myself but let’s accept it for the sake of argument….)
OK: anyway I accept your point, but if it is true it illustrates the grave limitations of a ‘realist’ interpretation of moden politics. The key problem is that ‘realism’ ignores what most people think is the most important aspect of geopolitics: morality.
In other words, instead of being an article (as most readers on the ‘left’ have interpreted it) about the pernicious influence of Israel on the US, and how this is unfair and how it leads to poverty and violence for the Palestinians, this is (on your reading) merely an article that raises an interesting problem.
The problem is this. According to your reading of the article the point of it is this. The US has backed numerous dictators throughout South America and Africa. In the Middle East, it still does: Saudi Arabia being a case in point. Now (implicitly) the authors agree that this is the correct thing to do. You should support Nazi-ism (or Jihadism or Stalinism) if it’s in your interests to do so.
But (according to the authors) here’s an interesting problem. It is not, according to the authors, in the US’ interests to support Israel. But US foreign policy (and my apologies to some of the more excitably right wing commentators to this blog) is unquestionably biased in favour of Israel and against the Palestinians. Why should this be?
The answer, according to the authors, is the Israel lobby. It is this lobby that is distorting the US’ own (correct) aim to maximise its self-interest. Instead, the US should support Saudi Arabia and (in Palestine) Hamas. In Iraq, the US should have supported Saddam Hussein. And so on.
My problem with this analysis is threefold:
1: it is a cartoon, merely (as Orwell pointed out many years ago, about crude Marxism) a way of saying ‘cui bono’. It presupposes that ‘interests’ are simple things that can be easily evaluated, and, indeed, that ‘nations’ actually do have interests. Links of culture and history and language count for nothing in this view, although they clearly do in the ‘real’ world. It ignores ‘systems’ issues (for example feedback loops (the classic one is an arms race) which lead to results no one really wanted but which were inevitable once the initial conditions were set up) and inertia (once the US had started to support Israel it was more likely to keep on doing so just because the infrastucture for support was already in place).
2: It ignores morality. But even if you think that’s the ‘right’ thing to do (surely in itself a moral judgement?) it is an objective fact that everyone in the world, from Bush to Bin Laden to Bibi to Blair, frame their policies in moral terms, condemn their enemies in moral terms, justify their actions in moral terms. You can disregard morality if you want, but to pretend that it actually doesn’t exist, and that people don’t make people behave in certain ways is insane.
3: It is interesting that the article itself is almost universally interpreted as claiming that US support for Israel is unjust, that it’s unfair, that it is in fact, immoral. But of course that’s the one argument the authors can’t make. So instead they have to make various arguments as to how the US would be ‘better off’ without supporting Israel. This may be true, but it’s also true that the US would have been ‘better off’ if it hadn’t invaded Iraq. But the US did invade Iraq. This in itself questions their thesis which is why they have to invent a fantasy explanation that this was ‘really for Israel’, an action which they can then explain with their deus ex machina the ‘Israel Lobby’.
But the fact is that Israel is NOT better off after the invasion of Iraq, and any sane person can see that it would be even worse off after an invasion of Iran. So their ‘explanation’ really explains nothing.
“In the matter of delivering votes, though, I would say support for Istrael among the Republicans skyrocketed once the pro-Israel lobby showed they could help deliver the votes of various fundamentalist Christian Zionists, as well as the votes of a whole bunch of non-descript Islamophobes and Arab-haters.”
