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John J. Mearsheimer and
Stephen M. Walt
John F. Kennedy School of Government Harvard University
March 2006
U.S. foreign policy shapes events in every corner of the globe. Nowhere is
this truer than in the Middle East, a region of recurring instability and
enormous strategic importance. Most recently, the Bush Administration.s
attempt to transform the region into a community of democracies has helped
produce a resilient insurency in Iraq, a sharp rise in world oil prices,
and terrorist bombings in Madrid, London, and Amman. With so much at stake
for so many, all countries need to understand the forces that drive U.S.
Middle East policy.
The U.S. national interest should be the primary object of American
foreign policy. For the past several decades, however, and especially
since the Six Day War in 1967, the centerpiece of U.S. Middle East policy
has been its relationship with Israel. The combination of unwavering U.S.
support for Israel and the related effort to spread democracy throughout
the region has inflamed Arab and Islamic opinion and eopardized U.S.
security.
This situation has no equal in American political history. Why has the
United States been willing to set aside its own security in order to
advance the interests of another state? One might assume that the bond
between the two countries is based on shared strategic interests or
compelling moral imperativs. As we show below, however, neither of those
explanations can account for the remarkable level of material and
diplomatic support that the United States povides to Israel.
Instead, the overall thrust of U.S. policy in the region is due almost
entirely to U.S. domestic politics, and especially to the activities of
the .Israel Lobby.. Other special interest groups have managed to skew
U.S. foreign policy in directions they favored, but no lobby has managed
to divert U.S. foreign policy as far from what the American national
interest would otherwise suggest, while simultaneously convincing
Americans that U.S. and Israeli interests are essentially identical.1
In the pages that follow, we describe how the Lobby has accomplished this
feat, and how its activities have shaped America.s actions in this
critical region. Given the strategic importance of the Middle East and its
potential impact on others, both Americans and non.Americans need to
understand and address the Lobby.s influence on U.S. policy. 1
Some readers will find this analysis disturbing, but the facts recounted
here are not in serious dispute among scholars. Indeed, our account relies
heavily on the work of Israeli scholars and journalists, who deserve great
credit for shedding light on these issues. We also rely on evidence
provided by respected Israeli and international human rights
organizations. Similarly, our claims about the Lobby.s impact rely on
testimony from the Lobby.s own members, as well as testimony from
politicians who have worked with them. Readers may reject our conclusions,
of course, but the evidence on which they rest is not controversial.
THE GREAT BENEFACTOR
Since the October War in 1973, Washington has provided Israel with a level
of support dwarfing the amounts provided to any other state. It has been
the largest annual recipient of direct U.S. economic and military
assistance since 1976 and the largest total recipient since World War II.
Total direct U.S. aid to Israel amounts to well over $140 billion in 2003
dollars.2 Israel receives about $3 billion in direct foreign assistance
each year, which is roughly one.fifth of America.s foreign aid budget. In
per capita terms, the United States gives each Israeli a direct subsidy
worth about $500 per year.3 This largesse is especially striking when one
realizes that Israel is now a wealthy industrial state with a per capita
incom roughly equal to South Korea or Spain.4
Israel also gets other special deals from Washington.5 Other aid
recipients get their money in quarterly installments, but Israel receives
its entire appropriation at the beginning of each fiscal year and thus
earns extra interest. Most recipients of American military assistance are
required to spend all of it in the United States, but Israel can use
roughly twenty.five percent of its aid allotment to subsidize its own
defense industry. Israel is the only recipient that does not have to
account for how the aid is spent, an exemption that makes it virtually
impossible to prevent the money from being used for purposes the United
States opposes, like building settlements in the West Bank.
Moreover, the United States has provided Israel with nearly $3 billion to
develop weapons systems like the Lavi aircraft that the Pentagon did not
want or need, while giving Israel access to top.drawer U.S. weaponry like
Blackhawk helicopters and F.16 jets. Finally, the United States gives
Israel access to intelligence that it denies its NATO allies and has
turned a blind eye towards Israels acquisition of nuclear weapons.6
2 In addition, Washington provides Israel with consistent diplomatic
support. Since 1982, the United States has vetoed 32 United Nations
Security Council resolutions that were critical of Israel, a number
greater than the combined total of vetoes cast by all the other Security
Council members.7 It also blocks Arab states. efforts to put Israel.s
nuclear arsenal on the International Atomic Energy Agency.s agenda.8
The United States also comes to Israel.s rescue in wartime and takes its
side when negotiating peace. The Nixon Administration re.supplied Israel
during the October War and protected Israel from the threat of Soviet
intervention. Washington was deeply involved in the negotiations that
ended that war as well as the lengthy .step.by.step. process that
followed, just as it played a key role in the negotiations that preceded
and followed the 1993 Oslo Accords.9 There were occasional frictions
between U.S. and Israeli officials in both cases, but the United States
coordinated its positions closely with Israel and consistently backed the
Israeli approach to the negotitions. Indeed, one American participant at
Camp David (2000) later said, .far too often, we functioned . . . as
Israel.s lawyer..10
As discussed below, Washington has given Israel wide latitude in dealing
with the occupied territories (the West Bank and Gaza Strip), even when
its actions were at odds with stated U.S. policy. Moreover, the Bush
Administration.s ambitious strategy to transform the Middle East.beginning
with the invasion of Iraq.is at least partly intended to improve Israel.s
strategic situation. Apart from wartime alliances, it is hard to think of
another instance where one country has provided another with a similar
level of material and diplomaticsupport for such an extended period.
America.s support for Israel is, in short, unique.
This extraordinary generosity might be understandable if Israel were a
vital strategic asset or if there were a compelling mora case for
sustained U.S. backing. But neither rationale is convincing.
A STRATEGIC LIABILITY
According to the American.Israel Public Affairs Committee.s (AIPAC)
website, .the United States and Israel have formed a unique partnership to
meet the growing strategic threats in the Middle East . . . . This
cooperative effort provides significant benefits for both the United
States and Israel..11 This claim is an article of faith among Israel.s
supporters and is routinely invoked by Israeli politicians and pro.Israel
Americans.
3 Israel may have been a strategic asset during the Cold War.12 By serving
as America.s proxy after the Six Day War (1967), Israel helped contain
Soviet expansion in the region and inflicted humiliating defeats on Soviet
clients like Egypt and Syria. Israel occasionally helped protect other
U.S. allies (like Jordan.s King Hussein) and its military prowess forced
Moscow to spend more backing its losing clients. Israel also gave the
United States useful intelligence about Soviet capabilities.
