The United States, Israel, and
the Lobby - Part 2
excerpted from the book
The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign
Policy
by John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen
M. Walt
Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2007,
paperback
p83
Today, Israel is the strongest military power in the Middle East.
Its conventional forces are far superior to those of its neighbors,
and it is the only state in the region with nuclear weapons. Egypt
and Jordan have signed peace treaties with Israel, and Saudi Arabia
has offered to do so as well. Syria has lost its Soviet patron,
Iraq has been decimated by three disastrous wars, and Iran is
hundreds of miles away and has never directly attacked Israel.
The Palestinians barely have effective police, let alone a military
that could threaten Israel's existence, and they are further weakened
by profound internal divisions. The deaths caused by Palestinian
suicide bombers are tragic and strike fear in the hearts of all
Israelis, but they do relatively little damage to Israel's economy,
much less threaten its territorial integrity. Groups like Hezbollah
can launch low-yield missiles and rockets at Israel and might
be able to kill a few hundred Israelis over the course of months
or years, but these attacks do not represent an existential threat
to Israel.
p87
Whether a country is democratic is not a reliable indicator of
how Washington will relate to it. The United States has overthrown
a few democratic governments in the past and has supported numerous
dictators when doing so was thought to advance U.S. interests.
The Eisenhower administration overthrew a democratically elected
government in Iran in 1953, while the Reagan administration supported
Saddam Hussein in the 1980s. Today, the Bush administration has
good relations with dictators like Hosni Mubarak in Egypt and
Pervez Musharraf in Pakistan, and at the same time it has worked
to undermine the democratically elected Hamas government in the
Occupied Territories. It also has an acrimonious relationship
with Hugo Chavez, the elected leader of Venezuela.
p87
The United States is a liberal democracy where people of any race,
religion, or ethnicity are supposed to enjoy equal rights. While
Israel's citizens are of many backgrounds, including Arab, Muslim,
and Christian, among others, it was explicitly founded as a Jewish
state, and whether a citizen is regarded as Jewish ordinarily
depends on kinship verifiable Jewish ancestry.
p87
David Ben-Gurion
Any Jewish woman who, as far as it depends
on her, does not bring into the world at least four healthy children
is shirking her duty to the nation, like a soldier who evades
military service .
p88
The initial draft of the Basic Law on Human Dignity and Liberty,
which approximates the U.S. Bill of Rights, contained language
that promised equality for all Israelis: "All are equal before
the law, and there shall be no discrimination on the grounds of
gender, religion, nationality, race, ethnic group, country of
origin or any other irrelevant factor."" Ultimately,
however, a Knesset committee removed that clause from the final
version that became law in 1992. Since then, Arab members of Israel's
Knesset have made numerous attempts to amend that Basic Law by
adding language that provides for equality before the law. But
their Jewish colleagues have refused to go along, a situation
that stands in marked contrast to the United States, where the
equality principle is enshrined in law.
In addition to Israel's commitment to
maintaining its Jewish identity and its refusal to grant de jure
equality for non-Jews. Israel's 1.36 million Arabs are de facto
treated as second-class citizens. An Israeli government commission
found in 2003, for example, that Israel behaves in a "neglectful
and discriminatory" manner toward them. Indeed, there is
widespread support among Israeli Jews for(this)unequal treatment
of Israeli Arabs. A poll released in March 2007 found that 55
percent of Israeli Jews wanted segregated entertainment facilities,
while more than 75 percent said they would not live in the same
building as an Israeli Arab. More than half of the respondents
said that for a Jewish woman to marry an Arab is equal to national
treason, And 50 percent said that they would refuse employment
if their immediate supervisor was an Arab. The Israel Democracy
Institute reported in May 2003 that 53 percent of Israeli Jews
"are against full equality for the Arabs," while 77
percent of Israeli Jews believe that "there should be a Jewish
majority on crucial political decisions." Only 31 percent
"support having Arab political parties in the government."