I find this passage confusing. Are you seriously suggesting that a primary (or even large but non-primary) part of the Republican/fundamentalist-Christian alliance has to do with Israel? If it can be traced to any single issue (and I’m not sure that it can) that issue is surely “abortion”. It could be argued that part of the Republican treatment of Israel springs from the alliance of Republicans and fundamentalist Christians (and I think Mearscheimer and Walt do suggest that). I think that argument is stupid too, but it is at least colorable. Part of the problem that I have with the article is its silly attempt to mush together a bunch of people into “The Lobby” that certainly shouldn’t be classified together while ignoring other obvious lobby participants on the issue of the Middle East. It would be like saying that Christians and Muslims form a “religious lobby” because they both dislike abortion. Such a formulation is nearly useless because A) they don’t really form a unitary lobby, B) Christians aren’t all anti-abortion, C) Muslims aren’t all anti-abortion, and D) insofar as they are anti-abortion they often work in different groups with different tactics. “The Lobby” they describe doesn’t exist as they describe it. To the extent it does exist, it doesn’t have as much power as they ascribe to it. Their thesis that “The Lobby” drives US policy in the Middle East ignores the effects of other very important players, presupposes an ideal foreign policy (completely undescribed) which the US is diverted from, mixes up the players that they do describe, and ignores the effect of other world events on US policy in the Middle East (especially the USSR in the Cold War period.)
Now, is there SOME influence? Of course. Enough influence to be a concern? I doubt it. To analyze it they would be better off identifying what the policy would look like without the alleged undue influence. But I doubt a serious analyst would conclude the US and USSR wouldn’t have been playing proxy-war games if only Israel had not existed or if only “The Lobby” had not been so powerful. Would the US have protected Kuwait if Israel had not existed or if “The Lobby” were not so powerful? Surely. Would the US have funded the proto-Taliban in Afghanistan against the Soviets? Yes, because that was something decided by Pakistan and the US not Israel and the US. Would the US have stationed troops in Saudi Arabia thus pissing off bin Laden? Almost certainly. Middle East policy isn’t really all about Israel.
This discussion is displaying an inaequate understanding of how lobbies actually work. They use money, but they also use influence over personnel (bureaucrats and Congressional staffers), influence over the ideological environment. A Jewish lobby is particularly well placed to use those tools because the ethnic Jewish community in the U.S. combines great wealth with great intellectual firepower, and a substantial over-representation in ideologically influential areas like the media and academia. Key Bush administration foreign policy staffers are Jewish, and the Mearsheimer/Walt article specifically refers to the aid Jewish Congressional staffers give to AIPAC. The Ashkenazi Jewish community is also particularly intelligent and quite talented at generating ideological justifications for support of Israel, which they can use their many positions in the media and think tank world to propagate. The community is also fairly united around at least some form of military support for Israel. It’s a perfect storm of political power, each of the elements synergizes with the other.
Chris, you are showing a somewhat heavy hand in censoring posts. I hope you leave this one up and don’t read the above factual statements as somehow anti-semitic. I am an Ashkenazi Jewish academic who has seen this dynamic operating in my community and among my acquaintances (some of whom work for AIPAC) my entire life. If we’re going to raise this topic at all we should be realistic about it.
Chris,
The quote is from the unedited version of the article, which is linked at the bottom of the LRB piece and available here. I don’t think my comment above has to rely on a complete “equation” in M&W between the “Israel Lobby” and the American Jewish community. I qualified what I said above in various parantheticals. But even so, M&W paint with a fairly broad bush, arguing that most moderate and conservative Jews (i.e., the overwhelming majority who think Israel is a “salient issue”) “favor giving steadfast support to Israel.” That’s certainly true, but there is more. The support of American Jews is, on their view, consciously against American interests. Anyway, I think that’s a reasonable inference from what they say, and so I don’t think Geras was distorting their view. Or at least his reading wasn’t much of a stretch.
Abb1: if M&W want to claim that part of the American Jewish community is actively disloyal to American interests, then they’re free to say so. The only point of my comment above was to register a respectful disagreement with Chris about whether Geras was off-base. I think M&W are fairly read (passive—but I’m describing possible interpretations here) in the way I described. And if that’s right, then they are open to criticisms in addition to those directed against what they say about the substance of American foreign policy.