Israel.s strategic value during this period should not be overstated,
however.13 Backing Israel was not cheap, and it complicated America.s
relations with the Arab world. For example, the U.S. decision to give
Israel $2.2 billion in emergency military aid during the October War
triggered an OPEC oil embargo that inflicted considerable damage o Western
economies. Moreover, Israel.s military could not protect U.S. interests in
the region. For example, the United States could not rely on Israel when
the Iranian Revolution in 1979 raised concerns about the security of
Persian Glf oil supplies, and had to create its own .Rapid Deployment
Force. instead.
Even if Israel was a strategic asset during the Cold War, the first Gulf
War (1990.91) revealed that Israel was becoming a strategic burden. The
United States could not use Israeli bases during the war without rupturing
the anti.Iraq coalition, and it had to divert resources (e.g., Patriot
missile batteries) to keep Tel Aviv from doing anything that might
fracture the alliance against Saddam. History repeated itself in 2003:
although Israel was eager for the United States to attack Saddam,
President Bush could not ask it to help without triggering Arab
opposition. So Israel stayed on the sidelines again.14
Beginning in the 1990s, and especially after 9/11, U.S. support for Israel
has been justified by the claim that both states are threatened by
terrorist groups originating in the Arabor Muslim world, and by a set of
.rogue states. that back these groups and seek WMD. This rationale implies
that Washington should give Israel a free hand in dealing with the
Palestinians and not press Israel t make concessions until all Palestinian
terrorists are imprisoned or dead. It also implies that the United States
should go after countries like the Islamic Republic of Iran, Saddam
Hussein.s Iraq, and Bashar al.Assad.s Syria. Israel is thus seen as a
crucial ally in the war on terror, because its enemies are America.s
enemies.
This new rationale seems persuasive, but Israel is in fact a liability in
the war on terror and the broader effort to deal with rogue states.
4 To begin with, .terrorism. is a tactic employed by a wide array of
political groups; it is not a single unified adversary. The terrorist
organizations that threaten Israel (e.g., Hamas or Hezbollah) do not
threaten the United States, except when it intervenes against them (as in
Lebanon in 1982). Moreover, Palestinian terrorism is not random violence
directed against Israel or .the West.; it is largely a response to
Israel.s prolonged campaign to colonize the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
More importantly, saying that Israel and the United States are united by a
shared terrorist threat has the causal relationship backwards: rather, the
United States has a terrorism problem in good part because it is so
closely allied with Israel, not the other way around. U.S. support for
Israel is not the only source of anti.American terrorism, but it is an
important one, and it makes winning the war on terror more difficult.15
There is no question, for example, that many al Qaeda leaders, including
bin Laden, are motivated by Israel.s presence in Jerusalem and the plight
of the Palestinians. According to the U.S. 9/11 Commission, bin Laden
explicitly sought to punish the United States for its policies in the
Middle East, including its support for Israel, and he even tried to time
the attacks to highlight this issue.16
Equally important, unconditional U.S. support for Israel makes it easier
for extremists like bin Laden to rally popular support and to attract
recruits. Public opinion polls confirm that Arab populations are deeply
hostile to American support for Israel, and the U.S. State Department.s
Advisory Group on Public Diplomacy for the Arab and Muslim world found
that .citizens in these countries are genuinely distressed at the plight
of the Palestinians and at the role they perceive the UnitedStates to be
playing..17
As for so.called rogue states in the Middle East, they are not a dire
threat to vital U.S. interests, apart from the U.S. commitment to Israel
itself. Although the United States does have a number of disagreements
with these regimes, Washington would not be nearly as worried about Iran,
Ba.thist Iraq, or Syria were it not so closely tied to Israel. Even if
these states acquire nuclear weapons.which is obviously not desirable.it
would not be a strategic disaster for the United States. Neither America
nor Israel could be blackmailed by a nuclear.armed rogue, because the
blackmailer could not carry out the threat without receiving overwhelming
retaliation. The danger of a .nuclear handoff. to terrorists is equally
remote, because a rogue state could not be sure the transfer would be
undetected or that it would not be blamed and punished afterward. 5
Furthermore, the U.S. relationship with Israel actually makes it harder to
deal with these states. Israel.s nuclear arsenal is one reason why some of
its neighbors want nuclear weapons, and threatening these states with
regime change merely increases that desire. Yet Israel is not much of an
asset when the United States contemplates using force against these
regimes, because it cannot participate in the fight.
In short, treating Israel as America.s most important ally in the campaign
against terrorism and assorted Middle East dictatorships bothexaggerates
Israel.s ability to help on these issues and ignores the ways that
Israel.s policies make U.S. efforts more difficult.
Unquestioned support for Israel also weakens the U.S. position outside the
Middle East. Foreign elites consistently view the United States as too
supportive of Israel, and think its tolerance of Israeli repression in the
occupied territories is morally obtuse and a handicap in the war on
terroism.18 In April 2004, for example, 52 former British diplomats sent
Prime Minister Tony Blair a letter saying that the Israel.Palestine
conflict had .poisoned relations between the West and the Arab and Islamic
worlds,. and warning that the policies of Bush and Prime Minister Ariel
Sharon were .one.sided and illegal..19
A final reason to question Israel.s strategic value is that it does not
act like a loyal ally. Israeli officials frequently ignore U.S. requests
and renege on promises made to top U.S. leaders (including past pledges to
halt settlement construction and to refrain from .targeted assassinations.
of Palestinian leaders).20 Moreover, Israel has provided sensitive U.S.
military technology to potential U.S. rivals like China, in what the U.S.
State Department Inspector.General called .a systematic and growing
pattern of unauthorized transfers..21 According to the U.S. General
Accounting Office, Israel also .conducts the most aggressive espionage
operations against the U.S. of any ally..22 In addition to the case of
Jonathan Pollard, who gave Israel large quantities of classified material
in the early 1980s (which Israel reportedly passed onto the Soviet Union
to gain more exit visas for Soviet Jews), a new controversy erupted in
2004 when it was revealed that a key Pentagon official (Larry Franklin)
had passed classified information to an Israeli diplomat, allegedly aided
by two AIPAC officials.23 Israel is hardly the only country that spies on
the United States, but its willingness to spy on its principal patron
casts further doubt on its strategic value.
6 A DWINDLING MORAL CASE
Apart from its alleged strategic value, Israel.s backers also argue that
it deserves unqualified U.S. support because 1) it is weak and surrounded
by enemies, 2) it is a democracy, which is a morally preferable form of
government; 3) the Jewish people have suffered from past crimes and
therefore deserve special treatment, and 4) Israel.s conduct has been
morally superior to its adversaries. behavior.
On close inspection, however, each of these arguments is unpersuasive.
There is a strong moral case for supporting Israel.s existence, but that
is not in jeopardy. Viewed objectively, Israel.s past and present conduct
offers no moral basis for privileging it over the Palestinians.
