Sabbah Report » Stephen Walt

Academic Freedom: The Fall of the Last Bastion of Democracy

Mohamed Khodr — Sat, 10 Dec 2011 07:55:03 +0000

To the Honorable President of Baylor University Judge Kenneth Starr
To the Honorable Members of the Board of Regents of Baylor University

Re: Professor Marc Ellis

"The most important aspect of freedom of speech is freedom to learn. All education is a continuous dialogue - questions and answers that pursue every problem on the horizon. That is the essence of academic freedom."
--William Orville Douglas

"The whole idea of equal justice under law means that you've got to play by the rules. It has nothing to do with the underlying subject matter. You just tell the truth."
--Kenneth Starr

Honorable Ladies and Gentlemen:

In our nation freedom of speech much like freedom of the press is defined, implemented, and censored by those in power in direct contradiction to the words and spirit of our First Amendment.

Such is the current outrageous, dishonorable, and unconstitutional actions taken by Judge Starr against one of the country's leading and most distinguished scholars on Jewish Studies, tenured Professor Marc Ellis, by eliminating his upcoming courses, shutting down his department, and launching an investigation on whether Professor Ellis' writing against ISRAELI policies is anathema to the Jewish Christian Zionist's standard of "thou shall not speak against Israel."

The Baylor Lariat, November 30, 2011, highlighted Professor Ellis' dissident voice against Israel's policies as a major factor in his unwarranted persecution by Ken Starr:

"Dr. Marc Ellis, director of the university's Center for Jewish Studies, said Baylor President Ken Starr approved charges against him in June at least in part because of his outspoken criticism of the state of ISRAEL"

It is a shameful stain on Baylor University, a Christian University that espouses to teach the life and moral values of Jesus ("Judge not lest you be judged") should resort to such illegal and unconstitutional persecution of Professor Ellis simply for his right as an American citizen to speak and write freely in an environment that should respect academic freedom and free speech.

As a former Judge President Starr is fully aware of the Supreme Court's decision cited below.

In a 1989 case before the Supreme Court on the freedom to burn the American flag, the Supreme Court ruled that such action is freedom of speech: Justice William J. Brennan asserted that:

"If there is a bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment, it is that government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea offensive or disagreeable."

What deemed heresy will next be on Baylor's Christian chopping block? Ethnic cleansing of Non-Christians, expulsion of women unless they bow down in total obedience to man, the handicapped and poor students on scholarship, or anyone who is not born again nor blindly accepts Ken Starr's and the University's ultimatums.

Is this not hypocritical when compared to the statement below on Baylor's mission and values?

"Baylor encourages all of its students to cultivate their capacity to think critically..to arrive at informed and reasoned conclusions."

Starr and Baylor are creating a dangerous precedent of a new inquisition against those who espouse dissident opinions than the accepted conformity for Israel that it can do no wrong.

Is there a financial threat to Baylor that it will lose funds should it continue to keep Professor Marc Ellis' as a tenured academician much like what happened at Harvard with Professor Stephen Walt? Even the founder and first Prime Minister of Israel, the very country Ken Starr is stealthily protecting would've respected Professor Ellis' right to free speech and his dissidence from the overwhelming blind support Israel receives in this country, not out of love or strategic need, but out of sheer fear of its powerful lobbies.

David Ben Gurion said:

"The test of democracy is freedom of criticism."

American ignorance on Israel is its best weapon of mass destruction against America's national interests and the humanity of its occupied populations.

Baylor's Board of Regents has a responsibility and obligation to uphold the University's mission to its students, its faculty, and its national and international outreach to uphold Professor Marc Ellis' absolute right as a tenured Professor and American citizen to exercise his constitutionally guaranteed free speech and his academic responsibility to provide his students and society at large with opposing and dissenting views on Israel or any other issue.

As Ronald Reagan said:

"There are no constraints on the human mind, no walls around the human spirit, no barriers to our progress except those we ourselves erect."

Baylor can solidify the principle that universities are truly the foundation of reason, rationality, critical thought based on knowledge of all sides of an issue, an environment of freedom for the mind and soul, a bastion for free flowing ideas, debates, and research, a pathway to graduate free thinkers who will enter a world challenged by and challenging of competing ideas.

Without such principles there is neither an educational institution nor true learning.

To avoid a historical mistake and shame upon Baylor, the renowned and distinguished Professor Marc Ellis must not face any politically motivated investigation of his academic freedom that might incredibly lead to his dismissal.

Board of Regents, this is not only the right thing to do but the only intellectually honest and sound decision worthy of Baylor University.

With utmost respect;

Mohamed Khodr

* Mohamed Khodr is a political activist who frequently writes on the plight of Palestinians living under the brutal occupation of Israel, U.S. Foreign Policy, Islam, and Arab politics.

A False Friend in the White House

SR Editor — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 10:54:34 +0000

By Stephen M. Walt* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Illustration by Yaser Ahmad

Last Friday the United States vetoed a U.N. Security Council Resolution condemning Israel's continued expansion of settlements in the occupied territory of the West Bank. The resolution didn't question Israel's legitimacy, didn't declare that "Zionism is racism," and didn't call for a boycott or sanctions. It just said that the settlements were illegal and that Israel should stop building them, and called for a peaceful, two-state solution with "secure and recognized borders. The measure was backed by over 120 countries, and 14 members of the security council voted in favor. True to form, only the United States voted no.

There was no strategic justification for this foolish step, because the resolution was in fact consistent with the official policy of every president since Lyndon Johnson. All of those presidents has understood that the settlements were illegal and an obstacle to peace, and each has tried (albeit with widely varying degrees of enthusiasm) to get Israel to stop building them.

Yet even now, with the peace process and the two-state solution flat-lining, the Obama administration couldn't bring itself to vote for a U.N. resolution that reflected the U.S. government's own position on settlements. The transparently lame explanation given by U.S. officials was that the security council isn't the right forum to address this issue. Instead, they claimed that the settlements issue ought to be dealt with in direct talks between Israel and the Palestinians, and that the security council should have nothing to say on the issue.

This position is absurd on at least two grounds. First, the expansion of settlements is clearly an appropriate issue for the security council to consider, given that it is authorized to address obvious threats to international peace and security. Second, confining this issue to "direct talks" doesn't make much sense when those talks are going nowhere. Surely the Obama administration recognizes that its prolonged and prodigious effort to get meaningful discussions going have been a complete bust? It is hard to believe that they didn't recognize that voting "yes" on the resolution might be a much-needed wake-up call for the Israeli government, and thus be a good way to get the peace process moving again? Thus far, all that Obama's Middle East team has managed to do in two years is to further undermine U.S. credibility as a potential mediator between Israel and the Palestinians, and to dash the early hopes that the United States was serious about "two states for two peoples." And while Obama, Mitchell, Clinton, Ross, and the rest of the team have floundered, the Netanyahu government has continued to evict Palestinian residents from their homes, its bulldozers and construction crews continuing to seize more and more of the land on which the Palestinians hoped to create a state.

Needless to say, the United States is all by its lonesome on this issue. Our fellow democracies -- France, Germany, Great Britain, Brazil, South Africa, India, and Colombia -- all voted in favor of the resolution, but not the government of the Land of the Free. And it's not as if Netanyahu deserved to be rewarded at this point, given how consistently he has stiffed Obama and his Middle East team.

For more on this latest sad chapter in the annals of American Middle East diplomacy, see M.J Rosenberg here and here, the Magnes Zionist here and here, and Gideon Levy here.

As these commentators recognize, the real reason for Obama's misguided decision was the profound influence of the Israel lobby. Indeed, few observers have missed this simple and obvious fact. One can only conclude that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton's repeated claims that they are "friends of Israel" and devoted to its security are nothing more than empty, politically expedient rhetoric. Whatever they may say, the policies they are pursuing -- including this latest veto -- are in fact harmful to Israel's long-term future. The man who declared in Cairo on June 4, 2009 that a two-state solution was "in the "Israel's interest, the Palestinians' interest, America's interest, and the world's interest" must have changed his mind, because his actions ever since have merely hastened the moment when creating two viable states will be impossible (if that is not already the case). Then remember what former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said in 2007, "if the two-state solution fails, Israel will face a South African style struggle for political rights." And "once that happens," he warned, "the state of Israel is finished."

If Obama were a true friend of Israel, in short, he'd be doing whatever he could to keep it from expanding its ruinous occupation and making the Zionist vision unsustainable. And given that Congress remains hopeless on this issue, he could have shown he was a true friend by instructing his U.N. Ambassador, Susan Rice, to vote for the resolution, as a diverse array of foreign policy experts had suggested. He would also have devoted some portion of his first two years in office to explaining to the American people why some "tough love" was needed on both sides (i.e., not just the Palestinians), and he would have recruited America's democratic allies in a genuine effort to bring the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to a fair and stable end. Had he done these things, most Americans would have supported him. Instead, his lame actions are just enabling the occupation, and for the most cynical domestic political reasons (like safeguarding his re-election prospects in 2012). Even worse, he did it at a moment when the Arab world is in ferment, and when the voice of the Arab street is beginning to be heard. But instead of aligning itself with international law, basic principles of justice, and its own stated position, the Obama administration caved. Again.

If the United States hopes to be on the right side of history, it is time to start thinking about what its policy should be when everybody finally acknowledges that "two states for two peoples" is no longer a practical possibility. This is going to happen sooner or later, and anyone who is still advocating for a two-state solution at that point is going to sound like an ignorant fool. Not because of the flaws in that option, but simply because it will be impossible to implement. What alternative solution will the president and secretary of state support then? Ethnic cleansing? A binational, liberal democracy in which all inhabitants of Israel/Palestine have equal civil and political rights? Or permanent apartheid, in the form of disconnected Palestinian Bantustans under de facto Israeli control? That awkward reality may not be apparent while Obama is president (which is probably what he is hoping), but it will be a damning legacy to leave to his successor, as well as a tragedy for two peoples who have already known more than their share.

Postscript: Some readers may think I am being too defeatist here, and they might cite in evidence Bernard Avishai's New York Times Magazine essay detailing the alleged "near-miss" peace talks between Olmert and Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas in 2008. Avishai's account portrays the two leaders as close to a deal and suggests that it would not be that hard to resurrect a similar deal today. It's an interesting article, but there are at least four problems with his optimistic account. First, Olmert was the lamest of lame ducks by 2008, because he was due to be indicted on corruption charges and everyone knew it, so the talks themselves were something of a side-show. Second, even had this not been the case, it is by no means clear that Olmert could have sold the Israeli public on the proposed deal. Third, it is not even clear that the two sides were that close to an agreement, given Olmert's insistence that Israel could not withdraw from Ariel and Maale Adumim (two settlement blocs that thrust deep inside the West Bank). Fourth, and probably most important, political trends in Israel are headed the other way (among other things, Avigdor Lieberman wasn't foreign minister back then), which makes the Olmert/Abbas talks even less relevant. For excellent critical responses to Avishai's piece, see Noam Sheizaf, Matthew Taylor, and Ilene Cohen.

* Stephen M. Walt is the Robert and Renée Belfer professor of international relations at Harvard University.

What Obama Hasn’t Changed About the Mid East Peace Process

Maggie Sager — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 17:20:57 +0000

By Maggie Sager * | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Forgive my cynicism, but you will not see me holding my breath in anticipation of a comprehensive and just conclusion to the Arab-Israeli conflict, not this time around, not even with Mr. Change himself at the helm of negotiations. To illustrate my point, and for the benefit of all of you following along at home, let me recap what hasn’t changed with the most recent incarnation of peace talks:

The Past: Israel has done its best to extort the United States government in exchange for participation in or acceptance of peace initiatives.

For example, in exchange for Israel’s participation at the 1991 Madrid Conference, the United States was forced to instrument the revocation of UN Resolution 3379, which equated Zionism (the ideological foundation of which presumes that Jews as a distinct ethnic group have exclusive and special rights in contrast with other ethnic groups) with racism (the ideological foundation of which presumes that a distinct ethnic group has exclusive and special rights in contrast with other ethnic groups).

In another instance, President Nixon was only able to persuade the Knesset to formally accept UN Resolution 242, which called for withdrawal from the territories Israel captured in 1967 (and to this day still occupies in part, in contravention of international law) by giving “private assurances that Israel would receive additional US aircraft,” according to John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, authors of The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy. Similarly, “[Israel’s] acceptance of the cease-fire that ended the so-called War of Attrition with Egypt…was bought by a US pledge to accelerate aircraft deliveries to Israel, to provide advanced electronic countermeasures against Egypt’s Soviet-supplied anti-aircraft missiles, and, more generally, to maintain the balance of power.”

In fact, as Mearsheimer and Walt point out:

This pattern continued though the 1970’s, with Presidents Nixon, Ford and Carter pledging ever-larger sums of aid in the course of the disengagement talks with Egypt and during the negotiations that lead to the 1978 Camp David Accords and the 1979 Egypt-Israeli Peace Treaty…In much the same way, , the Clinton administration gave Israel increased assistance as part of the peace treaty with Jordan in 1994, and Clinton’s efforts to advance the Oslo peace process led him to pledge an additional $1.2 billion in military ai to Israel to win Israel’s acceptance of the 1998 Wye Agreement [which Netanyahu promptly suspended].

Before being supplanted by Iraq in 2005, Israel was the number one annual recipient of US foreign aid, followed by Egypt and Jordan respectively. It is common knowledge that Egypt and Jordan receive these US funds with the precondition that they maintain peaceful relations with Israel. In this way, the US essentially picks up the tab for Israeli aggression.