That sentiment squares with the fact that Israel did not appoint
its first Muslim Arab cabinet minister until January 2007, almost
six decades after the founding of the state. And even that one
appointment, which was to the minor portfolio of science, sports,
and culture, was highly controversial.
Israel's treatment of its Arab citizens
is more than just discriminatory. For example, to limit the number
of Arabs in its midst, Israel does not permit Palestinians who
marry Israeli citizens to become citizens themselves and does
not give these spouses the right to live in Israel. The Israeli
human rights organization B'Tselem called this restriction "a
racist law that determines who can live here according to racist
criteria. " Also, the Olmert government is pushing-and the
Knesset's ministerial committee on legislation approved on January
10, 2007-a law that would allow the courts to revoke the citizenship
of "unpatriotic" citizens. This legislation, which is
clearly aimed at Israeli Arabs, was labeled "a drastic and
extreme move that harms civil liberties" by Israel's attorney
general. Such laws may be understandable in light of Israel's
founding principles-the explicit aim of creating a Jewish state-but
they are not consistent with America's image of a multiethnic
democracy in which all citizens are supposed to be treated equally
regardless of their ancestry.
In early 2007, Benjamin Netanyahu apologized
to ultra-Orthodox Israelis with large families for the hardships
that were caused by welfare cuts that he had made in 2002 when
he was finance minister. He noted, however, that there was at
least one important and unexpected benefit of these cuts: "there
was a dramatic drop in the birth rate" within the "non-Jewish
public . For Netanyahu, like many Israelis who are deeply worried
about the so-called Arab demographic threat, the fewer Israeli
Arab births, the better.
Netanyahu's comments would almost certainly
be condemned if made in the United States. Imagine the outcry
that would arise here if a U.S. cabinet official spoke of the
benefits of a policy that had reduced the birthrates of African
Americans and Hispanics, thereby preserving a white majority.
But such statements are not unusual in Israel, where important
leaders have a history of making derogatory comments about Palestinians
and are rarely sanctioned for them. Menachem Begin once said that
"Palestinians are beasts walking on two legs," while
former IDF Chief of Staff Rafael Eitan referred to them as "drugged
roaches in a bottle" and also said that good Arab is a dead
Arab." Another former chief of staff, Moshe Ya'alon, referred
to the Palestinian threat as like a "cancer" on which
he was performing "chemotherapy. "
Such discriminatory views are not restricted
to Israeli leaders. In a recent survey of Jewish high school students
in Israel, 75 percent of the respondents said that Arabs are "uneducated."
The same percentage said that they are "uncivilized,' while
74 percent of those polled said that Arabs are "unclean."
Commenting on this last finding, Larry Derfner wrote in the Jerusalem
Post: "To say Arabs are unclean is not a hard-line political
statement. It's not an unduly harsh comment on Arab behavior.
To say Arabs are unclean is to evince an irrational, hysterical,
impenetrable, absolute hatred for an entire ethnic group-which,
in fact, happens not to be unclean, no more than Jews are. To
say Arabs are unclean is an expression of racism in about its
purest, most virulent form." The person who oversaw the survey
said, "We were not surprised by the outcome of the research.
Anyone who is familiar with the field knows that these warped
perceptions exist, but these dings are at the most severe extreme
of a disturbing phenomenon.
p90
The Israel Democracy Institute reported in May 2003 that 57 percent
of Israel's Jews "think that the Arabs should be encouraged
to emigrate. "A 2004 survey conducted by Haifa University's
Center for the Study of National Security found that the number
had increased to 63.7 percent. One year later, in 2005, the Palestinian
Center for Israel Studies found that 42 percent of Israeli Jews
believed that their government should encourage Israeli Arabs
to leave, while another 17 percent tended to agree with the idea.