Backing the Underdog?
Israel is often portrayed as weak and besieged, a Jewish David surrounded
by a hostile Arab Goliath. This image has been carefully nurtured by
Israeli leaders and sympathetic writers, but the opposite image is closer
to the truth. Contrary to popular belief, the Zionists had larger,
better.equipped, and better.led forces during the 1947.49 War of
Independence and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) won quick and easy
victories against Egypt in 1956 and against Egypt, Jordan, and Syria in
1967.before large.scale U.S. aid began flowing to Israel.24 These
victories offer eloquent evidence of Israeli patriotism, organizational
ability, and military prowess, but they also reveal that Israel was far
from helpless even in its earliest years.
Today, Israel is the strongest military power in the Middle East. Its
conventional forces are far superior to its neighbors and it is the only
state in the region with nuclear weapons. Egypt and Jordan signed peace
treaties with Israel and Saudi Arabia has offered to do so as well. Syria
has lost its Soviet patron, Iraq has been decimated by three disastrous
wars, and Iran is hundreds of miles away. The Palestinians barely have
effective police, let alone a military that could threaten Israel.
According to a 2005 assessment by Tel Aviv University.s prestigious Jaffee
Center for Strategic Studies, .the strategic balance decidedly favors
Israel, which has continued to widen the qualitative gap between its own
military capability and deterrence powers and those of its neghbors..25 If
backing the underdog were a compelling rationale, the United States would
be supporting Israel.s opponents.
7 Aiding a Fellow Democracy?
American backing is often justified by the claim that Israel is a
fellow.democracy surrounded by hostile dictatorships. This rationale
sounds convincing, but it cannot account for the current level of U.S.
support. After all, there are many democracies around the world, but none
receives the lavish support that Israel does. The United States has
overthrown democratic governments in the past and supported dictators when
this was thought to advance .S. interests, and it has good relations with
a number of dictatorships today. Thus, being democratic neither justifies
nor explains America.s support for Israel.
The .shared democracy. rationale is also weakened by aspects of Israeli
democracy that are at odds with core American values. The United States is
a liberal democracy where people of any race, religion, or ethnicity are
supposed to enjoy equal rights. By contrast, Israel was explicitly founded
as a Jewish state and citizenship is based on the principle of blood
kinship.26 Given this conception of citizenship, it is not surprising that
Israel.s 1.3 million Arabs are treated as second.class citizens, or that a
recent Israeli government commission found that Israel behaves in a
.neglectful and discriminatory. manner towards them.27
Similarly, Israel does not permit Palestinians who marry Israeli citizens
to become citizens themselves, and does not give these spouses the right
to live in Israel. The Israeli human rights organization B.tselem called
this restriction .a racist law that determines who can live here according
to racist criteria..28 Such laws may be understandable given Israel.s
founding principles, but they are not consistent with America.s image of
democracy.
Israel.s democratic status is also undermined by its refusal to grant the
Palestinians a viable state of their own. Israel controls the lives of
about 3.8 million Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, while colonizing
lands on which the Palestinians have long dwelt. Israel is formally
democratic, but the millions of Palestinians that it controls are denied
full political rights and the .shared democracy. rationale is
correspondingly weakened.
Compensation for Past Crimes
A third moral justification is the history of Jewish suffering in the
Christian West, especially the tragic episode of the Holocaust. Because
Jews were persecuted for 8 centuries and can only be safe in a Jewish
homeland, many believe that Israel deserves special treatment from the
United States.
There is no question that Jews suffered greatly from the despicable legacy
of anti.Semitism, and that Israel.s creation was an appropriate response
to a long record of crimes. This history, as noted, provides a strong
moral case for supporting Israel.s existence. But the creation of Israel
involved additional crimes against a largely innocent third party: the
Palestinians.
The history of these events is well.understood. When political Zionism
began in earnest in the late 19th century, there were only about 15,000
Jews in Palestine.29 In 1893, for example, the Arabs comprised roughly 95
percent of the population, and though under Ottoman control, they had been
in continuous possession of this territory for 1300 years.30 Even when
Israel was founded, Jews were only about 35 percent of Palestine.s
population and owned 7 percent of the land.31
The mainstream Zionist leadership was not interested in establishing a
bi.national state or accepting a permanent partition of Palestine. The
Zionist leadership was sometimes willing to accept partition as a first
step, but this was a tactical maneuver and not their real objective. As
David Ben.Gurion put it in the late 1930s, .After the formation of a large
army in the wake of the establishment of the state, we shall abolish
partition and expand to the whole of Palestine..32
To achieve this goal, the Zionists had to expel large numbers of Arabs
from the territory that would eventually become Israel. There was simply
no other way to accomplish their objective. Ben.Gurion saw the problem
clearly, writing in 1941 that .it is impossible to imagine general
evacuation [of the Arab population] without compulsion, and brutal
compulsion..33 Or as Israeli historian Benny Morris puts it, .the idea of
transfer is as old as modern Zionism and has accompanied its evolution and
praxis during the past century..34
This opportunity came in 1947.48, when Jewish forces drove up to 700,000
Palestinians into exile.35 Israeli officials have long claimed that the
Arabs fled because their leaders told them to, but careful scholarship
(much of it by Israeli historians like Morris) have demolished this myth.
In fact, most Arab leaders urged the Palestinian population to stay home,
but fear of violent death at the hands of Zionist forces led most of them
to flee.36 After the war, Israel barred the return of the Palestinian
exiles.
9 The fact that the creation of Israel entailed a moral crime against the
Palestinian people was well understood by Israel.s leadrs. As Ben.Gurion
told Nahum Goldmann, president of the World Jewish Congress, .If I were an
Arab leader I would never make terms with Israel. That is natural: we have
taken their country. . . . We come from Israel, but two thousand years
ago, and what is that to them? There has been anti.Semitism, the Nazis,
Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They only see one thing: we
have come here and stolen their country. Why should they accept that?.37
Since then, Israeli leaders have repeatedly sought to deny the
Palestinians. national ambitions.38 Prime Minister Golda Meir famously
remarked that .there was no such thing as a Palestinian,. and even Prime
Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who signed the 1993 Oslo Accords, nonetheless
opposed creating a full.fledged Palestinian state.39 Pressure from
extremist violence and the growing Palestinian population has forced
subsequent Israeli leaders to disengage rom some of the occupied
territories and to explore territorial compromise, but no Israeli
government has been willing to offer the Palestinians a viable state of
their own. Even Prime Minister Ehud Barak.s purportedly generous offer at
Camp David in July 2000 would only have given the Palestiniansa disarmed
and dismembered set of .Bantustans. under de facto Israeli control.40
Europe.s crimes against the Jews provide a clear moral justification for
Israel.s right to exist. But Israel.s survival is not in doubt.even if
some Islamic extremists make outrageous and unrealistic references to
.wiping it off the map..and the tragic history of the Jewish people does
not obligate the United States to help Israel no matter what it does
today.
