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«'Eλληνες ενωθείτε εναντίον
του κοινού εχθρού, εναντίον του μίσους, της διχόνοιας και της διαίρεσης, που είναι ό ίδιος μας ο εαυτός» - Θ. ΚΟΛΟΚΟΤΡΩΝΗΣ-
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Με την άδικη πατρίδα σου να συμπεριφέρεσαι όπως με την μητρυιά: να σιωπάς
Πυθαγόρας | 
Γιά "να λέγονται τα πράγματα με τ' όνομά τους" |
Ειρηνοποιός είναι αυτός που τρέφοντας έναν κροκόδειλο, νομίζει ότι θα φαγωθεί τελευταίος Oυίνστον Τσώρτσιλ |
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USA - The Israel Lobby
John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt
For the past several decades, and especially since the Six-Day War in
1967, the centrepiece of US Middle Eastern policy has been its
relationship with Israel. The combination of unwavering support for
Israel and the related effort to spread ‘democracy’ throughout the
region has inflamed Arab and Islamic opinion and jeopardised not only
US security but that of much of the rest of the world. This situation
has no equal in American political history. 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? One might assume that the
bond between the two countries was based on shared strategic interests
or compelling moral imperatives, but neither explanation can account
for the remarkable level of material and diplomatic support that the US
provides.
Instead, the thrust of US policy in the region derives almost entirely
from domestic politics, and especially the activities of the ‘Israel
Lobby’. Other special-interest groups have managed to skew foreign
policy, but no lobby has managed to divert it as far from what the
national interest would suggest, while simultaneously convincing
Americans that US interests and those of the other country – in this
case, Israel – are essentially identical.
Since the October War in 1973, Washington has provided Israel with a
level of support dwarfing that given to any other state. It has been
the largest annual recipient of direct economic and military assistance
since 1976, and is the largest recipient in total since World War Two,
to the tune of well over $140 billion (in 2004 dollars). Israel
receives about $3 billion in direct assistance each year, roughly
one-fifth of the foreign aid budget, and worth about $500 a year for
every Israeli. This largesse is especially striking since Israel is now
a wealthy industrial state with a per capita income roughly equal to
that of South Korea or Spain.
Other recipients get their money in quarterly installments, but Israel
receives its entire appropriation at the beginning of each fiscal year
and can thus earn interest on it. Most recipients of aid given for
military purposes are required to spend all of it in the US, but Israel
is allowed to use roughly 25 per cent of its allocation to subsidise
its own defence industry. It is the only recipient that does not have
to account for how the aid is spent, which makes it virtually
impossible to prevent the money from being used for purposes the US
opposes, such as building settlements on the West Bank. Moreover, the
US has provided Israel with nearly $3 billion to develop weapons
systems, and given it access to such top-drawer weaponry as Blackhawk
helicopters and F-16 jets. Finally, the US gives Israel access to
intelligence it denies to its Nato allies and has turned a blind eye to
Israel’s acquisition of nuclear weapons.
Washington also provides Israel with consistent diplomatic support.
Since 1982, the US has vetoed 32 Security Council resolutions critical
of Israel, more than the total number of vetoes cast by all the other
Security Council members. It blocks the efforts of Arab states to put
Israel’s nuclear arsenal on the IAEA’s agenda. The US comes to the
rescue in wartime and takes Israel’s side when negotiating peace. The
Nixon administration protected it from the threat of Soviet
intervention and resupplied it during the October War. Washington was
deeply involved in the negotiations that ended that war, as well as in
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. In each case there was occasional friction between US and
Israeli officials, but the US consistently supported the Israeli
position. One American participant at Camp David in 2000 later said:
‘Far too often, we functioned . . . as Israel’s lawyer.’ Finally, the
Bush administration’s ambition to transform the Middle East is at least
partly aimed at improving Israel’s strategic situation.
This extraordinary generosity might be understandable if Israel were a
vital strategic asset or if there were a compelling moral case for US
backing. But neither explanation is convincing. One might argue that
Israel was an asset during the Cold War. By serving as America’s proxy
after 1967, it helped contain Soviet expansion in the region and
inflicted humiliating defeats on Soviet clients like Egypt and Syria.
It occasionally helped protect other US allies (like King Hussein of
Jordan) and its military prowess forced Moscow to spend more on backing
its own client states. It also provided useful intelligence about
Soviet capabilities.
Backing Israel was not cheap, however, and it complicated America’s
relations with the Arab world. For example, the decision to give $2.2
billion in emergency military aid during the October War triggered an
Opec oil embargo that inflicted considerable damage on Western
economies. For all that, Israel’s armed forces were not in a position
to protect US interests in the region. The US could not, for example,
rely on Israel when the Iranian Revolution in 1979 raised concerns
about the security of oil supplies, and had to create its own Rapid
Deployment Force instead.
The first Gulf War revealed the extent to which Israel was becoming a
strategic burden. The US could not use Israeli bases without rupturing
the anti-Iraq coalition, and had to divert resources (e.g. Patriot
missile batteries) to prevent Tel Aviv doing anything that might harm
the alliance against Saddam Hussein. History repeated itself in 2003:
although Israel was eager for the US to attack Iraq, Bush could not ask
it to help without triggering Arab opposition. So Israel stayed on the
sidelines once again.
Beginning in the 1990s, and even more after 9/11, US support has been
justified by the claim that both states are threatened by terrorist
groups originating in the Arab and Muslim world, and by ‘rogue states’
that back these groups and seek weapons of mass destruction. This is
taken to mean not only that Washington should give Israel a free hand
in dealing with the Palestinians and not press it to make concessions
until all Palestinian terrorists are imprisoned or dead, but that the
US should go after countries like Iran and Syria. Israel is thus seen
as a crucial ally in the war on terror, because its enemies are
America’s enemies. In fact, Israel is a liability in the war on terror
and the broader effort to deal with rogue states.
‘Terrorism’ is not a single adversary, but a tactic employed by a wide
array of political groups. The terrorist organisations that threaten
Israel 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 colonise the West
Bank and Gaza Strip.
More important, saying that Israel and the US are united by a shared
terrorist threat has the causal relationship backwards: the US has a
terrorism problem in good part because it is so closely allied with
Israel, not the other way around. 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. There is no question
that many al-Qaida leaders, including Osama bin Laden, are motivated by
Israel’s presence in Jerusalem and the plight of the Palestinians.
Unconditional support for Israel makes it easier for extremists to
rally popular support and to attract recruits.
As for so-called rogue states in the Middle East, they are not a dire
threat to vital US interests, except inasmuch as they are a threat to
Israel. Even if these states acquire nuclear weapons – which is
obviously undesirable – neither America nor Israel could be
blackmailed, because the blackmailer could not carry out the threat
without suffering overwhelming retaliation. The danger of a nuclear
handover to terrorists is equally remote, because a rogue state could
not be sure the transfer would go undetected or that it would not be
blamed and punished afterwards. The relationship with Israel actually
makes it harder for the US to deal with these states. Israel’s nuclear
arsenal is one reason some of its neighbours want nuclear weapons, and
threatening them with regime change merely increases that desire.
A final reason to question Israel’s strategic value is that it does not
behave like a loyal ally. Israeli officials frequently ignore US
requests and renege on promises (including pledges to stop building
settlements and to refrain from ‘targeted assassinations’ of
Palestinian leaders). Israel has provided sensitive military technology
to potential rivals like China, in what the State Department
inspector-general called ‘a systematic and growing pattern of
unauthorised transfers’. According to the General Accounting Office,
Israel also ‘conducts the most aggressive espionage operations against
the US of any ally’. In addition to the case of Jonathan Pollard, who
gave Israel large quantities of classified material in the early 1980s
(which it reportedly passed on to the Soviet Union in return for more
exit visas for Soviet Jews), a new controversy erupted in 2004 when it
was revealed that a key Pentagon official called Larry Franklin had
passed classified information to an Israeli diplomat. Israel is hardly
the only country that spies on the US, but its willingness to spy on
its principal patron casts further doubt on its strategic value.