The following year, the Center for Combating Racism found that
40 percent of Israel's Jews wanted their leaders to encourage
the Arab population to emigrate, while the Israel Democracy Institute
found the number to be 62 percent. If 40 percent or more of white
Americans declared that blacks, Hispanics, and Asians "should
be encouraged" to leave the United States, it would surely
prompt vehement criticism.
p91
Freedom of the press is alive and well in Israel, where, paradoxically,
it is much easier to criticize Israeli policy than it is in the
United States.
p115
The bulk of the [Israel] lobby is comprised of Jewish Americans
who are deeply committed to making sure that U.S. foreign policy
advances what they believe to be Israel's interests. According
to the historian Melvin I. Urofsky, "No other ethnic group
in American history has so extensive an involvement with a foreign
nation." Steven T. Rosenthal agrees, writing that "since
1967 ... there has been no other country whose citizens have been
as committed to the success of another country as American Jews
have been to Israel . In 1981, the political scientist Robert
H. Trice described the pro-Israel lobby as "comprised of
at least 75 separate organizations - mostly Jewish - that actively
support most of the actions and policy positions of the Israeli
government."' The activities of these groups and individuals
go beyond merely voting for pro-Israel candidates to include writing
letters to politicians or news organizations, making financial
contributions to pro-Israel political candidates, and giving active
support to one or more pro-Israel organizations, whose leaders
often contact them directly to convey their agenda .
p115
There is significant variation among American Jews in their depth
of commitment to Israel. Roughly a third of them, in fact, do
not identify Israel as a particularly salient issue. In 2004,
for example, a well-regarded survey found that 36 percent of Jewish
Americans were either "not very" or "not at all"
emotionally attached to Israel.
p116
American Jews have formed an impressive array of civic organizations
whose agendas include working to benefit Israel, in many cases
by influencing U.S. foreign policy. Key organizations include
AIPAC, the American Jewish Congress, ZOA, the Israel Policy Forum
(IPF), the American Jewish Committee, the ADL, the Religious Action
Center of Reform Judaism, Americans for a Safe Israel, American
Friends of Likud, Mercaz-USA, Hadassah, and many others. Indeed,
the sociologist Chaim I. Waxman reported in 1992 that the American
Jewish Yearbook listed more than eighty national Jewish organizations
"specifically devoted to Zionist and pro-Israel activities
... and for many others, objectives and activities such as 'promotes
Israel's welfare,' 'support for the State of Israel' and 'promotes
understanding of Israel' appear with impressive frequency."
Fifty-one of the largest and most important organizations come
together in the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish
Organizations, whose self-described mission includes "forging
diverse groups into a unified force for Israel's well-being"
and working to "strengthen and foster the special U.S.-Israel
relationship."
The lobby also includes think tanks such
as the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA),
the Middle East Forum (MEF), and WINEP, as well as individuals
who work in universities and other research organizations. There
are also dozens of pro-Israel PACs ready to funnel money to pro-Israel
political candidates or to candidates whose opponents are deemed
either insufficiently supportive of or hostile to Israel.
p117
Of the various Jewish organizations that include foreign policy
as a central part of their agenda, AIPAC is clearly the most important
and best known. In 1997, when Fortune magazine asked members of
Congress and their staffs to list the most powerful lobbies in
Washington, AIPAC came in second behind AARP but ahead of heavyweight
lobbies like the AFL-CIO and the NRA. A National journal study
in March 2005 reached a similar conclusion, placing AIPAC in second
place (tied with AARP) in Washington's "muscle rankings."
Former Congressman Mervyn Dymally (D-CA) once called AIPAC "without
question the most effective lobby in Congress," and the former
chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Lee Hamilton,
who served in Congress for thirty-four years, said in 1991, "There's
no lobby group that matches it ... They're in a class by themselves."
p119
AIPAC was transformed from an intimate, low-budget operation into
a large, mass-based organization with a staff of more than 150
employees and an annual budget (derived solely from private contributions)
that went from some $300,000 in 1973 to an estimated $40-60 million
today.
p127
Membership on AIPAC's board of directors is based on each director's
financial contributions, not, observes Massing, on "how well
they represent AIPAC's members . The individuals willing to give
the largest amounts to AIPAC (and to sympathetic politicians)
tend to be the most zealous defenders of Israel, and AIPAC's top
leadership (consisting primarily of former presidents of the organization)
is considerably more hawkish on Middle East issues than are most
Jewish Americans.
p128
Thomas L. Friedman of the New York Times
Ever since Mr. Rabin and Mr. Arafat shook
hands they have received only the most tepid support from mainstream
American Jewish groups, like the Conference of Presidents, and
outright hostility from the orthodox and fringe Jewish groupings.