P.S. one also needs to look at the history of ideology as a separate force, instead of just looking for the “money” or “power” of the Israel lobby as the only influence. For example, the current power of the Israel (especially the old Likud-oriented) lobby over the Republican party is related to the migration of Jewish neoconservatives into the party in the 70s, combined with the rising generalized public hostility toward the non-Israeli middle east that began with the oil crisis in the 70s, continued with the Iran hostage situation, then Libya, then the Gulf War. Those factors combined with money and institutional influence allowed a particular segment of the Israel lobby to set up a narrative that portrayed Israel as the enemy of our enemies in the Middle East, and therefore our unquestioned friend. There is an alternative narrative (supported by many in the Jewish community as well) that emphasizes the benefits to the U.S. that could be created by taking an honest broker between Israel and the rest of the Arab world, while still protecting Israel’s right to exist. The Mearsheimer/Walt article doesn’t cover this ideological history well.
Micah,
all right, sorry. It’s just that I am very sceptical of this “modern anti-semitism” thing. It’s way too elastic, can absorb pretty much anything.
“In what way, precisely, was Saddam Hussein’s dying and collapsing regime a ‘threat’ to Israel?”
It supported the Palestinians, and remained uncowed by Israel. Whether that made Iraq a threat to Israel is debatable – but certainly (if reports in Haaretz are to be believed) it was perceived as one by many within the Israeli establishment.
Whether you’re philosemetic or antisemetic doesn’t matter. Whether Israel has a right to exist or not doesn’t matter. Beneath the interminable argument lies the bald fact that the Jewish State is an extreme anomaly, a country with the population of El Salvador but the nuclear weaponry of a major power that maintains its existence by a permanent state of war with the peoples, if not the governments, in its region. Mere demographics, if not some new Saladin, will eventually overwhelm the latest Kingdom of Jerusalem. Maybe discussions of Israel’s prospects always end up in hysteria, paranoia, and mere noise because we all realize how impossible the situation really is and don’t want to think about it.
I can’t help thinking, reading this thread, that there are quite a few people who are deeply worried about anti-Semitism because they think that it is a cover for criticism of Israel.
Micah,
except M&W go to considerable pains to point out that they do not believe that the Israel Lobby (and there’s no need to put it in scare quotes. It exists) does represent the views of most Jews (this seems a fair assumption). They go further, stating that while most Jews (as do the authors, seemingly) support the state of Israel’s right to exist and defend itself, they do not support the policies of Likud towards the Palestinians (the self same policies are supported by the Israeli lobby, using the author’s definition of that lobby). At no point do the authors state that they think supporting Israel’s “right to exist”, or from attack, is against US interests – and given their previous comments I think it is unreasonable to assume that they think it is.
Rephrased. While it might be in America’s interest to support Israel on occasion, there will be occasions in which it is not in America’s interest.
“Given M&W’s realism, you can read them as saying that (a significant percentage of powerful) American Jews have placed Israel’s interest above that of the United States. The latter interpretation is a trope of modern anti-semitism (and structually similar to the powerful anti-Catholic trope that Catholics are subservient to the Vatican), and H&M and Geras are right to worry about it.”
I don’t buy this. It would be anti-semitism to claim it as a given, or to claim that Jews (wealthy or otherwise) will always support Israel over the US. However if you claim that it is anti-semitic to claim (with supporting examples) that some wealthy American Jews support Israel interests over those of the US - then you have redefined anti-semitism such that certain strains of it are acceptable. This is because if some wealthy Jews do support Israeli interests over those of the US, and it is anti-semitic to point this out, then it is anti-semitic to make a truthful statement. I’m guessing this is not an argument you wish to make, nonetheless…
Are you seriously suggesting that a primary (or even large but non-primary) part of the Republican/fundamentalist-Christian alliance has to do with Israel?
American fundamentalist Christianism is extremely pro-Israel, though stridently anti-Jewish. Outlets such as Hal Lindsey’s go on and on about Israel. Israel and the Jews play a crucial role in the Left Behind series, supposedly read by 65 million Americans. The classic LaHaye-style construction of the End Times is based upon getting as many Jews as possible to emigrate to Israel, so that (1) the Rapture can get underway once an undefined “critical mass” of Jews in Israel is reached, (2) the majority of Jews in the world can be brutally exterminated, and (3) the remnant can be converted to Christianity. These are rabidly-held tenets of much of the Christian Right (though the Dominionists have their own peculiar take on things). I personally was informed by various conservative relatives in 2004 that George W. Bush was a better “friend to Israel” because he was “Christian.” Perhaps you wish to argue that right-wing fundamentalist Christians have no impact on Republican electoral strategies?