Israel’s strategic value isn’t the only issue. Its backers also argue
that it deserves unqualified support because it is weak and surrounded
by enemies; it is a democracy; the Jewish people have suffered from
past crimes and therefore deserve special treatment; and Israel’s
conduct has been morally superior to that of its adversaries. On close
inspection, none of these arguments is persuasive. There is a strong
moral case for supporting Israel’s existence, but that is not in
jeopardy. Viewed objectively, its past and present conduct offers no
moral basis for privileging it over the Palestinians.
Israel is often portrayed as David confronted by Goliath, but the
converse 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 Defence Forces won quick
and easy victories against Egypt in 1956 and against Egypt, Jordan and
Syria in 1967 – all of this before large-scale US aid began flowing.
Today, Israel is the strongest military power in the Middle East. Its
conventional forces are far superior to those of its neighbours and it
is the only state in the region with nuclear weapons. Egypt and Jordan
have signed peace treaties with it, and Saudi Arabia has offered to do
so. Syria has lost its Soviet patron, Iraq has been devastated by three
disastrous wars and Iran is hundreds of miles away. The Palestinians
barely have an effective police force, let alone an army that could
pose a threat to Israel. According to a 2005 assessment by Tel Aviv
University’s Jaffee Centre for Strategic Studies, ‘the strategic
balance decidedly favours Israel, which has continued to widen the
qualitative gap between its own military capability and deterrence
powers and those of its neighbours.’ If backing the underdog were a
compelling motive, the United States would be supporting Israel’s
opponents.
That Israel is a fellow democracy surrounded by hostile dictatorships
cannot account for the current level of aid: there are many democracies
around the world, but none receives the same lavish support. The US has
overthrown democratic governments in the past and supported dictators
when this was thought to advance its interests – it has good relations
with a number of dictatorships today.
Some aspects of Israeli democracy are at odds with core American
values. Unlike the US, where people are supposed to enjoy equal rights
irrespective of race, religion or ethnicity, Israel was explicitly
founded as a Jewish state and citizenship is based on the principle of
blood kinship. Given this, it is not surprising that its 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. Its democratic status is also
undermined by its refusal to grant the Palestinians a viable state of
their own or full political rights.
A third justification is the history of Jewish suffering in the
Christian West, especially during the Holocaust. Because Jews were
persecuted for centuries and could feel safe only in a Jewish homeland,
many people now believe that Israel deserves special treatment from the
United States. The country’s creation was undoubtedly an appropriate
response to the long record of crimes against Jews, but it also brought
about fresh crimes against a largely innocent third party: the
Palestinians.
This was well understood by Israel’s early leaders. David Ben-Gurion
told Nahum Goldmann, the 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?
Since then, Israeli leaders have repeatedly sought to deny the
Palestinians’ national ambitions. When she was prime minister, Golda
Meir famously remarked that ‘there is no such thing as a Palestinian.’
Pressure from extremist violence and Palestinian population growth has
forced subsequent Israeli leaders to disengage from the Gaza Strip and
consider other territorial compromises, but not even Yitzhak Rabin was
willing to offer the Palestinians a viable state. Ehud Barak’s
purportedly generous offer at Camp David would have given them only a
disarmed set of Bantustans under de facto Israeli control. The tragic
history of the Jewish people does not obligate the US to help Israel
today no matter what it does.
Israel’s backers also portray it as a country that has sought peace at
every turn and shown great restraint even when provoked. The Arabs, by
contrast, are said to have acted with great wickedness. Yet on the
ground, Israel’s record is not distinguishable from that of its
opponents. Ben-Gurion acknowledged that the early Zionists were far
from benevolent towards the Palestinian Arabs, who resisted their
encroachments – which is hardly surprising, given that the Zionists
were trying to create their own state on Arab land. In the same way,
the creation of Israel in 1947-48 involved acts of ethnic cleansing,
including executions, massacres and rapes by Jews, and Israel’s
subsequent conduct has often been brutal, belying any claim to moral
superiority. Between 1949 and 1956, for example, Israeli security
forces killed between 2700 and 5000 Arab infiltrators, the overwhelming
majority of them unarmed. The IDF murdered hundreds of Egyptian
prisoners of war in both the 1956 and 1967 wars, while 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.
During the first intifada, the IDF distributed truncheons to its troops
and encouraged them to break the bones of Palestinian protesters. The
Swedish branch of Save the Children estimated that ‘23,600 to 29,900
children required medical treatment for their beating injuries in the
first two years of the intifada.’ Nearly a third of them were aged ten
or under. The response to the second intifada 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.’ The IDF fired one million bullets in the first days of the
uprising. Since then, for every Israeli lost, Israel has killed 3.4
Palestinians, the majority of whom have been innocent bystanders; the
ratio of Palestinian to Israeli children killed is even higher (5.7:1).
It is also worth bearing in mind that the Zionists relied on terrorist
bombs to drive the British from Palestine, and that Yitzhak Shamir,
once a terrorist and later prime minister, declared that ‘neither
Jewish ethics nor Jewish tradition can disqualify terrorism as a means
of combat.’
The Palestinian resort to terrorism is wrong but it isn’t surprising.
The Palestinians believe they have no other way to force Israeli
concessions. As Ehud Barak once admitted, had he been born a
Palestinian, he ‘would have joined a terrorist organisation’.
So if neither strategic nor moral arguments can account for America’s support for Israel, how are we to explain it?
The explanation is the unmatched power of the Israel Lobby. We use ‘the
Lobby’ as shorthand for the loose coalition of individuals and
organisations who actively work to steer US foreign policy in a
pro-Israel direction. This is not meant to suggest that ‘the Lobby’ is
a unified movement with a central leadership, or that individuals
within it do not disagree on certain issues. Not all Jewish Americans
are part of the Lobby, because Israel is not a salient issue for many
of them. In a 2004 survey, for example, roughly 36 per cent of American
Jews said they were either ‘not very’ or ‘not at all’ emotionally
attached to Israel.
Jewish Americans also differ on specific Israeli policies. Many of the
key organisations in the Lobby, such as the American-Israel Public
Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and the Conference of Presidents of Major
Jewish Organisations, are run by hardliners who generally support the
Likud Party’s expansionist policies, including its hostility to the
Oslo peace process. The bulk of US Jewry, meanwhile, is more inclined
to make concessions to the Palestinians, and a few groups – such as
Jewish Voice for Peace – strongly advocate such steps. Despite these
differences, moderates and hardliners both favour giving steadfast
support to Israel.
Not surprisingly, American Jewish leaders often consult Israeli
officials, to make sure that their actions advance Israeli goals. As
one activist from a major Jewish organisation wrote, ‘it is routine for
us to say: “This is our policy on a certain issue, but we must check
what the Israelis think.” We as a community do it all the time.’ There
is a strong prejudice against criticising Israeli policy, and putting
pressure on Israel is considered out of order. 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 him to persuade
Israel to curb construction of its controversial ‘security fence’. His
critics said 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 resist policies being promoted by the government of Israel.’
Similarly, when the president of the Israel Policy Forum, Seymour
Reich, advised Condoleezza Rice in November 2005 to ask Israel to
reopen a critical border crossing in the Gaza Strip, his action was
denounced as ‘irresponsible’: ‘There is,’ his critics said, ‘absolutely
no room in the Jewish mainstream for actively canvassing against the
security-related policies . . . of Israel.’ Recoiling from these
attacks, Reich announced that ‘the word “pressure” is not in my
vocabulary when it comes to Israel.’
Jewish Americans have set up an impressive array of organisations to
influence American foreign policy, of which AIPAC is the most powerful
and best known. In 1997, Fortune magazine asked members of Congress and
their staffs to list the most powerful lobbies in Washington. AIPAC was
ranked second behind the American Association of Retired People, but
ahead of 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 ‘muscle rankings’.
