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"Anyone who criticises Israel's actions or argues that pro-Israel groups have significant influence over US Middle East policy," the authors have written, "...stands a good chance of being labelled an anti-Semite. Indeed, anyone who merely claims that there is an Israeli lobby runs the risk of being charged with anti-Semitism ... Anti-Semitism is something no-one wants to be accused of." This is strong stuff in a country where - to quote the late Edward Said - the "last taboo" (now that anyone can talk about blacks, gays and lesbians) is any serious discussion of America's relationship with Israel.
Walt is already the author of an elegantly written account of the resistance to US world political dominance, a work that includes more than 50 pages of references. Indeed, those who have read his Taming Political Power: The Global Response to US Primacy will note that the Israeli lobby gets a thumping in this earlier volume because Aipac "has repeatedly targeted members of Congress whom it deemed insufficiently friendly to Israel and helped drive them from office, often by channelling money to their opponents."
But how many people in America are putting their own heads above the parapet, now that Mearsheimer and Walt have launched a missile that would fall to the ground unexploded in any other country but which is detonating here at high speed? Not a lot. For a while, the mainstream US press and television - as pro-Israeli, biased and gutless as the two academics infer them to be - did not know whether to report on their conclusions (originally written for The Atlantic Monthly, whose editors apparently took fright, and subsequently reprinted in the London Review of Books in slightly truncated form) or to remain submissively silent. The New York Times, for example, only got round to covering the affair in depth well over two weeks after the report's publication, and then buried its article in the education section on page 19. The academic essay, according to the paper's headline, had created a "debate" about the lobby's influence.
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But something surely has to give.
Across the United States, there is growing evidence that the Israeli and neo-conservative lobbies are acquiring ever greater power. The cancellation by a New York theatre company of My Name is Rachel Corrie - a play based on the writings of the young American girl crushed to death by an Israeli bulldozer in Gaza in 2003 - has deeply shocked liberal Jewish Americans, not least because it was Jewish American complaints that got the performance pulled.
"How can the West condemn the Islamic world for not accepting Mohamed cartoons," Philip Weiss asked in The Nation, "when a Western writer who speaks out on behalf of Palestinians is silenced? And why is it that Europe and Israel itself have a healthier debate over Palestinian human rights than we can have here?" Corrie died trying to prevent the destruction of a Palestinian home. Enemies of the play falsely claim that she was trying to stop the Israelis from collapsing a tunnel used to smuggle weapons. Hateful e-mails were written about Corrie. Weiss quotes one that reads: "Rachel Corrie won't get 72 virgins but she got what she wanted."
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Perhaps the most incendiary paragraph in the essay - albeit one whose contents have been confirmed in the Israeli press - discusses Israel's pressure on the United States to invade Iraq. "Israeli intelligence officials had given Washington a variety of alarming reports about Iraq's WMD programmes," the two academics write, quoting a retired Israeli general as saying: "Israeli intelligence was a full partner to the picture presented by American and British intelligence regarding Iraq's non-conventional capabilities." ...
A few weeks ago, the Financial Times ran an editorial titled, "Why can't we talk about Israel?" It's a fair question, though anyone that tries runs the risk of being labeled anti-Semitic.
The Times was commenting on a wave of claims of anti-Semitism that clobbered two professors and foreign policy scholars who wrote a paper criticizing America's unconditional support for Israel. In it John Mearshiemer of the University of Chicago and Stephen Walt of Harvard University claim that the Israeli lobby's influence on Congress is harmful to our foreign policy and this is major reason for Middle Eastern antagonism toward America.
It's no mystery that the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee, the largest Israeli lobby, wields enormous influence in Washington. According to it's Web site, "Through more than 2,000 meetings with members of - at home and in Washington - AIPAC activists help pass more than 100 pro-Israel legislative initiatives a year."
So what's wrong with a critical analysis of yet another interest group buying access to Congress?
Predictably, author and Harvard professor Alan Dershowitz, who is an unconditional supporter of Israeli policy, led the charge against Mearsheimer and Walt. Dershowitz compared them to conspiracy theorists and bigots and called on American Jews to demand they be treated equally with other Americans.
