Worldview Politics

On US-Israeli Relations
29 April 2008

It is common knowledge that the mainstream media in the US treats Israel with kid gloves, for fear of angering powerful Zionist constituencies and moguls (some of whom actually own significant portions of the media — see Blankfort below). This contrasts sharply with, say, Europe, or even Israel itself, where discussion and criticism are vigorous. Even so, I was surprised last Sunday night when 60 Minutes displayed some egregious bias, in my opinion, in its piece on the Israeli Air Force. I have come to respect 60 Minutes as one of the few remaining honest and hard-hitting investigative shows on a major network, so it was sad to note the flawed reporting that I will shortly describe. This seemed like a good occasion to write a wide-ranging article on US opinion and policy regarding Israel. Of course, the topic is too vast for a comprehensive review, of which I am not capable anyway. Nevertheless, I have written on this before, so I will try to gather together some of my results in one convenient place.

In order to preempt any harsh impressions, let me state at the outset that I support Israel's right to exist, roughly along the 1967 borders. Today, that is enough to guarantee her security, while occupation actually diminishes her security, as even Israeli hawks are beginning to acknowledge. Also, it is important to realize that polls have shown that most Jewish voters are far more liberal than the neocons or the Bush administration and oppose the Iraq war more than do average Americans. Nevertheless, it is clear that powerful hawkish Zionist groups and individuals can exert considerable leverage over American foreign policy, depending on the mix of forces under given circumstances. To say so is hardly to indulge in conspiracy theories.

Note that I do not reach firm and dogmatic conclusions regarding the Israel lobby. Rather, I present various arguments and pieces of evidence. I realize that there are many nuances and ambiguities. However, I am convinced that hawks in both the US and Israel are feeding off of each other to give both countries bad foreign policies.

Does 60 Minutes Work for the Israeli Government?

Now, on to the 60 Minutes piece. It starts right off with the often repeated canard that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad wants Israel to be 'wiped off the map'. The Zionist hawks have seized on this as proof that Ahmadinejad is another Hitler and Iran another Nazi Germany, as explicitly stated by Major General Eliezer Shkedy on the show. 60 Minutes just leaves the inflammatory statement out to hang, with no discussion, and this is deceitful in several ways.

First of all, Iran is no Nazi Germany. It is an underdeveloped country, long suffering under US-imposed sanctions, with no capability to destroy Israel. It's army is not about to march on Israel, and the only question is regarding its nuclear program. A recent American NIE (National Intelligence Estimate) has clearly stated that Iran is not developing a nuclear weapon, and the IAEA concurs. At least, there is no good evidence to the contrary, which is what matters. So Iran has no nuclear weapon, while Israel has 200-300 nuclear bombs, made using technology probably stolen from us, while our politicians looked away. The balance of power is overwhelmingly in Israel's favor, and it is Israel that is creating a nuclear arms race in the Middle East, if indeed there is one. It is ludicrous for Israel to be sounding the alarm about one hypothetical Iranian weapon.

A few more remarks regarding this much misunderstood and obfuscated issue: The Iranians have the right under the NPT treaty to develop nuclear energy for peaceful uses, provided it submits to UN inspection. There have been some occasions when Iran impeded this process, generally in response to American bullying, but the IAEA is now satisfied with its ability to monitor. The real issue is that hawks in the US and Israel don't even want Iran to develop peaceful nuclear energy, which is its right under the NPT, since this would give Iran the enhanced ability to switch over some day to a nuclear weapons program. The hawks have simply declared Iran a 'rogue' state not to be trusted under any circumstances, even though Iran has many legitimate grievances against the US and Israel, to be discussed in this article. The US, under Israeli pressure, is putting a precondition of halting all nuclear enrichment (for civilian nuclear reactors) as a precondition to any further talks. This is s slap in the face of Iran, given its NPT rights, and is clearly intended to sabotage diplomacy and prepare the way for war. Rather than conjuring apocalyptic scenarios, we should try to understand why the Iranians might want a nuclear weapon. There are plenty of rational reasons: the US invasion next door, our past and present bullying, Israel's nukes, other Muslim neighbors with nukes, and the nicer treatment we've given to North Korea. We need to treat the Iranians with respect and understanding and work out a deal, which includes security guarantees for Iran and a two-state solution for Israel and the Palestinians.

I was particularly shocked when 60 Minutes mentioned the Israeli government's opinion (or fabricated propaganda?) that Iran is indeed developing a bomb, without even a passing reference to our own NIE. The NIE was major news just a few months ago, and there is no way that 60 Minutes could not know about it. Is 60 Minutes more loyal to the Israeli government than to our own? Are they a bunch of fifth columnists working for Israel? I suppose any talk of 'treason' would be overblown and McCarthyite, but I can't help wondering about internal CBS politics. Anyhow, our administration is only too happy to disregard the NIE and repeat the Israeli propaganda, along with Senator Joe Lieberman, our illustrious senator from Israel, and many other public figures of a neocon persuasion.

Furthermore, Ahmadinejad is not a dictator, but only an elected official who is becoming increasingly unpopular. The real power is with the Mullahs, who have tried to make peace overtures with us on several occasions, which we repeatedly spurned. For instance, it is well known that they cooperated with us against the Taliban right after 9/11. That could have been the beginning of friendly new relations, but nothing came of it, perhaps due to the Israel Lobby in Washington D.C. On other recent occasions, they have offered to resolve 'all outstanding issues', including Israel and nuclear research, but we simply declare them evil and refuse to talk to them (though there are reports of secret talks, since our situation in Iraq is so desperate).

