Soros adds voice to debate over Israel lobby
This article linked from: antiwar.com
(as are many posts seen in this NG)
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N13215323.htm
By Bernd Debusmann, Special Correspondent
WASHINGTON, April 16 (Reuters) - The billionaire
investor George Soros has added his voice to a
heated but little-noticed debate over the role of
Israel's powerful lobby in shaping Washington policy
in a way critics say hurts U.S. national interests
and stifles debate.
In the current issue of the New York Review of Books,
Soros takes issue with "the pervasive influence of
the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)"
in Washington and says the Bush administration's
close ties with Israel are obstacles to a peace
settlement between Israel and the Palestinians.
Soros, who is Jewish but not often engaged in Israel
affairs, echoed arguments that have fueled a
passionate debate conducted largely in the rarefied
world of academia, foreign policy think tanks and
parts of the U.S. Jewish community.
"The pro-Israel lobby has been remarkably successful
in suppressing criticism," wrote Soros. Politicians
challenge it at their peril and dissenters risk
personal vilification, he said.
AIPAC has consistently declined comment on such
charges, but many of its supporters have been vocal
in dismissing them. Historian Michael Oren, speaking
at AIPAC's 2007 conference in March, said the group
was not merely a lobby for Israel. "It is the
embodiment of a conviction as old as this (American)
nation itself that belief in the Jewish state is
tantamount to belief in these United States," he said
in a keynote speech.
The long-simmering debate bubbled to the surface a
year ago, when two prominent academics, Stephen Walt
of Harvard and John Mearsheimer of the University of
Chicago, published a 12,500-word essay entitled "The
Israel Lobby" and featuring the fiercest criticism of
AIPAC since it was founded in 1953.
AIPAC now has more than 100,000 members and is rated
one of the most influential special interest groups
in the United States, its political clout comparable
with such lobbies as the National Rifle Association.
The AIPAC members are all U.S. citizens and the group
receives no funding from the Israeli government.
Its annual conference in Washington attracts a Who's
Who of American politics, both Republicans and
Democrats.
UNWAVERING SUPPORT
Mearsheimer and Walt said the lobby had persuaded
successive administrations to align themselves too
closely with Israel.
"The combination of unwavering support for Israel
and the related effort to spread 'democracy' has
inflamed Arab and Islamic opinion and jeopardized
not only U.S. security but much of the rest of the
world," they wrote.
No other lobby group has managed to divert U.S.
foreign policy so far from the U.S. national
interest, while simultaneously convincing Americans
that U.S. interests and those of Israel are
essentially identical, they wrote.
Once considered an honest broker in the Middle East,
the United States is now seen in much of the
Arab world as an unquestioning backer of Israel,
according to international opinion polls.
Peace moves have been at a near-standstill since the
failure of Israeli-Palestinian talks in 2000 at the
end of Bill Clinton's presidency. The Bush
administration, accused by the Arab world of
relative neglect, has said it hopes to promote peace
in its final two years despite the political weakness
of Israeli and Palestinian leaders.
The two academics said that pressure from Israel and
its lobby in Washington played an important role in
President George W. Bush's decision to attack Iraq,
an arch-enemy of Israel, in 2003.
Mearsheimer and Walt found no takers for their essay
in the U.S. publishing world. When it was eventually
published in the London Review of Books, they noted
it would be hard to imagine any mainstream media
outlet in the United States publishing such a piece.
It has been drawing criticism that ranged from shoddy
scholarship to anti-Semitism, chiefly from
conservative fellow academics and political
supporters of the present relationship between
Washington and Israel.
In his contribution to the debate, Soros said: "A
much-needed self-examination of American policy in
the Middle East has started in this country; but it
can't make much headway as long as AIPAC retains
powerful influence in both the Democratic and
Republican parties."
That influence is reflected by the fact that Israel
is the largest recipient of U.S. aid in the world.
GOING MAINSTREAM
Mearsheimer and Walt are now working on expanding
their article into a book -- to be published in
September by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. The company
has not commented on online reports that it paid the
two authors a $750,000 advance and plans to print
one million copies.
Another mainstream publisher, Simon and Schuster,
already discovered that it not only is it possible
to publish criticism of Israel but it can also be
good for the bottom line.
Former President Jimmy Carter's book "Palestine Peace
Not Apartheid" shot up the bestseller lists after its
publication last November, stayed there for more
than three months and is still selling well.
It had an initial print run of 300,000 copies and
there are now 485,000 copies in print, said Victoria
Meyer, a spokeswoman for Simon and Schuster.
Carter's book and its reference to apartheid provoked
angry reactions -- more in the United States than in
Israel, where leftists opposed to the occupation of
the West Bank have been accusing the government of
apartheid practices for years and where the word has
lost its shock value.
In response to charges of bias and anti-Semitism,
Carter said he wanted to provoke a discussion of
issues debated routinely and freely in Israel but
rarely in the United States.
"This reluctance to criticize any policies of the
Israeli government is because of the extraordinary
lobbying efforts of the American Israel Political
Action Committee and the absence of any significant
contrary voices," he wrote in the Los Angeles Times
during a tour to promote his book. "It would be
almost politically suicidal for members of Congress
to espouse a balanced position between Israel and
Palestine."
According to Oren, the pro-AIPAC historian, the
Carter book and the Mearsheimer-Walt paper had the
same "insidious thesis" and suffered from the same
flaw -- ignoring oil as a driving element in U.S.
policies on the Middle East.
This article linked from: antiwar.com
(as are many posts seen in this NG)
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N13215323.htm
--
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
( has polemical response from Alan Dershowitz at site )
Edited non-PDF HTML version :
http://www.lrb.co.uk./v28/n06/mear01_.html
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