The Present: According to Ynetnews among other sources, Israel’s leading Likud party has demanded concessions and guarantees from the Obama Administration in exchange for extending its settlement “freeze,” despite the fact that the entire international community including the United States regards these settlements as completely illegal. Apparently Obama is taking the bait, though the specifics of his pay-off to the Israeli mob are disputed. The Guardian reports that Obama sent Netanyahu a letter which requests a “60-day renewal of the freeze. In return, Obama guarantees to demand no further extensions, to ensure that the future of Jewish settlements would become part of final status negotiations, and to veto any United Nations Security Council resolution relating to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict over the next year, while talks continue. He pledges to support a continued Israeli military presence in the Jordan Valley after the establishment of a Palestinian state. The letter also acknowledges Israel’s security needs and the need to upgrade its defense capabilities, and promises to consult Israel and the Arab states on US policy on Iran.”

The Past: When carrots don’t work, the US has with increasing rarity attempted to use sticks to incentivize Israeli compliance with US policy objectives. In the past 30 years, Israel has come to understand such threats as purely symbolic gestures, as no president has made good on their harsh words.

Case in point: Mearsheimer and Walt point out, “In 1991, the first Bush administration pressured the Shamir government to stop building settlements and to attend a planned peace conference by withholding the $10 billion loan guarantee, but the suspension lasted only a few months and the guarantees were approved once Yitzhak Rabin replaced Shamir as prime minister.” While Israel agreed to halt construction of new settlements, it continued to expand the existing blocs and the settlements grew at a rate almost 10 times faster than the natural growth of Israel Proper’s population.

The Present: In the first week of January, under the direction of Obama, Middle East Envoy George Mitchell had stern words for the Israeli government, threatening to withhold aid if the country did not make decisive moves toward peace, including making good on its promise to halt settlement construction. However, just as before, Israel called Mitchell’s bluff, holding the moratorium in word more than deed, as new settlement construction only decreased by 50%, existing blocs grew, and Israel continued to seize Palestinian land. Even as the moratorium has expired, directly resulting in the cessation of negotiations, aid to Israel is not in jeopardy.

The Past: In 1975 President Reagan and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger were becoming impatient with Israel’s “intransigence to disengage with Egypt” as Mearsheimer put it. Both called for a reassessment of US aid to Israel, but were stymied by an AIPAC-sponsored letter penned by 76 senators concerned with maintaining current levels of military and economic support. Reagan and Kissenger were then forced to pursue other methods of negotiation.

The Present: 87 senators have written a letter to President Obama, whole-heartedly supported by AIPAC, urging him to make sure Abbas does not leave the negotiating table regardless of the resumption of Israeli settlement construction. In response Israel News reports the administration is pressuring Abbas “not to quit the talks regardless of whether Israel extends the moratorium or not.”

The Past: Undermining the US’s stated policy objective of achieving nuclear non-proliferation in the Middle East, Israel is currently the only power in the region known to have nuclear and chemical weapons. President Kennedy eventually relegated on his efforts to have IAEA officials properly appraise Israel’s nuclear ambitions, while President Johnson, confronted with the knowledge that the country had in fact acquired WMD, chose to ignore this reality.

The Present: Last month the IAEA failed to pass a resolution aimed at Israel’s WMD program, with 51 mostly Western countries (spearheaded by the United States) voting against it, citing the possibility that the resolution would undermine peace negotiations. Before the incident, Obama explained his strong opposition to singling out Israel on the issue of non-proliferation. The irony is clearly lost on him.

The Past: In December 1982, during a lame-duck session, Congress attempted to provide a $250 million increase in military aid to Israel in the wake of the invasion of Lebanon, the use of cluster bombs, the illegal use of US weapons for offensive purposes, as well as the IDF’s complicity in the massacres at Sabra and Shatila. Following this move, President Reagan and his new Secretary of State George Shultz reinstituted a 1981 Memorandum of Understanding on strategic cooperation in 1983.

The Present: In the midst of Operation Cast Lead, which killed more than 1,400 Palestinians and lead to accusations of war crimes and crimes against humanity by the Goldstone Report, on January 16th, 2009, Congressed signed a Memorandum of Understanding essentially endorsing the operation and pledging unconditional support for the State of Israel. While vocal on a number of policy issues before his inauguration, Obama said nothing of this development, and has yet to negatively address the MOU.

For those of us concerned with history, it has become increasingly evident that there is nothing new to discuss. Palestinians are still not represented by a competent, unified or truly legitimate leadership. Israel is still employing the same tired tactics. But what’s most disheartening about the latest spectacle is Obama’s handling of the situation. Far from being the beacon of hope and progress he claimed himself to be in Cairo (does anyone remember, “It’s time for these settlements to stop,” or was I just hearing things?), Obama has shown he is no different from his predecessors.

* Maggie Sager is currently a student at Mills College in Oakland, California. You can find her work at Resisting Occupation.

Overcoming AIPAC is not enough

Lawrence Davidson — Sat, 02 Oct 2010 07:01:03 +0000

By Lawrence Davidson* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Two stories have recently appeared, each discussing a different approach to overcoming the influence of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the pro-Israel lobby that presently has enough clout to substitute its own parochial interests for the national interest. As John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt's 2007 book, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, demonstrated there is a direct connection between AIPAC's level of influence in Congress and the White House and the recent disasters that have befallen the U.S. in the Middle East. Indeed, the connection is one of sufficient intensity to have led to the creation in 2008 of a new "pro-Israel, pro-peace" lobby called J Street. J Street calls for Israel to accept, "borders based on the 1967 line with reciprocally agreed land swaps," thus allowing for a two state formula settlement. The optimistic view here is that in the relatively near future J Street will become strong enough to displace AIPAC and its hard line "we must keep it all" stance on the Occupied Territories. While this prognosis might be a tad premature, the situation has progressed enough that folks involved in this effort are now discussing tactics and approaches that might speed up AIPAC's demise. And so, our two stories.

The first story appeared in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz on September 26, 2010 and is entitled "Billionaire George Soros Revealed as Mystery J Street Donor." It is now public information that Mr. Soros sees AIPAC as "too hawkish" and so he and his family have thrown their weight behind the more compromising, "dovish" J Street. They have done so to the tune of 245,000 dollars a year. Soros has in fact been making these contributions since J Street's founding in 2008. This is certainly not all the money the Washington based lobby obtains per year. J Street has about 10,000 donors and they provide about 11 million dollars annually.

What is important is that a man like George Soros, who is dedicated to using some of his fortune to move the world in what he feels is a progressive direction, has put his money behind the traditional approach to influencing American policy formulation. He appears to accept as a working assumption that interest group politics plays a central role in both domestic and foreign policy making. Thus, if you want to change policy you have to out-lobby the fellow who is helping to shape the one now in place. In the case of J Street this means the organization must not only be able to win the politicians' allegiance through reasoned argument, but be capable of providing them with enough money to counter any AIPAC effort to unseat them in an election. Soros knows this and his aim is to help J Street achieve this status.

The second story comes in the form of a short essay by the Irish writer Maidhc O'Cathail that appeared in the Salem-News.com. It is entitled "The Truth Will Set U.S. Free: Breaking Israel's Stranglehold over American Foreign Policy." O'Cathail quotes Philip Giraldi, who is executive director of the Council for the National Interest (an organization critical of the American-Israel alliance), a former CIA officer and also a contributer to The American Conservative. Giraldi's position is that overcoming AIPAC "must be done from the bottom up as Israel cannot be challenged in the mainstream media, Congress, and in the White House." The tactic here is to convince enough American voters that "Israel is and always has been a strategic liability that has done immense damage to the United States and its worldwide interests" so they will be led to demand that the Congress and political parties abandon AIPAC. This has proven anything but easy. According to Jeff Gates, a former counsel for the Senate Committee on Finance, the present lack of transparency on the various sources of lobby money means that "the American public is ignorant of Israel's all-pervasive influence."

However, this opaqueness might also be slowly dissipating. A multiplicity of advocacy groups, both Jewish and non-Jewish, have grown up in the last ten years to publicize the brutal policies of the Israelis and U.S. complicity in them. Despite Giraldi's opinion that challenge in the mainstream media is impossible, there has been movement even in this unlikely arena. For instance, consider the relatively wide coverage of Israel's recent decision not to extend its settlement freeze and thereby threaten an end to the Obama administration's efforts at peace talks. So, unlike ten years ago, one now can find articles and op-ed pieces critical of Israel and, by extension, AIPAC as well. And, while they do not yet appear frequently enough to create a tipping point in public awareness they are beginning to contribute to a slow but perceptible shift in public opinion. Even a recent poll conducted by the American Jewish organization, The Israel Project, suggests a steady decline in the number of American citizens who feel that the U.S. must continue to support Israel.

The truth is that the two approaches, one centered on the national capital and the other centered on main street, have to be pursued simultaneously. And, there is now movement at both levels. Yet the pace of change is agonizingly slow. And that fact raises the question of just how much of Palestine will be left when AIPAC's influence is finally overcome? If the Israelis have their way what will be left is an emaciated Gaza and a rump area of the West Bank. Even though the Obama administration has promoted talks and called, unsuccessfully, for a continued settlement freeze, one suspects that it, and other foreseeable U.S. administrations, would be accepting of such a final outcome. It should be pretty clear to anyone who cares to see, that ruination is the preferred fate for any Middle East country that challenges either the U.S. or Israel. It is the adage "bomb them back to the stone age" made real. If you do not believe that, just ask an Iraqi refugee about what is left of their homeland now that the Americans have redone the landscape. Ask someone familiar with the present state of affairs in Gaza as well as the West Bank. Perpetual weakness and poverty is the fait accompli that Israel has in mind for Palestine on the day when AIPAC goes by the board. On that day they plan to have taken all that they desire and so even if Washington is persuaded to change its policies, it will no longer matter in Jerusalem.

What does all this mean for those involved in the fight against AIPAC's influence in American foreign affairs? It means that the goal of displacing the Israel lobby is really not sufficient. The J Street people and those who are presently campaigning at the grass roots have argue the fate of U.S. national interests in broader terms. For instance,

1. It must be made clear that a rejuvenation of American interests in the Middle East and Muslim world is linked much more directly to the fate of Palestine than to Israel. If any final settlement fails to insure the creation of a viable Palestinian state, the U.S. will be blamed and our interests will continue to suffer whether we are still allied to Israel or not. It must be made clear that, as an advocate for the destruction of Palestine, AIPAC advocates the destruction of U.S. interests as well.

2. Why is this so? This is the way it is because the issue of justice is first and foremost in the minds of a billion Muslims and that at the core of this issue stands Palestine (and not head scarfs). If U.S. interests are to be forwarded in the lands with Muslim majorities, then the question of Palestine must be faced honestly and objectively. This simply cannot happen as long as a Zionist lobby has the power to monopolize policy formulation. The problem is not Hamas, Hezbollah or Iran. The problem is Israel and its American agents. They are the ones complicit in past disastrous policy decisions and they are the ones pushing for equally disastrous future ones.

3. In the face of these truths, J Street presently operates as if it is afraid of its own shadow. If J Street feels it cannot directly advocate for justice for Palestinians, then it should do so indirectly. That is, the organization should get specific about the fact that the Israel AIPAC so strongly defends is in the hands of leaders who represent a harshly anti-American ethic. Men like Avigdor Lieberman and the leaders of the Shas party are racists who want to ethnically cleanse the Palestinians from as much territory as they can. For these Israeli leaders this is not a matter of security, it is a matter of religious purity. This is an utterly un-American goal. This has to be said loudly to both the American public and the Congress.

So you see that as we move ahead we must meld the liberation of the United States from AIPAC's wholly negative influence with the revival of U.S. national interests in the broader Middle East and Muslim world, and that in turn with the viable future of Palestine. All three must be promoted as an interlinked package. If they are not, Washington will certainly some day be free of AIPAC, but Palestine will left under the pernicious shadow of Israel. For this we will always be blamed and our interests will always suffer.

* Lawrence Davidson is professor of history at West Chester University. He is the author of numerous books, including Islamic Fundamentalism and America's Palestine: Popular and Official Perceptions from Balfour to Israeli Statehood.

The “Peace Process” is Still Going Nowhere – by Stephen M. Walt

SR Editor — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 17:24:14 +0000

By Stephen M. Walt* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

If you think the announcement that the Israelis and Palestinians are going to resume "direct talks" is a significant breakthrough, you haven't been paying attention for the past two decades (at least). I wish I could be more optimistic about this latest development, but I see little evidence that a meaningful deal is in the offing.

Why do I say this? Three reasons.

1. There is no sign that the Palestinians are willing to accept less than a viable, territorially contiguous state in the West Bank (and eventually, Gaza), including a capital in East Jerusalem and some sort of political formula (i.e., fig-leaf) on the refugee issue. By the way, this outcome supposedly what the Clinton and Bush adminstrations favored, and what Obama supposedly supports as well.

2. There is no sign that Israel's government is willing to accept anything more than a symbolic Palestinian "state" consisting of a set of disconnected Bantustans, with Israel in full control of the borders, air space, water supplies, electromagnetic spectrum. etc. Prime Minister Netanyahu has made it clear that this is what he means by a "two-state solution," and he has repeatedly declared that Israel intends to keep all of Jerusalem and maybe a long-term military presence in the Jordan River valley. There are now roughly 500,000 Israeli Jews living outside the 1967 borders, and it is hard to imagine any Israeli government evacuating a significant fraction of them. Even if Netanyahu wanted to be more forthcoming, his coalition wouldn't let him make any meaningful concessions. And while the talks drag on, the illegal settlements will continue to expand.

3. There is no sign that the U.S. government is willing to put meaningful pressure on Israel. We're clearly willing to twist Mahmoud Abbas' arm to the breaking point (which is why he's agreed to talks, even as Israel continues to nibble away at the territory of the future Palestinian state), but Obama and his Middle East team have long since abandoned any pretense of bringing even modest pressure to bear on Netanyahu. Absent that, why should anyone expect Bibi to change his position?

So don't fall for the hype that this announcement constitutes some sort of meaningful advance in the "peace process." George Mitchell and his team probably believe they are getting somewhere, but they are either deluding themselves, trying to fool us, or trying to hoodwink other Arab states into believing that Obama meant what he said in Cairo. At this point, I rather doubt that anyone is buying, and the only thing that will convince onlookers that U.S. policy has changed will be tangible results. Another round of inconclusive "talks" will just reinforce the growing perception that the United States cannot deliver.