Finally, Juan Cole and others have pointed out that the words 'wipe off the map' are a misleading translation of a flowery Parsi expression that means 'regime change', which is precisely what we have been trying to do to Iran's next door neighbor Iraq. We invaded Iraq, based on bogus intelligence, unleashing civil war, and we have thus been responsible for as many as a million innocent Iraqi deaths, according to reliable statistics from Johns Hopkins and other places. Who are we to get indignant about the evils of 'regime change'? After all, it was we who imposed the cruel Shah in a bloody coup in 1953, simply to keep the oil from being nationalized. This was part of a pattern of neo-colonialism often repeated throughout the Middle East over the years. For example, the Saudis are a corrupt dynasty supported by us, for our own selfish purposes. Further examples abound. We also supported Saddam during the bloody Iraq-Iran war, in which poison gas was used against Iranians, with our acquiescence. As for hyperbolic language, presidential candidate Hillary Clinton recently pledged to 'obliterate' Iran, in retaliation for a nuclear strike against Israel, and presidential candidate John McCain has been filmed singing 'Bomb, bomb, bomb Iran' to a Beach Boys tune. Meanwhile, we have not forsworn first-use of tactical nuclear weapons in the Middle East.

Speaking of existential threats, it is clear to all fair-minded observers that Israel is slowly strangulating the Palestinians in the occupied territories, with never-ending settlements, which the US never seriously resists. The only reasonable solution for the Palestinian conflict is a two-state partition roughly along the 1967 border, but Israel is playing out the clock and creating 'facts on the ground', as they have admitted. The Palestinians know this, and their 'terrorism' must be viewed in this light, as a last desperate attempt to survive. Or at least, not to go down without a fight. How arrogant of the Israeli government to feign shock over a bogus existential threat from a powerless Iranian politician, when it is the one who is snuffing the Palestinian aspiration for freedom and dignity, simply to please some right-wing Jewish (and American) religious fanatics.

The 60 Minutes piece also mentions homemade missiles from Gaza killing Israeli civilians. What it doesn't mention is that Gaza is a hellhole prison due to Israeli embargoes, and the civilian death toll is far greater on the Palestinian side. An Israeli pilot says he has no choice but to go after 'terrorists' on crowded streets, where innocent Palestinians serve as human shields. The collateral damage far exceeds the injury to Israelis, but he shrugs this off, just as we shrug off our own horrendous collateral damage, when we go around bombing the world to 'protect' our 'interests'. Unless, one discusses the slow Israeli strangulation of the Palestinians on their ancient homeland, and Israel's refusal to stop settlements and bargain for peace in good faith, then it is deceitful to point only to the pathetic attempts of certain Palestinians at retaliation. And under all circumstances, mass punishment of entire populations is a war crime, not that that ever stopped Israel or the United States. The Israelis fire missiles into crowded streets, and we bombed Hiroshima and napalmed Vietnam. Yet we are both always so pious in our rhetoric, and the other side is always so barbaric, whether German, Communist or Islamic.

None of this essential background is provided by 60 Minutes. The propaganda that Iran is another Hitler about to get a nuclear bomb is simply repeated, as though CBS were an organ of the Israeli government. And this is precisely how our politicians behave, with only a few brave exceptions. It is easy to see why many think that an omnipotent 'Jewish lobby' controls both Congress and the media. However, Stephen Zunes and other thoughtful individuals have taught me that we must be careful is laying the blame, and I will discuss this a bit more as the article proceeds.

Pelosi and Dems Gave Bush Green Light to Attack Iran

Certainly, one glaring instance of AIPAC's power astounded me back in March of 2007, when Speaker Pelosi and the Democrats stripped a military spending bill of language mandating that President Bush obtain Congressional approval before attacking Iran. It was precisely such a blank check that enabled Bush to invade Iraq in March 2003, despite reports from the IAEA that they were getting access to all desired sites and were turning up no WMD. The 2006 midterms were supposed to have been a referendum on American displeasure with the war, and you would have thought that the Democrats would be chastened. After all, the Constitution clearly states that Congress must declare war, so that any blank check to the President is theoretically illegal. (Justice Scalia, where is your 'originalism' when we need it?)

Why did Pelosi and the Democrats do this? Articles by Patrick Buchanan and Justin Raimondo made it pretty clear to me that the power of AIPAC was behind it all. What distressed me above all is not that AIPAC was (and is) playing the American political game so well. That is their right, and it is legal. What is shocking is how poorly this was reported in the mainstream press. True, Buchanan counts as part of that press, and he appears regularly on television, but it was evidently not enough to get a serious discussion going. The establishment pundits overwhelmingly treat Israel and AIPAC with kid gloves, and, as a consequence, the American public seems largely clueless when it comes to the Middle East.

Herman vs. Zunes on the Israel Lobby

Here I copy and expand on a piece that I wrote on 22 Feb 08:

A 2002 discussion between Stephen Zunes and Edward Herman reveals some interesting facts. They are debating the importance of the so-called Israel Lobby in influencing US foreign policy, and Zunes claims that 'arms exporters — who profit enormously from U.S. Middle East policy and oppose politicians who question military aid to Israel — have a lobbying budget and PAC budget six times greater than AIPAC and its allied PACs'. Furthermore, some famous cases of the Israel Lobby allegedly defeating politicians turn out to be more complex upon closer inspection. Zunes agrees with Herman that 'pro-Israel PACs pollute the political process and threaten democracy, but no more so than the scores of other PACs — primarily tied to big business'.

