By Joshua Holland, AlterNet. Posted April 4, 2006.
http://www.alternet.org/audits/34416/
How a seemingly noncontroversial academic paper set off a political
firestorm within the foreign policy establishment.
By Joshua Holland, AlterNet. April 4, 2006.
http://community.freespeech.org/forum/viewtopic.php?forum=8&showtopic=1655&fromblock=yes
A few weeks ago two scholars published a study that might have
languished in the obscurity of academia.
But the paper was about the impact that the "Israel Lobby" -- which
the authors characterized as a loose confederation of like-minded
individuals and groups -- has on U.S. policy in the Middle East. So,
predictably, it set off a nice little firestorm with accusations of
anti-Semitism flying around our most hallowed Ivy League colleges and
members of Congress discussing how to respond to the study's
"charges."
"The Israel Lobby," by political scientists Stephen Walt of Harvard's
Kennedy School of Government and John Mearsheimer of the University of
Chicago, offered nothing new to the debate about U.S. policy toward
the Middle East. The authors established no groundbreaking facts and
unearthed no shocking original documents that could change the course
of historical understanding.
As Walt and Mearsheimer noted, only their conclusion -- that the
Israel Lobby's unprecedented success has shifted U.S. foreign policy
in the Middle East away from a narrow focus on America's national
interests -- is controversial, and then only by a matter of degree.
The data from which they drew that conclusion came largely from
Israeli academics and journalists and, as the authors point out, "are
not in serious dispute among scholars."
What was interesting about the paper was its authorship and the
reaction it elicited from Israel's many U.S. supporters. Those
supporters inadvertently proved Walt and Mearsheimer correct on at
least one point: the Israel Lobby doesn't tolerate debate about the
relationship between the United States and its favorite client state,
and it's quick to accuse dissenters of having the vilest of intent.
The New York Sun -- known as a mouthpiece for neoconservatism -- ran
six articles about the paper the week it was released. Two were on the
front page, above the fold. The first was headlined "David Duke Claims
to Be Vindicated by a Harvard Dean" (Walt is the academic dean at the
Kennedy School). According to the Sun, "Duke, a former Louisiana state
legislator and one-time Ku Klux Klan leader, called the paper 'a great
step forward.'" Later in the article -- below the fold -- Duke admits
that he hadn't actually read the study.
The guilt-by-association didn't end with Duke -- although he made
appearances in a number of other articles about the study, including
one in the Washington Post. Terrorists, apparently, also endorsed it:
"The Palestine Liberation Organization mission to Washington is
distributing the paper, which also is being hailed by a senior member
of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist organization," according to
the Sun.
The Sun's second hit piece quoted two Harvard professors who are
"publicly supportive of Israel" and Rep. Eliot Engel, D-N.Y., who
conceded that the "'dishonest so-called intellectuals' who wrote the
paper are 'entitled to their stupidity'" but insisted that it was a
matter of common decency "to expose them for being the anti-Semites
they are."
That statement alone illustrates one of Walt and Mearsheimer's main
points beautifully: "No discussion of how the Lobby operates," they
wrote, "would be complete without examining one of its most powerful
weapons: the charge of anti-Semitism 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.'"
Alan Dershowitz, who fought to get the University of California Press
to kill an academic critique of his book "The Case for Israel" (in
which he's accused of shoddy research and plagiarism), said the paper
was "simply a compilation of hateful paragraphs lifted from other
sources and given academic imprimatur." His evidence? Apparently Walt
and Mearsheimer used a quote -- from former Time editor Max Frankel's
memoir -- that also appeared on some white supremacist website.
Dershowitz, without evidence, dismissed the idea that the scholars
could have gotten the quote from anywhere but the white power hate
sites, bloviating: "[Walt] quotes Max Frankel, as if he read the whole
500 pages of Max Frankel? I promise you they did not read Max
Frankel's whole book."
An editorial suggested that Walt should be replaced as academic dean,
and another urged wealthy Jewish backers of the Kennedy School to pull
their support. It got so hot that the professors removed Harvard's
logo from the paper (which critics said "proved" that it was filled
with errors, a claim Harvard's administration denies).
There was much more in that vein from the New Republic, from Martin
Kramer and Daniel Pipes and from many others.
The backdrop to all of this, of course, is the ongoing campus wars,
where the Israel-Palestine conflict is always Ground Zero. Walt and
Mearsheimer touch on the Lobby's efforts to constrain discussion of
our relationship with Israel by imposing a narrow political
correctness. In addition to funding the think tanks and academic
chairs, that strategy rests on relentless attacks against academics
who criticize Israeli policy:
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. 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
(American Israel Public Affairs Committee) more than tripled its
spending for programs to monitor university activities and to train
young advocates for Israel
Ultimately, most of the criticism of the study amounted to little more
than knocking down straw men.