The one item in all this that does give me pause is the accompanying statement by the Middle East Quartet (the United States, Russia, the EU and the U.N.), which appears at first glance to have some modest teeth in it. Among other things, it calls explicitly for "a settlement, negotiated between the parties, that ends the occupation which began in 1967 and results in the emergence of an independent, democratic, and viable Palestinian state living side by side in peace and security with Israel and its other neighbors." It also says these talks can be completed within one year. Sounds promising, but the Quartet has issued similar proclamations before (notably the 2003 "Roadmap"), and these efforts led precisely nowhere. So maybe there's a ray of hope in there somewhere, but I wouldn't bet on it.

Meanwhile, both Democrats and Republicans here in the United States will continue to make pious statements about their commitment to a two-state solution, even as it fades further and further into the realm of impossibility. Barring a miracle, we will eventually have to recognize that "two-states for two peoples" has become a pipe-dream. At that point, U.S. leaders will face a very awkward choice: they can support a democratic Israel where Jews and Arabs have equal political rights (i.e., a one-state democracy similar to the United States, where discrimination on the basis of religion or ethnicity is taboo), or they can support an apartheid state whose basic institutions are fundamentally at odds with core American values.

Equally important, an apartheid Israel will face growing international censure, and as both former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and current Defense Minister Ehud Barak have warned, such an outcome would place Israel's own long-term future in doubt. If that happens, all those staunch "friends of Israel" who have hamstrung U.S. diplomacy for decades can explain to their grandchildren how they let that happen.

As for the Obama administration itself, I have only one comment. If you think I'm being too gloomy, then do the world a favor and prove me wrong. If you do, I'll be the first to admit it.

* Stephen M. Walt is the Robert and Renée Belfer professor of international relations at Harvard University.

Stephen M. Walt: The Critic of My Friend is My Enemy

SR Editor — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 11:40:20 +0000

Illustration by Carlos Latuff

Turkey and the Neocons

By Stephen M. Walt* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

It couldn't be more predictable. Back when Israel and Turkey were strategic allies with extensive military-to-military ties, prominent neoconservatives were vocal defenders of the Turkish government and groups like the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and AIPAC encouraged Congress not to pass resolutions that would have labeled what happened to the Armenians at the hands of the Turks during World War I a "genocide." (The "Armenian lobby" is no slouch, but it's no match for AIPAC and its allies in the Israel lobby). The fact that the ADL was in effect protecting another country against the charge of genocide is more than a little ironic, but who ever said that political organizations had to be ethically consistent? Once relations between Israel and Turkey began to fray, however -- fueled primarily by Turkish anger over Israel's treatment of the Palestinians -- the ADL and AIPAC withdrew their protection and Congressional defenders of Israel began switching sides, too.

Last week Jim Lobe published a terrific piece at InterPress Service, detailing how prominent neoconservatives have switched from being strong supporters (and in some cases well-paid consultants) of the Turkish government to being vehement critics. He lays out the story better than I could, but I have a few comments to add.

First, if this doesn't convince you that virtually all neoconservatives are deeply Israeli-centric, then nothing will. This affinity is hardly a secret; indeed, neocon pundit Max Boot once declared that support for Israel was a "key tenet" of neoconservatism. But the extent of their attachment to Israel is sometimes disguised by the claim that what they really care about is freedom and democracy, and therefore they support Israel simply because it is "the only democracy in the Middle East."

But now we see the neoconservatives turning on Turkey, even though it is a well-functioning democracy, a member of NATO, and a strong ally of the United States. Of course,Turkey's democracy isn't perfect, but show me one that is. The neocons have turned from friends of Turkey to foes for one simple reason: Israel. Specifically, the Turkish government has been openly critical of Israel's conduct toward the Palestinians, beginning with the blockade of Gaza, ramping up after the brutal bombardment of Gaza in 2008-2009, and culminating in the lethal IDF attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla. As Lobe shows, a flock of prominent neoconservatives are now busily demonizing Turkey, and in some cases calling for its expulsion from NATO.

Thus, whether a state is democratic or not matters little for the neocons; what matters for them is whether a state backs Israel or not. So if you're still wondering why so many neoconservatives worked overtime to get the U.S. to invade Iraq -- even though Osama bin Laden was in Afghanistan or Pakistan -- and why they are now pushing for war with Iran, well, there's your answer.

As I've said repeatedly, there's nothing wrong with any American feeling a deep attachment to a foreign country and expressing it in politics, provided that they are open and honest about it and provided that other people can raise the issue without being accused of some sort of bigotry. The neocons' recent volte-face over Turkey is important because it reveals their policy priorities with particular clarity, and Lobe deserves full points for documenting it for us.

One last comment. Neoconservatives usually portray American and Israeli interests as essentially identical: In their eyes, what is good for Israel is good for the United States and vice versa. This claim makes unconditional U.S. support seem like a good idea, and it also insulates them from the charge that they are promoting Israel's interests over America's. After all, if the interests of the two states are really one and the same, then by definition there can be no conflict of interest, which means that the "dual loyalty" issue (a term I still don't like) doesn't arise.

I hold the opposite view. I believe that the "special relationship" has become harmful to both countries, and that a more normal relationship would be better for both. Right now, the special relationship hurts the United States by fueling anti-Americanism throughout the region and making us look deeply hypocritical in the eyes of billions -- yes, billions -- of people. It also distorts our policy on a host of issues, such as non-proliferation, and makes it extremely difficult to use our influence to advance the cause of Middle East peace. President Obama's failures on this front -- despite his repeated pledges to do better--make this all-too-obvious. At the same time, this unusual relationship harms Israel by underwriting policies that have increased its isolation and that threaten its long-term future. It also makes it nearly impossible for U.S. leaders to voice even the mildest of criticisms when Israel acts foolishly, because to do so casts doubts about the merits of the special relationship and risks incurring the wrath of the various groups that exist to defend it.

Although the United States and Israel do share certain common interests, it is becoming increasingly clear that their interests are not identical. This situation puts die-hard neoconservatives in a tough spot, as it could force them to choose between promoting what is good for America or defending what they think (usually wrongly) will be good for Israel. And insofar as prominent neocons continue to beat the drums for war, it behooves us to remember both their abysmal track record and their underlying motivations.

* Stephen M. Walt is the Robert and Renée Belfer professor of international relations at Harvard University.

End Israel Lobbies Pervasive and Damaging Influence in US Politics

Debbie Menon — Sat, 24 Apr 2010 10:47:47 +0000

Support for Israel is not only tragic and immoral, it is also extremely damaging to Americans.

US Congressman Steny Hoyer

By Debbie Menon* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Mark Perry in his recent article in Foreign Policy journal "Petraeus wasn't the First," describes succinctly, the opposition to U.S. support for Israel, the rationale for it, and the cover-up on it among American publishers^[1].

It is extremely valuable reading recommends Alison Weir, the the executive director of the website IF AMERICANS KNEW, "it corrects misconceptions that so many Americans have on the causation of U.S. support for Israel – including even some who are otherwise well informed on Palestine" she asserts^[2].

Mark Perry is correct in all respects. He quotes Joe Hoar, who remind him that it's all old history. "What's the news here? Hasn't this been said before?" and hasn't it all been done before?

Has man ever learned from history? I think it says something about the nature of Man when you reflect that Einstein said "that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."

Key elements of the US government have always opposed the concept of a Zionist Israel, ever since the state and defence departments advised President Harry Truman not to sign up to the Zionist project, which he nevertheless did but with reservations, qualifications and conditions that were immediately ignored.

But none of these key elements of governance has influence over the Zionist-controlled US corporate press, entertainment, academic and public (mis)information media (and the corporate and business advertising budgets that drive them) where the roots of American public opinion are planted and from which the blissfully ignorant American masses take the cues for their views and feelings. Nor do they control the free-spending lobbies that buy and sell legislators and politicians on Capitol Hill with the same ease with which they trade banks and corporations on the stock market.

While this is well documented, the sad thing is that today many editors, journalists, analysts and publishers, even in the so-called progressive American media, either still do not know these facts or have chosen not to inform the public about them.

Recent "hate speech" legislation in the US Congress has already eviscerated the freedom of speech guarantees of the First Amendment. Try to persuade me that abuse and vilification of Islam and Christianity will get you the same treatment in the courts that open and objective political criticism of Israel will. The fact that it will almost certainly not is a perfect example of the power of lobbies in controlling the law of, and restricting free speech in, the USA.

The recent 300-36 vote by the US House Representatives rejecting the UN-sponsored Goldstone Report, and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)-initiated letter "Reaffirming the US-Israel Alliance", which was signed by 76 senators and pressed the US president not to put pressure on Israel – and repeated the "unbreakable bond" mantra – is the best evidence of who controls US Middle East policy and how powerless the US president is to serve his own country's interest. Barack Obama would do well to heed George Washington's advise, when he warned in his farewell address against "passionate attachment" to an ally. (Also see Anthony Lawson's video, "Treason by Members of the United States Congress".)

Video link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3BahjX9nI5k

Yes, it is about this ally's powerful lobbying and its pervasive influence on American politics, policy and institutions that these and other writers have long written valuable books, revealing facts about the extent of the stranglehold of the Israel lobby over the US Congress and the US administration.

It's long past time to end one of the most damaging and pervasive cover-ups in the US today, and time for people and institutions to confront Israel's lobbies.

Paul Findley, They Dare to Speak Out: People and Institutions Confront Israel's Lobby
Edgar Tivnan, The Lobby: Jewish political power and American foreign policy
Donald Neff Fallen Pillars, U.S. Policy Towards Palestine and Israel Since 1945
George W. Ball and Douglas B. Ball, The Passionate Attachment: America's Involvement With Israel, 1947 to the Present
John Mulhall, America and the Founding of Israel: An Investigation of the Morality of America's Role
James Petras, The Power of Israel in the United States
John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy
Jeff Gates, Guilt by Association: How Deception and Self-Deceit Took America to War – his first release in the Criminal State series

American support for Israel is not only tragic and immoral, it is also extremely damaging to Americans when American Representatives continue to put Israel's interests before the interests of Americans – a reality that U.S. analysts have noted for years, but that individuals and corporate owners in the media, academia, and elsewhere have worked to prevent the public from learning.

It's long past time to end one of the most damaging and pervasive cover-ups in the U.S. today and time for people and institutions to confront Israel's lobbies.

References:
^[1] Petraeus wasn't the first
^[2] If Americans Knew – what every American needs to know about Israel/Palestine
^[3] US House rejects Goldstone report
^[4] Signatories to Boxer-Isakson Letter – Reaffirming the U.S.-Israel Alliance
^[5] Cherry-picking from Washington's Tree

* Debbie Menon is an independent writer based in Dubai. Here blog is http://mycatbirdseat.com/ and she can be reached at: debbiemenon@gmail.com

More hype about Iran?

SR Editor — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 09:21:02 +0000

By Prof. Stephen M. Walt* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Back when I started writing this blog, I warned that the idea of preventive war against Iran wasn't going to go away just because Barack Obama was president. The topic got another little burst of oxygen over the past few days, in response to what seems to have been an over-hyped memorandum from Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and some remarks by the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Adm. Michael Mullen, following a speech at Columbia University. In particular, Mullen noted that military action against Iran could "go a long way" toward delaying Iran's acquisition of a weapons capability, though he also noted this could only be a "last resort" and made it clear it was not an option he favored.

One of the more remarkable features about the endless drumbeat of alarm about Iran is that it pays virtually no attention to Iran's actual capabilities, and rests on all sorts of worst case assumptions about Iranian behavior. Consider the following facts, most of them courtesy of the 2010 edition of The Military Balance, published annually by the prestigious International Institute for Strategic Studies in London:

GDP: United States -- 13.8 trillion
Iran --$ 359 billion (U.S. GDP is roughly 38 times greater than Iran's)

Defense spending (2008):
U.S. -- $692 billion
Iran -- $9.6 billion (U.S. defense budget is over 70 times larger than Iran)

Military personnel:
U.S.--1,580,255 active; 864,547 reserves (very well trained)
Iran-- 525,000 active; 350,000 reserves (poorly trained)

Combat aircraft:
U.S. -- 4,090 (includes USAF, USN, USMC and reserves)
Iran -- 312 (serviceability questionable)

Main battle tanks:
U.S. -- 6,251 (Army + Marine Corps)
Iran -- 1,613 (serviceability questionable)

Navy:
U.S. -- 11 aircraft carriers, 99 principal surface combatants, 71 submarines, 160 patrol boats, plus large auxiliary fleet
Iran -- 6 principal surface combatants, 10 submarines, 146 patrol boats

Nuclear weapons:
U.S. -- 2,702 deployed, >6,000 in reserve
Iran -- Zero

One might add that Iran hasn't invaded anyone since the Islamic revolution, although it has supported a number of terrorist organizations and engaged in various forms of covert action. The United States has also backed terrorist groups and conducted covert ops during this same period, and attacked a number of other countries, including Panama, Grenada, Serbia, Sudan, Somalia, Iraq (twice), and Afghanistan.

By any objective measure, therefore, Iran isn't even on the same page with the United States in terms of latent power, deployed capabilities, or the willingness to use them. Indeed, Iran is significantly weaker than Israel, which has roughly the same toal of regular plus reserve military personnel and vastly superior training. Israel also has more numerous and modern armored and air capabilities and a sizeable nuclear weapons stockpile of its own. Iran has no powerful allies, scant power-projection capability, and little ideological appeal. Despite what some alarmists think, Iran is not the reincarnation of Nazi Germany and not about to unleash some new Holocaust against anyone.