Herman mentions a Senate vote overwhelmingly in favor of Israel, while no such support was forthcoming for a Saudi peace plan. As James Petras puts it, 'Can the petroleum lobby get a 94-2 vote in favor of the Saudi plan?' Zunes reminds us that there is also the armaments industry, which would lose substantially if peace in the Middle East were to break out. In Zunes' opinion, this explains Congresswoman McKinney's defeat in 2002, as she was 'the chief House sponsor of the Code of Conduct, which would have restricted arms exports to regimes that violate human rights', such as Saudi Arabia or Israel. (For those who doubt that conservative Republicans and Big Business contributed more to McKinney's defeat that pro-Israel groups, Zunes cites the Open Secrets website, which keeps tabs on campaign contributions.) Herman counters that other electoral defeats of politicians critical of Israel cannot be explained in terms of corporate PAC money. He also criticizes Zunes for downplaying the bullying tactics of the Israel lobby. I agree with Herman that, if nothing else, the lobby has had a pernicious effect on the democratic debate, with tactics that do amount to bullying and calumny.

Like Chomsky, Zunes points out that no 'ethnic lobby' was necessary to explain 'Congressional and administration support for Indonesia's 24-year occupation of East Timor', to cite just one particularly bloody example (leaving corporate money as the likely influence on US foreign policy towards Indonesia). And that is only one of many examples from around the world. In another detailed article , Zunes provides many important examples where American presidents thwarted the will of the Lobby, when larger US 'interests' were at stake:

American presidents are hardly powerless when it comes to pressure by the Israel lobby. Evidence suggests that whenever U.S. presidents have come to the conclusion that policies advocated by the Israel lobby were not in America's best interests, the administration has generally won. During the Suez Crisis of 1956, just days before the presidential election, President Dwight Eisenhower — fearing a radical backlash in the Arab world if the United States failed to do otherwise — strongly condemned the Israeli/French/British invasion of Egypt. Threatening to end the tax-exempt status for Israeli bonds and related private contributions to Israel, Eisenhower forced the Israeli government to completely withdraw from Egyptian territory within months. Similarly, when Israeli forces invaded southern Lebanon in 1978, advancing as far north as the Litani River, President Jimmy Carter forced Israeli troops back to within a few miles of the border by threatening a suspension of some U.S. aid. In 1981, President Ronald Reagan successfully defeated a concerted effort by AIPAC to get Congress to block the proposed sale of advanced AWACS planes to Saudi Arabia. Ten years later, the senior President George Bush successfully fought off enormous pressure from AIPAC and delayed a $10 billion loan guarantee to Israel until after the Israeli election, thereby insuring the defeat of rightist Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, who had been stonewalling the peace process much to the chagrin of the Bush administration. In 2004, the current Bush administration successfully pressured Israel to renege on a deal with China to upgrade Harpy surveillance aircraft and forced the ouster of the Israeli Defense Ministry's director general, Amos Yaron. In short, the Israel lobby hardly has a 'stranglehold' on U.S. Middle East policy, as professors Walt and Mearsheimer claim.

One problem is that liberals are reluctant to criticize Israeli policies, probably because of past Jewish suffering, and also because many liberals are Jewish or are close to Jews. Zunes points out that there are liberals who spoke out against the occupation of East Timor but remained silent on Israel's occupation of the West Bank, like his own representative Nancy Pelosi. Some have alleged that she was influenced by AIPAC money. However, Pelosi is from one of the safest seats in the country and doesn't need AIPAC money. Her vote is explained by the simple fact that calls related to East Timor outnumbered those related to Israel by ten to one. Zunes claims that there simply aren't many liberal and progressive groups willing to lobby seriously against Israel's policies. Indeed, they are often as ardently pro-Israel as AIPAC. (Thus, silence, rather than corporate money, may influence a particular politician, but corporate money explains the overall US policy, at least when powerful ethnic groups within America are not part of the picture.)

Finally, when interpreting the influence of the pro-Israel lobbies, one must not neglect the right-wing (and rather deranged) Christian component, which may be more powerful than the Jewish component:

When examining the power of the Israel lobby in negatively influencing U.S. Middle East policy, it is important to recognize the role of other lobbies that have an interest in encouraging the dangerous direction of current U.S. policy. Placing so much emphasis on AIPAC and its allied groups ignores other special interests and ideologies which also play a role in urging U.S. support for the Israeli government. Such allied groups include fundamentalist Christians, who believe that a militarily dominant Israel is necessary for the Second Coming of Christ, but Mearsheimer and Walt mention them only in passing in their article. The authors recount, as an example of the power of the Israel lobby, how — after President Bush's initial call on Israel to back off from its bloody spring 2002 re-conquest of West Bank cities was rebuffed by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon — the administration backed down and threw its support behind the offensive. However, most accounts of President Bush's backtracking attribute it not primarily to pressure from AIPAC and other Jewish groups but rather to the more than 100,000 emails received by the White House from Christian conservatives defending the Israeli offensive. Indeed, these Christian Zionists exercise a much more influential role in the current administration than do Jewish Zionists. (See The Influence of the Christian Right on U.S. Middle East Policy.) During his two presidential election campaigns, George W. Bush was less dependent on Jewish voters than any modern president, but no president has ever been more beholden to the Christian Right.