That there is a strong “Jewish-survival” lobby should not be a surprise. I see nothing wrong with it and no reason for Jews to be the least bit embarassed about it.
Attacks on the existence of such a lobby are not even veiled anti-Semitism.
So, raw data, since the policies of AIPAC are heavily aligned with Likud, and influential American neocons are much more likely to have cozy meetings with Mr. Netanyahu than Mr. Peretz, is Labour anti-Semitic for practicing the wrong flavor of Zionism? Because you seem inordinately fond of accusing those who criticize one particular set of Israeli political viewpoints of anti-Semitism.
Brendan,
I like your deterministic angle, but I think this case is just a bit too extreme for ‘historical materialism’ explanation.
Not just “support”, but blind, unconditional, irrational, cult-like support; read some of those congressional resolutions. It’s just plain weird, counter-intuitive.
I really don’t understand comments like jim harrison’s. Even if you grant that Israel is in some future time, definitively doomed, so what? All of us are doomed in the near or far future. All empires crumble, peoples disperse and are eradicated or change cultural referents, governments fade, etcetera. The Pontic Greeks lasted three thousand years, but even they were eventually destroyed by the Soviet Union and the Turks. You could say the same thing about the US, or Germany (two hundred years ago there wasn’t even a Germany, and many people thought there never would be one – there’s a “lost cause” for you).
What is this supposed to convince us to do? Shoot the horse because we know it will die sometime in the future and possibly inconvenience us? How do we know when it will die for sure?
Incidentally. While I think the authors are right to identify the Israeli lobby as a powerful force in american politics, I think it is very simplistic to say that this is the reason the US supports Israel. However it is A factor. There are many other factors, ranging from historical (anti-communism, 40 years of being allies)to the bias of US news coverage.
One factor is that many people within the Jewish community are successful (in politics, the media and business) and/or wealthy and consequently on issues that the Jewish community cares about (and for which there is no strong opposing viewpoint) such as Israel, the Jewish viewpoint will be a powerful and influential one. there’s nothing terribly surprising, or sinister, about this (unlike many campaigns by AIPAC, or some of their supporters, but that’s another story).
At any given time certain factors will have a stronger influence than others. The current administration has strong links to Christian zionists, and had (and may still well have) members who had strong links to the Likud party in Israel. The Israeli lobby would be in that instance knocking on an open door.
However, it would be interesting to see explanations of US reluctance to punish Israel for such things as passing US secrets to Russia, passing military secrets to China, or for that matter the attack on USS Liberty – which did not acknowledge some form of Israeli lobby. There may well be one – but I’ve been able to come up with one.
And some American Jews do have some kind of joint loyalty, given that they have dual nationality, and taking an Israeli passport is an active choice for those born in the US. I don’t have a huge problem with this (having dual nationality myself) – but if some of those people were in government (as there may) it might be more questionable.
‘American fundamentalist Christianism is extremely pro-Israel, though stridently anti-Jewish. Outlets such as Hal Lindsey’s go on and on about Israel. Israel and the Jews play a crucial role in the Left Behind series, supposedly read by 65 million Americans. The classic LaHaye-style construction of the End Times is based upon getting as many Jews as possible to emigrate to Israel, so that (1) the Rapture can get underway once an undefined “critical mass” of Jews in Israel is reached, (2) the majority of Jews in the world can be brutally exterminated, and (3) the remnant can be converted to Christianity. These are rabidly-held tenets of much of the Christian Right (though the Dominionists have their own peculiar take on things). I personally was informed by various conservative relatives in 2004 that George W. Bush was a better “friend to Israel” because he was “Christian.” ’
This is absolutely correct and in itself demonstrates why talking about an ‘Israel Lobby’ as if that explains everything is pointless. The US (under Bush) would support Israel regardless of whether the Israel lobby existed or not, because Bush is an extremist fundamentalist who believes in end times, who believes that atheists should not be allowed to vote, who disbelieves in evolution, and so forth. His foreign policy is predicated on the idea that the world will end fairly soon and that the Rapture will then happen (so was Ronald Reagan’s when it wasn’t influenced by his wife’s astrologer) and makes no sense whatsoever unless you grasp that viewpoint.