Earlier this semester, I wrote a column criticizing Israel's hard-line response to the newly-elected Hamas Palestinian government. The day it ran, someone asked me why I thought I was qualified to comment on that miserable and bloody conflict.
Any interest group that lobbies my government to the tune of nearly $3 billion per year is well within my range of criticism. And any government that engages in questionable foreign policy with my country's name attached to the sales receipt is well within the sphere of my written word.
Mearsheimer and Walt also forecasted that there would be a backlash to their thesis. In fact, it addressed the very question of why anyone who criticizes Israel is immediately labeled anti-Semitic.
An article by Michelle Goldberg on Salon.com highlighted the lashing Howard Dean got during his 2004 presidential campaign after he charged that the United States should take a more even-handed stance in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Sen. Joseph Lieberman said he was selling out Israel.
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The truth is our support for Israel is damaging to U.S. foreign policy and it's also a substantial drain on American taxpayers. It damages our legitimacy abroad, because we slap Israel on the wrist for its heinous acts while we breathe fire down the backs of the Palestinians for their terrorism.
Richard Cohen, a Washington Post columnist, came up with this strange attempt at a reason:
"Israel's special place in U.S. foreign policy is deserved, in my view, and not entirely the product of lobbying. Israel has earned it, and isn't there something bracing about a special relationship that is not based on oil or markets or strategic location but on shared values."
We share values with Western Europe and steadily more of Eastern Europe. Should we turn on the cash tap for them? Or should we reassess our aid to an industrialized country, with a solid economy, prolific social institutions and a parliamentary democracy second to nearly none? Better yet, maybe we should dangle our aid in front of Israel like a carrot, the same we are doing to the Palestinians.
This would level the burden of reconciliation between the Palestinians and Israel. If the Bush administration hopes to force the Hamas government into decisions by turning off the financial tap, why doesn't it threaten to cut off the $3 billion in aid if Israel doesn't withdraw and dismantle all of its illegal settlements in the West Bank?
In the meantime, Dershowitz and others should stop being victims, because they aren't. The only victims I've heard of lately were lying dead in the streets of Tel Aviv and the Gaza Strip.
Uri Avnery highlights the overwhelming influence of the Israel lobby in the USA - "If the Israeli government wanted a law tomorrow annulling the Ten Commandments, 95 senators (at least) would sign the bill forthwith." But he says that the conclusion as to whether the tail wags the dog or the reverse may be less straightforward. "The US uses Israel to dominate the Middle East, Israel uses the US to dominate Palestine."
I don't usually tell these stories, because they might give rise to the suspicion that I am paranoid.
For example: 27 years ago, I was invited to give a lecture-tour in 30 American universities, including all the most prestigious ones - Harvard, Yale, Princeton, MIT, Berkeley and so on. My host was the Fellowship of Reconciliation, a respected non-Jewish organization, but the lectures themselves were to be held under the auspices of the Jewish Bet-Hillel chaplains.
On arrival at the airport in New York I was met by one of the organizers. "There is a slight hitch," he told me, "29 of the rabbis have cancelled your lecture."
In the end, all the lectures did take place, under the auspices of Christian chaplains. When we came to the lone rabbi who had not cancelled my lecture, he told me the secret: the lectures had been forbidden in a confidential letter from the Anti-Defamation League, the thought-police of the Jewish establishment. The salient phrase has stuck to my memory: "While it cannot be said that Member of the Knesset Avnery is a traitor, yet..."
And Another story from real life: a year later I went to Washington DC in order to "sell" the two-ttate solution, which at the time was considered an outlandish, not to say crazy, idea. In the course of the visit, the Quakers were so kind as to arrange a press conference for me.
When I arrived, I was amazed. The hall was crammed full, practically all the important American media were represented. Many had come straight from a press conference held by Golda Meir, who was also in town. The event was to last an hour, as is usual, but the journalists did not let go. They bombarded me with questions for another two hours. Clearly, what I had to say was quite new to them and they were interested.
I was curious how this would be reported in the media. And indeed, the reaction was stunning: not a word appeared in any of the newspapers, on radio or TV. Not one single word.