In summary, there are many forces affecting US policy towards the Middle East, and the available evidence, according to Zunes, suggests that the good, old Military-Industrial Complex is the dominant one, with Christian nuts following close behind. This thesis seems plausible enough to me, and I am willing to accept it for now. That said, it seems to me that AIPAC and company are currently playing a decisive role in pushing us towards war with Iran. The administration may want war for its own reasons, but it is the hawkish Israeli government and its supporters in the US who keep screaming about an 'existential threat' from Iran's hypothetical and discredited nuclear weapons program. Also, I find it a bit strange that the Military-Industrial Complex should be so powerful, while evidence exists that AIPAC is stronger than Big Oil (see Scuttled Oil Deals below). Most importantly, I wouldn't measure the power of the Israel Lobby solely by campaign-related money, where the MIC may have a huge advantage. There is no doubt that Israel sympathizers have a massive influence over the media, and much of that influence is distinctly hawkish. This in turn molds the minds of Americans, who seem mostly incapable of thinking for themselves. Congress responds accordingly.

Stephen Zunes: The Israel Lobby: How Powerful is it Really?

Stephen Zunes: The Israel Lobby Revisited

Alternative Insight: A rebuttal to Zunes

Jeffrey Blankfort on the Israel Lobby

After reporting on Zunes and Herman, I then discussed an article by Jeffrey Blankfort, who is rather more critical of the Lobby than Zunes:

Jeffrey Blankfort, a journalist and pro-Palestinian activist, has a hard-hitting article on the Israel Lobby that presents numerous details worth recording:

He refers to a book by Benjamin Ginsberg of the Johns Hopkins University called The Fatal Embrace, published by the University of Chicago Press in 1993. The book opens with the these words:

"Since the 1960s, Jews have come to wield considerable influence in American economic, cultural, intellectual and political life. Jews played a central role in American finance during the 1980s, and they were among the chief beneficiaries of that decade's corporate mergers and reorganizations. Today, though barely 2% of the nation's population is Jewish, close to half its billionaires are Jews. The chief executive officers of the three major television networks and the four largest film studios are Jews, as are the owners of the nation's largest newspaper chain and the most influential single newspaper, the New York Times".

Blankfort then claims that their influence has only increased since the book was written. In particular, the wealth allows for generous political support, and the remarkable media power allows for considerable influence in shaping the debate. Perusal of the NYT business pages clearly reveals a strong Jewish presence in the media, claims Blankfort, including at the executive levels. This doesn't mean that all these 'tycoons' are pro-Israel zealots, but it does mean that the American debate is 'extremely biased' towards the Israelis and against the Palestinians, in sharp contrast to Europe, as echoed by Nation columnist Eric Alterman. This bias occurs at both the elite and popular levels.

Whereas Chomsky claims that Israel has always served the interests of the imperial US elites, Blankfort argues that many American presidents have tried to restrain Israeli behavior, particularly regarding settlements, only to be overruled by an AIPAC-influenced Congress. For instance, in 1991, the first president Bush wanted to tie $650 million dollars in loan guarantees to a freeze in settlements, but backed down when an angry Shamir called on AIPAC, which quickly got the signatures of 77 senators. Blankfort claims that previously friendly and influential columnists such as Safire, Will and Krauthammer suddenly started to fault Bush on Israel as well as on the economy, and it was all downhill for him from there on.

Something similar happened with the second Bush, when he demanded that Sharon withdraw troops from Jenin in 2002, saying 'Enough is enough'. Sharon refused, and Bush soon backed down, when the same columnists blasted him and even compared him to Arafat. The backlash was so powerful that Bush was soon calling Sharon a 'man of peace'! Since then, as noted by Robert Fisk and others, Sharon 'seems to be writing Bush's speeches'.

During the Reagan era, left-wing anti-interventionists launched a grass-roots movement against funding for the Contras in Nicaragua, which was successful, forcing Reagan to resort to well-known illegal means that lead to the Iran-Contra scandal. But no such measures have ever been seriously proposed by the Left to penalize Israel for human rights violations in the occupied territories. There may be some criticism but never a determined grass-roots campaign.

Blankfort also denies Chomsky's argument that Israel is just another victim client state in the same mold as El Salvador, Nicaragua or Guatemala. The inhabitants of those Central American countries had no voice or lobbying power in America, with which they could hope to sway Congress. The same hardly applies to Israel and its supporters in the U.S. Blankfort addresses some other points as well.

Jim Lobe on Neocons

The piece on Blankfort was followed by this one on Jim Lobe. He discusses the neocons, those expert Washington manipulators who were instrumental in getting us into Iraq, and who are closely allied with AIPAC and the right-wing Israel Lobby:

Today (i.e. 22 Feb 08), Electric Politics had an interesting radio interview with Jim Lobe on the neocons, which Lobe has been following since the '70s. We learn much that is a staple of the Antiwar.com website. In particular, we cannot understand the neocons without realizing their obsession with Hitler and the Holocaust. All foreign policy is interpreted in terms of the appeasement of the 1930's, and new Hitlers are always on the horizon. This leads to a Manichean view of history as a never-ending struggle between Good and Evil. Naturally, the United States and Israel must be the good side, so that we can do no worse that make a few mistakes along the way. We have a responsibility for fighting 'evil' everywhere in the world, which it is our prerogative to define. This entitles us to double standards and to a cavalier attitude towards international law. Furthermore, the Trotskyite roots of the neocons have imbued them with a strong elitist sense of their own intellectual and moral superiority, as well as with a dogmatic and pugnacious attitude in all their arguments with others.