It is as if these organizations can only thrive if they have an
enemy, someone to fight.
128
The [Israel] lobby's drift to the right has been reinforced by
the emergence of the neoconservatives. The neoconservative movement
has been an important part of American intellectual and political
life since the 1970s, but it has drawn particular attention since
September 11.
... Neoconservatism is a political ideology
with distinct views on both domestic and foreign policy, although
only the latter is relevant here. Most neoconservatives extol
the virtues of American hegemony-and sometimes even the idea of
an American empire-and they believe U.S. power should be used
to encourage the spread of democracy and discourage potential
rivals from even trying to compete with the United States."
In their view, spreading democracy and preserving U.S. dominance
is the best route to long-term peace. Neoconservatives also believe
that America's democratic system ensures that it will be seen
as a benign hegemon by most other countries, and that U.S. leadership
will be welcomed provided it is exercised decisively. They tend
to be skeptical of international institutions (especially the
UN, which they regard as both anti-Israel and as a constraint
on America's freedom of action) and wary of many allies (especially
the Europeans, whom they see as idealistic pacifists free-riding
on the Pax Americana). Viewing U.S. leadership as "good both
for America and for the world," to quote the website of the
neoconservative Project for New American Century, neoconservatives
generally favor the unilateral exercise of American power instead.
Very importantly, neoconservatives believe
that military force is an extremely useful tool for shaping the
world in ways that will benefit America If the United States demonstrates
its military prowess and shows that it is willing to use the power
at its disposal, then allies will follow our lead and potential
adversaries will realize it is futile to resist and will decide
to "bandwagon" with the United States." Neoconservatism,
in short, is an especially hawkish political ideology.
Neoconservatives occupy influential positions
at a variety of organizations and institutions. Prominent neoconservatives
include former and present policy makers like Elliott Abrams,
Kenneth Adelman, William Bennett, John Bolton, Douglas Feith,
the late Jeane Kirkpatrick, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby,
Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, James Woolsey, and David Wurmser;
journalists like the late Robert Bartley, David Brooks, Charles
Krauthammer, William Kristol, Bret Stephens, and Norman Podhoretz;
academics like Fouad Ajami, Eliot Cohen, Aaron Friedberg, Bernard
Lewis, and Ruth Wedgwood; and think-tank pundits like Max Boot,
David Frum, Reuel Marc Gerecht, Robert Kagan, Michael Ledeen,
Joshua Muravchik, Daniel Pipes, Danielle Pletka, Michael Rubin,
and Meyrav Wurmser. The leading neoconservative magazines and
newspapers are Commentary, the New York Sun, the Wall Street Journal
op-ed page, and the Weekly Standard. The think tanks and advocacy
groups most closely associated with these neoconservatives are
the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), the Center for Security
Policy (CSP), the Hudson Institute, the Foundation for Defense
of Democracies (FDD), the Jewish Institute for National Security
Affairs (JINSA), the Middle East Forum (MEF), the Project for
a New American Century (PNAC), and the Washington Institute for
Near East Policy (WINEP).
p130
Given their hawkish orientation, it is
not surprising that the neoconservatives tend to align with right-wing
elements in Israel itself. For example, it was a group of eight
neoconservatives (led by Richard Perle and including Douglas Feith
and David Wurmser) that drafted the 1996 "Clean Break"
study for incoming Likud Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. That
study advocated that Israel abandon the Oslo peace process and
use bold measures including military force-to topple unfriendly
Middle Eastern regimes and thereby "transcend" the Arab-Israeli
conflict.