.Virtuous Israelis. versus .Evil Arabs.
The final moral argument portrays Israel as a country that has sought
peace at every turn and showed great restraint even when rovoked. The
Arabs, by contrast, are said to have acted with great wickedness. This
narrative.which is endlessly repeated by Israeli leaders and American
apologists such as Alan Dershowitz.is yet another myth.41 In terms of
actual behavior, Israel.s conduct is not morally distinguishable from the
actions of its opponents.
Israeli scholarship shows that the early Zionists were far from benevolent
towards the Palestinian Arabs.42 The Arab inhabitants did resist the
Zionists. encroachments, which is hardly surprising given that the
Zionists were trying to create their own state on Arab lands. The Zionists
responded vigorously, and 10 neither side owns the moral high ground
during this period. This same scholarship also reveals that the creation
of Israel in 1947.48 involved explicit acts of ethnic cleansing, including
executions, massacres, and rapes by Jews.43
Furthermore, Israel.s subsequent conduct towards its Arab adversaries and
its Palestinian subjects has often been brutal, belying any claim to
morally superior conduct. Between 1949 and 1956, for example, Israeli
security forces killed between 2,700 and 5000 Arab infiltrators, the
overwhelming majority of them unarmed.44 The IDF conducted numerous
cross.border raids against its neighbors in the early 1950s, and though
these actions were portrayed as defensive responses, they were actually
part of a broader effort to expand Israel.s borders. Israel.s expansionist
ambitions also led it to join Britain and France in attacking Egypt in
1956, and Israel withdrew from the lands it had conquered only in the face
of intense U.S. pressure. 45
The IDF also murdered hundreds of Egyptian prisoners.of.war in both the
1956 and 1967 wars.46 In 1967, it expelled between 100,000 and 260,000
Palestinians from the newly.conquered West Bank, and drove 80,000 Syrians
from the Golan Heights.47 It was also complicit in the massacre of 700
innocent Palestinians at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps following its
invsion of Lebanon in 1982, and an Israeli investigatory commission found
then.Defence Minister Sharon .personally responsible. for these
atrocities.48
Israeli personnel have tortured numerous Palestinian prisoners,
systematically humiliated and inconvenienced Palestinian civilians, and
used force indiscriminately against them on numerous occasions. During the
First Intifida (1987.1991), for example, the IDF distributed truncheons to
its troops and encouraged them to break the bones of Palestinian
protestors. The Swedish .Save the Children. organization estimated that
.23,600 to 29,900 children required medical treatment for their beating
injuries in the first two years of the intifida,. with nearly one.third
sustaining broken bones. Nearly one.third of the beaten children were aged
ten and under..49
Israel.s response to the Second Intifida (2000.2005) has been even more
violent, leading Ha.aretz to declare that .the IDF . is turning into a
killing machine whose efficiency is awe.inspiring, yet shocking..50 The
IDF fired one million bullets in the first days of the uprising, which is
far from a measured response.51 Since then, Israel has killed 3.4
Palestinians for every Israeli lost, the majority of whom have been
innocent bystanders; the ratio of Palestinian to Israeli children killed
is even higher (5.7 to 1).52 Israeli forces have also killed several
foreign 11 peace activists, including a 23 year.old American woman crushed
by an Israeli bulldozer in March 2003.53
These facts about Israel.s conduct have been amply documented by numerous
human rights organizations.including prominent Israeli groups.and are not
disputed by fair.minded observers. And that is why four former officials
of Shin Bet (the Israeli domestic security organization) condemned
Israel.s conduct during the Second Intifada in November 2003. One of them
declared .we are behaving disgracefully,. and another termed Israel.s
conduct .patently immoral..54
But isn.t Israel entitled to do whatever it takes to protect its citizens?
Doesn.t the unique evil of terrorism justify continued U.S. support, even
if Israel often responds harshly?
In fact, this argument is not a compelling moral justification either.
Palestinians have used terrorism against their Israeli occupiers, and
their willingness to attack innocent civilians is wrong. This behavior is
not surprising, however, because the Palestinians believe they have no
other way to force Israeli concessions. As former Prime Minister Barak
once admitted, had he been born a Palestinian, he .would have joined a
terrorist organization..55
Finally, we should not forget that the Zionists used terrorism when they
were in a similarly weak position and trying to obtain their on state.
Between 1944 and 1947, several Zionist organizations used terrorist
bombings to drive the British from Palestine, and took the lives of many
innocent civilians along the way.56 Israeli terrorists also murdered U.N.
mediator Count Folke Bernadotte in 1948, because they opposed his proposal
to internationalize Jerusalem.57 Nor were the perpetrators of these acts
isolated extremists: the leaders of the murder plot were eventually
granted amnesty by the Israeli government and one of them was elected to
the Knsset. Another terrorist leader, who approved the murder but was not
tried, was future Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir. Indeed, Shamir openly
argued that .neither Jewish ethics nor Jewish tradition can disqualify
terrorism as a means of combat.. Rather, terrorism had .a great part to
play . in our war against the occupier [Britain]..58 If the Palestinians.
use of terrorism is morally reprehensible today, so was Israel.s reliance
upon it in the past, and thus one cannot justify U.S. support for Israel
on the grounds that its past conduct was morally superior.59
12 Israel may not have acted worse than many other countries, but it
clearly has not acted any better. And if neither strategic nor moral
arguments can account for America.s support for Israel, how are we to
explain it?
THE ISRAEL LOBBY
The explanation lies in the unmatched power of the Israel Lobby. Were it
not for the Lobby.s ability to manipulate the American political system,
the relationship between Israel and the United States would be far less
intimate than it is today.
What Is The Lobby?
We use .the Lobby.as a convenient short.hand term for the loose coalition
of individuals and organizations who actively work to shape U.S. foreign
policy in a pro.Israel direction. Our use of this term 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
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 so that it
advances Israel.s interests. Their activities go beyond merely voting for
candidates who are pro.Israel to include letter.writing, financial
contributions, and supporting pro.Israel organizations. But 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 percent
of Jewish.Americans said they were either .not very. or .not at all.
emotionally attached to Israel.60
Jewish.Americans also differ on specific Israeli policies. Many of the key
organizations in the Lobby, like AIPAC and the Conference of Presidents of
Major Jewish Organizations (CPMJO), are run by hardliners who generally
supported the expansionist policies of Israel.s Likud Party, including its
hostility to the Oslo Peace Process. The bulk of U.S. Jewry, on the other
hand, is more favorably disposed to making concessions to the
Palestinians, and a few groups.such as Jewish Voice for Peace.strongly
advocate such steps.61 Despite these differences, moderates and hardliners
both support steadfast U.S. support for Israel.