Actually, the neocon view is only the bipartisan American establishment view since World War II, but on steroids and with more emphasis on Israel. Hitler casts a long shadow! Of course, this simplistic view totally ignores the blowback from our aggressive policies, as well as the legitimate security and human rights concerns of those we have chosen to demonize. This led, for instance, to an exaggeration of Soviet might during the Cold War and a blindness to the internal weaknesses of the Communist system. Naturally, neocons despise liberals, lefties, appeasers, Europeans, and particularly the (pre-Sarkozy) French! This militant spirit still thrives in the Republican party, despite the Iraq blunder. Zealots rarely learn from their mistakes.

One telling case related by Lobe was Chile under Pinochet. It is well known that the US helped him to assassinate the democratically-elected Allende and stage a coup. One of Pinochet's victims was the Jewish journalist Jacobo Timerman, who was 'disappeared' and tortured at length. Upon his release, he wrote a book called Prisoner Without A Name, which describes quite explicitly how the regime was neo-Nazi, including swastikas and pictures of Hitler on the wall and a general admiration for the man. This proved rather paradoxical for the neocons, so that neocon luminaries such as Irving Kristol and Midge Decter set about discrediting their fellow Jewish victim — albeit a left-leaning one!

A meisterstroke of the neocons was to cultivate the American Christian right against Carter, which helped elect Ronald Reagan. Their efforts were facilitated by a similar Manichean outlook in these Christians, inspired by those gentle and humane passages in the Old Testament proclaiming divine genocide. My goodness, what an irony! The relationship has blossomed ever since, so that nowadays Christian Zionists are the major component of AIPAC in terms of numbers. All this notwithstanding the anti-Semitism to be found in the writings of preachers such as Pat Robertson. The nicer evangelicals simply inform their Jewish friends that they look forward to converting them before Jesus comes back in a few years or so and presses the button for Armageddon. No doubt the neocons and right-wing Jews consider these Christian Zionists to be useful idiots. By the way, Jerry Falwell got his first private jet as a gift from Menachem Begin.

It was interesting to learn that the neocons turned on president Reagan, when he became furious over the Sabra and Shatila massacre in 1982, and later when he made overtures to Gorbachev. Iran-Contra during the late 1980's was a severe blow to the neocons, via the participation of people like Elliott Abrams, and this put them out of commission for a while. They roared back after 9/11, when they managed to divert a dimwit president to Iraq, as part of their grandiose plan to reshape the Middle East. That little experiment is now a mess, and the neocons might be considered to be in decline, except that they have achieved their ultimate goal of getting the US militarily enmeshed in the Middle East quicksand, which could join us (even more) at the hip to Israel. Lobe clarifies that he does not consider the neocons to be 'agents' of the Israeli government. Rather, they are to the right of much of the Israeli political spectrum and find their natural partners in uber-hawks like Netayanhu. Many Israelis consider that the neocon project has destabilized the Middle East, including with respect to Assad of Syria, who had become something of a bulwark! Not to mention how Iran has been empowered by the brilliant neocon schemes.

At present, Lobe thinks that Bob Gates is doing a good job of putting the US back on a 'realistic' foreign policy track. Lobe thinks that Gates was instrumental in releasing the NIE on the non-existence of the Iranian nuclear weapons program, which has considerably reduced the chances of war (but keep your fingers crossed). Cheney and the neocons are emasculated, at least for now, while Rice and Gates are reviving diplomacy, in the spirit of the first Bush, whom the neocons despise. This may actually return America to imperialism-lite, in my opinion. I would prefer a clean break with the past. Meanwhile, Bill Kristol gets a column in the New York Times! Since when is honesty the best policy? The neocon legacy survives in other ways, e.g. the Republicans are by and large as interventionist as ever and have bought on to the 'Islamofascism' propaganda, thus keeping Manichaeism alive and well. And don't forget that Hillary's advisors are basically neocons, and she wouldn't dream of saying no to AIPAC. Would Obama?

A final point: If this bogeyman of Islamofascism were to somehow disappear, another enemy is sure to arise, probably China (already in the neocon sights). The greatest fear of neocons is that Americans become 'isolationist', which will surely lead to the rise of Hitlers everywhere. Thus, any lie or propaganda is acceptable or even necessary, in order to scare Americans into being grown-up and responsible and carrying on the good fight against Eternal Evil. This is the 'noble lie' of a neocon intellectual ancestor called Leo Strauss. (One very harmful consequence of this intellectual arrogance is that regional experts are denigrated and sidelined, which led, e.g., to the disaster in Iraq, in which the ancient Sunni-Shia conflict was ignored going in.)

Note: Electric Politics also had an interview in January, 2008 with John J. Mearsheimer, who has aroused a lot of controversy with a book he co-authored with Stephen M. Walt, called The Israel Lobby. Their basic thesis is that American politicians have been excessively deferential to the Lobby, to the point where it harms our national interests. Mearsheimer and Walt are prominent scholars of US foreign policy, and Mearsheimer claims that they paid a steep price for speaking out, such as being shunned by colleagues. I do agree with the criticism that they are too forgiving of Bush and Cheney and the gentile foreign policy establishment in general, including many top Democrats. It's not all AIPAC's fault.