Many neoconservatives are connected to
an overlapping set of Washington-based think tanks, committees,
and publications whose agenda includes promoting the special relationship
between the United States and Israel. Consider Richard Perle,
one of the most prominent neoconservatives, who is a fellow at
AEI and also affiliated with the right-wing C SP, the Hudson Institute,
JINSA, PNAC, MEF, and FDD, and also serves on WINEP's board of
advisers. His fellow neoconservatives are similarly well connected:
William Kristol is the editor of the Weekly Standard, cofounder
of PNAC, and previously associated with FDD, MEF, and AEI. The
Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer is a past recipient
of AEI's Irving Kristol Award (named for William's father, one
of neoconservatism's founding figures), a signatory of several
PNAC open letters, a contributing editor at the Weekly Standard,
and is also affiliated with FDD. The list of past and present
connections would delight a network theorist: Elliott Abrams (CSP,
Hudson, PNAC); William Bennett (AEI, CSP, PNAC); John Bolton (AEI,
JINSA, PNAC); Douglas Feith (CSP, JINSA); David Frum (AEI, Weekly
Standard); Reuel Marc Gerecht (AEI, PNAC, Weekly Standard); Michael
Ledeen (AEI, JINSA); Jeane Kirkpatrick (AEI, FDD, JINSA, PNAC,
WINEP); Joshua Muravchik (AEI, JINSA, PNAC, WINEP); Daniel Pipes
(PNAC, MEF, WINEP); Norman Podhoretz (Hudson, Commentary, PNAC);
Michael Rubin (AEI, CSP, MEF); Paul Wolfowitz (AEI, PNAC, WINEP);
David Wurmser (AEI, MEF, FDD); and James Woolsey (CSP, JINSA,
PNAC, FDD).
p131
The various think tanks, committees, foundations, and publications
have nurtured the neoconservative movement operate much as other
policy networks do. Far from shunning publicity or engaging in
hidden plots, these groups actively court publicity for the explicit
purpose of shaping public and elite opinion and thereby moving
U.S. foreign policy in the directions they favor.
p131
Russell Kirk, conservative political theorist
What really animates the neoconservatives
... is the preservation of Israel. That lies in back of everything.
p132
Jews comprise the core of the neoconservative movement. In this
sense, neoconservativism is a microcosm of the larger pro-Israel
movement. Jewish Americans are central to the neoconservative
movement, just as they form the bulk of the [Israel] lobby.
p132
The [Israel] lobby includes ... the Christian Zionists, a subset
of the broader politically oriented Christian Right. Prominent
members of this constituency include religious figures such as
the late Jerry Falwell, Gary Bauer, Pat Robertson, and John Hagee,
as well as politicians like former House Majority Leaders Tom
DeLay (R-TX) and Richard Armey (R-TX), and Senator James Inhofe
(R-OK). Although support for Israel is not their only concern,
a number of Christian evangelicals have become increasingly visible
and vocal in their support for the Jewish state, and they have
recently formed an array of organizations to advance that commitment
within the political system. In a sense, the Christian Zionists
can be thought of as an important "junior partner" to
the various pro-Israel groups in the American Jewish community.
The origins of Christian Zionism lie in
the theology of dispensationalism, an approach to biblical interpretation
that emerged in nineteenth-century England, largely through the
efforts of Anglican ministers Louis Way and John Nelson Darby.
Dispensationalism is a form of premillennialism, which asserts
that the world will experience a period of worsening tribulations
until Christ returns. Like many other Christians, dispensationalists
believe that Christ's return is foretold in Old and New Testament
prophecy, and that the return of the Jews to Palestine is a key
event in the preordained process that will lead to the Second
Coming.
p133
The founding of the state of Israel in 1948 gave new life to the
dispenstionalist movement, but the Six-Day War in 1967, which
its leaders saw as a "miracle of God," was even more
important for its emergence as a political force. Dispensationalists
interpreted Israel's seizure of all of Jerusalem and the West
Bank (which, like Israel's Likud party, they refer to as Judea
and Samaria) as the fulfillment of Old and New Testament prophecy,
and these "signs" encouraged them and other Christian
evangelicals to begin working to ensure that the United States
was on the "right side" as the Bible's blueprint for
the end-times unfolded."' According to Timothy Weber, former
president of the Memphis Theological Seminary "Before the
Six Day War, dispensationalists were content to sit in the bleachers
of history, explaining the End-Time game on the field below...
