The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy

"The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy" is a controversial working paper which claims that U.S. Middle East policy is not in America's national interest and is driven primarily by a "loose coalition of individuals and organizations who actively work to steer US foreign policy in a pro-Israel direction". The paper was originally commissioned by the Atlantic Monthly. After the article was completed, it was first approved for publication and then rejected by the Atlantic Monthly. The paper was finally published in March, 2006 by John Mearsheimer, political science professor at the University of Chicago, and Stephen Walt, academic dean of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

Summary

According to their paper, "No lobby has managed to divert U.S. foreign policy as far from what the American national interest would otherwise suggest, while simultaneously convincing Americans that U.S. and Israeli interests are essentially identical". Mearsheimer and Walt also argue that AIPAC is a source of serious concern for the United States' national security. They also make heavy criticism of efforts they describe as being by the lobby against academic freedom. The specifically point to the efforts of Daniel Pipes and Martin Kramer to collect dossiers on suspect academics through the website Campus Watch. Daniel Pipes later wrote to the London Review of Books denying that his activities were party of any Israeli Lobby.

The lobby

The paper has the following to say about what it calls the Lobby:

• "It is not meant to suggest that 'the lobby' is a unified movement with a central leadership, or that individuals within it do not disagree on certain issues."
• "The Lobby also includes prominent Christian evangelicals like Gary Bauer, Jerry Falwell, Ralph Reed and Pat Robertson, as well as Dick Armey and Tom DeLay...all of whom believe Israel's rebirth is the fufillment of bilbical prophecy and support its expansionist agenda; to do otherwise, they believe, would be contrary to God's will."
• "Not all Jewish Americans are part of the Lobby, because Israel is not a salient issue for many of them."
• "Many of the key organizations in the Lobby, such as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organzations, are run by hardliners who generally support the Likud Party's expansionist policies, including its hostility to the Oslo Peace Process."
• "There is nothing improper about American Jews and their Christian allies attempting to sway US policy; the Lobby's activities are not a conspiracy... For the most part the individuals and groups in it are only doing what other special interest groups do, but doing it very much better."
• "Although neo-conservative and other Lobby leaders were eager to invade Iraq, the broader American Jewish Community was not."
• "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."

The support

• Economical: Israel is the largest total recipient of US aid since World War II. Total direct U.S. aid to Israel for this period amounts to well over $140 billion in 2003 dollars. Israel receives about $3 billion in direct foreign assistance each year, which is about one‐fifth of America’s foreign aid budget. The authors write that "This largesse is especially striking when one realizes that Israel is now a wealthy industrial state with a per capita income roughly equal to South Korea or Spain."
  Israel is the only recipient of US aid that does not have to account for how the aid is spent. This makes it in practice impossible to prevent the money from being used for purposes the United States officially opposes, like building settlements in the West Bank.
• Diplomatic/political: Since 1982, the United States has vetoed 32 United Nations Security Council resolutions that were critical of Israel. (This is a number greater than the combined total of vetoes cast by all the other Security Council members together.) The US has also blocks Arab states’ efforts to put Israel’s nuclear arsenal on the International Atomic Energy Agency’s agenda.
  The authors state that: "This extraordinary generosity might be understandable if Israel were a vital strategic asset or if there were a compelling moral case for sustained U.S. backing. But neither rationale is convincing"

Reception

Praise

The paper was described as a "wake-up call" by Daniel Levy, former advisor to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak. In a March 25 article for Haaretz, Levy wrote, "Their case is a potent one: that identification of American with Israeli interests can be principally explained via the impact of the Lobby in Washington, and in limiting the parameters of public debate, rather than by virtue of Israel being a vital strategic asset or having a uniquely compelling moral case for support".

Former U.S. Ambassador Edward Peck, now of the Independent Institute, wrote that "The expected tsunami of rabid responses condemned the report, vilified its authors, and denied there is such a lobby—validating both the lobby’s existence and aggressive, pervasive presence and obliging Harvard to remove its name." Peck is generally in agreement with the paper's core thesis: "Opinions differ on the long-term costs and benefits for both nations, but the lobby's views of Israel's interests have become the basis of U.S. Middle East policies."

An editorial in the Financial Times praised the paper, remarking that "They argue powerfully that extraordinarily effective lobbying in Washington has led to a political consensus that American and Israeli interests are inseparable and identical", and decrying the "wave of condemnation" that followed publication: "On various counts, this is a shame and a self-inflicted wound no society built on freedom should allow."