The Sibel Edmonds Case

And let us not forget the mysterious Sibel Edmonds case, in which powerful lobbies, pro-Turkish as well as pro-Israeli, seem to be squashing an investigation of treason:

Whew! It's getting more complicated. I've started looking into the Sibel Edmonds whistleblower case, and now it seems as though there may be a US-Israel-Turkey-Neocon-AIPAC-Military-Industrial-Complex to worry about. Edmonds is a former FBI translator who alleges that top ranking US government officials associated with the American Turkish Council — which she claims is a sister organization to AIPAC — have been involved in stealing nuclear secrets and selling them to Israel, Turkey and even Pakistan. She claims to have seen specific documentary evidence, but she has been gagged by the government under a 'state secrets' law. She was fired by the FBI, even though the Inspector General of the Justice Department concluded that her claims had merit. She is now trying to take her case public, at considerable risk to herself. Representative Henry Waxman, who once proclaimed shock at her allegations, now refuses to let her testify to Congress, where she would be able to speak freely. Did Waxman get a phone call from AIPAC? Many of our old neocon friends, such as Perle and Feith, turn out to have a close connection with the ATC, just as they do with AIPAC and major defense industries. It's all one big, happy family! Perle and Feith have been investigated in the past by the FBI for passing state secrets to Israel, but the cases were dropped, due to 'political pressure' says journalist Philip Giraldi, a former CIA officer. I wonder how President Obama will deal with this.

Scuttled Oil Deals

Justin Raimondo recently wrote about some scuttled oil deals from the 1990s, which he claims show that the Israel Lobby is much more powerful than the infamous Oil Lobby, at least when it comes to the Middle East (and at least back in the 1990s):

SCUTTLED OIL DEAL SHOWS POWER OF LOBBY
Justin Raimondo, Antiwar, 28 April 08

The policy of 'dual containment', conceived by the Clinton administration during the early 1990s, meant that the U.S. was committed to hostile relations with both Iraq and Iran. The policy, as John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt point out, 'was essentially a copy of an Israeli proposal'. It meant stationing troops in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait to offset an alleged threat to American interests. Yet there was no reason to assume Tehran had hostile intentions toward the U.S. At the time, Iranian President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani was eager to establish friendly relations with the U.S. As pressure built to abandon 'dual containment' and initiate a more workable policy that would give the U.S. more flexibility, the Lobby went on the offensive with a relentless campaign to impose economic sanctions on Iran.
The Iranians, determined to signal their willingness to be reasonable, chose an American oil company, Conoco, to develop the Sirri oil fields. As Trita Parsi points out in Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran, and the United States:
"For AIPAC, the Conoco deal 'was a coincidence and a convenient target'. The organization went into high gear to use the Iranian offer not only to scuttle the Conoco deal, but also to put an end to all U.S.-Iran trade. In a report that it released on April 2, 1995, titled 'Comprehensive U.S. Sanctions Against Iran: A Plan for Action', AIPAC argued that Iran must be punished for its actions against Israel. 'Iran's leaders reject the existence of Israel. Moreover, Iran views the peace process as an American attempt to legalize Israel's occupation of Palestinian, Muslim lands', it said. Pressured by Congress, AIPAC, and the Israelis, President Clinton swiftly scrapped the deal by issuing two executive orders that effectively prohibited all trade with Iran. The decision was announced on April 30 by Clinton in a speech before the World Jewish Congress."

This wasn't enough for the Lobby, which brought pressure on Sen. Alphonse D'Amato to introduce a bill that imposed sanctions on any countries doing business with either Libya or Iran. The Iran-Libya Sanctions Act passed the House with not a single dissenting vote, and the same scenario went down in the Senate. The Lobby made sure the Iranian peace offering was rudely rebuffed — and the president reminded of just who was in charge of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. The White House meekly went along with the Lobby's wishes: after all, the presidential election was but three months away.
The Conoco affair should dispel any myths about the supposedly supreme power of the 'oil lobby' as the decisive factor in shaping U.S. policy in the region: the Israel lobby beat them hands down. As James Schlesinger put it, 'It is scarcely possible to overstate the influence of Israel's supporters on our politics in the Middle East.' The harder the Iranians tried to approach the Americans, the more rudely they were repulsed.

Ah, and then there's the whole USS Liberty incident, in which Israel fired on a U.S. spy ship and killed Americans, but this was allegedly covered up by President Johnson so as not to lose Jewish votes. Some very high-ranking officials, in and out of the military, have attested that the attack was 'deliberate and unprovoked', but various controversial investigations found no fault, which has not appeased critics. This contrasts nicely with bogus attacks, such as on the USS Maine or in the Gulf of Tonkin, which got us into major hot wars.

What matters in Washington is power and not truth, but the exact power relationships can be complex, murky and changing. On many occasions, the Israel Lobby has no doubt strongly influenced American policy, but it would be unfair and misleading to say that Israel or Zionists have 'hijacked' American policy. All too often, they have only piggy-backed, with great skill, on the already bellicose predisposition of the Powers That Be. This includes Democrats as well as Republicans. If anything, the Democrats are even more interventionist.

The real problem is the abysmal ignorance of the American public, though it is not clear how peace-loving they would be if they were better informed. I think that perhaps some case could be made that hawkish pro-Israel Jews exert an inordinate influence over the major media, as evidenced by the 60 Minutes article I started out with, but solving that 'problem' is very tricky if one is also a purist on freedom of speech, as I believe I am. Perhaps the internet will 'liberate' Americans from their chains of ignorance and save the world from imminent disaster. Or perhaps not.