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, all of whom believe Israel’s rebirth is the fulfilment
of biblical prophecy and support its expansionist agenda; to do
otherwise, they believe, would be contrary to God’s will.
Neo-conservative gentiles such as John Bolton; Robert Bartley, the
former Wall Street Journal editor; William Bennett, the former
secretary of education; Jeane Kirkpatrick, the former UN ambassador;
and the influential columnist George Will are also steadfast supporters.
The US form of government offers activists many ways of influencing the
policy process. Interest groups can lobby elected representatives and
members of the executive branch, make campaign contributions, vote in
elections, try to mould public opinion etc. They enjoy a
disproportionate amount of influence when they are committed to an
issue to which the bulk of the population is indifferent. Policymakers
will tend to accommodate those who care about the issue, even if their
numbers are small, confident that the rest of the population will not
penalise them for doing so.
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. By contrast, pro-Arab interest groups, in so
far as they exist at all, are weak, which makes the Israel Lobby’s task
even easier.
The Lobby pursues two broad strategies. First, it wields its
significant influence in Washington, pressuring both Congress and the
executive branch. Whatever an individual lawmaker or policymaker’s own
views may be, the Lobby tries to make supporting Israel the ‘smart’
choice. Second, it strives to ensure that public discourse portrays
Israel in a positive light, by repeating myths about its founding and
by promoting its point of view in policy debates. The goal is to
prevent critical comments from getting a fair hearing in the political
arena. Controlling the debate is essential to guaranteeing US support,
because a candid discussion of US-Israeli relations might lead
Americans to favour a different policy.
A key pillar of the Lobby’s effectiveness is its influence in Congress,
where Israel is virtually immune from criticism. This in itself is
remarkable, because Congress rarely shies away from contentious issues.
Where Israel is concerned, however, potential critics fall silent. One
reason is that some key members are Christian Zionists like Dick Armey,
who said in September 2002: ‘My No. 1 priority in foreign policy is to
protect Israel.’ One might think that the No. 1 priority for any
congressman would be to protect America. There are also Jewish senators
and congressmen who work to ensure that US foreign policy supports
Israel’s interests.
Another source of the Lobby’s power is its use of pro-Israel
congressional staffers. 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.’
AIPAC itself, however, forms the core of the Lobby’s influence in
Congress. Its 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 US elections (as the scandal
over the lobbyist Jack Abramoff’s shady dealings reminds us), and AIPAC
makes sure that its friends get strong financial support from the many
pro-Israel political action committees. Anyone who is seen as hostile
to Israel can be sure that AIPAC will direct campaign contributions to
his or her political opponents. AIPAC also organises letter-writing
campaigns and encourages newspaper editors to endorse pro-Israel
candidates.
There is no doubt about the efficacy of these tactics. Here is one
example: in the 1984 elections, AIPAC helped defeat Senator Charles
Percy from Illinois, who, according to a prominent Lobby figure, had
‘displayed insensitivity and even hostility to 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.’
AIPAC’s influence on Capitol Hill goes even further. 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.’ More important, he notes that AIPAC is ‘often called on to
draft speeches, work on legislation, advise on tactics, perform
research, collect co-sponsors and marshal votes’.
The bottom line is that AIPAC, a de facto agent for a foreign
government, has a stranglehold on Congress, with the result that US
policy towards Israel is not debated there, even though that policy has
important consequences for the entire world. In other words, one of the
three main branches of the government is firmly committed to supporting
Israel. As one former Democratic senator, Ernest Hollings, noted on
leaving office, ‘you can’t have an Israeli policy other than what AIPAC
gives you around here.’ Or as Ariel Sharon once told an American
audience, ‘when people ask me how they can help Israel, I tell them:
“Help AIPAC.”’
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.
Key organisations in the Lobby make it their business to ensure that
critics of Israel do not get important foreign policy jobs. Jimmy
Carter wanted to make George Ball his first secretary of state, but
knew that Ball was seen as critical of Israel and that the Lobby would
oppose the appointment. In this way any aspiring policymaker is
encouraged to become an overt supporter of Israel, which is why public
critics of Israeli policy have become an endangered species in the
foreign policy establishment.
When 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’. Virtually all the top Democrats in the
House signed a letter criticising Dean’s remarks, and the Chicago
Jewish Star reported that ‘anonymous attackers . . . are clogging the
email inboxes of Jewish leaders around the country, warning – without
much evidence – that Dean would somehow be bad for Israel.’
This worry was absurd; Dean is in fact quite hawkish on Israel: 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
those of the more moderate Americans for Peace Now. He had merely
suggested that to ‘bring the sides together’, Washington should act as
an honest broker. This is hardly a radical idea, but the Lobby doesn’t
tolerate even-handedness.
During the Clinton administration, Middle Eastern policy was largely
shaped by officials with close ties to Israel or to prominent
pro-Israel organisations; among them, 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 the country. These men were among
Clinton’s closest advisers at the Camp David summit in July 2000.
Although all three supported the Oslo peace process and favoured the
creation of a Palestinian state, they did so only within the limits of
what would be acceptable to Israel. The American delegation took its
cues from Ehud Barak, co-ordinated its negotiating positions with
Israel in advance, and did not offer independent proposals. Not
surprisingly, Palestinian negotiators complained that they were
‘negotiating with two Israeli teams – one displaying an Israeli flag,
and one an American flag’.
The situation is even more pronounced in the Bush administration, whose
ranks have included such fervent advocates of the Israeli cause as
Elliot Abrams, John Bolton, Douglas Feith, I. Lewis (‘Scooter’) Libby,
Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz and David Wurmser. As we shall see, these
officials have consistently pushed for policies favoured by Israel and
backed by organisations in the Lobby.
The Lobby doesn’t want an open debate, of course, because that might
lead Americans to question the level of support they provide.
Accordingly, pro-Israel organisations work hard to influence the
institutions that do most to shape popular opinion.
The Lobby’s perspective prevails in the mainstream media: the debate
among Middle East pundits, the journalist Eric Alterman writes, is
‘dominated by people who cannot imagine criticising Israel’. He lists
61 ‘columnists and commentators who can be counted on to support Israel
reflexively and without qualification’. Conversely, he found just five
pundits who consistently criticise Israeli actions or endorse Arab
positions. Newspapers occasionally publish guest op-eds challenging
Israeli policy, but the balance of opinion clearly favours the other
side. It is hard to imagine any mainstream media outlet in the United
States publishing a piece like this one.
‘Shamir, Sharon, Bibi – whatever those guys want is pretty much fine by
me,’ Robert Bartley once remarked. Not surprisingly, his newspaper, the
Wall Street Journal, along with other prominent papers like the Chicago
Sun-Times and the Washington Times, regularly runs editorials that
strongly support Israel. Magazines like Commentary, the New Republic
and the Weekly Standard defend Israel at every turn.
Editorial bias is also found in papers like the New York Times, which
occasionally criticises Israeli policies and sometimes concedes that
the Palestinians have legitimate grievances, but is not even-handed. In
his memoirs the paper’s former executive editor Max Frankel
acknowledges the impact his own attitude had on his editorial
decisions: ‘I was much more deeply devoted to Israel than I dared to
assert . . . 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 recognised, I wrote them from a pro-Israel
perspective.’
News reports are more even-handed, 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 actions on the
ground. To discourage unfavourable reporting, the Lobby organises
letter-writing campaigns, demonstrations and boycotts of news outlets
whose content it considers anti-Israel. One CNN executive has said that
he sometimes gets 6000 email messages in a single day complaining about
a story. In May 2003, the pro-Israel Committee for Accurate Middle East
Reporting in America (CAMERA) organised demonstrations outside National
Public Radio stations in 33 cities; it also tried to persuade
contributors to withhold support from NPR until its Middle East
coverage becomes more sympathetic to Israel. Boston’s NPR station,
WBUR, reportedly lost more than $1 million in contributions as a result
of these efforts. Further pressure on NPR has come from Israel’s
friends in Congress, who have asked for an internal audit of its Middle
East coverage as well as more oversight.