Rupert Cornwell, writing in The Independent, welcomed "a debate on America's support for Israel".

David Duke

The paper was praised by the white supremacist David Duke, who "devoted his entire half-hour Internet radio broadcast on March 18 to the paper", and who, on March 21, 2006, was interviewed by Joe Scarborough regarding the paper on MSNBC's Scarborough Country program. Duke has stated he is "surprised how excellent it is" and claimed his views had been "vindicated". According to Duke, "the task before us is to wrest control of America's foreign policy and critical junctures of media from the Jewish extremist Neocons".

In response, Walt stated "I have always found Mr. Duke's views reprehensible, and I am sorry he sees this article as consistent with his view of the world".

Mary-Kay Wilmers, the editor of the London Review of Books which published a version of the paper, said with regards to David Duke: "I don't want David Duke to endorse the article. It makes me feel uncomfortable. But when I re-read the piece, I did not see anything that I felt should not have been said. Maybe it is because I am Jewish, but I think I am very alert to anti-Semitism. And I do not think that criticising US foreign policy, or Israel's way of going about influencing it, is anti-Semitic. I just don't see it."

Mixed reviews

Columnist Christopher Hitchens agreed that "AIPAC and other Jewish organizations exert a vast influence over Middle East policy", and stated that the paper "contains much that is true and a little that is original" and that he "would have gone further than Mearsheimer and Walt". However, he also says that "what is original is not true and what is true is not original", and that the notion that the "Jewish tail wags the American dog... the United States has gone to war in Iraq to gratify Ariel Sharon, and... the alliance between the two countries has brought down on us the wrath of Osama Bin Laden" is "partly misleading and partly creepy".

A Haaretz editorial said that the paper "involved an attempt to blame the Jews for developments that are unconnected to them", and goes on to say that "the conclusion that Israel can draw from the anti-Israel feeling expressed in the article is that it will not be immune for eternity." It concludes that "it would be irresponsible to ignore the article's serious and disturbing message...The professors' article does not deserve condemnation; rather, it should serve as a warning sign."

According to Jefferson Morley of the Washington Post "In the international online media, [the paper] has attracted largely positive coverage. By contrast, U.S. and Israeli commentators have described their findings as outrageous and scandalous."

In describing the last of three "surprising weaknesses" of the paper, Eric Alterman writes in The Nation, "Third, while it's fair to call AIPAC obnoxious and even anti-democratic, the same can often be said about, say, the NRA, Big Pharma and other powerful lobbies. The authors note this but often seem to forget it. This has the effect of making the Jews who read the paper feel unfairly singled out, and inspires much emotionally driven mishigas in reaction. Do these problems justify the inference that the authors are anti-Semitic? Of course not. "

Joseph Massad, professor of modern Arab politics and intellectual history at Columbia University, writes, "Is the pro- Israel lobby extremely powerful in the United States? As someone who has been facing the full brunt of their power for the last three years through their formidable influence on my own university and their attempts to get me fired, I answer with a resounding yes. Are they primarily responsible for US policies towards the Palestinians and the Arab world? Absolutely not."

Criticism

A number of Harvard professors have criticized the paper. Marvin Kalb, an administrator at the Kennedy School at Harvard, said that the paper failed to meet basic quality standards for academic research. Ruth Wisse, a professor of Yiddish Literature and Comparative Literature, wrote, "When the authors imply that the bipartisan support of Israel in Congress is a result of Jewish influence, they function as classic conspiracy theorists who attribute decisions to nefarious alliances rather than to the choices of a democratic electorate". David Gergen, a professor of public service at the Kennedy School at Harvard, wrote that the charges in the paper are "wildly at variance with what I have personally witnessed in the Oval Office over the years..." Alan Dershowitz, professor of Law, wrote an extensive report challenging the factual basis of the paper, the motivations of the authors and their scholarship. Dershowitz claimed that, "The paper contains three types of major errors: quotations are wrenched out of context, important facts are misstated or omitted, and embarrasingly weak logic is employed."

Representative Eliot L. Engel described the authors as "dishonest so-called intellectuals" - he insisted they were "entitled to their stupidity", and had a right to publish it, but also supported "the right of the rest of us to expose them for being the anti-Semites they are."