The more one thinks about it, the odder our obsession with Iran appears. It's a pretty unloveable regime, to be sure, but given Iran's actual capabilities, why do U.S. leaders devote so much time and effort trying to corral support for more economic sanctions (which aren't going to work) or devising strategies to "contain" an Iran that shows no sign of being able to expand in any meaningful way? Even the danger that a future Iranian bomb might set off some sort of regional arms race seems exaggerated, according to an unpublished dissertation by Philipp Bleek of Georgetown University. Bleek's thesis examines the history of nuclear acquisition since 1945 and finds little evidence for so-called "reactive proliferation." If he's right, it suggests that Iran's neighbors might not follow suit even if Iran did "go nuclear" at some point in the future).

Obviously, simple bean counts like the one presented above do not tell you everything about the two countries, or the political challenges that Iran might pose to its neighbors. Iran has engaged in a number of actions that are cause for concern (such as its support for Hezbollah in Lebanon), and it has some capacity to influence events in Iraq and Afghanistan. Moreover, as we have learned in both of these countries, objectively weaker adversaries can still mount serious counterinsurgency operations against a foreign occupier. And if attacked, Iran does have various retaliatory options that we would find unpleasant, such as attacking shipping in the Persian Gulf. So Iran's present weakness does not imply that the United States can go ahead and bomb it with impunity.

What it does mean is that we ought to keep this relatively minor "threat" in perspective, and not allow the usual threat-inflators to stampede us into another unnecessary war. My impression is that Admiral Mullen and Sec Def Gates understand this. I hope I'm right. But I'm still puzzled as to why the Obama administration hasn't tried the one strategy that might actually get somewhere: take the threat of force off the table, tell Tehran that we are willing to talk seriously about the issues that bother them (as well as the items that bother us), and try to cut a deal whereby Iran ratifies and implements the NPT Additional Protocol and is then permitted to enrich uranium for legitimate purposes (but not to weapons-grade levels). It might not work, of course, but neither will our present course of action or the "last resort" that Mullen referred to last weekend.

* Prof. Stephen M. Walt is the Robert and Renée Belfer professor of international affairs at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. Professor Walt is the author of Taming American Power: The Global Response to U.S. Primacy, and, with coauthor J.J. Mearsheimer, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy.

Source: Foreign Policy
BEHROUZ MEHRI/AFP/Getty Images

Reversing faux legitimacy

Paul J. Balles — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 16:07:22 +0000

By Paul J. Balles* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

We all know what Illegitimate children have been called, Illegitimate countries have not; especially if the foetus grew out of a media that ignores the illegitimate conception.

There are illegitimate governments. A few years ago, a blogger who didn't use his own name asked the question: "How Do We View Illegitimate Governments That Do Not Have the Consent of the Governed?"

His answer: "Well it depends."

"When they serve our purposes, we are quick to recognize them and open diplomatic relations. Even when the changeover in power is by military coup."

We Americans tried to bastardize Venezuela's president Hugo Chavez. On the other hand, we supported General Musharraf's overthrow of the government in Pakistan. Military coups actually do a job of delegitimizing the government in power.

The difficult term delegitimize, which seems to be the best way to describe the event, has been said, "To revoke the legal or legitimate status of a government."

Webster says it means "to diminish or destroy the legitimacy, prestige, or authority of a government."

Oscar Arias Sanchez defined it: "To revoke the legal or legitimate status of: 'Out of poverty sprout social instability and desperation, which delegitimize governments that declare themselves democratic'."

The example is particularly relevant to Israel and their treatment of the Palestinians. The Israeli Palestinians have been kept in poverty, even in Israel where the pretence that they are part of a democratic society is a ruse.

"Strangely ironic, the Israeli treatment of Palestinians as illegitimate under the occupation is coming around to the realization, by increasing numbers, that the illegitimate party is Israel."

What will be done to delegitimize Israel?

"The campaign, involving boycotts, protests and calls for divestment..." said the Israeli Reut Institute. The Institute predicted where and who would be involved.

In a summary of their report, the Reut Institute said the international effort--dominated by left-wing activists and non-governmental organizations in London, Toronto, Brussels, Madrid and the San Francisco-Oakland area--seeks to "turn Israel into a pariah state by undermining its moral legitimacy and ultimately aspiring towards eliminating the 'Zionist entity..."

Several novel events, apart from the campaigns to delegitimize Israel have taken place recently, forcing media attention. Two top military men--Centcom head General David Petraeus and Joint Chief of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen have both questioned Israel's usefulness to the United States.

In the past, the Zionist controlled US media was able to ignore critical statements about Israel by retired generals and admirals. However, both Petraeus and Mullen are frontline commanders. When they say that the American relationship with Israel harms American interests, the media has to listen and report it.

Second, leading figures in the US administration--the President, Vice President and Secretary of State finally stood up briefly to Israel when Israel flaunted settlement expansion in American faces. The settlements have been considered the most illegitimate activity of the Israeli government. The media couldn't avoid reporting Israel's insulting behaviour.

Third, while the American public has resisted calls for war with Iran, the Israeli hawks and American Zionists have continued their propaganda campaigns for preemptive bombing. The public has grown tired of the Israeli self-serving propaganda that could drag America, with the consent of a Zionist controlled Congress, into another Mideast war.

Last, a number of respected leaders and scholars have spoken out against Israel's misadventures. Former President Jimmy Carter has persuaded a number of Americans that Israel is an apartheid state, whether he intended that result or not.

In addition to Carter, two leading scholars, political science professor John Mearshimer of the University of Chicago and Stephen Walt, Professor of International Affairs at Harvard University have decried The Israeli Lobby (AIPAC) and US Foreign Policy.

The Goldstone report, by a South African Jewish judge, on the responsibility of Israel for the carnage in Gaza has, as Richard Falk noted, "...challenged the UN to impose accountability on the Israeli political and military leadership for their alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity."

Thus the ground for delegitimization is fertile. What can be done? Richard Falk has observed, "by boycotting cultural and academic activities, by disrupting trade relations through divestment moves or through refusals to load and unload ships and planes carrying cargo to or from Israel, and by pressuring governments to impose economic sanctions."

Meanwhile, the Reut report in Israel is preparing the Israelis for a counter campaign, something that Zionist organizations in both Israel and America have mastered. They start with a warning that implies the old anti-Semitism label.

Their report says these "Hubs of delegitimization...are places that combine an internal dynamic of strong fundamental anti-Israeli activity that stretches far beyond legitimate criticism of Israeli policies, with a strong global impact..."

The reasoning for the choices of venues? The Institute says, "These hubs are usually global metropolises that concentrate international media, leading judicial institutions, major academic centres, international NGOs and human rights organizations."

What will the Zionists do to counter the delegitimization efforts? Remember, they are the greatest distorters of truth ever to subjugate the world's media.

They will create comparisons designed to mislead: Reut said there is a "coalescence" between "two parallel processes" - the so-called delegitimization forces, such as NGOs and leftist organizations, and the militant Islamist efforts led by groups like Hamas and Hezbollah.

Since they have already portrayed Hamas and Hezbollah as scoundrels and terrorists, this ploy will transfer those negative images to the organizations involved in delegitimization efforts.

They have already recommended that Mossad, Israel's spy agency, become involved. The Reut Think Tank recommends that Mossad "intelligence agents should, in addition to passing on information to decision-makers on crucial issues like global terrorism and the Iranian nuclear program also pay closer attention to perceived attacks on Israel's legitimacy."

What will Zionists do to try to defeat the efforts to delegitimize Israel? As usual, they will ignore or deny any criticism of Israel. They will repeat every slogan or line that has ever conjured up sympathy for Israel.

They will advise Israeli spokespersons on what to say against any of the measures questioning the legitimacy of Israel. They have been at this for decades. The spokespersons will advise political commentators and members of Congress so they all take the same lines.

Israeli spokespeople will dismiss the assumption that Israel is like South Africa as inherently anti-Zionist and racist. They will claim it assumes that the Jewish people have no right to self-determination.

Zionists will insist that initiatives that single out Israel assume that the entire fault for the conflict is on one side, and ignores terrorism. They will argue that those who sponsor these initiatives admit that their goal is the destruction of Israel.

Israel supporters repeatedly argue that no other state is singled out for this treatment despite flagrant violations of human rights in China, Sudan, Iran, Libya and elsewhere.

They will condemn those who subscribe to delegitimizing activities, using ad hominem attacks instead of arguments against the issues. Zionists will accuse critics of ant-Semitism or of being self-hating Jews if the critics are Jewish.

The best result of delegitimizing Israel will be the attention that the media will be forced to pay to it. They will be hard pressed to give coverage to Israel's critics and to avoid the one-sided defences of Israeli misdeeds and illegitimacy.

* Paul J. Balles is a retired American university professor and freelance writer who has lived in the Middle East for many years. For more information, see http://www.pballes.com.

Prof. Stephen M. Walt – Time for George Mitchell to resign

SR Editor — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 11:34:52 +0000

By Prof. Stephen M. Walt | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

If Mideast special envoy George Mitchell wants to end his career with his reputation intact, it is time for him to resign. He had a distinguished tenure in the U.S. Senate -- including a stint as majority leader -- and his post-Senate career has been equally accomplished. He was an effective mediator of the conflict in Northern Ireland, helped shepherd the Disney Corporation through a turbulent period, and led an effective investigation of the steroids scandal afflicting major league baseball. Nobody can expect to be universally admired in the United States, but Mitchell may have come as close as any politician in recent memory.

Why should Mitchell step down now? Because he is wasting his time. The administration's early commitment to an Israeli-Palestinian peace was either a naïve bit of bravado or a cynical charade, and if Mitchell continues to pile up frequent-flyer miles in a fruitless effort, he will be remembered as one of a long series of U.S. "mediators" who ended up complicit in Israel's self-destructive land grab on the West Bank. Mitchell will turn 77 in August, he has already undergone treatment for prostate cancer, and he's gotten exactly nowhere (or worse) since his mission began. However noble the goal of Israeli-Palestinian peace might be, surely he's got better things to do.

In an interview earlier this week with Time's Joe Klein, President Obama acknowledged that his early commitment to achieving "two states for two peoples" had failed. In his words, "this is as intractable a problem as you get ... Both sides-the Israelis and the Palestinians-have found that the political environments, the nature of their coalitions or the divisions within their societies, were such that it was very hard for them to start engaging in a meaningful conversation. And I think we overestimated our ability to persuade them to do so when their politics ran contrary to that" (my emphasis).

This admission raises an obvious question: who was responsible for this gross miscalculation? It's not as if the dysfunctional condition of Israeli and Palestinian internal politics was a dark mystery when Obama took office, or when Netanyahu formed the most hard-line government in Israeli history. Which advisors told Obama and Mitchell to proceed as they did, raising expectations sky-high in the Cairo speech, publicly insisting on a settlement freeze, and then engaging in a humiliating retreat? Did they ever ask themselves what they would do if Netanyahu dug in his heels, as anyone with a triple-digit IQ should have expected? And if Obama now realizes how badly they screwed up, why do the people who recommended this approach still have their jobs?

As for Mitchell himself, he should resign because it should be clear to him that he was hired under false pretenses. He undoubtedly believed Obama when the president said he was genuinely committed to achieving Israel-Palestinian peace in his first term. Obama probably promised to back him up, and his actions up to the Cairo speech made it look like he meant it. But his performance ever since has exposed him as another U.S. president who is unwilling to do what everyone knows it will take to achieve a just peace. Mitchell has been reduced to the same hapless role that Condoleezza Rice played in the latter stages of the Bush administration -- engaged in endless "talks" and inconclusive haggling over trivialities-and he ought to be furious at having been hung out to dry in this fashion.

The point is not that Obama's initial peace effort in the Middle East has failed; the real lesson is that he didn't really try. The objective was admirably clear from the start -- "two states for two peoples" -- what was missing was a clear strategy for getting there and the political will to push it through. And notwithstanding the various difficulties on the Palestinian side, the main obstacle has been the Netanyahu government's all-too obvious rejection of anything that might look like a viable Palestinian state, combined with its relentless effort to gobble up more land. Unless the U.S. president is willing and able to push Israel as hard as it is pushing the Palestinians (and probably harder), peace will simply not happen. Pressure on Israel is also the best way to defang Hamas, because genuine progress towards a Palestinian state in the one thing that could strengthen Abbas and other Palestinian moderates and force Hamas to move beyond its talk about a long-term hudna (truce) and accept the idea of permanent peace.

It's not as if Obama and Co. don't realize that this is important. National Security Advisor James Jones has made it clear that he sees the Israel-Palestinian issue as absolutely central; it's not our only problem in the Middle East, but it tends to affect most of the others and resolving it would be an enormous boon. And there's every sign that the president is aware of the need to do more than just talk.

Yet U.S. diplomacy in this area remains all talk and no action. When a great power identifies a key interest and is strongly committed to achieving it, it uses all the tools at its disposal to try to bring that outcome about. Needless to say, the use of U.S. leverage has been conspicuously absent over the past year, which means that Mitchell has been operating with both hands tied firmly behind his back. Thus far, the only instrument of influence that Obama has used has been presidential rhetoric, and even that weapon has been used rather sparingly.

And please don't blame this on Congress. Yes, Congress will pander to the lobby, oppose a tougher U.S. stance, and continue to supply Israel with generous economic and military handouts, but a determined president still has many ways of bringing pressure to bear on recalcitrant clients. The problem is that Obama refused to use any of them.

When Netanyahu dug in his heels and refused a complete settlement freeze -- itself a rather innocuous demand if Israel preferred peace to land -- did Obama describe the settlements as "illegal" and contrary to international law? Of course not. Did he fire a warning shot by instructing the Department of Justice to crack down on tax-deductible contributions to settler organizations? Nope. Did he tell Secretary of Defense Robert Gates to signal his irritation by curtailing U.S. purchases of Israeli arms, downgrading various forms of "strategic cooperation," or canceling a military exchange or two? Not a chance. When Israel continued to evict Palestinians from their homes and announced new settlement construction in East Jerusalem and the West Bank in August, did Obama remind Netanyahu of his dependence on U.S. support by telling U.S. officials to say a few positive things about the Goldstone Report and to use its release as an opportunity to underscore the need for a genuine peace? Hardly; instead, the administration rewarded Netanyau's intransigence by condemning Goldstone and praising Netanyahu for "unprecedented" concessions. (The "concessions," by the way, was an announcement that Israel would freeze settlement expansion in the West Bank "temporarily" while continuing it in East Jerusalem. In other words, they'll just take the land a bit more slowly).