The Israeli side also dominates the 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 to found
WINEP. Although WINEP plays down its links to Israel, claiming instead
to provide a ‘balanced and realistic’ perspective on Middle East
issues, it is funded and run by individuals deeply committed to
advancing Israel’s agenda.
The Lobby’s influence extends well beyond WINEP, however. Over the past
25 years, pro-Israel forces have established a commanding presence at
the American Enterprise Institute, the Brookings Institution, the
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 employ few, if any, critics of US support
for Israel.
Take the Brookings Institution. For many years, its senior expert on
the Middle East was William Quandt, a former NSC official with a
well-deserved reputation for even-handedness. Today, Brookings’s
coverage is conducted through the Saban Center for Middle East Studies,
which is financed by Haim Saban, an Israeli-American businessman and
ardent Zionist. The centre’s director is the ubiquitous Martin Indyk.
What was once a non-partisan policy institute is now part of the
pro-Israel chorus.
Where the Lobby has had the most difficulty is in stifling debate on
university campuses. In the 1990s, when the Oslo peace process was
underway, there was only mild criticism of Israel, but it grew stronger
with Oslo’s collapse and Sharon’s access to power, becoming quite
vociferous when the IDF reoccupied the West Bank in spring 2002 and
employed massive force to subdue the second intifada.
The Lobby moved immediately to ‘take back the campuses’. New groups
sprang up, like the Caravan for Democracy, which brought Israeli
speakers to US colleges. Established groups like the Jewish Council for
Public Affairs and Hillel joined in, and a new group, the Israel on
Campus Coalition, was formed to co-ordinate the many bodies that now
sought to put Israel’s case. Finally, AIPAC more than tripled its
spending on programmes to monitor university activities and to train
young advocates, in order to ‘vastly expand the number of students
involved on campus . . . in the national pro-Israel effort’.
The Lobby also monitors what professors write and teach. In September
2002, Martin Kramer and Daniel Pipes, two passionately pro-Israel
neo-conservatives, established a website (Campus Watch) that posted
dossiers on suspect academics and encouraged students to report remarks
or behaviour that might be considered hostile to Israel. This
transparent attempt to blacklist and intimidate scholars provoked a
harsh reaction and Pipes and Kramer later removed the dossiers, but the
website still invites students to report ‘anti-Israel’ activity.
Groups within the Lobby put pressure on particular academics and
universities. Columbia has been a frequent target, no doubt because of
the presence of the late Edward Said on its faculty. ‘One can be sure
that any public statement in support of the Palestinian people by the
pre-eminent literary critic Edward Said will elicit hundreds of emails,
letters and journalistic accounts that call on us to denounce Said and
to either sanction or fire him,’ Jonathan Cole, its former provost,
reported. When Columbia recruited the historian Rashid Khalidi from
Chicago, the same thing happened. It was a problem Princeton also faced
a few years later when it considered wooing Khalidi away from Columbia.
A classic illustration of the effort to police academia occurred
towards the end of 2004, when the David Project produced a film
alleging that faculty members of Columbia’s Middle East Studies
programme were anti-semitic and were intimidating Jewish students who
stood up for Israel. Columbia was hauled over the coals, but a faculty
committee which was assigned to investigate the charges found no
evidence of anti-semitism and the only incident possibly worth noting
was that one professor had ‘responded heatedly’ to a student’s
question. The committee also discovered that the academics in question
had themselves been the target of an overt campaign of intimidation.
Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of all this is the efforts Jewish
groups have made to push Congress into establishing mechanisms to
monitor what professors say. If they manage to get this passed,
universities judged to have an anti-Israel bias would be denied federal
funding. Their efforts have not yet succeeded, but they are an
indication of the importance placed on controlling debate.
A number of Jewish philanthropists have recently established Israel
Studies programmes (in addition to the roughly 130 Jewish Studies
programmes already in existence) so as to increase the number of
Israel-friendly scholars on campus. In May 2003, NYU announced the
establishment of the Taub Center for Israel Studies; similar programmes
have been set up at Berkeley, Brandeis and Emory. Academic
administrators emphasise their pedagogical value, but the truth is that
they are intended in large part to promote Israel’s image. Fred Laffer,
the head of the Taub Foundation, makes it clear that his foundation
funded the NYU centre to help counter the ‘Arabic [sic] point of view’
that he thinks is prevalent in NYU’s Middle East programmes.
No discussion of the Lobby would be complete without an examination of
one of its most powerful weapons: the charge of anti-semitism. Anyone
who criticises Israel’s actions or argues that pro-Israel groups have
significant influence over US Middle Eastern policy – an influence
AIPAC celebrates – stands a good chance of being labelled an
anti-semite. Indeed, anyone who merely claims that there is an Israel
Lobby runs the risk of being charged with anti-semitism, even though
the Israeli media refer to America’s ‘Jewish Lobby’. In other words,
the Lobby first boasts of its influence and then attacks anyone who
calls attention to it. It’s a very effective tactic: anti-semitism is
something no one wants to be accused of.
Europeans have been more willing than Americans to criticise Israeli
policy, which some people attribute to a resurgence of anti-semitism in
Europe. We are ‘getting to a point’, the US ambassador to the EU said
in early 2004, ‘where it is as bad as it was in the 1930s’. Measuring
anti-semitism is a complicated matter, but the weight of evidence
points in the opposite direction. 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 US-based
Anti-Defamation League and the Pew Research Center for the People and
the Press found that it was in fact declining. In the 1930s, by
contrast, anti-semitism was not only widespread among Europeans of all
classes but considered quite acceptable.
The Lobby and its friends often portray France as the most anti-semitic
country in Europe. But in 2003, the head of the French Jewish community
said that ‘France is not more anti-semitic than America.’ According to
a recent article in Ha’aretz, the French police have reported that
anti-semitic incidents declined by almost 50 per cent in 2005; and this
even though France has the largest Muslim population of any European
country. Finally, when a French Jew was murdered in Paris last month by
a Muslim gang, tens of thousands of demonstrators poured into the
streets to condemn anti-semitism. Jacques Chirac and Dominique de
Villepin both attended the victim’s memorial service to show their
solidarity.
No one would deny that there is anti-semitism among European Muslims,
some of it provoked by Israel’s conduct towards the Palestinians and
some of it straightforwardly racist. But this is a separate matter with
little bearing on whether or not Europe today is like Europe in the
1930s. Nor would anyone 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 views are rejected by the
vast majority of Europeans.
Israel’s advocates, when pressed to go beyond mere assertion, claim
that there is a ‘new anti-semitism’, which they equate with criticism
of Israel. In other words, criticise 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 it
manufactures the bulldozers used by the Israelis to demolish
Palestinian homes, the Chief Rabbi complained that this 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-roots, and even in the
middle ranks of the Church.’ But the Church was guilty merely of
protesting against Israeli government policy.
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: they
question its behaviour towards the Palestinians, as do Israelis
themselves. Nor is Israel being judged unfairly. Israeli treatment of
the Palestinians elicits criticism because it is contrary to widely
accepted notions of human rights, to international law and to the
principle of national self-determination. And it is hardly the only
state that has faced sharp criticism on these grounds.
In the autumn 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-Qaida by
halting Israel’s expansionist policies in the Occupied Territories and
advocating the creation of a Palestinian state. Bush had very
significant means of persuasion at his disposal. He could have
threatened to reduce economic and diplomatic support for Israel, and
the American people would almost certainly have supported him. A May
2003 poll reported that more than 60 per cent of Americans were willing
to withhold aid if Israel resisted US pressure to settle the conflict,
and that number rose to 70 per cent among the ‘politically active’.