Not surprisingly, American Jewish leaders often consult with Israeli
officials, so that the former can maximize their influence in the United
States. As one activist with a major Jewish organization wrote, .it is
routine for us to say: .This is our 13 policy on a certain issue, but we
must check what the Israelis think.. We as a community do it all the
time..62 There is also a strong norm against criticizing Israeli policy,
and Jewish.American leaders rarely support putting pressure on Israel.
Thus, Edgar Bronfman Sr., the president of the World Jewish Congress, was
accused of .perfidy. when he wrote a letter to President Bush in mid.2003
urging Bush to pressure Israel to curb construction of its controversial
.security fence..63 Critics declared that, .It would be obscene at any
time for the president of the World Jewish Congress to lobby the president
of the United States to rsist policies being promoted by the government of
Israel..
Similarly, when Israel Policy Forum president Seymour Reich advised
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to pressure Israel to reopen a crtical
border crossing in the Gaza Strip in November 2005, critics denounced his
action as .irresponsible behavior,. and declared that, .There is
absolutely no room in the Jewish mainstream for actively canvassing
against the security.related policies . . . of Israel..64 Recoiling from
these attacks, Reich proclaimed that .the word pressure is not in my
vocabulary when it comes to Israel..
Jewish.Americans have formed an impressive array of organizations to
influence American foreign policy, of which AIPAC is the most powerful and
well.known. In 1997, Fortune magazine asked members of Congress and their
staffs to list the most powerful lobbies in Washington.65 AIPAC was ranked
second behind the American Association of Retired People (AARP), but ahead
of heavyweight lobbies like the AFL.CIO and the National Rifle
Association. A National Journal study in March 2005 reached a similar
conclusion, placing AIPAC in second place (tied with AARP) in the
Washington.s .muscle rankings..66
The Lobby also includes prominent Christian evangelicals like Gary Bauer,
Jerry Falwell, Ralph Reed, and Pat Robertson, as well as Dick Armey and
Tom DeLay, former majority leaders in the House of Representatives. They
believe Israel.s rebirth is part of Biblical prophecy, support its
expansionist agenda, and think pressuring Israel is contrary to God.s
will.67 In addition, the Lobby.s membership includes neoconservative
gentiles such as John Bolton, the late Wall Street Journal editor Robert
Bartley, former Secretary of Education William Bennett, former U.N.
Ambassador Jeanne Kirkpatrick, and columnist George Will. 14
Sources of Power
The United States has a divided government that offers many ways to
influence the policy process. As a result, interest groups can shape
policy in many different ways.by lobbying elected representatives and
members of the executive branch, making campaign contributions, voting in
elections, molding public opinion, etc.
Furthermore, special interest groups enjoy disproportionate power when
they are committed to a particular issue and the bulk of the populaton is
indifferent. Policymakers will tend to accommodate those who care about
the issue in question, even if their numbers are small, confident that the
rest of the population will not penalize them.
The Israel Lobby.s power flows from its unmatched ability to play this
game of interest group politics. In its basic operations, it is no
different from interest groups like the Farm Lobby, steel and textile
workers, and other ethnic lobbies. What sets the Israel Lobby apart is its
extraordinary effectiveness. But there is nothing improper about American
Jews and their Christian allies attempting to sway U.S. policy towards
Israel. The Lobby.s activities are not the sort of conspiracy depicted in
anti.Semitic tracts like the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. For the most
part, the individuals and groups that comprise the Lobby are doing what
other special interest groups do, just much better. Moreover, pro.Arab
interest groups are weak to non.existent, which makes the Lobby.s task
even easier.68
Strategies for Success
The Lobby pursues two broad strategies to promote U.S. support for Israel.
First, it wields significant influence in Washington, pressuring both
Congress and the Executive branch to support Israel down the line.
Whatever an individual lawmaker or policymaker.s own views, the Lobby
tries to make supporting Israel the .smart. political choice.
Second, the Lobby strives to ensure that public discourse about Israel
portrays it in a positive light, by repeating myths about Israel and its
founding and by publicizing Israel.s side in the policy debates of the
day. The goal is to prevent critical commentary about Israel from getting
a fair hearing in the political arena. Controlling the debate is essential
to guaranteeing U.S. support, because a 15 candid discussion of
U.S..Israeli relations might lead Americans to favor a different policy.
Influencing Congress
A key pillar of the Lobby.s effectiveness is its influence in the U.S.
Congress, where Israel is virtually immune from criticism. This is in
itself a remarkable situation, because Congress almost never shies away
from contentious issues. Whether the issue is abortion, affirmative
action, health care, or welfare, there is certain to be a lively debate on
Capitol Hill. Where Israel is concerned, however, potential critics fall
silent and there is hardly any debate at all.
One reason for the Lobby.s success with Congress is that some key members
are Christian Zionists like Dick Armey, who said in September 2002 that
.My No. 1 priority in foreign policy is to protect Israel..69 One would
think that the number 1 priority for any congressman would be to .protect
America,. but that is not what Armey said. There are also Jewish senators
and congressmen who work to make U.S. foreign policy support Israel.s
interests.
Pro.Israel congressional staffers are another source of the Lobby.s power.
As Morris Amitay, a former head of AIPAC, once admitted, .There are a lot
of guys at the working level up here [on Capitol Hill] . who happen to be
Jewish, who are willing . to look at certain issues in terms of their
Jewishness .. These are all guys who are in a position to make the
decision in these areas for those senators .. You can get an awful lot
done just at the staff level..70
It is AIPAC itself, however, that forms the core of the Lobby.s influence
in Congress. AIPAC.s success is due to its ability to reward legislators
and congressional candidates who support its agenda, and to punish those
who challenge it. Money is critical to U.S. elections (as the recent
scandal over lobbyist Jack Abramoff.s various shady dealings reminds us),
and AIPAC makes sure that its friends get strong financial support from
the myriad pro.Israel political action committees. Those seen as hostile
to Israel, on the other hand, can be sure that AIPAC will direct campaign
contributions to their political opponents. AIPAC also organizes
letter.writing campaigns and encourages newspaper editors to endorse
pro.Israel candidates.