Abb1
‘Not just “support”, but blind, unconditional, irrational, cult-like support; read some of those congressional resolutions. It’s just plain weird, counter-intuitive.’
It may be weird but it’s certainly not counter-intuitive. As every opinion poll demonstrates, as everyone notices when they go there (and by ‘there’ i mean the real America, not San Francisco) the US is a very very religious country. I wasn’t really joking when I talked about a Saudi/Bush alliance: it’s certainly a pragmatic alliance, but they both have similarties in terms of modes of though, culture and so on.
Cian,
Two quick points: first, I use scare quotes because M&W mean something specific by the “Israel Lobby,” and other may mean something different. If we can agree that the phrase refers to their view, that’s fine.
Second, to be clear, I haven’t accused M&W of anti-semitism (and I’m not entirely sure Geras has either). What I did say is that it’s possible to read their article as suggesting disloyalty to American interests on the part of large segments of the American Jewish community and its leadership. And members of that community may be rightfully concerned about such charges and how they will be received (and predictably distorted—since it doesn’t just work in one direction) in the public domain.
“American fundamentalist Christianism is extremely pro-Israel, though stridently anti-Jewish.”
But that wasn’t your point. Your point was that the administration is pro-Israel because: “In the matter of delivering votes, though, I would say support for Istrael among the Republicans skyrocketed once the pro-Israel lobby showed they could help deliver the votes of various fundamentalist Christian Zionists, as well as the votes of a whole bunch of non-descript Islamophobes and Arab-haters.”
As I said before, this is overreading the “delivering votes” issue. If you think that votes can be delivered, the fundamentalist vote is much more ‘delivered’ by internal social issues than by concerns about Israel. You make the same mistake as Mearsheimer and Walt—you confuse An effect with a primary effect. It may very well be true that concerns about Israel contribute something to the alliance between fundamentalist Christians and Republicans. But by formulating it as “delivering the vote” you inappropriately suggest that it is a big factor. It isn’t. It might be a marginal contributing factor, attitudes about Israel might be influenced by the alliance, but the alliance between fundamentalist Christians and Republicans is not based on the issue of Israel. If you were to focus on issues of Israel as if they were the most important (or even a largely important) reason for that alliance, your analysis would go awry because you aren’t grounded in the real dynamics. In a similar fashion, if you insist on analyzing all the US foreign policy in the Middle East through an “its all about Israel” lens, you are going to have serious problems understanding what is really going on. The “its all about oil” crowd doesn’t see the full picture, but they at least they are talking about one of the big factors.
Talk specifics. Do you think the US would have supported action against the USSR in Afghanistan if it weren’t for The Lobby? Do you think the US wouldn’t have kicked Saddam out of Kuwait without The Lobby? Do you think that the US wouldn’t done stupid crap in Iran with the Shah except for The Lobby? Do you think that the US wouldn’t have stationed troops in Saudi Arabia to protect the oil fields from Saddam during the Bush I and Clinton years if it weren’t for The Lobby? If your (or Mearsheimer and Walt) analysis leads to “Yes” answers to any of these I suspect you aren’t looking very carefully. But if it doesn’t, the claim that The Lobby is the most important factor in US policy in the Middle East looks really odd.
Agree with cian. (And I also appreciate jr’s earlier comments.)