Indeed, 73 per cent said that the United States should not favour
either side.
Yet the administration failed to change Israeli policy, and Washington
ended up backing it. Over time, the administration also adopted
Israel’s own justifications of its position, so that US rhetoric began
to mimic Israeli rhetoric. By February 2003, a Washington Post headline
summarised the situation: ‘Bush and Sharon Nearly Identical on Mideast
Policy.’ The main reason for this switch was the Lobby.
The story begins in late September 2001, when Bush began urging Sharon
to show restraint in the Occupied Territories. He also pressed him to
allow Israel’s foreign minister, Shimon Peres, to meet with Yasser
Arafat, even though he (Bush) was highly critical of Arafat’s
leadership. Bush even said publicly that he supported the creation of a
Palestinian state. Alarmed, Sharon accused him of trying ‘to appease
the Arabs at our expense’, warning that Israel ‘will not be
Czechoslovakia’.
Bush was reportedly furious at being compared to Chamberlain, and the
White House press secretary called Sharon’s remarks ‘unacceptable’.
Sharon offered a pro forma apology, but quickly joined forces with the
Lobby to persuade the administration and the American people that the
United States and Israel faced a common threat from terrorism. Israeli
officials and Lobby representatives insisted that there was no real
difference between Arafat and Osama bin Laden: the United States and
Israel, they said, should isolate the Palestinians’ elected leader and
have nothing to do with him.
The Lobby also went to work in Congress. On 16 November, 89 senators
sent Bush a letter praising him for refusing to meet with Arafat, but
also demanding that the US not restrain Israel from retaliating against
the Palestinians; the administration, they wrote, must state publicly
that it stood behind Israel. According to the New York Times, the
letter ‘stemmed’ from a meeting two weeks before between ‘leaders of
the American Jewish community and key senators’, adding that AIPAC was
‘particularly active in providing advice on the letter’.
By late November, relations between Tel Aviv and Washington had
improved considerably. This was thanks in part to the Lobby’s efforts,
but also to America’s initial victory in Afghanistan, which reduced the
perceived need for Arab support in dealing with al-Qaida. Sharon
visited the White House in early December and had a friendly meeting
with Bush.
In April 2002 trouble erupted again, after the IDF launched Operation
Defensive Shield and resumed control of virtually all the major
Palestinian areas on the West Bank. Bush knew that Israel’s actions
would damage America’s image in the Islamic world and undermine the war
on terrorism, so he demanded that Sharon ‘halt the incursions and begin
withdrawal’. He underscored this message two days later, saying he
wanted Israel to ‘withdraw without delay’. On 7 April, Condoleezza
Rice, then Bush’s national security adviser, told reporters: ‘“Without
delay” means without delay. It means now.’ That same day Colin Powell
set out for the Middle East to persuade all sides to stop fighting and
start negotiating.
Israel and the Lobby swung into action. Pro-Israel officials in the
vice-president’s office and the Pentagon, as well as neo-conservative
pundits like Robert Kagan and William Kristol, put the heat on Powell.
They even accused him of having ‘virtually obliterated the distinction
between terrorists and those fighting terrorists’. Bush himself was
being pressed by Jewish leaders and Christian evangelicals. Tom DeLay
and Dick Armey were especially outspoken about the need to support
Israel, and DeLay and the Senate minority leader, Trent Lott, visited
the White House and warned Bush to back off.
The first sign that Bush was caving in came on 11 April – a week after
he told Sharon to withdraw his forces – when the White House press
secretary said that the president believed Sharon was ‘a man of peace’.
Bush repeated this statement publicly on Powell’s return from his
abortive mission, and told reporters that Sharon had responded
satisfactorily to his call for a full and immediate withdrawal. Sharon
had done no such thing, but Bush was no longer willing to make an issue
of it.
Meanwhile, Congress was also moving to back Sharon. On 2 May, it
overrode the administration’s objections and passed two resolutions
reaffirming support for Israel. (The Senate vote was 94 to 2; the House
of Representatives version passed 352 to 21.) Both resolutions held
that the United States ‘stands in solidarity with Israel’ and that the
two countries were, to quote the House resolution, ‘now engaged in a
common struggle against terrorism’. The House version also condemned
‘the ongoing support and co-ordination of terror by Yasser Arafat’, who
was portrayed as a central part of the terrorism problem. Both
resolutions were drawn up with the help of the Lobby. A few days later,
a bipartisan congressional delegation on a fact-finding mission to
Israel stated that Sharon should resist US pressure to negotiate with
Arafat. On 9 May, a House appropriations subcommittee met to consider
giving Israel an extra $200 million to fight terrorism. Powell opposed
the package, but the Lobby backed it and Powell lost.
In short, Sharon and the Lobby took on the president of the United
States and triumphed. Hemi Shalev, a journalist on the Israeli
newspaper Ma’ariv, reported that Sharon’s aides ‘could not hide their
satisfaction in view of Powell’s failure. Sharon saw the whites of
President Bush’s eyes, they bragged, and the president blinked first.’
But it was Israel’s champions in the United States, not Sharon or
Israel, that played the key role in defeating Bush.
The situation has changed little since then. The Bush administration
refused ever again to have dealings with Arafat. After his death, it
embraced the new Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, but has done little
to help him. Sharon continued to develop his plan to impose a
unilateral settlement on the Palestinians, based on ‘disengagement’
from Gaza coupled with continued expansion on the West Bank. By
refusing to negotiate with Abbas and making it impossible for him to
deliver tangible benefits to the Palestinian people, Sharon’s strategy
contributed directly to Hamas’s electoral victory. With Hamas in power,
however, Israel has another excuse not to negotiate. The US
administration has supported Sharon’s actions (and those of his
successor, Ehud Olmert). Bush has even endorsed unilateral Israeli
annexations in the Occupied Territories, reversing the stated policy of
every president since Lyndon Johnson.
US officials have offered mild criticisms of a few Israeli actions, but
have done little to help create a viable Palestinian state. Sharon has
Bush ‘wrapped around his little finger’, the former national security
adviser Brent Scowcroft said in October 2004. If Bush tries to distance
the US from Israel, or even criticises Israeli actions in the Occupied
Territories, he is certain to face the wrath of the Lobby and its
supporters in Congress. Democratic presidential candidates understand
that these are facts of life, which is the reason John Kerry went to
great lengths to display unalloyed support for Israel in 2004, and why
Hillary Clinton is doing the same thing today.
Maintaining US support for Israel’s policies against the Palestinians
is essential as far as the Lobby is concerned, but its ambitions do not
stop there. It also wants America to help Israel remain the dominant
regional power. The Israeli government and pro-Israel groups in the
United States have worked together to shape the administration’s policy
towards Iraq, Syria and Iran, as well as its grand scheme for
reordering the Middle East.
Pressure from Israel and the Lobby was not the only factor behind the
decision to attack Iraq in March 2003, but it was critical. Some
Americans believe that this was a war for oil, but there is hardly any
direct evidence to support this claim. Instead, the war was motivated
in good part by a desire to make Israel more secure. According to
Philip Zelikow, a former member of the president’s Foreign Intelligence
Advisory Board, the executive director of the 9/11 Commission, and now
a counsellor to Condoleezza Rice, the ‘real threat’ from Iraq was not a
threat to the United States. The ‘unstated threat’ was the ‘threat
against Israel’, Zelikow told an audience at the University of Virginia
in September 2002. ‘The American government,’ he added, ‘doesn’t want
to lean too hard on it rhetorically, because it is not a popular sell.’