There is no doubt about the potency of these tactics. To take but one
example, in 1984 AIPAC helped defeat Senator Charles Percy from Illinois,
who, according to one prominent Lobby figure, had .displayed insensitivity
and even hostility to 16 our concerns.. Thomas Dine, the head of AIPAC at
the time, explained what happened: .All the Jews in America, from coast to
coast, gathered to oust Percy. And the American politicians ..those who
hold public positions now, and those who aspire ..got the message..71
AIPAC prizes its reputation as a formidable adversary, of course, because
it discourages anyone from questioning its agenda.
AIPAC.s influence on Capitol Hill goes even further, however. According to
Douglas Bloomfield, a former AIPAC staff member, .It is common for members
of Congress and their staffs to turn to AIPAC first when they need
information, before calling the Library of Congress, the Congressional
Research Service, committee staff or administration experts..72 More
importantly, he notes that AIPAC is .often called upon to draft speeches,
work on legislation, advise on tactics, perform research, collect
co.sponsors and marshal votes..
The bottom line is that AIPAC, which is a de facto agent for a foreign
government, has a stranglehold on the U.S. Congress.73 Open debate about
U.S. policy towards Israel does not occur there, even though that policy
has important consequences for the entire world. Thus, one of the three
main branches of the U.S. government is firmly committed to supporting
Israel. As former Senator Ernest Hollings (D.SC) noted as he was leaving
office, .You can.t have an Israeli policy other than what AIPAC gives you
around here..74 Small wonder that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon once
told an American audience. .When people ask me how they can help Israel, I
tell them.Help AIPAC..75
Influencing the Executive
The Lobby also has significant leverage over the Executive branch. That
power derives in part from the influence Jewish voters have on
presidential elections. Despite their small numbers in the population
(less than 3 percent), 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 percent of the money..76 Furthermore, Jewish voters have high turn.out
rates and are concentrated in key states like California, Florida,
Illinois, New York, and Pennsylvania. Because they matter in close
elections, Presidential candidates go to great lengths not to antagonize
Jewish voters.
Key organizations in the Lobby also directly target the administration in
power. For example, pro.Israel forces make sure that critics of the Jewish
state do not get important foreign.policy appointments. Jimmy Carter
wanted to make George 17 Ball his first secretary of state, but he knew
that Ball was perceived as critical of Israel and that the Lobby would
oppose the appointment.77 This litmus test forces any aspiring policymaker
to become an overt supporter of Israel, which is why public critics of
Israeli policy have become an endangered species in the U.S. foreign
policy establishment.
These constraints still operate today. When 2004 presidential candidate
Howard Dean called for the United States to take a more .even.handed role.
in the Arab.Israeli conflict, Senator Joseph Lieberman accused him of
selling Israel down the river and said his statement was
.irresponsible..78 Virtually all of the top Democrats in the House signed
a hard.hitting letter to Dean criticizing his comments, and the Chicago
Jewish Star reported that .anonymous attackers . are clogging the e.mail
inboxes of Jewish leaders around the country, warning ..without much
evidence ..that Dean would somehow be bad for Israel..79
This worry was absurd, however, because Dean is in fact quite hawkish on
Israel.80 His campaign co.chair was a former AIPAC president, and Dean
said his own views on the Middle East more closely reflected those of
AIPAC than the more moderate Americans for Peac Now. Dean had merely
suggested that to .bring the sides together,. Washington should act as an
honest broker. This is hardly a radical idea, but it is anathema to the
Lobby, which does not tolerate the idea of even.handedness when it comes
to the Arab.Israeli conflict.
The Lobby.s goals are also served when pro.Israel individuals occupy
important positions in the executive branch. During the Clinton
Administration, for example, Middle East policy was largely shaped by
officials with close ties to Israel or to prominent pro.Israel
organizations.including Martin Indyk, the former deputy director of
research at AIPAC and co.founder of the pro.Israel Washington Institute
for Near East Policy (WINEP); Dennis Ross, who joined WINEP after leaving
government in 2001; and Aaron Miller, who has lived in Israel and often
visits there.81
These men were among President Clinton.s closest advisors at the Camp
David summit in July 2000. Although all three supported the Oslo peace
process and favored creation of a Palestinian state, they did so only
within the limits of what would be acceptable to Israel.82 In particular,
the American delegation took its cues from Israeli Prime Minister Ehud
Barak, coordinated negotiating positions in advance, and did not offer its
own independent proposals for settling the conflict. Not surprisingly,
Palestinian negotiators complained that they were 18 .negotiating with two
Israeli teams ..one displaying an Israeli flag, and one an American
flag..83
The situation is even more pronounced in the Bush Administration, whose
ranks include fervently pro.Israel individuals like Elliot Abrams, John
Bolton, Douglas Feith, I. Lewis (.Scooter.) Libby, Richard Perle, Paul
Wolfowitz, and David Wurmser. As we shall see, these officials
consistently pushed for policies favored by Israel and backed by
organizations in the Lobby.
Manipulating the Media
In addition to influencing government policy directly, the Lobby strives
to shape public perceptions about Israel and the Middle East. It does not
want an open debate on issues involving Israel, because an open debate
might cause Americans to question the level of support that they currently
provide. Accordingly, pro.Israel organizations work hard to influence the
media, think tanks, and academia, because these institutions are critical
in shaping popular opinion.
The Lobby.s perspective on Israel is widely reflected in the mainstream
media in good part because most American commentators ae pro.Israel. The
debate among Middle East pundits, journalist Eric Alterman writes, is
.dominated by people who cannot imagine criticizing Israel..84 He lists 61
.columnists and commentators who can be counted upon to support Israel
reflexively and without qualification.. Conversely, Alterman found just
five pundits who consistently criticize Israeli behavior or endorse
pro.Arab positions. Newspapers occasionally publish guest op.eds
challenging Israeli policy, but the balance of opinion clearly favors the
other side.
This pro.Israel bias is reflected in the editorials of major newspapers.
Robert Bartley, the late editor of the Wall Street Journal, once remarked
that, .Shamir, Sharon, Bibi . whatever those guys want is pretty much fine
by me..85 Not surprisingly, the Journal, along with other prominent
newspapers like The Chicago Sun.Times and The Washington Times regularly
run editorials that are strongly pro.Israel. Magazines like Commentary,
the New Republic, and the Weekly Standard also zealously defend Israel at
every turn.