Like the Clinton and Bush administrations, in short, the idea that the United States ought to use its leverage and exert genuine pressure on Israel remains anathema to Obama, to Mitchell and his advisors, and to all those pundits who are trapped in the Washington consensus on this issue. The main organizations in the Israel lobby are of course dead-set against it -- and that goes for J Street as well -- even though there is no reason to expect Israel to change course in the absence of countervailing pressure.

Obama blinked -- leaving Mitchell with nothing to do-because he needed to keep sixty senators on board with his health care initiative (that worked out well, didn't it?), because he didn't want to jeopardize the campaign coffers of the Democratic Party, and because he knew he'd be excoriated by Israel's false friends in the U.S. media if he did the right thing. I suppose I ought to be grateful to have my thesis vindicated in such striking fashion, but there's too much human misery involved on both sides to take any consolation in that.

So what will happen now? Israel has made it clear that it is going to keep building settlements -- including the large blocs (like Ma'ale Adumim) that were consciously designed to carve up the West Bank and make creation of a viable Palestinian state impossible. Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian Authority, and other moderate forces will be increasingly discredited as collaborators or dupes. As Israel increasingly becomes an apartheid state, its international legitimacy will face a growing challenge. Iran's ability to exploit the Palestinian cause will be strengthened, and pro-American regimes in Egypt, Jordan, and elsewhere will be further weakened by their impotence and by their intimate association with the United States. It might even help give al Qaeda a new lease on life, at least in some places. Jews in other countries will continue to distance themselves from an Israel that they see as a poor embodiment of their own values, and one that can no longer portray itself convincingly as "a light unto the nations." And the real tragedy is that all this might have been avoided, had the leaders of the world's most powerful country been willing to use their influence on both sides more directly.

Looking ahead, one can see two radically different possibilities. The first option is that Israel retains control of the West Bank and Gaza and continues to deny the Palestinians full political rights or economic opportunities. (Netanyahu likes to talk about a long-term "economic peace," but his vision of Palestinian bantustans under complete Israeli control is both a denial of the Palestinians' legitimate aspirations and a severe obstacle to their ability to fully develop their own society. Over time, there may be another intifada, which the IDF will crush as ruthlessly as it did the last one. Perhaps the millions of remaining Palestinians will gradually leave -- as hardline Israelis hope and as former House speaker Dick Armey once proposed. If so, then a country founded in the aftermath of the Holocaust -- one of history's greatest crimes-will have completed a dispossession begun in 1948 -- a great crime of its own.

Alternatively, the Palestinians may remain where they are, and begin to demand equal rights in the state under whose authority they have been forced to dwell. If Israel denies them these rights, its claim to being the "only democracy in the Middle East" will be exposed as hollow. If it grants them, it will eventually cease to be a Jewish-majority state (though its culture would undoubtedly retain a heavily Jewish/Israeli character). As a long-time supporter of Israel's existence, I would take no joy in that outcome. Moreover, transforming Israel into a post-Zionist and multinational society would be a wrenching and quite possibly violent experience for all concerned. For both reasons, I've continued to favor "two states for two peoples" instead.

But with the two-state solution looking less and less likely, these other possibilities begin to loom large. Through fear and fecklessness, the United States has been an active enabler of an emerging tragedy. Israelis have no one to blame but themselves for the occupation, but Americans -- who like to think of themselves as a country whose foreign policy reflects deep moral commitments-will be judged harshly for our own role in this endeavor.

The United States will suffer certain consequences as a result-decreased international influence, a somewhat greater risk of anti-American terrorism, tarnished moral reputation, etc.-but it will survive. But Israel may be in the process of drafting its own suicide pact, and its false friends here in the United States have been supplying the paper and ink. By offering his resignation-and insisting that Obama accept it-George Mitchell can escape the onus of complicity in this latest sad chapter of an all-too-familiar story. Small comfort, perhaps, but better than nothing.

* Stephen M. Walt is the Robert and Renée Belfer professor of international affairs at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. Professor Walt is the author of Taming American Power: The Global Response to U.S. Primacy, and, with coauthor J.J. Mearsheimer, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy.

Uriel Sinai/Getty Images

The Israel Lobby [Video]

Haitham Sabbah — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 17:07:53 +0000

A documentary which AIPAC and the Zionists don't want you to see:

For many years now the American foreign policy has been characterized by the strong tie between the United States and Israel. Does the United States in fact keep Israel on its feet? And how long will it continue to do so?

Is one allowed to question that reality, or is the pro-Israel lobby so strong, financially and politically, that the relationship with Israel is taboo and therefore unmentionable? And what happens to those who dare expose the unmentionable?

In March 2006 the American political scientists John Mearsheimer (University of Chicago) and Steve Walt (Harvard) published the controversial article 'The Israel Lobby and US foreign policy'. In it they state that it is not, or no longer, expedient for the US to support and protect present-day Israel. Together with the power shifts in Congress and the increasing doubts about the current Middle-East policy, this could become the fuse in the powder keg. Backlight talks to the people concerned in this 'new realism' debate.

The documentary sheds light on both parties involved in the discussion: those who wish to maintain the strong tie between the US and Israel (Neocon Richard Perle, televangelist John Hagee, and lobby organization AIPAC), and those who were critical of it and not infrequently became 'victims' of the lobby. Member of Congress Earl Hilliard from Alabama advocated a rapprochement with the Arab world and was promptly ousted by a political adversary who had the support of Aipac money. Historian Tony Judt, who tried to maintain that Israel was becoming a belligerent and intolerant ethno-state, driven by religion, found a lecture cancelled at the last minute. And Human Rights Watch director Kenneth Roth was personally attacked after he had criticised the violence Israel had used in the mini-war against Lebanon last summer.

Finally the question arises to what extend the pro-Israel lobby ultimately determines the military and political importance of Israel itself. Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson (Colin Powell's ex chief-of-staff) explains how the lobby's influence affects the decision-making structure in the White House. The lobby, Congress, the White House and Israel itself seem to have ended up in a suffocating embrace: will it ever change and how could it? Tony Judt and Richard Perle conclude by raising the crucial matters: what is the alternative? And what other friends can Israel count on?

Director: Marije Meerman
Research: William de Bruijn

Source: Tegenlicht - VPRO

Breaking the Taboo: Why We Took On the Israel Lobby

Haitham Sabbah — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 21:40:38 +0000

If you think that the "War on Terror" has come about because Islamic extremists "hate your freedoms," you are wrong. It is because of the unbalanced and deeply flawed foreign policy chosen my US politicians in the Middle East, which generated much of the anti-American sentiment found in the Arab world. If you ask, Why? Here's a realistic answer to your question:

Cartoon by Bendib

Eric Chinski, the editor of John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Waltâ€™s provocative new bestseller, asks the authors whether their book is good for the Jews and good for America. This interview originally appeared on the Web site of the publishing house Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Why did your article "The Israel Lobby," which was published in the London Review of Books in 2006, provoke such heated discussion around the world? James Traub wrote in The New York Times Magazine: " 'The Israel Lobby' slammed into the opinion-making world with a Category 5 force." How would you describe the reaction?

The article received enormous attention because it challenged what had become a taboo issue in mainstream foreign policy circles, namely the impact of the Israel lobby on U.S. Middle East policy. We did not question Israel's legitimacy and explicitly stated that the United States should come to Israel's aid if its survival is at risk, but we did argue that pro-Israel groups in the United States were encouraging policies that were ultimately not in America's national interest. Although the views we expressed are often discussed openly in other democracies -- including Israel itself -- they have rarely been set forth in detail by mainstream figures in the United States. The article was also of great interest to many readers because it has become increasingly obvious that U.S. Middle East policy has gone badly awry. Although a number of groups and individuals either mischaracterized our views or attacked us personally, many other readers agreed that such an examination of the lobby's role was long overdue.

Why did you feel the need to follow up the article with your book "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy"? What more is there to say?

Writing a book provided an opportunity to present a more nuanced and complete statement of our views, and also allowed us to address some of the responses to the original article. Although the article was long by magazine standards, space limitations forced us to omit several key issues and to deal with other topics more briefly than we would have liked. Events like the 2006 Lebanon war had not occurred when the article was published, and additional information about other episodes -- such as the U.S. decision to invade Iraq -- had since come to light. Thus, writing a book allowed us to refine our analysis and bring it up to date.

In particular, the book presents a more detailed definition of the lobby, an extended discussion of its development and rightward drift over time, an examination of the role of the so-called Christian Zionists, and an analysis of the controversial issue of "dual loyalty." We also offer a more detailed description of the various strategies that groups in the lobby use to advance their goals within the U.S. political system. The book also addresses the widespread belief -- as illustrated by Michael Moore's documentary "Fahrenheit 9/11" -- that oil companies are the real driving force behind America's Middle East policy, and explains why this view is incorrect.

Finally, our original article did not offer much in the way of positive prescriptions, but the book outlines a new approach to U.S. Middle East policy that would better serve U.S. interests and, in our view, be better for Israel as well. To that end, it also identifies how the influence of the lobby might become more constructive, for the good of both countries.

What is the extent of American financial, diplomatic, and military aid to Israel, and how does it compare with other states'?

Israel is the largest recipient of U.S. economic and military assistance, having received more than $154 billion in U.S. aid since its creation in 1948, and it currently receives roughly $3 billion in direct U.S. assistance every year, even though it is now a prosperous country. The United States also consistently gives Israel diplomatic support, and consistently comes to its aid in wartime, as it did during the 2006 war in Lebanon. Most important, U.S. support for Israel is largely unconditional: Israel receives generous American assistance even when it takes actions that the U.S. government believes are wrong, such as building settlements in the Occupied Territories. As former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin once remarked, U.S. backing for Israel is "beyond compare in modern history."

Isn't America's special relationship with Israel based on strong strategic and moral arguments? Isn't it important for the United States to have an ally that shares our values in a region dominated by extremism and enemies of America?

Israel is not the strategic asset to the United States that many claim. Israel may have been a strategic asset during the Cold War, but it has become a growing liability now that the Cold War is over. Unconditional support for Israel has reinforced anti-Americanism around the world, helped fuel America's terrorism problem, and strained relations with other key allies in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. The United States derives some tangible strategic benefits from its close security partnership with Israel, but it pays a high price for them. On balance, it is more of a liability than an asset.

Similarly, the moral case for unconditional U.S. support is not compelling. Israel is a democracy, but no other democracy gets the same level of support that Israel does -- and so unconditionally. There is a strong moral case for Israel's existence, which is why we support a Jewish state in Palestine and believe the U.S. should come to its aid if its survival is jeopardized. But many of Israel's policies -- especially the continued occupation of the West Bank and its refusal to allow the Palestinians a viable state of their own -- are at odds with key U.S. values. Viewed objectively, the early Zionists' behavior during the founding of the Jewish state and Israel's later behavior toward the Palestinians and its Arab neighbors undermine the myth of Israel as victim and the Arabs as aggressors.

The strategic and moral rationales for unconditional U.S. support have grown weaker since the end of the Cold War, yet U.S. support has continued to increase. This anomaly suggests that some other factor is at work.

Why do you focus on Israel and not on other U.S. allies?

We focus on Israel's policies in this book not because we have any animus toward Israel or because we regard its behavior as worse than other states'. Rather, we focus on it because the United States has long focused so much of its financial, diplomatic, and military attention on Israel. Israel is often said to deserve this support because it supposedly acts better than other states do, but we show that this is not the case. It has not acted worse than other states, but neither has it acted significantly better. Regrettably, uncritical U.S. support has led to policies that are harmful to the United States and Israel alike.

If the strategic and moral rationales don't account for the exceptional backing of Israel, what does?

The pro-Israel lobby. The lobby is a loose coalition of individuals and groups that actively works to push American policy in ways that will benefit Israel. It is not a cabal or conspiracy, or a single, hierarchical organization with a central leadership and total unanimity of views. Rather, it is a set of groups and individuals who all favor steadfast U.S. support for Israel but sometimes disagree on certain policy issues. Prominent groups in the lobby include the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL); Christians United for Israel (CUFI), and pro-Israel think tanks like the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and the American Enterprise Institute (AEI). Leading individuals in the lobby include the heads of these various organizations, as well as neoconservatives who served in the Bush administration like Elliott Abrams, John Bolton, Douglas Feith, Paul Wolfowitz, and David Wurmser, some of whom are closely associated with hard-line pro-Israel think tanks and conservative politicians in Israel, or Christian Zionists like John Hagee of CUFI and ... Tom DeLay (R-Texas).

Religious and ethnic identity does not define who is part of the lobby, as it includes gentiles as well as Jewish-Americans. It is the political agenda of an individual or a group, not ethnicity or religion, that determines whether they are part of the lobby. Thus, the Israel lobby is not synonymous with American Jewry, and "Jewish lobby" is not an appropriate term for describing the various groups and individuals that work to foster U.S. support for Israel. These groups and individuals sometimes disagree on particular issues but they are united in their belief that the "special relationship" between the United States and Israel should not be substantively questioned. They are not all-powerful and they do not "control" U.S. foreign policy. Rather, they form a powerful special interest group, which over time has acquired considerable influence over U.S. policy in the Middle East.

What are the strategies the lobby uses to influence the policymaking process and public discourse about Israel and its relationship with the United States?