This in particular is a good point:
This is because if some wealthy Jews do support Israeli interests over those of the US, and it is anti-semitic to point this out, then it is anti-semitic to make a truthful statement.
And generally—complementary to overstatement on the Israel-critical side of things—there’s way too much of the more zealous pro-Israel strain of commentary that functionally has this effect, of broadening the application of the term “anti-Semitism” to the point that it actually disastrously weakens the attempt to tackle the kind of vicious prejudice which that term normally evokes.
A particularly bad offender (right up there with “the Holocaust should silence all critics,” as helpfully furnished by Raw Data) is the “why is Israel singled out” meme, which attempts to dismiss or downplay criticism or censure of Israeli crimes by pointing out that other people have done worse (as though international law should be making dispensation for those who engage in only a little ethnic cleansing or discrimination as compared with, say, China or Cambodia). It usually proceeds via false implications that the UN has virtually never tried to censure an act of genocide, ethnic cleansing or violation of resolutions in another country (cf. Jet’s harping on the Sudan, above), and relies on rather creepy further implications that there’s something suspect about “obsession” with the Palestinians as though Arabs are somehow inherently unworthy of humanitarian consideration or attention (would the same people contend that there was something “suspicious” about “obsession” with South African apartheid because there were arguably worse things happening in Tibet at the time?). I’ve even seen it lead to claims that Israel at the worst would “only” be doing what America did to the Natives, as if this were supposed to be some sort of defense, although we’ve mercifully been spared this here so far.
“Some other guys do it too” is an extremely poor defense in any context, and it cheapens attempts to confront real anti-Semitism. Of course criticism of Israel can be motivated by anti-Semitism, just as Zionism can be enabled by “blood and soil” anti-Arab racism, but it’s bad practice to reach for those cudgels too easily. Though I suspect Jim Harrison is right about why we’re so often tempted to do just that.
I haven’t read the LRB article yet,but it strikes me that the notion of an “Israel lobby” is a bit outdated. I would take this to be a group that lobbied in support of Israel and its government, whatever that government’s position.
But it’s been clear for a long time that the most prominent lobbying is being done by people who are (or were until its recent breakup) partisans for Likud and against Labour. Their support for the Israeli government is conditional on the maintenance of aggressive expansionism. Norman Podhoretz had a piece in Commentary quite a while ago making this shift explicit.
This is much more typical of this kind of lobby, though the usual pattern is to suppport the “outs” agaisnt the “ins” as with the Cuba lobby.
“What I did say is that it’s possible to read their article as suggesting disloyalty to American interests on the part of large segments of the American Jewish community and its leadership.”
As for whether one can. Well only if you are a careless reader (and if we must watch what we say because of careless, lazy readers, then there is no point writing anything). They are stating that where US interests and Israeli interests collide – a substantial minority will be loyal to Israeli, rather than Us, interests. Certainly a good argument can be made for that case – and I fail to see why the subject should be off limits.
Geras has manufactured a criticism. The authors did not state that the Jews are disqualified from having a voice in the affairs of the nation that they belong to. They did not even imply it. Its a strawman (but then this is Norman Geras, so that’s not surprising). The author’s are questioning whether US foreign policy should be dictated (accepting for a moment their claim that it is) by a lobby group, which slavishly supports Israeli foreign policy.
And btw, its strange that a “progressive” like Geras should be so accepting of the corruption that is US lobbying…
“And members of that community may be rightfully concerned about such charges and how they will be received (and predictably distorted—since it doesn’t just work in one direction) in the public domain.”
Given that Zionists regularly, and deliberately, conflate Jews with Israelis, I’m not sure that they have the right to be concerned. Also given that a large minority of American Jews at least give the appearance of having split loyalities, then the proper response is to deal with the charge, rather than applying moral pressure so that the charge is never raised.
And, please, lets not pretend that the Jewish community in the US is a threatened, endangered, minority. They are loud, powerful and wealthy (and deservedly so) as a community. While anti-semitism is still present in the US, it is trivial compared to other existing forms of racism in the US.
john – as far as I know AIPAC has supported whichever government was in power. As Labour have gone more for subtle expansionism, than aggressive, there’s not a major difference in foreign policy for either party (both built settlements, assassinated Palestinian activists, etc, etc).