The Terrorist Paradigm Promoted by Israel

UPDATE (1 May 08): Antiwar Radio just interviewed ex-CIA officer Philip Giraldi on interesting intelligence developments from Israel. Apparently, some antiwar factions in the Israeli government are trying the thwart the drive towards war with Iran. During the course of the discussion, it is revealed how the Israeli government has successfully imposed the 'terrorist paradigm' on American political discourse (with help from 9/11). Regional nationalist movements like Hamas and Hezbollah have been lumped under the rubric of 'Islamic Terror'. Not only does this recall the gross oversimplifications of Cold War categories, with the implausible domino theory, but it also recalls the pernicious demonization characteristic of the era.

Basically, classifying an adversary as 'terrorist' means we will no longer talk to them, which makes diplomacy impossible — a desired objective of the hawks. For instance, it has been widely reported that Hamas wants to work out a 10-year truce with Israel. Even if this isn't full recognition, you might think it is an option well worth exploring, but both Israel and the US simply refuse to talk to Hamas, since they are evil terrorists. You can't talk with evil people any more than with Hitler or Satan. Likewise, Hezbollah is really just a Shiite resistance group formed in response to Israel's invasion of Lebanon, but they have been cast beyond the pale as 'terrorists'.

Same for the Iranian National Guards or Quds force, who have been similarly demonized by the Kyle-Lieberman amendment, for 'interfering' in Iraq. Thus, a potential green light has been given to the administration for an invasion of Iran. This completely disregards Iran's legitimate concern with the US invading a next-door neighbor. Let us remember how we reacted to missiles in Cuba, or worse, Reagan's death squads in Nicaragua, in response to a laughable 'threat'. Moreover, let us realize that the Shiites in Iraq are 'brothers' to the Iranians as much as the Europeans are to us, whom we shielded all during the Cold War with NATO. All such subtleties can be simply dismissed with a single thought-stopping word, promoted by the Israeli government, and preached to Americans like an 11th commandment, with considerable help from the AIPAC wing of the Israel Lobby.

No, this Lobby certainly does not 'control' US foreign policy, but it can be a malevolent influence, which is bad enough. Above all, we should not tolerate any restrictions on public debate, through the mechanism of taboos and smear tactics. And one of the most powerful taboos is to refuse to consider the legitimate grievances of the other side — to simply blank out their humanity — through the nasty but effective device of demonization.

AIPAC and Democratic Defectors

UPDATE (3 May 08): The 2006 midterm elections were supposed to have been a repudiation of the Iraq war, in which the public put the Democrats back in office in order to start withdrawing troops. Instead, 37 Democratic Senators gave President Bush $100 billion with 'no strings' attached to continue the war — enough money to pay for 1.3 million college students for 4 years, according to Jeremy Kroth in the following article. At the time of the vote, he says, 62% of Americans favored a timetable for withdrawal, and, more significantly, 70% of Democrats favored such a timetable, but the Democrats in Congress simply ignored them. Kroth investigates the power of AIPAC in all of this and concludes that it was significant. It is sad that so seemingly a decent guy as Carl Levin turned coat. Furthermore, only 30% of Americans favored going into Iraq in the first place, but AIPAC did. Coincidence? Ditto for the 2007 'surge'. But let's not forget our old friends, the Military-Industrial Complex...

WHAT AIPAC WANTS, AIPAC GETS
Jeremy Kroth, CounterPunch, 10 July 07
Curiously, all of the traitor democrats were huge career recipients of funds from the Israeli lobby. If we took ten Democratic apostates and compared them to ten Democrats who stood by the voters, pro-Israeli PAC contributions were ten times greater for the turncoats than those who stayed with their constituencies ($322,000 versus $34,000 on average).
To be specific: Carl Levin, outspoken critic of the war and, we thought, a loyal supporter of the new regime to end it, defected and blithely turned his back on his Michigan support base. Despite his strident anti-war rhetoric, the Grand Rapids Independent reports Levin has supported Bush all the way 'consistently funding the war and not introducing any meaningful legislation to bring it closer to an end'. Practically unknown to his constituents, Levin is one of the largest beneficiaries of Pro-Israeli PAC funds collecting $600,000 in career contributions according to the Washington Report on Mideast Affairs.
Barbara Boxer, Denis Kucinich, and Earl Blaumenauer, all opponents of the war, collectively got $73,000, but turncoat-democrats, Dan Durbin, Max Baucus, and Frank Lautenberg scooped up in excess of a million plus untold benes like travel funds.
What comes out in the wash is the best PAC money can buy: Three months before we invaded Iraq, a New York Times poll showed only 30 percent of the American people favored an all-out invasion, but the Israeli lobby (AIPAC) did, and it prevailed. Hardly a sprinkling of Americans favored the 'surge', a meager fourteen percent, but AIPAC did, and the surge is surging as we speak. Fewer than thirty percent of Democrats supported that no-strings-budget, but AIPAC did, and the conclusion plays out another hackneyed chorus of 'Whatever AIPAC wants, AIPAC gets.'
In 1992, the director of the Israeli lobby, David Steiner, was surreptitiously recorded bragging about playing a role in selecting the Secretary of State and what he got for Israel: 'Besides the $10 billion in loan guarantees which was a fabulous thing, $3 billion in foreign, in military aid, and I got almost a billion dollars in other goodies that people don't even know about!' When the tape was made public, Steiner resigned, but it underscored the incredible power, access, and influence this lobby has.
Two professors, Mearsheimer and Walt, recently insinuated that American democracy has been suborned by the Israeli lobby, echoing Senator Fulbright's 1989 indictment that AIPAC had usurped the electoral process and could 'elect or defeat nearly any congressman or senator that they wish'. Such observations do not fall on deaf ears. Over half the senate and a third of the congress obediently attended the AIPAC annual convention (versus less than a dozen visiting the NAACP's event). Non-attendance can suggest a lawmaker might be soft on terrorism, or, god forbid, anti-Semitic.