On 16 August 2002, 11 days before Dick Cheney kicked off the campaign
for war with a hardline speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars, the
Washington Post reported that ‘Israel is urging US officials not to
delay a military strike against Iraq’s Saddam Hussein.’ By this point,
according to Sharon, strategic co-ordination between Israel and the US
had reached ‘unprecedented dimensions’, and Israeli intelligence
officials had given Washington a variety of alarming reports about
Iraq’s WMD programmes. As one retired Israeli general later put it,
‘Israeli intelligence was a full partner to the picture presented by
American and British intelligence regarding Iraq’s non-conventional
capabilities.’
Israeli leaders were deeply distressed when Bush decided to seek
Security Council authorisation for war, and even more worried when
Saddam agreed to let UN inspectors back in. ‘The campaign against
Saddam Hussein is a must,’ Shimon Peres told reporters in September
2002. ‘Inspections and inspectors are good for decent people, but
dishonest people can overcome easily inspections and inspectors.’
At the same time, Ehud Barak wrote a New York Times op-ed warning that
‘the greatest risk now lies in inaction.’ His predecessor as prime
minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, published a similar piece in the Wall
Street Journal, entitled: ‘The Case for Toppling Saddam’. ‘Today
nothing less than dismantling his regime will do,’ he declared. ‘I
believe I speak for the overwhelming majority of Israelis in supporting
a pre-emptive strike against Saddam’s regime.’ Or as Ha’aretz reported
in February 2003, ‘the military and political leadership yearns for war
in Iraq.’
As Netanyahu suggested, however, the desire for war was not confined to
Israel’s leaders. Apart from Kuwait, which Saddam invaded in 1990,
Israel was the only country in the world where both politicians and
public favoured war. As the journalist Gideon Levy observed at the
time, ‘Israel is the only country in the West whose leaders support the
war unreservedly and where no alternative opinion is voiced.’ In fact,
Israelis were so gung-ho that their allies in America told them to damp
down their rhetoric, or it would look as if the war would be fought on
Israel’s behalf.
Within the US, the main driving force behind the war was a small band
of neo-conservatives, many with ties to Likud. But leaders of the
Lobby’s major organisations lent their voices to the campaign. ‘As
President Bush attempted to sell the . . . war in Iraq,’ the Forward
reported, ‘America’s most important Jewish organisations rallied as one
to his defence. In statement after statement community leaders stressed
the need to rid the world of Saddam Hussein and his weapons of mass
destruction.’ The editorial goes on to say that ‘concern for Israel’s
safety rightfully factored into the deliberations of the main Jewish
groups.’
Although neo-conservatives and other Lobby leaders were eager to invade
Iraq, the broader American Jewish community was not. Just after the war
started, Samuel Freedman reported that ‘a compilation of nationwide
opinion polls by the Pew Research Center shows that Jews are less
supportive of the Iraq war than the population at large, 52 per cent to
62 per cent.’ Clearly, it would be wrong to blame the war in Iraq on
‘Jewish influence’. Rather, it was due in large part to the Lobby’s
influence, especially that of the neo-conservatives within it.
The neo-conservatives had been determined to topple Saddam even before
Bush became president. They caused a stir early in 1998 by publishing
two open letters to Clinton, calling for Saddam’s removal from power.
The signatories, many of whom had close ties to pro-Israel groups like
JINSA or WINEP, and who included Elliot Abrams, John Bolton, Douglas
Feith, William Kristol, Bernard Lewis, Donald Rumsfeld, Richard Perle
and Paul Wolfowitz, had little trouble persuading the Clinton
administration to adopt the general goal of ousting Saddam. But they
were unable to sell a war to achieve that objective. They were no more
able to generate enthusiasm for invading Iraq in the early months of
the Bush administration. They needed help to achieve their aim. That
help arrived with 9/11. Specifically, the events of that day led Bush
and Cheney to reverse course and become strong proponents of a
preventive war.
At a key meeting with Bush at Camp David on 15 September, Wolfowitz
advocated attacking Iraq before Afghanistan, even though there was no
evidence that Saddam was involved in the attacks on the US and bin
Laden was known to be in Afghanistan. Bush rejected his advice and
chose to go after Afghanistan instead, but war with Iraq was now
regarded as a serious possibility and on 21 November the president
charged military planners with developing concrete plans for an
invasion.
Other neo-conservatives were meanwhile at work in the corridors of
power. We don’t have the full story yet, but scholars like Bernard
Lewis of Princeton and Fouad Ajami of Johns Hopkins reportedly played
important roles in persuading Cheney that war was the best option,
though neo-conservatives on his staff – Eric Edelman, John Hannah and
Scooter Libby, Cheney’s chief of staff and one of the most powerful
individuals in the administration – also played their part. By early
2002 Cheney had persuaded Bush; and with Bush and Cheney on board, war
was inevitable.
Outside the administration, neo-conservative pundits lost no time in
making the case that invading Iraq was essential to winning the war on
terrorism. Their efforts were designed partly to keep up the pressure
on Bush, and partly to overcome opposition to the war inside and
outside the government. On 20 September, a group of prominent
neo-conservatives and their allies published another open letter: ‘Even
if evidence does not link Iraq directly to the attack,’ it read, ‘any
strategy aiming at the eradication of terrorism and its sponsors must
include a determined effort to remove Saddam Hussein from power in
Iraq.’ The letter also reminded Bush that ‘Israel has been and remains
America’s staunchest ally against international terrorism.’ In the 1
October issue of the Weekly Standard, Robert Kagan and William Kristol
called for regime change in Iraq as soon as the Taliban was defeated.
That same day, Charles Krauthammer argued in the Washington Post that
after the US was done with Afghanistan, Syria should be next, followed
by Iran and Iraq: ‘The war on terrorism will conclude in Baghdad,’ when
we finish off ‘the most dangerous terrorist regime in the world’.
This was the beginning of an unrelenting public relations campaign to
win support for an invasion of Iraq, a crucial part of which was the
manipulation of intelligence in such a way as to make it seem as if
Saddam posed an imminent threat. For example, Libby pressured CIA
analysts to find evidence supporting the case for war and helped
prepare Colin Powell’s now discredited briefing to the UN Security
Council. Within the Pentagon, the Policy Counterterrorism Evaluation
Group was charged with finding links between al-Qaida and Iraq that the
intelligence community had supposedly missed. Its two key members were
David Wurmser, a hard-core neo-conservative, and Michael Maloof, a
Lebanese-American with close ties to Perle. Another Pentagon group, the
so-called Office of Special Plans, was given the task of uncovering
evidence that could be used to sell the war. It was headed by Abram
Shulsky, a neo-conservative with long-standing ties to Wolfowitz, and
its ranks included recruits from pro-Israel think tanks. Both these
organisations were created after 9/11 and reported directly to Douglas
Feith.
Like virtually all the neo-conservatives, Feith is deeply committed to
Israel; he also has long-term ties to Likud. He wrote articles in the
1990s supporting the settlements and arguing that Israel should retain
the Occupied Territories. More important, along with Perle and Wurmser,
he wrote the famous ‘Clean Break’ report in June 1996 for Netanyahu,
who had just become prime minister. Among other things, it recommended
that Netanyahu ‘focus on removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq –
an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right’. It also
called for Israel to take steps to reorder the entire Middle East.
Netanyahu did not follow their advice, but Feith, Perle and Wurmser
were soon urging the Bush administration to pursue those same goals.
The Ha’aretz columnist Akiva Eldar warned that Feith and Perle ‘are
walking a fine line between their loyalty to American governments . . .
and Israeli interests’.
Wolfowitz is equally committed to Israel. The Forward once described
him as ‘the most hawkishly pro-Israel voice in the administration’, and
selected him in 2002 as first among 50 notables who ‘have consciously
pursued Jewish activism’. At about the same time, JINSA gave Wolfowitz
its Henry M. Jackson Distinguished Service Award for promoting a strong
partnership between Israel and the United States; and the Jerusalem
Post, describing him as ‘devoutly pro-Israel’, named him ‘Man of the
Year’ in 2003.