This is in response to JR’s comment in #31
“fjm- I have no interest in calling you anti-Semitic. I’m sure you’re not. But I note that many Britons (the AUT for example) seem to find the Palestinian situation much more distressing than far worse situations.”
The AUT’s position was a reflexive response to Israel’s treatment of Palestinian universities (which have been damaged, effectively closed and their students prevented in various ways from attending). They believed that they were defending the academic freedom of Palestinian academics, by boycotting Israeli academics. You may not agree with their motives, but I fail to see how the proposed action was inappropriate. Nor can I see a similar situation in the world, which is relevant to the concerns of the AUT (higher education), where they could take action. While the situation in Burma, say, is appaling – a boycott by academics is unlikely to have much affect.
“It’s clear that their preferred solution is for Israel to go away.”
Clear from what? All of them? The people who proposed it? Your information is based upon what, a poll? Personal interviews with all members?
“One reason for AIPAC’s power is that objectively, anti-Semitism is very real and very widespread”
You are throwing words (“objective”) with quite precise meanings around in a loose and wooly fashion. Anti-semitism cannot be defined objectively, given that different parties disagree on what it is. Nor can it be measured (any more than any other set of attitudes) objectively.
The ADL recently found that anti-semitism was no worse in western europe, than it is in the USA, for what that’s worth. In the UK anti-semitism is rare, and frowned upon. Ironicaly it is precisely because it is rare, that charges of anti-semitism by Zionists have such power to shut critics up. I mean if anti-semitism was so acceptable and widespread in the UK, why would people defend themselves from the charge?
“and also that subjectively, fear of anti-Semitism (and fear of gentiles generally) is much more deeply ingrained in Jews”
This would seem true almost by definition. Any other scenario would be decidedly perverse – just as whites fearing anti-black racism more than blacks fearing the same would be a decidedly odd situation.
I don’t want to defend the MW article because for one thing I’ve only skimmed part of it. But regarding the Christian Zionist connection, I suspect that is a strong factor. I was a Christian Zionist myself once and grew up surrounded by people who’d read “The Late Great Planet Earth”, which was the 1970’s version of the “Left Behind” books. Support for Israel (because it’s all part of the events leading to the Second Coming) is just second nature to people who believe this stuff.
Now as for how this determines the stand taken by politicians, I don’t know. But it’s likely to make some difference. It’s not like there are a whole lot of Americans who go out of their way to read Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and B’Tselem and the New York Review of Books and clamor incessantly for a balanced approach to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. To the extent that Christian American voters do care about Israel, the overwhelming majority are probably into this apocalyptic nonsense. And among the moderate and liberal Christians, some probably support Israel because of some vague sense that any harsh criticism of it is motivated by antisemitism. (I have a friend who seems to think like this.)
What this says about the Israel lobby is not so much that they are all-powerful, but that they’ve got some massive built-in (and mostly irrational) support from Christian Zionists.
Hektor Bim—I agree with part of what you say. People tend to be hypocritical on human rights. (I’m tended to get sidetracked by disagreeing with some of your examples, but it’s irrelevant to your larger point.) What I’m saying is that the way the Israeli/Palestinian conflict is treated in American political circles is a very good example of this widespread phenomenon.
cian, I agree about AIPAC - I was referring to the group commonly called “neocons”, who I think have had more influence than AIPAC since Bush got in.
Not to be dense, but what is here intended by anti-Semetic? The older non-racialist “Jew Hate” or the more modern racialist version? If it is the the last, then surely one would need to show a connection between the lobbying and underming of America’s national interest, how so ever one wishes to understand that, and the activities of the IR on the level of a racial compulsion. I didn’t see any of that kind of racialist thinking, which is not to say it wasn’t there.