The Israel lobby uses the same basic strategies that other interest groups employ. It pushes its agenda in Congress by supporting friendly candidates and legislators with votes and campaign money and by helping to frame legislation; by getting sympathetic individuals appointed to key policy positions in the executive branch; by monitoring the media and pressuring news organizations to offer favorable coverage; and by writing articles, books, and op-eds designed to move public opinion in directions they favor. These various strategies are as American as apple pie, and there is nothing illegitimate about them. Yet it ought to be equally legitimate to examine and discuss how the Israel lobby works to push its agenda in government, and to debate whether its influence is beneficial, the same way that one might examine other interest groups like the gun lobby, the farm lobby, the pharmaceutical lobby, the energy lobby, and other ethnic lobbies (e.g., Cuban-Americans, Indian-Americans, Armenian-Americans, etc.).

Do you think the Israel lobby's tactics sometimes go beyond acceptable interest-group politics?

Unfortunately, yes. Although most of the lobby's tactics are legitimate forms of political participation, some groups and individuals in the lobby also try to silence or marginalize opponents and critics by smearing them as anti-Semites or self-hating Jews. This sort of response was evident in the personal attacks directed at Jimmy Carter for writing a controversial book about Israeli policy in the Occupied Territories, and in the efforts of the American Jewish Committee and the Anti-Defamation League to prevent the historian Tony Judt from giving a lecture on the Israel lobby to a group in New York City. True anti-Semitism is loathsome and should be firmly opposed, but using this sort of accusation to silence or marginalize critics is antithetical to the principles of free speech and open debate on which democracy depends.

Why is it so difficult to talk about the role of the Israel lobby?

Primarily because of the many centuries of anti-Semitism in the Christian West, which culminated in the horrors of the Nazi Holocaust. Given this long history of sometimes violent persecution, Jewish Americans (and many gentiles) are understandably sensitive to any argument that is critical of Israel or of the political influence of groups in which Jews are central participants. This sensitivity is compounded by the memory of bizarre conspiracy theories of the sort laid out in "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion," a notorious anti-Semitic tract that was discredited long ago. Such paranoid views remain a staple of neo-Nazis and other fringe groups, however, which reinforces Jewish sensitivities even more. Given this history, some people are likely to suspect that anyone who criticizes Israel is in fact questioning its right to exist, or that anyone who examines the political influence of the Israel lobby is questioning the loyalty of pro-Israel individuals or accusing them of some sort of illegitimate activity. We explicitly reject these anti-Semitic notions, but given past experience, we understand why it is easier to talk about the influence of other special interest groups than it is to talk about the Israel lobby.

What is the lobby's impact on U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East?

In Part II of the book, we show how the lobby has encouraged the United States to take Israel's side in its long struggle with the Palestinians, and made it more difficult for the United States to help bring this conflict to a close. The lobby -- and especially the neoconservatives within it -- also played a key role in the decision to invade Iraq in 2003, although other factors (such as the September 11 attacks) were also critical in making the decision for war. The lobby has successfully pressed the Bush administration to adopt a more confrontational stance toward Syria and Iran, and encouraged it to back Israel to the hilt during the 2006 war in Lebanon.

Why are these policies not in America's national interest?

Backing Israel's harsh treatment of the Palestinians has reinforced anti-Americanism around the world and almost certainly helped terrorists recruit new followers. U.S. and Israeli policy also led directly to Hamas' growing popularity and its victory in the Palestinian elections, which made a difficult situation worse and a long-term peace settlement even more elusive. The Iraq war is a strategic disaster that has damaged America's standing and strengthened Iran's regional position, and now provides other terrorists with an ideal training ground. The Lebanon war enhanced Hezbollah's position, weakened the pro-American Siniora government in Beirut, and further tarnished America's image throughout the region. A hard-line approach to Iran helped bring President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to power but failed to halt Iran's nuclear ambitions, and threatening Syria led Damascus to stop helping the United States against al Qaeda. None of these developments has been good for the United States.

What is the impact on Israel's long-term interests?

U.S. aid has indirectly subsidized Israel's attempt to colonize the Occupied Territories, a policy that many Israelis now see as a strategic and moral disaster. Yet the lobby has made it effectively impossible for Washington to convince the Israeli government to abandon this misguided policy. The lobby's influence has also made it harder for the United States to persuade Israel to seize opportunities -- such as a peace treaty with Syria, the 2002 Saudi peace initiative, or full and complete implementation of the Oslo agreements -- that would have saved Israeli lives and shrunk the number of enemies it still faces. The invasion of Iraq -- which Israel and the lobby both supported -- turned out to be a major boon for Iran, the country many Israelis fear most. And by pressing Congress and the Bush administration to back Israel's ill-conceived response to Hezbollah in the summer of 2006, the lobby unwittingly facilitated a policy that damaged Israel significantly.

Do you think the upcoming 2008 presidential campaign will provide a chance for the Israel lobby's influence to be discussed?

Regrettably, no. The candidates will undoubtedly disagree on a wide array of domestic and foreign-policy issues: health care, education, taxes, the environment, what to do in Iraq, how to deal with a rising China, etc. But the one issue on which there will be virtually no debate is the question of whether the United States should continue to give Israel unconditional backing. Even though almost everyone recognizes that U.S Middle East policy is a disaster, no serious candidate is going to suggest anything other than steadfast and largely unconditional support for Israel. Indeed, all the major candidates (Clinton, Edwards, McCain, Obama, Romney, etc.) have already expressed their strong and uncritical backing for Israel, even though the campaign is just getting underway. Not only is this situation bad for the United States, it is also not good for Israel. The United States would be a better ally if its leaders could make support for Israel more conditional and if they could give their Israeli counterparts more candid and critical advice without facing a backlash from the Israel lobby.

What in your view should the U.S.-Israel relationship look like? What should the lobby's role be?

The United States has three strategic interests in the Middle East: maintaining the flow of Persian Gulf oil to world markets, discouraging the spread of WMD, and reducing anti-American terrorism from this region. It is also committed to Israel's survival, but on moral rather than strategic grounds. Instead of garrisoning the region with its own troops or attempting to transform the entire region, the United States should act as an "offshore balancer." The United States does not need to control the Middle East itself; it merely needs to prevent any hostile power(s) from controlling the region. To do that, Washington should strive to maintain a balance of power in the region and intervene with its own forces only when local actors cannot uphold the balance themselves, as it did when it liberated Kuwait in 1991.

As part of this strategy, the United States would begin to treat Israel like a normal state, rather than as the 51st state. Israel is nearly 60 years old, increasingly prosperous, and now officially recognized by the vast majority of the world's nations. The United States should deal with it as it does with other democracies: backing Israel when its policies are consistent with U.S. interests, but opposing it when they are not. And the United States should use its considerable leverage to fashion a durable two-state solution, as it is the only outcome that is consistent with U.S. values and with the long-term interests of both America and Israel.

Achieving this shift will require overcoming the opposition from the most powerful groups in the lobby, like AIPAC and the Conference of Presidents. This goal can be achieved if there is a more open debate about the lobby's role in shaping U.S. policy, more widespread awareness of Israel's history and behavior, and a candid discussion within America's pro-Israel community. Instead of trying to weaken or counter the lobby, one may hope that moderate pro-Israel organizations will become more influential, and that the leading organizations realize that the hard-line positions they have espoused in the past have been counterproductive. If these groups can bring their impressive influence to bear in more constructive ways, U.S. policy will be more in line with its national interests, and better for Israel too.

Podcast: AIPAC & US Foreign Policy – Debate between James Petras & Norman Finkelstein

Haitham Sabbah — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 10:33:31 +0000

What is the power and influence of "The Lobby" (a.k.a. AIPAC) on US Foreign Policy?

The explanation for the support is to be found in the activities of the Israel Lobby, also known as the Jewish Lobby, or as AIPAC (the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee), which uses its formidable influence to shape American foreign policy in accordance with Israeli interests. This opinion has most recently been associated with an article published in the London Book Review, co-authored by Professor Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Professor Walt of Harvard University (more about this here and here).

Here is a debate on this subject between Norman Finkelstein (professor of political science at De Paul University) and James Petras (an Emeritus Professor of sociology at SUNY, Binghamton):

John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt: pro-Israel Lobby influence over U.S. foreign policy on the recent Israel-Lebanon war

Haitham Sabbah — Fri, 01 Sep 2006 23:52:48 +0000

The two scholars who created a controversy earlier this year when they wrote that the pro-Israel lobby exerted too much influence over U.S. foreign policy (I've talked about it earlier this year here) said Monday that the recent Israel-Hezbollah war in Lebanon was yet another example of what they view as a dangerous tendency. The conference on 'Israeli Influence' was organized by 'Council on American-Islamic Relations' (CAIR).

John Mearsheimer, a University of Chicago political science professor, and Stephen Walt, a professor of international relations at Harvard University's Kennedy School, said the U.S. government's unstinting support for Israel's recent war in Lebanon once again placed the agenda of what they call the Israel lobby ahead of U.S. strategic interests.

Pro-Israel lobby has warped U.S. policy Pt.1

Pro-Israel lobby has warped U.S. policy Pt.2

You can watch the whole video on c-span here.

Here's a full transcript of the Mearsheimer-Walt press conference sponsored by CAIR:

MR. WALT: Thank you very much. It's a pleasure to be here today, and I want to thank CAIR for inviting us to present the results of our research on the forces that shape U.S. Middle East policy. I think this is an important subject for all Americans and for all of the countries in the Middle East as well.

Our presentation is going to be in two parts. I'm going to begin by summarizing the main arguments in our article on the Israel lobby, and then John will apply those ideas to the recent war between Israel and Lebanon, and show that you can't really understand what happened there if you don't understand the political power of pro-Israel groups in the United States.

Our bottom line, as many of you know, is that the influence of the Israel lobby has led to policies that are not in the U.S. national interest, not in the interests of other countries in the region and, ultimately, not in Israel's long-term interest as well. We're going to try and limit our remarks to about 25 minutes apiece so there is time for comments and questions when we're done.

All right. What's our core argument? We make several big arguments in our paper. First, we just document the level of support the United States provides to Israel -- about $3 billion a year in economic and military assistance each year. That's about $500 per year per Israeli citizen, despite the fact that Israel is a relatively wealthy industrial power. That aid is largely unconditional. It's not linked to Israeli behavior. It gets its aid when it builds settlements, it gets its aid when it spies on us, when it sells American high technology to countries like China, or when it attacks civilians in the West Bank, Lebanon or Gaza.

Israel also gets consistent diplomatic support from the United States. Since 1982, for example, we have vetoed 33 U.N. Security Council resolutions that were critical of Israel. That's a total greater than all of the vetoes by all of the other Security Council members put together.

And finally, we take Israel's side in wartime, as John is going to discuss in some detail. Moreover, over time we have tended to favor Israel's side whenever peace talks do occur. This led former U.S. negotiator Aaron Miller to state, a few years back, that the United States basically had acted as Israel's lawyer during the Oslo process and, of course, has been even more one-sided under President Bush.

The bottom line here is no other country gets the same level of economic, military and diplomatic support. Now, that support is usually justified by saying that Israel is a vital strategic asset or by invoking various moral rationales. We argue in our paper that this level of support can't be fully explained by either strategic or moral arguments.

With respect to the strategic argument, Israel may have been a useful ally during the Cold War. It's possible to make a pretty good argument on that basis. But the Soviet Union is now gone, the Cold War is over, and we don't face any great power rivals.

Today, Israel is said to be a key ally in the war on terror and in our efforts to combat rogue states like Syria and Iran. But there are several big problems with this line of argument.

First, it has the causal logic backwards. We don't back Israel because we have a common threat from terrorism; rather, we have a common threat from terrorism because we have been so closely tied to Israel. That's not -- again, let me be very clear here: That's not the only reason. I am not saying that our unconditional support for Israel is the only source of anti-American terrorism, but it is a very important one. This was clearly stated in the 9/11 commission report. This was the conclusion reached by separate studies by the U.S. State Department and by the Pentagon's Defense Science Board in the last couple of years. Numerous surveys of Arab public opinion confirm their strong resentment at unconditional American support for Israel, and if you go to our enemy bin Laden and look at his statements, it's quite clear that our support for Israel has been an issue for him for quite some time. Again, not the only source of anti-American extremism, but it is an important one.

Second, although the United States does have some differences with other countries in the region, Israel turns out to be the main bone of contention between us and them. For example, last year, President Bush said we didn't want Iran to get nuclear weapons, not because it threatened to attack the United States, but, quote, "because it would threaten our ally Israel." There are a lot of good reasons why the United States doesn't want countries in that region to get weapons of mass destruction, but we shouldn't overstate that particular danger. Remember, those states could not use any WMD without being destroyed in retaliation, and that also means that threatening to use them wouldn't be very credible either. Finally, Israel's own nuclear arsenal is one reason why other countries in that area want them, and it makes it harder for us to put pressure on states that are trying to get them.

Third, and perhaps most important, Israel isn't much of a strategic asset for dealing with those problems. For example, it could not participate in the 1990-'91 Gulf War or the more recent 2000 Gulf War -- in fact, in both cases, the United States had to divert military assets to protecting Israel. The bottom line here is that unconditional support for Israel makes winning the war on terrorism harder, not easier. There isn't a compelling strategic rationale for the current level of U.S. aid.

Now what about the moral arguments? There are a set of different moral arguments justifying American support for Israel, because it's said to be vulnerable, surrounded by enemies, because it's the only democracy in the Middle East, or because it is said to have acted much better than its adversaries have. These arguments sound convincing, but if you look at them carefully, again, they can't explain why the United States gives it so much support and so unconditionally.

Let me emphasize that John and I both believe there is a strong moral case for Israel's existence, based on the long history of anti- Semitism and the tragic experience of the Holocaust. And we also believe the United States should help protect Israel if its survival were in jeopardy. But Israel's existence is, fortunately, not in jeopardy. It's the dominant military power in the Middle East; it has several hundred nuclear weapons of its own. It is not going to be erased from the pages of history, no matter what some Islamic radicals or what Iran's president might say. And let me be very clear about this: John and I think this is a good thing. Israel does have some security problems, but the taproot of those problems is its failure to achieve a just peace with the Palestinians. Israeli defense forces are not all-powerful, but Hezbollah, Hamas or Iran couldn't conquer Israel today or in the foreseeable future.