By the way, three years ago I again held a press conference, this time on Capitol Hill in Washington. It was an exact replica of the last time: the crowd of reporters, their obvious interest, the continuation of the conference well beyond the appointed time - and not a single word in the media.
I could tell some more stories like these, but the point is made. I recount them only in connection with the scandal recently caused by two American professors, Stephen Walt of Harvard and John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago. They published a research paper on the influence of the Israel lobby in the United States.
In 80 pages, 40 of them footnotes and sources, the two show how the pro-Israel lobby exercises unbridled power in the US capital, how it terrorizes the members of the Senate and the House of Representatives, how the White House dances to its tune (if indeed a house can dance), how the important media obey its orders and how the universities, too, live in fear of it.
The paper caused a storm. And I don't mean the predictable wild attacks by the "friends of Israel" - which means almost all politicians, journalists and professors. These pelted the authors with all the usual accusations: that they were anti-Semites, that they were resurrecting the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and so forth. There was something paradoxical in these attacks, since they only illustrated the authors' case.
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By the way, American guests in Israel, who know that at home it is forbidden to mention the influence of the Jewish-Israeli lobby, are dumbfounded to see that here the lobby does not hide its power in Washington but openly boasts of it.
The question, therefore, is not whether the two professors are right in their findings. The question is what conclusions can be drawn from them.
Let's take the Iraq affair. Who is the dog? Who the tail?
The Israeli government prayed for this attack, which has eliminated the strategic threat posed by Iraq. America was pushed into the war by a group of neo-conservatives, almost all of them Jews, who had a huge influence on the White House. In the past, some of them had acted as advisers to Binyamin Netanyahu.
On the face of it, a clear case. The pro-Israeli lobby pushed for the war, Israel is its main beneficiary. If the war ends in a disaster for America, Israel will undoubtedly be blamed.
Really? What about the American aim of getting their hands on the main oil reserves of the world, in order to dominate the world economy? What about the aim of placing an American garrison in the centre of the main oil-producing area, on top of the Iraqi oil, between the oil of Saudi Arabia, Iran and the Caspian Sea? What about the immense influence of the big oil companies on the Bush family? What about the big multinational corporations, whose outstanding representative is Dick Cheney, that hoped to make hundreds of billions from the "reconstruction of Iraq"?
The lesson of the Iraq affair is that the American-Israeli connection is strongest when it seems that American interests and Israeli interests are one (irrespective of whether that is really the case in the long run). The US uses Israel to dominate the Middle East, Israel uses the US to dominate Palestine.
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Anyway, the American-Israeli symbiosis is unique and far too complex a phenomenon to be described as a simple conspiracy. I am sure that the two professors did not mean to do so.
The dog wags the tail and the tail wags the dog. They wag each other. ...
Editor's note: Justin Raimondo is traveling. His column will return Friday.
Israel's once-powerful lobby in the U.S. is running scared. The American Israel Political Affairs Committee (AIPAC) is facing a burgeoning scandal with the upcoming trial of Steve Rosen their longtime chief lobbyist, and Iran policy expert Keith Weissman, who are accused of spying on behalf of Israel. Their source in the Pentagon – Iran analyst and neoconservative ideologue Larry Franklin – was caught red-handed by the FBI handing over top secret information to the two AIPAC officials, who then turned the vital data over to Israeli embassy employees. Franklin pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 12 years, with time off for good behavior – i.e., testifying against his fellow spies.
Another big problem for the Lobby is that people are beginning to wake up to their game. A recent study, published by Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, shows how the Lobby has been able to dominate the foreign policy debate and divert policymakers from pursuing American interests, while assiduously pursuing Israel's. The authors, John Mearsheimer, known as a spokesman for the "realist" school of foreign policy analysis, and Stephen Walt, academic dean of the Kennedy School, have since come in for a relentless assault, a furious round of smears so vicious and hysterical that the effect is almost comical.
Take, for instance, Alan Dershowitz's contribution to the non-discussion, which insists on discerning the supposedly hidden "motive" behind the Mearsheimer-Walt piece. It couldn't possibly be that they disagree with the Lobby's agenda, and honestly believe that the debate over the centrality of Israel to American policy in the Middle East has been skewed – oh no. They have to be "bigots" out to spread "anti-Semitic canards" – and the "proof" of this is that they supposedly garnered some of their quotes from "Internet hate sites."