Editorial bias is also found in papers like the New York Times. The Times
occasionally criticizes Israeli policies and sometimes concedes that the
Palestinians have legitimate grievances, but it is not even.handed. In his
memoirs, for example, former Times executive editor Max Frankel
acknowledged 19 the impact his own pro.Israel attitude had on his
editorial choices. In his words: .I was much more deeply devoted to Israel
than I dared to assert.. He goes on: .Fortified by my knowledge of Israel
and my friendships there, I myself wrote most of our Middle East
commentaries. As more Arab than Jewish readers recognized, I wrote them
from a pro.Israel perspective.. 86
The media.s reporting of news events involving Israel is somewhat more
even.handed than editorial commentary is, in part because reporters strive
to be objective, but also because it is difficult to cover events in the
occupied territories without acknowledging Israel.s actual behavior. To
discourage unfavorable reporting on Israel, the Lobby organizes letter
writing campaigns, demonstrations, and boycotts against news outlets whose
content it considers anti.Israel. One CNN executive has said that he
sometimes gets 6,000 e.mail messages in a single day complaining that a
story is anti.Israel.87 Similarly, the pro.Israel Committee for Accurate
Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA) organized demonstrations outside
National Public Radio stations in 33 cities in May 2003, and it also tried
to convince contributors to withhold support from NPR until its Middle
East coverage became more sympatheticto Israel.88 Boston.s NPR station,
WBUR, reportedly lost more than $1 million in contributions as a result of
these efforts. Pressure on NPR has also come from Israel.s friends in
Congress, who have asked NPR for an internal audit as well as more
oversight of its Middle East coverage.
These factors help explain why the American media contains few criticisms
of Israeli policy, rarely questions Washington.s relationship with Israel,
and only occasionally discusses the Lobby.s profound influence on U.S.
policy.
Think Tanks That Think One Way
Pro.Israel forces predominate in U.S. think tanks, which play an important
role in shaping public debate as well as actual policy. The Lobby created
its own think tank in 1985, when Martin Indyk helped found WINEP.89
Although WINEP plays down its links to Israel and claims instead that it
provides a .balanced and realistic. perspective on Middle East issues,
this is not the case.90 In fact, WINEP is funded and run by individuals
who are deeply committed to advancing Israel.s agenda.
The Lobby.s influence in the think tank world extends well beyond WINEP.
Over the past 25 years, pro.Israel forces have established a commanding
presence at the American Enterprise Institute, the Brookings Institution,
the 20 Center for Security Policy, the Foreign Policy Research Institute,
the Heritage Foundation, the Hudson Institute, the Institute for Foreign
Policy Analysis, and the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs
(JINSA). These think tanks are decidedly pro.Israel, and include few, if
any, critics of U.S. support for the Jewish state.
A good indicator of the Lobby.s influence in the think tank world is the
evolution of the Brookings Institution. For many years, its senior expert
on Middle East issues was William B. Quandt, a distinguished academic and
former NSC official with a well.deserved reputation for evenhandedness
regarding the Arab.Israeli conflict. Today, however, Brookings.s work on
these issues is conducted through its Saban Center for Middle East
Studies, which is financed by Haim Saban, a wealthy Israeli.American
businessman and ardent Zionist.91 The director of the Saban Center is the
ubiquitous Martin Indyk. Thus, what was once a non.partisan policy
institute on Middle East matters is now part of the chorus of largely
pro.Israel think tanks.
Policing Academia
The Lobby has had the most difficulty stifling debate about Israel on
college campuses, because academic freedom is a core value and because
tenured professors are hard to threaten or silence. Even so, there was
only mild criticism of Israel in the 1990s, when the Oslo peace process
was underway. Criticism rose after that process collapsed and Ariel Sharon
came to power in early 2001, and it became especially intense when the IDF
re.occupied the West Bank in spring 2002 and employed massive force
against the Second Intifada.
The Lobby moved aggressively to .take back the campuses.. New groups
sprang up, like the Caravan for Democracy, which brought Israeli speakers
to U.S. colleges.92 Established groups like the Jewish Council for Public
Affairs and Hillel jumped into the fray, and a new group.the Israel on
Campus Coalition.was formed to coordinate the many groups that now sought
to make Israel.s case on campus. Finally, AIPAC more than tripled its
spending for programs to monitor university activities and to train young
advocates for Israel, in order to .vastly expand the number of students
involved on campus . . . in the national pro.Israel effort..93
The Lobby also monitors what professors write and teach. In September
2002, for example, Martin Kramer and Daniel Pipes, two passionately
pro.Israel neoconservatives, established a website (Campus Watch) that
posted dossiers on 21 suspect academics and encouraged students to report
comments or behavior that might be considered hostile to Israel.94 This
transparent attempt to blacklist and intimidate scholars prompted a harsh
reaction and Pipes and Kramer later removed he dossiers, but the website
still invites students to report alleged anti.Israel behavior at U.S.
colleges.
Groups in the Lobby also direct their fire at particular professors and
the universities that hire them. Columbia University, which had the late
Palestinian scholar Edward Said on its faculty, has been a frequent target
of pro.Israel forces. Jonathan Cole, the former Columbia provost, reported
that, .One can be sure that any public statement in support of the
Palestinian people by the preeminent literary critic Edward Said wil
elicit hundreds of e.mails, letters, and journalistic accounts that call
on us to denounce Said and to either sanction or fire him..95 When
Columbia recruited historian Rashid Khalidi from the University of
Chicago, Cole says that .the complaints started flowing in from people who
disagreed with the content of his political views.. Princeton faced the
same problem a few years later when it considered wooing Khalidi away from
Columbia.96
A classic illustration of the effort to police academia occurred in late
2004, when the .David Project. produced a propaganda film alleging that
faculty in Columbia University.s Middle East studies program were
anti.Semitic and were intimidating Jewish students who defended Israel.97
Columbia was raked over the coals in pro.Israel circles, but a faculty
committee assigned to investigate the charges found no evidence of
anti.Semitism and the only incident worth noting was the possibility that
one professor had .responded heatedly. to a student.s question.98 The
committee also discovered that the accused professors had been the target
of an overt intimidation campaign.
Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of this campaign to eliminate criticism
of Israel from college campuses is the effort by Jewsh groups to push
Congress to establish mechanisms that monitor what professors say about
Israel.99 Schools judged to have an anti.Israel bias would be denied
Federal funding. This effort to get the U.S. government to police campuses
have not yet succeeded, but the attempt illustrates the importance
pro.Israel groups place on controlling debate on these issues.
Finally, a number of Jewish philanthropists have established Israel
studies programs (in addition to the roughly 130 Jewish Studies programs
that already exist) so as to increase the number of Israel.friendly
scholars on campus.100 NYU 22 announced the establishment of the Taub
Center for Israel Studies on May 1, 2003, and similar programs have been
established at other schools like Berkeley, Brandeis, and Emory. Academic
administrators emphasize the pedagogical value of these programs, but the
truth is that they are intended in good part to promote Israel.s image on
campus. Fred Laffer, the head of the Taub Foundation, makes clear that his
foundation funded the NYU center to help counter the .Arabic [sic] point
of view. that he thinks is prevalent in NYU.s Middle East programs.101
In sum, the Lobby has gone to considerable lengths to insulate Israel from
criticism on college campuses. It has not been as successful in academia
as it has been on Capitol Hill, but it has worked hard to stifle criticism
of Israel by professors and students and there is much less of it on
campuses today102
The Great Silencer
No discussion of how the Lobby operates would be complete without
examining one of its most powerful weapons: the charge of anti.Semitism.