Finally, a brief word is in order about the neo-conservatives’ prewar
support of Ahmed Chalabi, the unscrupulous Iraqi exile who headed the
Iraqi National Congress. They backed Chalabi because he had established
close ties with Jewish-American groups and had pledged to foster good
relations with Israel once he gained power. This was precisely what
pro-Israel proponents of regime change wanted to hear. Matthew Berger
laid out the essence of the bargain in the Jewish Journal: ‘The INC saw
improved relations as a way to tap Jewish influence in Washington and
Jerusalem and to drum up increased support for its cause. For their
part, the Jewish groups saw an opportunity to pave the way for better
relations between Israel and Iraq, if and when the INC is involved in
replacing Saddam Hussein’s regime.’
Given the neo-conservatives’ devotion to Israel, their obsession with
Iraq, and their influence in the Bush administration, it isn’t
surprising that many Americans suspected that the war was designed to
further Israeli interests. Last March, Barry Jacobs of the American
Jewish Committee acknowledged that the belief that Israel and the
neo-conservatives had conspired to get the US into a war in Iraq was
‘pervasive’ in the intelligence community. Yet few people would say so
publicly, and most of those who did – including Senator Ernest Hollings
and Representative James Moran – were condemned for raising the issue.
Michael Kinsley wrote in late 2002 that ‘the lack of public discussion
about the role of Israel . . . is the proverbial elephant in the room.’
The reason for the reluctance to talk about it, he observed, was fear
of being labelled an anti-semite. There is little doubt that Israel and
the Lobby were key factors in the decision to go to war. It’s a
decision the US would have been far less likely to take without their
efforts. And the war itself was intended to be only the first step. A
front-page headline in the Wall Street Journal shortly after the war
began says it all: ‘President’s Dream: Changing Not Just Regime but a
Region: A Pro-US, Democratic Area Is a Goal that Has Israeli and
Neo-Conservative Roots.’
Pro-Israel forces have long been interested in getting the US military
more directly involved in the Middle East. But they had limited success
during the Cold War, because America acted as an ‘off-shore balancer’
in the region. Most forces designated for the Middle East, like the
Rapid Deployment Force, were kept ‘over the horizon’ and out of harm’s
way. The idea was to play local powers off against each other – which
is why the Reagan administration supported Saddam against revolutionary
Iran during the Iran-Iraq War – in order to maintain a balance
favourable to the US.
This policy changed after the first Gulf War, when the Clinton
administration adopted a strategy of ‘dual containment’. Substantial US
forces would be stationed in the region in order to contain both Iran
and Iraq, instead of one being used to check the other. The father of
dual containment was none other than Martin Indyk, who first outlined
the strategy in May 1993 at WINEP and then implemented it as director
for Near East and South Asian Affairs at the National Security Council.
By the mid-1990s there was considerable dissatisfaction with dual
containment, because it made the United States the mortal enemy of two
countries that hated each other, and forced Washington to bear the
burden of containing both. But it was a strategy the Lobby favoured and
worked actively in Congress to preserve. Pressed by AIPAC and other
pro-Israel forces, Clinton toughened up the policy in the spring of
1995 by imposing an economic embargo on Iran. But AIPAC and the others
wanted more. The result was the 1996 Iran and Libya Sanctions Act,
which imposed sanctions on any foreign companies investing more than
$40 million to develop petroleum resources in Iran or Libya. As Ze’ev
Schiff, the military correspondent of Ha’aretz, noted at the time,
‘Israel is but a tiny element in the big scheme, but one should not
conclude that it cannot influence those within the Beltway.’
By the late 1990s, however, the neo-conservatives were arguing that
dual containment was not enough and that regime change in Iraq was
essential. By toppling Saddam and turning Iraq into a vibrant
democracy, they argued, the US would trigger a far-reaching process of
change throughout the Middle East. The same line of thinking was
evident in the ‘Clean Break’ study the neo-conservatives wrote for
Netanyahu. By 2002, when an invasion of Iraq was on the front-burner,
regional transformation was an article of faith in neo-conservative
circles.
Charles Krauthammer describes this grand scheme as the brainchild of
Natan Sharansky, but Israelis across the political spectrum believed
that toppling Saddam would alter the Middle East to Israel’s advantage.
Aluf Benn reported in Ha’aretz (17 February 2003):
Senior IDF officers and those close to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon,
such as National Security Adviser Ephraim Halevy, paint a rosy picture
of the wonderful future Israel can expect after the war. They envision
a domino effect, with the fall of Saddam Hussein followed by that of
Israel’s other enemies . . . Along with these leaders will disappear
terror and weapons of mass destruction.
Once Baghdad fell in mid-April 2003, Sharon and his lieutenants began
urging Washington to target Damascus. On 16 April, Sharon, interviewed
in Yedioth Ahronoth, called for the United States to put ‘very heavy’
pressure on Syria, while Shaul Mofaz, his defence minister, interviewed
in Ma’ariv, said: ‘We have a long list of issues that we are thinking
of demanding of the Syrians and it is appropriate that it should be
done through the Americans.’ Ephraim Halevy told a WINEP audience that
it was now important for the US to get rough with Syria, and the
Washington Post reported that Israel was ‘fuelling the campaign’
against Syria by feeding the US intelligence reports about the actions
of Bashar Assad, the Syrian president.
Prominent members of the Lobby made the same arguments. Wolfowitz
declared that ‘there has got to be regime change in Syria,’ and Richard
Perle told a journalist that ‘a short message, a two-worded message’
could be delivered to other hostile regimes in the Middle East: ‘You’re
next.’ In early April, WINEP released a bipartisan report stating that
Syria ‘should not miss the message that countries that pursue Saddam’s
reckless, irresponsible and defiant behaviour could end up sharing his
fate’. On 15 April, Yossi Klein Halevi wrote a piece in the Los Angeles
Times entitled ‘Next, Turn the Screws on Syria’, while the following
day Zev Chafets wrote an article for the New York Daily News entitled
‘Terror-Friendly Syria Needs a Change, Too’. Not to be outdone,
Lawrence Kaplan wrote in the New Republic on 21 April that Assad was a
serious threat to America.
Back on Capitol Hill, Congressman Eliot Engel had reintroduced the
Syria Accountability and Lebanese Sovereignty Restoration Act. It
threatened sanctions against Syria if it did not withdraw from Lebanon,
give up its WMD and stop supporting terrorism, and it also called for
Syria and Lebanon to take concrete steps to make peace with Israel.
This legislation was strongly endorsed by the Lobby – by AIPAC
especially – and ‘framed’, according to the Jewish Telegraph Agency,
‘by some of Israel’s best friends in Congress’. The Bush administration
had little enthusiasm for it, but the anti-Syrian act passed
overwhelmingly (398 to 4 in the House; 89 to 4 in the Senate), and Bush
signed it into law on 12 December 2003.
The administration itself was still divided about the wisdom of
targeting Syria. Although the neo-conservatives were eager to pick a
fight with Damascus, the CIA and the State Department were opposed to
the idea. And even after Bush signed the new law, he emphasised that he
would go slowly in implementing it. His ambivalence is understandable.
First, the Syrian government had not only been providing important
intelligence about al-Qaida since 9/11: it had also warned Washington
about a planned terrorist attack in the Gulf and given CIA
interrogators access to Mohammed Zammar, the alleged recruiter of some
of the 9/11 hijackers. Targeting the Assad regime would jeopardise
these valuable connections, and thereby undermine the larger war on
terrorism.
Second, Syria had not been on bad terms with Washington before the Iraq
war (it had even voted for UN Resolution 1441), and was itself no
threat to the United States. Playing hardball with it would make the US
look like a bully with an insatiable appetite for beating up Arab
states. Third, putting Syria on the hit list would give Damascus a
powerful incentive to cause trouble in Iraq. Even if one wanted to
bring pressure to bear, it made good sense to finish the job in Iraq
first. Yet Congress insisted on putting the screws on Damascus, largely
in response to pressure from Israeli officials and groups like AIPAC.