How does Dershowitz know this? He claims his "staff" is compiling a "chart" that supposedly "proves" it. But since nothing short of looking over the authors' shoulders as they did their research could possibly "prove" such a thing, Dershowitz's "staff" is pissing in the wind. Dershowitz's whole case can be summed up as "David Duke believes the same thing – therefore, it can't be true." The logical fallacy involved here is too obvious to be pointed out. Suffice to say that this about sums up the entire strategy of the Lobby in all the years of its operation: anyone who opposes them is a "bigot," an "anti-Semite," and is spreading the modern day equivalent of the infamous Protocols of the Elders of Zion. ...
ALEXANDRIA, Va. -- Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice leaked national defense information to a pro-Israel lobbyist in the same manner that landed a lower-level Pentagon official a 12-year prison sentence, the lobbyist's lawyer said Friday.
Prosecutors disputed the claim.
The allegations against Rice came as a federal judge granted a defense request to issue subpoenas sought by the defense for Rice and three other government officials in the trial of Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman. The two are former lobbyists with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee who are charged with receiving and disclosing national defense information." ...
The London Review of Books recently published an article, by Professors John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Stephen Walt of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, on the Israel lobby's negative impact on U.S. domestic and international interests. 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.
All democracies have lobbies. Shrill insistence that no groups promote Israel is ludicrous. 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. That this influence largely results from the efforts of people determined to exercise their democratic prerogatives is not open to question—or to challenge.
The dangerous, unacceptable result of that lobbying, however, is the stifling of public debate. Knowing the fiercely negative reactions to accurate, detailed reporting of controversies surrounding Israel, the media fail to cover Israel's violations of every principle for which the United States—and Israel—loudly proclaim they stand. There is only rare, skimpy coverage of the ongoing Israeli mass punishments, house demolitions, illegal settlements, assassinations, settler brutality, curfews and beatings. On the other hand, the blind Palestinian rage generated by decades of receiving humiliating, savage suppression in their homeland is reported in lurid, bloody detail.
The lobby's effectiveness at control was illustrated two years ago. Both government and media condemned China when it arrested, and accused of espionage, a Chinese citizen–Green Card holder visiting from the U.S. Neither the U.S. government nor media has ever protested—has never even mentioned—Israel's years-long multiple arrests and protracted detentions of American citizens, without charge or trial. In September 2000, CNN interviewed four Americans who had been tortured, the only report on this compelling story, and the network has since been forced to refuse selling recordings of that news segment, “Americans Mistreated in Israeli Jails.” America would have been fully informed had any other country committed these acts.
The lobby also recently blocked the New York staging of a play, following its successful London run, based on the words of peace activist Rachel Corrie. She was crushed by an armored Caterpillar bulldozer while attempting to prevent demolition of a Palestinian home in Gaza. The driver failed to notice her blaze orange vest, yellow hard hat and bullhorn.
No rational American wants anything bad to happen to Israelis or Palestinians or Americans. But they have happened, are happening, will continue to happen. Israel's actions often involve violations of human rights, international law, and UN resolutions, undertaken at the expense of a helpless, brutalized Palestine, thus denying Israel peace, security, and international support. Worse, they also lead to violent reactions, which are often recognized under the UN Charter as legitimate resistance to occupation.
Israeli actions also generate anti-Semitism, the very label the lobby uses to bludgeon into silence anyone in America who questions relations with Israel and its expansionist policies. This effectively blocks broad public understanding that Israel's interests and America's, sometimes in agreement, are sometimes sharply divergent. Of greater and entirely justifiable concern, the lobby has succeeded in pressuring successive administrations into actions and statements blatantly contrary to announced American principles and the advancement of U.S. objectives.
As the only nation unstintingly providing Israel with vast amounts of money, arms and unhesitating political protection, the United States is perceived as the key facilitator of 40 years of occupation and oppression. The massive, growing political, economic and human costs of continuing that close relationship merit public knowledge, discussion and debate. The Israel lobby prevents it, as Mearsheimer and Walt have carefully documented.