But after [the] expansion of Israel into the West Bank and Gaza,
they began to get down on the field and be sure the teams lined
up right, becoming involved in political, financial, and religious
ways they never had before." Their efforts were part of the
broader rise of the so-called Christian Right (not all of whom
are strongly committed to Israel) and were clearly aided by the
growing political prominence of the evangelical movement.
p143
Arab petrodollars or energy companies were driving American policy,
one would expect to see the United States distancing itself from
Israel and working overtime to get the Palestinians a state of
their own. Countries like Saudi Arabia have repeatedly pressed
Washington to adopt a more evenhanded position toward the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict, but to little avail, and even wielding the "oil
weapon" during the 1973 October War had little effect on
U.S. support for Israel or on overall American policy in the region.
Similarly, if oil companies were driving U.S. policy, one would
also have expected Washington to curry favor with big oil producers
like Saddam Hussein's Iraq, Muammar Gaddafi's Libya, or the Islamic
Republic of Iran, so that U.S. companies could make money helping
them develop their energy resources and bringing them to market.
Instead, the United States imposed sanctions on all three of these
countries, in sharp opposition to what the oil industry wanted:
Indeed in some cases the U.S. government deliberately intervened
to thwart business deals that would have benefited U.S. companies.
If the oil lobby were as powerful as some critics believe, such
actions would not have occurred.
p144
One reason why Arab oil producers have only limited influence
is their lack of an indigenous base of support in the United States.
Because they are forced to rely on professional lobbyists and
public relations firms, it is easier for critics to denigrate
their representatives as mere agents of a foreign power... The
Israel lobby, by contrast, is a manifestation of the political
engagement of a subset of American citizens, and so its activities
are widely and correctly seen as a legitimate form of political
activity.
p145
American corporations appear to be discouraged from trying influence
U. S. Middle East policy by the fear of retaliation from well-organized
pro-Israel groups. In 1975, for example, the revelation that Gulf
Oil had underwritten a number of pro-Arab activities in the United
States led to public condemnations by the Conference of Presidents
and the Anti-Defamation League. In response, 'Gulf bought a half-page
ad in the New York Times in which it apologized for its action
and told readers, "You may be certain it will not happen
again." As [Robert] Trice notes, "A vigilant, sensitive,
and reactive pro-Israel lobby is one reason why U.S. corporations
have tended to avoid direct participation in domestic political
debates on Middle East questions."
p146
On balance, wealthy Arab governments and the oil lobby exert much
less influence on U.S. foreign policy than the Israel lobby does,
because oil interests have less need to skew foreign policy in
the directions they favor and they do not have the same leverage.
Writing in the early 1970s, the Columbia University professor
and former Assistant Secretary of State Roger Hilsman observed,
"It is obvious to even the most casual observer, that United
States foreign policy in the Middle East, where oil reigns supreme,
has been more responsive to the pressures of the American Jewish
community and their natural desire to support Israel than it has
to American oil interests." In his comparison of the Israel
and Arab lobbies, Mitchell Bard acknowledges that although oil
companies like Aramco have conducted lobbying campaigns in the
past, the effort "has had no observable impact on U.S. policy."
Or AIPAC's former legislative director, Douglas Bloomfield, told
BBC. News in 2003, "AIPAC has one enormous advantage. It
really doesn't have any opposition."
p150
The Israel lobby is the antithesis of a cabal or conspiracy; it
operates out in the open and proudly advertises its own clout.
In its basic operations, the Israel lobby is no different from
interest groups like the farm lobby, steel and textile workers,
and a host of ethnic lobbies, although the groups and individuals
who comprise the Israel lobby are in an unusually favorable position
to influence U.S. foreign policy. What sets it apart, in short,
is its extraordinary effectiveness.
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