Anyone who criticizes Israeli actions or says that pro.Israel groups have
significant influence over U.S. Middle East policy.an influence that AIPAC
celebrates.stands a good chance of getting labeled an anti.Semite. In
fact, anyone who says that there is an Israel Lobby runs the risk of being
charged with anti.Semitism, even though the Israeli media themselves refer
to America.s .Jewish Lobby.. In effect, the Lobby boasts of its own power
and then attacks anyone who calls attention to it. This tactic is very
effective, because anti.Semitism is loathsome and no responsible person
wants to be accused of it.
Europeans have been more willing than Americans to criticize Israeli
policy in recent years, which some attribute to a resurgence of
anti.Semitism in Europe. We are .getting to a point,. the U.S. Ambassador
to the European Union said in early 2004, .where it is as bad as it was in
the 1930s..103 Measuring anti.Semitism is a complicated matter, but the
weight of evidence points in the opposite direction. For example, in the
spring of 2004, when accusations of European anti.Semitism filled the air
in America, separate surveys of European public opinion conducted by the
Anti.Defamation League and the Pew Research Center for the People and the
Press showed that it was actually declining.104
Consider France, which pro.Israel forces often portray as the most
anti.Semitic state in Europe. A poll of French citizens in 2002 found
that: 89 percent could envisage living with a Jew; 97 percent believe
making anti.Semitic graffiti is a 23 serious crime; 87 percent think
attacks on French synagogues are scandalous; and 85 percent of practicing
French Catholics reject the charge that Jews have too much influence in
business and finance.105 It is unsurprising that the head of the French
Jewish community declared in the summer of 2003 that .France is not more
anti.Semitic than America..106 According to a recent article in Ha.aretz,
the French police report that anti.Semitic incidents in France declined by
almost 50 per cent in 2005; and this despite the fact that France has the
largest Muslim population of any country in Europe.107
Finally, when a French Jew was brutally murdered last month by a Muslim
gang, tens of thousands of French demonstrators poured into the streets to
condemn anti.Semitism. Moreover, President Jacques Chirac and Prime
Minister Dominique de Villepin both attended the victim.s memorial service
in a public showof solidarity with French Jewry.108 It is also worth
noting that in 2002 more Jews immigrated to Germany than Israel, making it
.the fastest growing Jewish community in the world,. according to an
article in the Jewish newspaper Forward.109 If Europe were really heading
back to the 1930s, it is hard to imagine that Jews would be moving there
in large numbers.
We recognize, however, that Europe is not free of the scourge of
anti.Semitism. No one would deny that there are still some virulent
autochthonous anti.Semites in Europe (as there are in the United States)
but their numbers are small and their extreme views are rejected by the
vast majority of Europeans. Nor would one deny that there is anti.Semitism
among European Muslims, some of it provoked by Israel.s behavior towards
the Palestinians and some of it straightforwardly racist. 110 This problem
is worrisome, but it is hardly out of control. Muslims constitute less
than five percent of Europe.s total population, and European governments
are working hard to combat the problem. Why? Because most Europeans reject
such hateful views.111 In short, when it comes to anti.Semitism, Europe
today bears hardly any resemblance to Europe in the 1930s.
This is why pro.Israel forces, when pressed to go beyond assertion, claim
that there is a .new anti.Semitism., which they equate with criticism of
Israel.112 In other words criticize Israeli policy and you are by
definition an anti.Semite. When the synod of the Church of England
recently voted to divest from Caterpillar Inc on the grounds that
Caterpillar manufacures the bulldozers used to demolish Palestinian homes,
the Chief Rabbi complained that it would .have the most adverse
repercussions on ... Jewish.Christian relations in Britain., while Rabbi
Tony Bayfield, the head of the Reform movement, said: ..There is a clear
problem of anti.Zionist .verging on anti.Semitic .attitudes emerging in
the grass 24 roots, and even in the middle ranks of the Church..113
However, the Church was neither guilty of anti.Zionism nor anti.Semitism;
it was merely protesting Israeli policy.114
Critics are also accused of holding Israel to an unfair standard or
questioning its right to exist. But these are bogus charges too. Western
critics of Israel hardly ever question its right to exist. Instead, they
question its behavior towards the Palestinians, which is a legitimate
criticism: Israelis question it themselves. Nor is Israel being judged
unfairly. Rather, Israeli treatment of the Palestinians elicits criticism
because it is contrary to widely.accepted human rights norms and
international law, as well as the principle of national
self.determination. And it is hardly the only state that has faced sharp
criticism on these grounds.
In sum, other ethnic lobbies can only dream of having the political muscle
that pro.Israel organizations possess. The question, therefore, is what
effect does the Lobby have on U.S. foreign policy?
THE TAIL WAGGING THE DOG
If the Lobby.s impact were confined to U.S. economic aid to Israel, its
influence might not be that worrisome. Foreign aid is valuable, but not as
useful as having the world.s only superpower bring its vast capabilities
to bear on Israel.s behalf. Accordingly, the Lobby has also sought to
shape the core elements of U.S. Middle East policy. In particular, it has
worked successfully to convince American leaders to back Israel.s
continued repression of the Palestinians and to take aim at Israel.s
primary regional adversaries: Iran, Iraq, and Syria.
Demonizing the Palestinians
It is now largely forgotten, but in the fall of 2001, and especially in
the spring of 2002, the Bush Administration tried to reduce anti.American
sentiment in the Arab world and undermine support for terrorist groups
like al Qaeda, by halting Israel.s expansionist policies in the occupied
territories and advocating the creation of a Palestinian state.
Bush had enormous potential leverage at his disposal. He could have
threatened to reduce U.S. economic and diplomatic support for Israel, and
the American people would almost certainly have supported him. A May 2003
poll reported that over 60 percent of Americans were willing to withhold
aid to Israel if it resisted U.S. pressure to settle the conflict, and
that number rose to 70 percent 25 among .politically active. Americans.115
Indeed, 73 percent said that United States should not favor either side.
Yet the Bush Administration failed to change Israel.s policies, and
Washington ended up backing Israel.s hard.line approach instead. Over
time, the Administration also adopted Israel.s justifications for this
approach, so that U.S. and Israeli rhetoric became similar. By February
2003, a Washington Post headline summarized the situation: .Bush and
Sharon Nearly Identical on Mideast Policy..116 The main reason for this
switch is the Lobby.
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