Mearsheimer and Walt are entitled to take the view that US foreign policy is biased towards Israel and that part of the explanation for that is the effectiveness of the pro-Israeli lobby.
Well, then, why aren’t their critics entitled to take the view that Mearsheimer and Walt are biased against Israel, and that part of the explanation for that is the effectiveness of the pro-Saudi (or, for that matter, anti-Semitic) lobby?
Because it’s intellectually unproductive, distracting and needlessly pugnacious to harp on one’s opponents’ motives, rather than their stated beliefs or actions, when arguing against them—that’s why.
If Mearsheimer and Walt had simply written a scholarly article arguing that America’s best interests are served by a foreign policy substantially less friendly towards Israel than the current one, nobody would have batted an eye. But once they effectively accused virtually every prominent Israel-friendly American of not just disagreeing with them about the best American foreign policy, but also of being motivated by greater loyalty to a foreign country than to their own, they invited a furiously hostile reaction. And if that reaction includes a bit of irrelevant, inappropriate questioning of their motives—well, nobody should be surprised.
if some wealthy Jews do support Israeli interests over those of the US, and it is anti-semitic to point this out, then it is anti-semitic to make a truthful statement.
Well, yes—and if Cian is a sociopathic anti-Semite with violent fantasies of mass murder of Jews, and it is out of bounds here to point this out, then it is out of bounds here to make a truthful statement.
Of course, I have no way of knowing what on earth Cian thinks about Jews or anyone else (except based on public statements, which do not justify any inference of sociopathy, anti-Semitism or violent fantasies of any kind). That’s why it would be entirely out of bounds for me to accuse Cian of such things.
Likewise, Cian has absolutely no clue what’s going on in the minds of “some wealthy Jews” who happen to believe that the US should offer support and friendship to the state of Israel. To suggest that they’re motivated by loyalty to a foreign country at the expense of their own is—or, at least, clearly ought to be—beyond the pale in respectable circles.
I’m unimpresssed with any argument of cause and effect that does not consider alternative causes. M&W’s view is that the casue of, what they consider, an unhealthy support of Israel is an “Israeli Lobby”.
One altentive is that US policy towards Israel has been formulated by successive US administrations, both Republican and Democrat, because they have come to the conclusion independently that this is the right thing to do. One could then still argue that this is a mistake but M&W never consider alternative causes. So really their thesis is a non-sense and it smells.
To suggest that they’re motivated by loyalty to a foreign country at the expense of their own is—or, at least, clearly ought to be—beyond the pale in respectable circles.
Why, would it be beyond the pale to note that, say, AARP activists or the greenpeace activists or anti-Castro Cubans are being motivated by loyalty to their cause more than loyalty to their own country? It’s said all the time about all kinds of activists. They all want their country to make sacrifices for the cause they feel is very important. It’s common, it’s obvious, it’s trivial. That’s the nature of almost any activism.
Dan: Likewise, Cian has absolutely no clue what’s going on in the minds of “some wealthy Jews” who happen to believe that the US should offer support and friendship to the state of Israel.
While I appreciate where you’re coming from, there are in fact some clues to what’s going on in the minds of lobbyists who openly acknowledge that Israel’s well-being is their first priority. The M&W article quotes some of them directly at various points, from what I can see. It doesn’t seem to me as though they’re airily speculating, nor does it seem to me that they’re making a claim that said individuals are “loyal to a foreign country at the expense of their own” in a larger sense or on all issues. (I’ve only had time to skim the article itself, mind you; maybe such claims will turn up on a more thorough reading, but I haven’t seen them or any hint of them yet.)
Neil: One altentive is that US policy towards Israel has been formulated by successive US administrations, both Republican and Democrat, because they have come to the conclusion independently that this is the right thing to do.
M&W seem to me to address the concretes of the lobby’s political effectiveness pretty directly and at length. I’m not saying their argument is necessarily ironclad, but it doesn’t seem fair to say that they simply haven’t considered alternative explanations—in fact, it seems precisely the insufficiency of alternative explanations that drives them to claim what they do.