What about the rest of the moral case? It's true that Israel is a democracy, but that doesn't explain why we give it so much aid and so unconditionally. There are lots of democracies in the world, but none of them gets the kind of support that Israel does. And there are some aspects of Israeli democracy that are at odds with core U.S. values. The United States is a liberal democracy, a melting pot where all ethnic and religious groups are supposed to have equal status. Israel, on the other hand, was explicitly founded as a Jewish state. Its non-Jewish population is treated as a second-class citizenry. It also denies political rights to the several million Palestinians it has under its control. So Israel is a vibrant democracy, but only for part of its people. And my point, by the way, is not to single out Israel for criticism or to say that Israeli democracy is in some way wrong -- simply to point out that its democratic character cannot explain why we give it so much help.

Finally, one cannot justify U.S. support by claiming that Israel has behaved better than the Palestinians. I'm not going to go into the details here, but a fair-minded look at the historical record shows that both sides have been guilty of terrorism, of wartime atrocities, and a great deal of brutal behavior. To be clear, we think Palestinian terrorism is wrong and that it has been counterproductive.

But the Zionists also used terrorism in their own struggle to gain a state, and Israel's treatment of its Palestinian subjects today is morally indefensible. And you don't have to take my word for it. Just ask respected human rights organizations like Save the Children, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International or the Israeli group B'Tselem. And plenty of Israelis, including former heads of Shin Bet, Israel's domestic security organization, would agree with that.

Now once again, we are not saying that Israel has acted worse than other countries have. But neither has it acted any better, and one cannot explain U.S. support on this basis. So how are we to explain it? The answer is the political influence of the Israel lobby.

We define the lobby as a loose coalition of individuals and groups who work to shape U.S. policy in a pro-Israel direction. It is not a centralized movement with a single headquarters. There are lots of differences within different organizations in it. It is not synonymous with American Jews, because many American Jews don't care that much about Israel. Others don't support the lobby's positions. And some of the groups that work powerfully on Israel's behalf, like Christian Zionists, are not Jewish(more about them here and here). It is not a cabal, a conspiracy, and there's nothing improper or illegitimate about its activities. It's just a good old-fashioned American special interest group, and those interest groups are a central part of American political life.

So how does it work, and why is it so powerful? Well, again, in the United States, given the way our government is organized, small groups with a very focused agenda often wield lots of political power because they care a lot, because they work 24/7 and because they hold crucial swing votes. If the rest of the population is largely indifferent, those with a single focus can get their way despite being relatively small in number. Think of the power of the farm lobby, even though farmers are less than 2 percent of the American population. Think of the National Rifle Association. Think about other ethnic lobbies, such as Cuban-Americans.

Second, the Israel lobby is particularly well funded and effective. AIPAC's annual budget is almost $50 million. They have a large, full-time staff, regional offices around the country. They're very good at steering campaign contributions to political candidates, either to reward people who are pro-Israel or to penalize people who are regarded as suspect. Groups and individuals in the lobby write articles, letters, op-eds defending the U.S.-Israel relationship. Representatives of these groups talk directly to legislators, help draft legislation, meet with other government officials and, in general, work overtime to shape the public discourse in the United States so that Israel is viewed favorably by most Americans.

Now, this turns out to be easy to do because most mainstream media are strongly pro-Israel. For example, it's hard to think of any prominent pundit or commentator who's strongly critical of Israel or strong pro-Arab. But it's easy to think of lots of commentators who are openly pro-Israel.

Finally, groups from the lobby are quick to attack and smear anyone who criticizes Israel, Israel's policies or criticizes U.S. support. And other pro-Israel groups organized boycotts and blacklists against media organizations that might report something negative about Israel. They put pressure on universities to marginalize anyone who's critical. And finally, as most of you know if you're in Washington, most of the major District of Columbia-based think tanks, like the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, the American Enterprise Institute, Heritage Foundation, Brookings Institute, all tilt in Israel's direction. There are other more smaller and more specialized groups that are even more extreme in that way.

For all of these reasons, the Israel lobby is quite powerful, and this is no secret. AIPAC was ranked number two in the National Journal's survey of lobbies in March 2005 -- tied with the AARP, by the way. And it was also ranked second in the 1997 survey by Forbes magazine.

Bill Clinton said AIPAC was, quote, "better than anyone else lobbying in this town." Newt Gingrich said it was, quote, "the most effective general interest group across the entire planet." Former Senator Fritz Hollings said as he was leaving office, "You can't have an Israel policy other than what AIPAC gives you around here." And it's no surprise, therefore, that Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert recently said, "Thank God we have AIPAC, the greatest supporter and friend we have in the whole world."

Now, these comments raise an interesting question. Why was our article so controversial if we were just saying what everybody already knows? (Laughter.)

Now finally, we argued that the lobby had a powerful and negative effect on U.S.-Middle East policy. And we just have to imagine what the world and what U.S. policy might be like if the lobby were less influential. If the lobby were less powerful, the United States would have used its leverage over the last 30 years to discourage the settlements policy or prevent it completely. Every American president since Lyndon Johnson has opposed the settlements and declared them an obstacle to peace. But no president was willing to pay the political price to stop them. Instead, we subsidized them, and many Israelis, of course, now understand this was a tragic mistake. They radicalized the Palestinian population, encouraged the growth of Islamic extremism, cost billions of dollars and thousands of lives and undermined Israel's image around the world. So the lobby's influence undermined Israel's security as well as our own.

If the lobby were less influential, the United States would have adopted a more independent policy toward the peace process instead of acting, again, as Israel's lawyer. Now, people in the lobby routinely blame the failure of the peace process entirely on Yasser Arafat, even though it's clear, of course, that the United States, Israel and the Palestinians all deserve a share of the blame for the failure of the Oslo process.

But if Arafat was the problem, why hasn't the United States done anything to support Mahmoud Abbas? He was elected in a democratic election. He has recognized Israel, rejected terror and called for a negotiated settlement. Given all our problems in the Middle East, and especially our deteriorating image in the Arab and Islamic world, you'd think we would have jumped on this opportunity to try and accomplish something. What do we do instead? We give Abbas nothing. We endorse further Israeli encroachments on the West Bank instead. And what's the result? The election of Hamas, leaving everybody, including Israel, worse off.

If the lobby were less influential, the United States would have been much less likely to have invaded Iraq in 2003. This war was conceived by neoconservatives -- many of them connected in the lobby -- encouraged by many Israeli leaders and endorsed openly by groups like AIPAC.

Now, I want to emphasize here the lobby's influence is not the only reason why the United States went to war in Iraq. Indeed, the lobby could not get either Clinton or Bush to go to war by themselves, even though the neoconservatives were pushing for it from the late 1990s onward. So we don't argue that they were singularly responsible. The key additional factor was September 11th, which turned Cheney and Bush in favor of war. So without 9/11, you don't get a war in Iraq either.

But remember, neoconservatives, like Paul Wolfowitz in the Pentagon, were quick to link Saddam Hussein to September 11th, even though there was no connection, and key groups in the lobby pushed very hard to make the case for war. So we argue that the Israel lobby was a necessary, though not sufficient, condition for the Iraq war. Without the lobby, the war would have been much less likely.

And finally, if the lobby were weaker, U.S. policy towards Iran would have been more flexible and possibly more effective. For the past decade or more, a number of prominent American experts have called for a more flexible policy towards Iran, but they get nowhere because AIPAC has pushed for a hard-line approach. Iran has made several overtures to us over the past decade getting no response. They actually helped us after September 11th, and we rewarded them by putting them in the axis of evil and calling for regime change. They sent a back-channel message in 2003 which included a somewhat veiled offer to end support for Hezbollah, possibly recognize Israel. We rejected because key groups in the lobby were adamantly opposed to any opening. What result? The Iranian hard-liners get stronger, Ahmadinejad gets elected, Iran's nuclear ambitions get reinforced.

Again, the point I want to underscore here is that in all of these cases our policy has been bad for the United States and bad for Israel as well. Now I want to highlight two things I didn't say, that we didn't say in our article. We did not say that the Israel lobby was all-powerful. Let me repeat this. This is not some secret cabal that controls our foreign policy. And there are countervailing forces out there, though they are much weaker, and the lobby doesn't get its way on every single issue. But nobody who's worked on these issues in Washington would deny that it's a very effective set of individuals and organizations. And I would argue they get their way now more than they used to.

Second, we didn't accuse and don't accuse anyone of being disloyal to the United States. Rather, we recognize that all of us have many commitments and affinities to our country, to our religion, to our families, sometimes to our employers. It's entirely permissible for those different commitments and attachments to manifest themselves in politics. That's perfectly okay here in the United States. People like Paul Wolfowitz or Doug Feith and people who work for AIPAC advocate policies they think are good for Israel and the United States alike. We don't think there's anything wrong with that. But we also don't think there's anything wrong for others to point out these individuals do have attachments that shape how they think about the Middle East and how they think about American policy in that region. And we see nothing wrong with saying that the views they think are in our best interests might not be in America's best interest of that of Israel.

Now, before I sum up, I want to make just a couple of quick comments about the public reaction to our article. When we wrote it, John and I knew it was likely to be controversial. We were disappointed that much of the reaction consisted of attacks on our characters or on extraneous issues rather than on a serious discussion of our main arguments. As I said before, we really didn't say anything that was all that controversial, that wasn't common knowledge inside the Beltway. And if you've looked carefully at our paper, you'll note that most of our analysis relies on "controversial" sources like The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Ha'aretz and Forward. As I noted, again, Washington insiders in both parties are well aware of the influence that the lobby has. And so it wasn't what we said, it was rather that two card-carrying members of the mainstream foreign policy establishment with rather impeccable, even boring, middle-of-the road credentials and absolutely no trace of an anti-Semitic history, attitudes or behavior finally pointed out the elephant in the room.

So what happened? Well, there were the predictable accusations that we were anti-Semites and various attempts to smear us by associating us with people like David Duke. People who offered these charges gave no evidence to back them up, of course, for the simple reason that there isn't any evidence. There was lots of attention on a very extraneous issues, such as whether the Kennedy School, where I work, had asked me to step down from my position as academic dean. For the record, it didn't. When people did discuss the substance, they tended to misrepresent our arguments or erroneously accused us of various factual errors.

Now, John and I have already dealt with some of those charges in a letter to the London Review. We are now preparing a lengthy response to our critics that will show the various factual criticisms are without foundation. And it's also worth noting that most of these criticisms dealt with secondary issues anyway, not with the main arguments in our book.

The most peculiar claim, to us, was the claim that we were sloppy, that somehow the paper's very sloppy. What you want to ask yourself is, does this seem at all likely? John and I have between us written six books and countless articles. People have disagreed with us throughout our careers, but no one has ever said before that our work was sloppy. Is it credible to think that the two of us would tackle a third-rail issue like this one and suddenly decide to be careless and cavalier in what we did? I might add the pieced was vetted by a number of other scholars in the field. We sent drafts around to lots of people to get comments before we published it to make sure that there were no meaningful errors in it at all.

Now finally, if you then look at the people who aren't connected to the lobby and they take a careful look -- the ones who have taken a look at our claims, they tend to agree with us. Michael Massing wrote an essay in The New York Review of Books where he repeated, unfortunately, some of the bogus charges against the paper. But his bottom line is quite clear, and I quote it: Quote, "On their central point, the power of the Israel lobby and the negative effect it has had on U.S. foreign policy, Mearsheimer and Walt are entirely correct." Similarly, L. Carl Brown, a distinguished professor emeritus at Princeton, recently wrote in Foreign Affairs that our paper was neither sloppy nor anti-Semitic. Instead, he called it a hard-headed analysis that just might set in motion a useful paradigm shift in U.S.-Middle East policy. Now, needless to say, we are pleased that the conversation is starting to focus on substance.

Our country faces very serious problems in the Middle East, in Iraq, with Iran and Saudi Arabia and the tragic conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. And we are not going to deal with any of these problems effectively if we cannot discuss these issues openly and honestly and if we can't discuss all of the factors that influence our policy in the region.

Now meanwhile, outside the Beltway and back in the Middle East, there is a growing conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.

Israeli forces were once again reoccupying Gaza. Hamas captured an Israeli soldier and was launching Katyushas. And at this point, Hezbollah ambushed an Israeli patrol near the Israeli-Lebanese border which gave Israel the pretext to launch to preplanned campaign to eliminate or gravely weaken Hezbollah.

As John will now explain, this tragic and unnecessary war provides additional evidence for how the Israel lobby is shaping U.S. policy and harming the United States, Israel and Israel's neighbors.

Thank you.

John.

(Applause.)

MR. SAYLOR: I'd just like to step in and remind everybody again you have the cards for questions. Please write down your questions, pass them to the aisles and we'll have people come around and collect them.

Professor John Mearsheimer is a professor at the University of Chicago. He graduated from West Point in 1970 and has written extensively about security issues and international politics.

MR. MEARSHEIMER: Thank you, Corey.

Thank you, Steve, for your excellent presentation and introduction.

I will proceed by describing the extensive support that the United States provided Israel during the recent Lebanon war. Next, I will attempt to show that this support did not make good strategic sense for the United States and, also, that there was no compelling moral rationale for it. In fact, the opposite is the case. I will then argue that the main reason that the United States supported Israel was the lobby. Finally, I will consider two alternative arguments that Israelis and their supporters in this country sometimes employ to explain America's unconditional support for Israel during the Lebanon conflict. Specifically, I'll examine the claim that U.S. policy reflects American public's deep commitment to Israel as well as the claim that Israel was acting as America's client state in its war with Hezbollah. In short, I will argue that this administration's policy in Lebanon was not in America's national interest.