If there were no Lobby, there would have been no Syria Accountability
Act, and US policy towards Damascus would have been more in line with
the national interest.
Israelis tend to describe every threat in the starkest terms, but Iran
is widely seen as their most dangerous enemy because it is the most
likely to acquire nuclear weapons. Virtually all Israelis regard an
Islamic country in the Middle East with nuclear weapons as a threat to
their existence. ‘Iraq is a problem . . . But you should understand, if
you ask me, today Iran is more dangerous than Iraq,’ the defence
minister, Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, remarked a month before the Iraq war.
Sharon began pushing the US to confront Iran in November 2002, in an
interview in the Times. Describing Iran as the ‘centre of world
terror’, and bent on acquiring nuclear weapons, he declared that the
Bush administration should put the strong arm on Iran ‘the day after’
it conquered Iraq. In late April 2003, Ha’aretz reported that the
Israeli ambassador in Washington was calling for regime change in Iran.
The overthrow of Saddam, he noted, was ‘not enough’. In his words,
America ‘has to follow through. We still have great threats of that
magnitude coming from Syria, coming from Iran.’
The neo-conservatives, too, lost no time in making the case for regime
change in Tehran. On 6 May, the AEI co-sponsored an all-day conference
on Iran with the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies and the
Hudson Institute, both champions of Israel. The speakers were all
strongly pro-Israel, and many called for the US to replace the Iranian
regime with a democracy. As usual, a bevy of articles by prominent
neo-conservatives made the case for going after Iran. ‘The liberation
of Iraq was the first great battle for the future of the Middle East .
. . But the next great battle – not, we hope, a military battle – will
be for Iran,’ William Kristol wrote in the Weekly Standard on 12 May.
The administration has responded to the Lobby’s pressure by working
overtime to shut down Iran’s nuclear programme. But Washington has had
little success, and Iran seems determined to create a nuclear arsenal.
As a result, the Lobby has intensified its pressure. Op-eds and other
articles now warn of imminent dangers from a nuclear Iran, caution
against any appeasement of a ‘terrorist’ regime, and hint darkly of
preventive action should diplomacy fail. The Lobby is pushing Congress
to approve the Iran Freedom Support Act, which would expand existing
sanctions. Israeli officials also warn they may take pre-emptive action
should Iran continue down the nuclear road, threats partly intended to
keep Washington’s attention on the issue.
One might argue that Israel and the Lobby have not had much influence
on policy towards Iran, because the US has its own reasons for keeping
Iran from going nuclear. There is some truth in this, but Iran’s
nuclear ambitions do not pose a direct threat to the US. If Washington
could live with a nuclear Soviet Union, a nuclear China or even a
nuclear North Korea, it can live with a nuclear Iran. And that is why
the Lobby must keep up constant pressure on politicians to confront
Tehran. Iran and the US would hardly be allies if the Lobby did not
exist, but US policy would be more temperate and preventive war would
not be a serious option.
It is not surprising that Israel and its American supporters want the
US to deal with any and all threats to Israel’s security. If their
efforts to shape US policy succeed, Israel’s enemies will be weakened
or overthrown, Israel will get a free hand with the Palestinians, and
the US will do most of the fighting, dying, rebuilding and paying. But
even if the US fails to transform the Middle East and finds itself in
conflict with an increasingly radicalised Arab and Islamic world,
Israel will end up protected by the world’s only superpower. This is
not a perfect outcome from the Lobby’s point of view, but it is
obviously preferable to Washington distancing itself, or using its
leverage to force Israel to make peace with the Palestinians.
Can the Lobby’s power be curtailed? One would like to think so, given
the Iraq debacle, the obvious need to rebuild America’s image in the
Arab and Islamic world, and the recent revelations about AIPAC
officials passing US government secrets to Israel. One might also think
that Arafat’s death and the election of the more moderate Mahmoud Abbas
would cause Washington to press vigorously and even-handedly for a
peace agreement. In short, there are ample grounds for leaders to
distance themselves from the Lobby and adopt a Middle East policy more
consistent with broader US interests. In particular, using American
power to achieve a just peace between Israel and the Palestinians would
help advance the cause of democracy in the region.
But that is not going to happen – not soon anyway. AIPAC and its allies
(including Christian Zionists) have no serious opponents in the
lobbying world. They know it has become more difficult to make Israel’s
case today, and they are responding by taking on staff and expanding
their activities. Besides, American politicians remain acutely
sensitive to campaign contributions and other forms of political
pressure, and major media outlets are likely to remain sympathetic to
Israel no matter what it does.
The Lobby’s influence causes trouble on several fronts. It increases
the terrorist danger that all states face – including America’s
European allies. It has made it impossible to end the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a situation that gives extremists a
powerful recruiting tool, increases the pool of potential terrorists
and sympathisers, and contributes to Islamic radicalism in Europe and
Asia.
Equally worrying, the Lobby’s campaign for regime change in Iran and
Syria could lead the US to attack those countries, with potentially
disastrous effects. We don’t need another Iraq. At a minimum, the
Lobby’s hostility towards Syria and Iran makes it almost impossible for
Washington to enlist them in the struggle against al-Qaida and the
Iraqi insurgency, where their help is badly needed.
There is a moral dimension here as well. Thanks to the Lobby, the
United States has become the de facto enabler of Israeli expansion in
the Occupied Territories, making it complicit in the crimes perpetrated
against the Palestinians. This situation undercuts Washington’s efforts
to promote democracy abroad and makes it look hypocritical when it
presses other states to respect human rights. US efforts to limit
nuclear proliferation appear equally hypocritical given its willingness
to accept Israel’s nuclear arsenal, which only encourages Iran and
others to seek a similar capability.
Besides, the Lobby’s campaign to quash debate about Israel is unhealthy
for democracy. Silencing sceptics by organising blacklists and boycotts
– or by suggesting that critics are anti-semites – violates the
principle of open debate on which democracy depends. The inability of
Congress to conduct a genuine debate on these important issues
paralyses the entire process of democratic deliberation. Israel’s
backers should be free to make their case and to challenge those who
disagree with them, but efforts to stifle debate by intimidation must
be roundly condemned.
Finally, the Lobby’s influence has been bad for Israel. Its ability to
persuade Washington to support an expansionist agenda has discouraged
Israel from seizing opportunities – including a peace treaty with Syria
and a prompt and full implementation of the Oslo Accords – that would
have saved Israeli lives and shrunk the ranks of Palestinian
extremists. Denying the Palestinians their legitimate political rights
certainly has not made Israel more secure, and the long campaign to
kill or marginalise a generation of Palestinian leaders has empowered
extremist groups like Hamas, and reduced the number of Palestinian
leaders who would be willing to accept a fair settlement and able to
make it work. Israel itself would probably be better off if the Lobby
were less powerful and US policy more even-handed.
There is a ray of hope, however. Although the Lobby remains a powerful
force, the adverse effects of its influence are increasingly difficult
to hide. Powerful states can maintain flawed policies for quite some
time, but reality cannot be ignored for ever. What is needed is a
candid discussion of the Lobby’s influence and a more open debate about
US interests in this vital region. Israel’s well-being is one of those
interests, but its continued occupation of the West Bank and its
broader regional agenda are not. Open debate will expose the limits of
the strategic and moral case for one-sided US support and could move
the US to a position more consistent with its own national interest,
with the interests of the other states in the region, and with Israel’s
long-term interests as well.
10 March 2006
................................
John Mearsheimer is the Wendell Harrison Professor of Political Science at Chicago, and the author of The Tragedy of Great Power Politics. Stephen Walt
is the Robert and Renee Belfer Professor of International Affairs at
the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. His most recent book is Taming American Power: The Global Response to US Primacy.
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