Walt and Mearsheimer were accused of furthering anti-Semitic
conspiracy theories about Jews "whispering in the ears of kings," but
the authors never suggest there's an organized conspiracy afoot, nor
do they claim that the Lobby is the only factor influencing U.S.
policy in the Middle East.
The scholars went out of their way to say that the "Lobby" is not some
shady cabal, and in fact is not even Jewish; many in the Lobby -- they
give ***** Armey as an example -- are in fact Christian Zionists.
They add that there's nothing wrong with citizens lobbying in a
democracy. Their point is simply that the Lobby's success has
redirected U.S. policy in the Middle East away from America's
interests, narrowly defined. Arguing that the relationship between the
United States and Israel "has no equal in American political history,"
the authors wrote:
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.
Walt and Mearsheimer are not household names around America's kitchen
tables, but they are giants in the field of international relations.
They represent foreign policy "realism," the dominant paradigm in
international relations for over a century. At its heart, realism's
focus is on how countries best use their power to advance their own
narrowly defined interests. Realists tend not to get caught up in the
kind of moral questions and historical debates that characterize so
much of the controversy around the Israel-Palestine conflict.
Walt and Mearsheimer's argument is powerful coming not from the right
or the left, but from smack in the center of the foreign policy
establishment. Forget about the immorality of occupation -- the only
time they reference the burden the Palestinian population bears or
Israel's poor human rights record is to counter the Lobby's claim that
the United States has a moral duty to support Israel.
Walt and Mearsheimer's case is that, on balance, the United States'
(almost) unconditional support for Israel doesn't serve the interest
of American power. Israel -- once a valuable counter to Soviet
influence in Syria and Egypt -- is, in the post Cold-war era, a
strategic liability.
Their argument on this point is hard to dispute. While the United
States' support for Israel is not the only source of anti-American
terror, it is certainly a driving factor and always a good recruiting
tool for extremists. The relationship, the authors argue, is so
inflammatory in both the Arab world and among our European allies that
Israel has become a highly militarized partner that has to sit on the
sidelines during American-led military actions in the Middle East,
including both Gulf Wars, in order to build and maintain international
support.
The authors' analysis of Israeli power in relation to that of its
regional neighbors was the strongest rebuttal to the case usually made
by Israel's supporters. The Israel Lobby claims that it is fighting
for a small, weak country surrounded by belligerents who are bent on
her destruction. But Walt and Mearsheimer argue that Israel -- with
military spending higher than all of its neighbors combined, access to
the latest U.S. weapons technology and the only nuclear arsenal in the
Middle East is not exactly fighting for its existence.
The scholars add that despite all the largesse, Israel "does not act
like a loyal ally." They cite a GAO report that found that Israel
"conducts the most aggressive espionage operations against the U.S. of
any ally" and concludes that "its willingness to spy on its principal
patron casts further doubt on its strategic value."
Walt and Mearsheimer ask why, given all of that, do we spend a fifth
of our foreign aid budget on a country with a per capita economic
output similar to Spain's? Why do we provide that support with fewer
strings than we place on other aid recipients? Why do we continue that
support even when Israel often ignores our wishes on issues like
selling weapons to the Chinese or continuing to build settlements when
it's the policy of the United States that such construction is
illegal?
Those questions are getting tougher to answer as we get mired deeper
in conflict in the Middle East. Walt and Mearsheimer's study comes at
an interesting time: Support for the Gulf War is in the basement, and
a growing number of voices are looking at the role Israel's supporters
-- inside the government and out -- played in making the case for the
war.
American support of Israel appears as strong as ever, and
fundamentally it is. But the recent espionage case against AIPAC
staffers and Pentagon officials (with Israeli embassy personnel named
as unindicted co-conspirators) and tensions over Israeli weapons sales
to third-party nations have weakened the once impregnable Lobby. At
the same time, there are growing divisions within the American foreign
policy elite between the neocons who want to shape the world in
America's image and the realists who counter that such hubris has been
the undoing of other leading powers.
Perhaps a crack is appearing in the monolith, and perhaps that crack
might widen into a real debate about our policies in the Middle East.
For some, that's a dangerous prospect. Small wonder that the study was
attacked with such rhetorical savagery.
Joshua Holland is an AlterNet staff writer.
http://community.freespeech.org/forum/viewtopic.php?forum=8&showtopic=1655&fromblock=yes
--
The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy
John J. Mearsheimer
University of Chicago - Department of Political Science
Stephen M. Walt
Harvard University - John F. Kennedy School of Government
http://ksgnotes1.harvard.edu/Research/wpaper.nsf/rwp/RWP06-011
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