Ambassador Edward Peck is an Advisory Board Member for the Center on Peace and Liberty at the Independent Institute, was Deputy Director of the Cabinet Task Force on Terrorism in the Reagan White House and former Chief of Mission in Iraq, and was in Jerusalem and the West Bank as an international observer of the presidential elections in 2005, and in Gaza for the Legislative Council elections in 2006. ..
WASHINGTON - Key figures in a phone-jamming scheme designed to keep New Hampshire Democrats from voting in 2002 had regular contact with the White House and Republican Party as the plan was unfolding, phone records introduced in criminal court show.
The records show that Bush campaign operative James Tobin, who recently was convicted in the case, made two dozen calls to the White House within a three-day period around Election Day 2002 — as the phone jamming operation was finalized, carried out and then abruptly shut down.
The national Republican Party, which paid millions in legal bills to defend Tobin, says the contacts involved routine election business and that it was "preposterous" to suggest the calls involved phone jamming. ...
Israel's once-powerful lobby in the U.S. is running scared. The American Israel Political Affairs Committee (AIPAC) is facing a burgeoning scandal with the upcoming trial of Steve Rosen their longtime chief lobbyist, and Iran policy expert Keith Weissman, who are accused of spying on behalf of Israel. Their source in the Pentagon – Iran analyst and neoconservative ideologue Larry Franklin – was caught red-handed by the FBI handing over top secret information to the two AIPAC officials, who then turned the vital data over to Israeli embassy employees. Franklin pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 12 years, with time off for good behavior – i.e., testifying against his fellow spies.
Another big problem for the Lobby is that people are beginning to wake up to their game. A recent study, published by Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, shows how the Lobby has been able to dominate the foreign policy debate and divert policymakers from pursuing American interests, while assiduously pursuing Israel's. The authors, John Mearsheimer, known as a spokesman for the "realist" school of foreign policy analysis, and Stephen Walt, academic dean of the Kennedy School, have since come in for a relentless assault, a furious round of smears so vicious and hysterical that the effect is almost comical.
Take, for instance, Alan Dershowitz's contribution to the non-discussion, which insists on discerning the supposedly hidden "motive" behind the Mearsheimer-Walt piece. It couldn't possibly be that they disagree with the Lobby's agenda, and honestly believe that the debate over the centrality of Israel to American policy in the Middle East has been skewed – oh no. They have to be "bigots" out to spread "anti-Semitic canards" – and the "proof" of this is that they supposedly garnered some of their quotes from "Internet hate sites."
How does Dershowitz know this? He claims his "staff" is compiling a "chart" that supposedly "proves" it. But since nothing short of looking over the authors' shoulders as they did their research could possibly "prove" such a thing, Dershowitz's "staff" is pissing in the wind. Dershowitz's whole case can be summed up as "David Duke believes the same thing – therefore, it can't be true." The logical fallacy involved here is too obvious to be pointed out. Suffice to say that this about sums up the entire strategy of the Lobby in all the years of its operation: anyone who opposes them is a "bigot," an "anti-Semite," and is spreading the modern day equivalent of the infamous Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
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Any mention of the term "neoconservatives" is taken by Dershowitz to mean "Jews" – but this is clearly not the case, as many neocons are not Jewish, although Jews are disproportionately represented in their ranks. But, then again, Jews are over-represented in the ranks of the libertarian movement, the leftist movement, the antiwar movement, and probably a good many other ideological movements of one sort or another. That the neocons put special emphasis on their affinity for and support of Israel – as a matter of high principle – is directly relevant to the argument of Mearsheimer and Walt that attributes their influence on administration policy to its present state of distortion – not because the neocons are Jews, but because they are neocons.
Judge in Israel Lobbyists' Trial Told Evidence 'Overwhelming' | By JOSH GERSTEIN - Staff Reporter of the Sun | April 6, 2006
Prosecutors told a federal judge in a recent brief that they have "overwhelming evidence" that two pro-Israel lobbyists deliberately broke the law when they obtained classified information from government officials. The two former employees of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman, were indicted in August on charges they conspired to violate a provision of the Espionage Act which makes it a crime to receive information "relating to the national defense."...