The Anti-Defamation League published an analysis of the paper which described it as "amateurish and biased critique of Israel, American Jews, and American policy" and a "sloppy diatribe".

The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America, a pro-Israel media watchdog group which in the past has been very critical of National Public Radio and Steven Spielberg, published a detailed study of the paper, saying that it was "riddled with errors of fact, logic and omission, has inaccurate citations, displays extremely poor judgement regarding sources, and, contrary to basic scholarly standards, ignores previous serious work on the subject".

Eliot A. Cohen, a professor at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at Johns Hopkins University, argues that the paper bears all the traditional hallmarks of anti-Semitism: "obsessive and irrationally hostile beliefs about Jews", accusations of Jews of "disloyalty, subversion or treachery, of having occult powers and of participating in secret combinations that manipulate institutions and governments", as well as selection of "everything unfair, ugly or wrong about Jews as individuals or a group" and equally systematical suppression of "any exculpatory information".

British journalist and Frontpage Magazine contributor Melanie Phillips called the paper a "particularly ripe example of the ‘global Zionist conspiracy’ libel". According to Phillips, "[t]he fundamental misrepresentations and distortions in this LRB paper are quite astonishing." For example, she dismisses the paper's assertion that Israeli citizenship "is based on the principle of blood kinship" as "totally untrue" because "[a]rabs and other non-Jews are Israeli citizens." Melanie Phillips based that statement on the quote "Israel was founded as a Jewish State and citizenship is based on a blood kinship. Given this, it is not suprising that its 1.3 million Arabs are treated as second-class citzens, or that a recent Israeli government commission found that Israel behaves in a neglectful and discriminatory manner towards them". Contrary to the claim by the paper's authors that critics of Israel stand "a good chance of getting labeled an antisemite", writes Phillips, "they stand instead an excellent chance of being published in the London Review of Books". Phillips had nothing to say about the rejection of the paper by the Atlantic Monthly.

Noam Chomsky, professor of linguistics at MIT, asserts that he did not find the thesis of the paper very convincing. He said that Stephen Zunes (professor of politics at the University of San Francisco) has rightly pointed out that "there are far more powerful interests that have a stake in what happens in the Persian Gulf region than does AIPAC [or the Lobby generally], such as the oil companies, the arms industry and other special interests whose lobbying influence and campaign contributions far surpass that of the much-vaunted Zionist lobby and its allied donors to congressional races."

Responses to criticism

Harvard's Kennedy School of Government removed its logo, more strongly wording its disclaimer and making it more prominent, and insisting the paper reflected only the views of its authors. The Kennedy School said in a statement: "The only purpose of that removal was to end public confusion; it was not intended, contrary to some interpretations, to send any signal that the school was also 'distancing' itself from one of its senior professors" and stated that they are committed to academic freedom, and do not take a position on faculty conclusions and research.

Mark Mazower, a professor of history at Columbia University, wrote that it is not possible to openly debate the topic of the article: "What is striking is less the substance of their argument than the outraged reaction: to all intents and purposes, discussing the US-Israel special relationship still remains taboo in the US media mainstream. [...] Whatever one thinks of the merits of the piece itself, it would seem all but impossible to have a sensible public discussion in the US today about the country’s relationship with Israel."

Criticism of the paper has itself been called "moral blackmail" and "bullying" by an opinion piece in The Australian: "Moral blackmail - the fear that any criticism of Israeli policy and US support for it will lead to charges of anti-Semitism - is a powerful disincentive to publish dissenting views...Bullying Americans into a consensus on Israeli policy is bad for Israel and makes it impossible for America to articulate its own national interest."

The editor of the London Review of Books, Mary-Kay Wilmers said after the LRB was accused of anti-Semitism, "one of the most upsetting things is the way it can contribute to anti-Semitism in the long run just by making so many constant appeals and preventing useful criticism of Israel."

Mearsheimer has stated, "[w]e fully recognised that the lobby would retaliate against us" and "[w]e expected the story we told in the piece would apply to us after it was published. We are not surprised that we've come under attack by the lobby." He also stated "we expected to be called anti-semites, even though both of us are philo-semites and strongly support the existence of Israel."

See also

• New anti-Semitism

External links

• AIPAC Press Releases
• The myth of the "Jewish lobby" in the Frontline (India's National Magazine) Volume 20 - Issue 20, September 27 - October 10, 2003.