Well, whether it was just AIPAC or AIPAC+MIC, it is clear that public opinion counts for little with such weighty matters as war and peace. And this has been the pattern for a long time. On the other hand, the frivolous American public now favors mad-dog McCain as much as Obama, so we can't entirely blame the money-bought politicians. The Serious Ones know that the childish temper tantrums of the public will pass. Besides, our Imperial Destiny requires leadership over the ignorant and feckless masses.

Karon Criticizes Remnick

UPDATE (3 May 08): There are, of course, gradations of criticism of Israel and the Israel Lobby, even on the left. David Remnick has written a review of Mearsheimer and Walt for the New Yorker. Tony Karon holds it up as an instance 'where some Jewish liberals of faultlessly progressive politics on every other issue turn into raving tribal belligerents of the Ariel Sharon hue when the conversation turns to Israel'. For instance, Remnick acknowledges Israel's brutal and counterproductive occupation of the West Bank, while at the same time he fails to comprehend that America's unqualified support of Israel is a major source of the problem, and AIPAC surely plays a key role. It is encouraging to hear Karon agree with Remnick that most American Jews are to the left of AIPAC and would disapprove of Israel's occupation. Unfortunately, the many liberal Jewish voices may be too little too late, as they are swamped by a mass of pitchfork-wielding, pro-Israel, pro-Armageddon Christian zealots.

THE ERUDITE HYSTERIA OF DAVID REMNICK
Tony Karon, Rootless Cosmopolitan, 31 August 07
But while Remnick may satisfy his liberal conscience by conceding the idea that the occupation is bad, what he's not answering is M&W's case that it is bizarre to the point of inexplicable that the U.S. no longer bothers to even threaten to take steps to restrain Israel from this 'moral violation'. U.S. support for Israel is unconditional, settlements and all. The sad fact, for the likes of Remnick, is that the occupation is not some aberration on Israel's part; there really is no longer any real distinction, in practice on the ground, between Israel and its occupation of the lands it captured in 1967. As Henry Siegman recently explained in an excellent piece in the London Review of Books, Israel quite simply has no inclination to withdraw from the occupied territories, and its ideas of a 'peace process' are essentially limited to the pursuit of Palestinian surrender.
As for evoking the authority of Prince Bandar, oy. Remnick himself had suggested that debate on U.S. Middle East policy was welcome, and that it should include questions such as 'whether we should be supplying arms to the Saudis'. Uh, Dave, those deals are typically negotiated by Bandar. And by the way, since when did this Bush-Cheney acolyte become a voice of Arab authority? How many Arab leaders were willing to publicly endorse the deal offered at Camp David? (Bandar himself wouldn't, you can be sure. And nor would Mahmoud Abbas.)
Remnick is entirely correct that most American Jews would agree with M&W about the occupation, but that simply underlines a point they make throughout the book — that the positions and interventions of the Israel lobby are not representative of mainstream American Jewish opinion; they're way to the right of it. It's not a 'Jewish lobby', it's a lobby of people — many of them Evangelical Christians — supporting the positions of the hardline nationalist right in Israel.
Remnick also attempts the rather silly argument that U.S. support for Israel has little impact on the appeal of Osama bin Laden and other radicals in the Arab world, because Bin Laden's objective is to overthrow Arab autocracies backed by the U.S. Yes, of course it is, but the point is that Bin Laden hardly needs to break a sweat in 'proving' American malfeasance to any Muslim audience — he simply needs to point for Washington's unswerving support of Israel, and the argument is over. And that precludes U.S. allies in the Arab world from attaining any popular legitimacy.

Obama and the Israel Lobby

UPDATE (14 May 08): Justin Raimondo has an interesting piece on Obama and the Israel Lobby, focusing on a recent interview with Jeffrey Goldberg in the Atlantic magazine. Goldberg peddled lies similar to Judith Miller, that helped get us into Iraq, but unlike Miller he has never had to pay a price. In the interview, as recounted by Raimondo, Goldberg constantly tries to needle Obama on his possibly less than fanatical support for everything Israel does. What interests me is that Obama handles it rather deftly, on the whole, though he genuflects to the Lobby as much as any American politician must who wants to get elected president. Even so, he lets though a few glimpses of understanding and humanity, more than you'd get from Bush or almost anybody else in our political pantheon. Obama is indeed smart, sophisticated and decent. He knows the reality in the Middle East, as well as in American politics. He is trying to walk a tightrope, but I think his heart is in the right place, as far as I can tell. We should help him, as our best hope, rather than nitpicking about his apparent deviations from purity. (However, I may revise my opinion if he chooses Hillary the Horrible for Veep.)

Online Articles

Mearsheimer-Walt Paper

Mearsheimer and Walt: The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy

Mearsheimer and Walt: The Israel Lobby (Chapter I)

LRB: Mearsheimer & Walt: The Israel Lobby

LRB: Dershowitz letter on M-W paper

LRB: M&W's reply to Dershowitz' letter

LRB: Mearsheimer, Ben-Ami, Indyk, Judt, Khalidi, Ross (video)

LRB: A Dutch documentary on AIPAC (video)

Mearsheimer & Walt: Breaking the Tabboo

Alan Dershowitz: On the Mearsheimer-Walt Israel lobby paper

NY Sun: Harvard's Paper on Israel Drew From Neo-Nazi Sites