I might add that I do not think it was in Israel's national interest either. Israel would have been much better off if the United States had given it a red light instead of a green light when it proposed its plan to attack Lebanon. That way, Israel would have been forced to come up with a smarter response and would have avoided the debacle that ensued in Lebanon.

American support for Israel and Lebanon started when the Bush administration gave Israel the okay to try to smash Hezbollah at an opportune moment. It now seems clear that Israel had been planning to strike at Hezbollah for months before the July 12th kidnapping and that key Israeli had briefed the administration about their intentions. The available evidence indicates that the Bush administration enthusiastically endorsed Israel's plans for war in Lebanon.

Once the war began and Israel came in for severe criticism from all around the world, the Bush administration provided Israel with diplomatic protection. It vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution that criticized Israel, and it worked assiduously for about a month to prevent the U.N. from imposing a cease-fire so that Israel could try to finish the job with Hezbollah.

Only when it became apparent that the IDF was not going to win a decisive victory did the Bush administration and Israel accept the need for a cease-fire. During the ensuing negotiations, which resulted in Resolution 1701, the United States went to great lengths to protect Israel's interests. In fact, as the resolution was being finalized, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert called President Bush on August 11th and thanked him for, quote, "safeguarding Israel's interests in the Security Council," end of quote.

The president also frequently defended Israel's actions in public and never offered a word of criticism. John Bolton, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., defended Israel at every turn during the Lebanon war.

Finally, the administration provided Israel with intelligence during the conflict. And when Israel started running out of smart bombs, the president quickly agreed to send replacements. It was no surprise that Shai Feldman, an Israeli scholar, said, quote, "There is huge, huge appreciation here for the president."

Congress has long been the place where Israel finds its strongest support in America. And its behavior during the Lebanon conflict confirmed that situation. Democrats and Republicans competed to show that their party, not the rival one, was Israel's best friend. One Jewish activist said that he thought that, quote, "It's a good thing to have members of Congress outdo their colleagues by showing their pro-Israeli credentials are stronger than the next guy's."

In the end, there was virtually no daylight between the two parties regarding Israel, which is quite remarkable when you think of the sharp differences between the two parties on most other important foreign policy issues, like Iraq, for example.

In terms of concrete action, the House of Representatives passed a strongly worded resolution supporting Israeli policy in Lebanon. The vote was 410-8. The Senate unanimously passed a similar resolution which was sponsored by 62 senators, including the leaders of both parties. A number of prominent Democrats, including the parties' leaders in both the House and the Senate, tried to prevent Iraq's prime minister from addressing Congress because he had dared to criticize Israeli policy in Lebanon. Howard Dean, the chairman of the Democratic Party, went so far as to say the Iraqi prime minister is an anti-Semite.

Potential presidential candidates for 2008, like Hillary Clinton, John McCain, Joe Biden and Newt Gingrich, were falling all over themselves to express their support for Israel. The only exception to that rule was Senator Chuck Hagel, who expressed mild reservation about what Israel and the United States were doing in Lebanon. One can be sure that he stands zero chance of becoming the next president of the United States.

The mainstream media also stood firmly behind Israel. Editor and Publisher, a distinguished journal which covers the newspaper industry, surveyed dozens of newspapers about a week after the war began and found that, quote, "almost none of them have condemned the Israeli attack on civilian areas and the infrastructure of Lebanon."

The 24-hour cable news stations were filled with reports and commentary which portrayed Israel as a beleaguered combatant that could do no wrong.

Perhaps the situation in the mainstream media is best summed up by these words from an article in The Independent, a British newspaper. Quote: "There are two sides to every conflict unless you rely on the U.S. media for information about the battle in Lebanon." Viewers have been fed a diet of partisan coverage which treats Israel as the good guys and their Hezbollah enemy as the incarnation of evil. Not only is there next to no debate; the debate itself is considered unnecessary and suspect.

What makes America's overwhelming support for Israel so remarkable is that the United States was the only country that enthusiastically supported Israel's actions in Lebanon. In fact, almost every other country in the world, as well as the U.N. leadership, criticized Israeli policy and, I might add, Washington's unyielding support of Israel.

This situation raises the obvious question: Why was the United States so out of step with the rest of the world? One possible answer is that supporting Israel made eminently good strategic sense for the United States. However, that's not the case. The war in Lebanon undermined America's position in the Middle East.

To be more specific, the United States has three major strategic concerns in that critically important region. The first is terrorism, which is mainly about neutralizing al Qaeda, although the United States is also committed to dealing with Hamas and Hezbollah.

The second concern is so-called rogue states, like Iran and Syria, which not only support terrorism but, in the case of Iran, seems determined to acquire nuclear weapons.

The third concern is the war in Iraq, which the United States is in danger of losing.

The Bush administration's support for Israel in the recent Lebanon war complicates Washington's ability to deal with all three of these problems.

Events in Lebanon have complicated America's terrorism problem in two ways. First, it has reinforced anti-Americanism in the Arab and Islamic world, which surely will help al Qaeda find new recruits who want to attack the United States and its allies. This increased hostility towards America will also generate public support for those terrorists in the Middle East and elsewhere.

Second, the conflict has increased Hezbollah's standing inside and outside of Lebanon. Although Hezbollah does not directly threaten the United States, Washington has an interest in weakening its influence in the region. However, by supporting Israel's offensive in Lebanon, it helped make Hezbollah stronger, not weaker.

The conflict in Lebanon has also made it more difficult to deal with Iran and Syria.

While there is no question that both countries support Hezbollah, the United States has a powerful interest in weakening or breaking those linkages, as well as breaking the linkage between Iran and Syria.

Instead, the Bush administration has blindly supported Israel and has treated Hezbollah, Iran and Syria as part of a seamless web of evil. The result: One, Iran and Syria are more likely to continue arming and supporting Hezbollah; two, Iran and Syria have even more reason to keep the United States pinned down in Iraq so that it cannot attack either of them; three, Iran has more reason than ever to acquire nuclear weapons so that it can deter an Israeli or U.S. attack on its homeland.

It's also worth noting that the IDF's lackluster performance in Lebanon makes clear that it will not be of much value in helping the United States deal with this threat environment, which its actions helped create and continue to fuel. As Steve said, Israel is not a strategic asset for dealing with terrorist threats or rogue states.

As noted, U.S. policy during the Lebanon war has given Iran and Syria more reason to do what they can to make life miserable for the United States in Iraq. However, it also angered Iraqis themselves, especially Iraqi Shi'a, who feel a powerful sense of allegiance to Hezbollah because it represents the Shi'a of southern Lebanon.

The United States is obviously in deep trouble in Iraq, and it cannot afford to further alienate the local population. But that is what the Bush administration's policy in Lebanon did.

Finally, the policy was strategically foolish because it endangers friendly regimes in Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia and runs the risk of causing a civil war in Lebanon and undoing the Cedar Revolution, which President Bush did so much to make happen.

American policy also angers our allies in Europe and raises doubts about whether the United States is a reliable ally for dealing with the terrorist and proliferation threats in the Middle East, which is much closer to Europe than is the United States.

In sum, backing Israel to the hilt in its war with Lebanon was not in America's strategic interest. It is hard to disagree with Aaron Miller's observation that, quote, "There is a danger in a policy in which there is no daylight whatsoever between the government of Israel and the government of the United States."

One might concede that support for Israel had significant strategic costs, but argue that it was nevertheless the correct policy for moral reasons. Israel, so the argument goes, has the right to defend itself, and it did so in a way that conformed to the laws of war.

Let me address this line of argument. To start, there's no question that Israel has the right to defend itself. Hardly anyone contests that point, and Steve and I certainly do not. The critical issue here is whether Israel's actions were consistent with the laws of war. That's the question on the table.

The answer is no. The Israeli campaign against Lebanon had two components. The first was to destroy Hezbollah as a fighting force. Special attention was paid to eliminating the thousands of missiles and rockets that it possessed.

The second component was a classic punishment campaign. Here the aim was to inflict massive pain on Lebanon's civilian population by destroying infrastructure and killing civilians. One might think that Israel only initiated its punishment campaign in response to Hezbollah's attacks on Israeli civilians, but that would be wrong.

Remember how the war started. It began on July 12th, when Hezbollah fighters killed three Israeli soldiers and captured two more near the border between Israel and Lebanon. Israel responded by bombing Lebanon, which in turn led Hezbollah to launch rockets and missiles at towns and cities in northern Israel.

Thus, although Hezbollah precipitated the conflict, Israel initiated the deadly counterpopulation exchanges. Israeli leaders made it clear from the start that all of Lebanon would pay a severe price in the war. For example, General Dan Halutz, the Israeli chief of staff, said at the beginning of the conflict that he intended, quote, "to turn back the clock in Lebanon by 20 years." He was also quoted at one point as saying that, quote, "Nothing is safe in Lebanon." And he was true to his word.

Consider Amnesty International's assessment of what the IDF wrought in Lebanon. I'm going to read from the report. "During more than four weeks of ground and aerial bombardment of Lebanon by the Israeli armed forces, the country's infrastructure suffered destruction on a catastrophic scale. Israeli forces pounded buildings into the ground, reduced entire neighborhoods to rubble, and turned villages and towns into ghost towns as their inhabitants fled the bombardments.

"Main roads, bridges and petrol stations were blown to bits. Entire families were killed in air strikes on their homes or in their vehicles while fleeing the aerial assaults on their villages. Scores lay buried beneath the rubble of their houses for weeks as the Red Cross and other rescue workers were prevented from accessing the areas by continuing Israeli strikes.

"The hundreds of thousands of Lebanese who fled the bombardment now face the danger of unexploded munitions as they head home. The Israeli air force launched more than 7,000 air attacks on about 7,000 targets in Lebanon between 12 July and 14 August, while the navy conducted an additional 2,500 bombardments.

"The attacks, although widespread, particularly concentrated on certain areas. In addition to the human toll" -- here's the human toll -- "an estimated 1,183 fatalities, about one-third of whom were children, 4,054 people injured, and 970,000 Lebanese people displaced.

"The civilian infrastructure was severely damaged. The Lebanese government estimates that 31 vital points, such as airports, ports, water and sewage treatment plants, electrical facilities, have been completely or partially destroyed, as have around 80 bridges and 94 roads. More than 25 fuel stations and around 900 commercial enterprises were hit. The number of residential properties, offices and shops completely destroyed exceeds 30,000. Two government hospitals were completely destroyed in Israeli attacks, and three others were seriously damaged." I could go on, but I won't.

Amnesty International is hardly alone in its assessment of the damage the IDF inflicted in Lebanon. William Arkin, an American security expert and a self-proclaimed, quote-unquote, "fan of air power," wrote in The Washington Post that, quote, "In carrying out its punishment campaign, Israel has left behind a shocking level of destruction outside the direct battle zone. I hesitate to use the words 'laid to waste' and 'moonscape' in describing the condition in urban Lebanon, because the same kinds of words are thrown around so promiscuously in describing U.S. air strikes. But what Israel has wrought is far more ruinous than anything the U.S. military, specifically the U.S. Air Force, has undertaken in the era of precision warfare."

It seems intuitively clear that Israel's destructive campaign in Lebanon violated the laws of war. But that's not enough. It's important to understand the specifics of the case. The bedrock distinction that underpins the laws of war, as well as just-war theory, is between civilian and military targets.

There is no question that states have the right to defend themselves by attacking each other's military assets. However, they are not supposed to directly attack civilian targets in another state unless, of course, they morph into military targets in the course of the war.

Furthermore, when attacking an adversary's military targets, states must make a determined effort to minimize collateral damage. This is where the well-known concept of proportionality comes into play. It says that when states strike at military targets, they must make sure that there is not excessive collateral damage, given the particular value of the military target.

In short, states cannot attack enemy civilian targets on purpose, and they must take great care to avoid collateral damage when hitting military targets. Israel failed to observe either of these distinctions. There's no question that Israel purposely attacked a wide array of civilian targets in Lebanon.

The description of the devastation from the Amnesty International report makes this clear. Remember, it concluded that Lebanon's, quote, "infrastructure" suffered destruction on a catastrophic scale. That report also says at another point that Israel's bombing campaign resulted in, quote, "massive destruction of civilian infrastructure," end of quote.

In a separate study of Israel's offensive in Lebanon, Human Rights Watch -- this is not Amnesty International, but Human Rights Watch -- concluded that, quote, "Israel has violated one of the most fundamental tenets of the laws of war -- the duty to carry out attacks on only military targets."

It's also clear that Israel did not take care to avoid collateral damage in striking targets that it considered military in nature. Indeed, Human Rights Watch concluded that despite Israel's claims that it was, quote, "taking all possible measures to minimize civilian harm," end of quotes, in fact, there was, quote, "a systematic failure by the IDF to distinguish between combatants and civilians," end of quotes.

Israel and its supporters invariably respond to this charge with the claim that Israel may have killed a large number of innocent civilians, but that was only because Hezbollah was using them as human shields. The Human Rights Watch study that I just referenced, however, directly contradicts that claim.

To quote from the report, "Human Rights Watch found no cases" -- no cases -- "in which Hezbollah deliberately used civilians as shields to protect them from the retaliatory IDF attacks." In none of the cases of civilian deaths documented in this report is there evidence to suggest that Hezbollah forces or weapons were in or near the area that the IDF targeted during or just prior to the attack.

Regarding the issue of proportionality, the report also declares that, quote, "The IDF consistently tolerated a high level of civilian casualties for questionable military gain. At least one Israeli leader made no bones about the fact that Israel was violating the proportionality principle. Dan Gillerman, Israel's ambassador to the United States, said early in the war, "To those countries who claim that we are using disproportionate force, I have only this to say. You are damn right we are."

In sum, it is impossible to make the case that the United States supported Israel during the Lebanon war because it was the morally correct policy choice. If morality was the issue, the Bush administration would have condemned Israel's action in Lebanon from the start.

The principal reason, of course, that the United States backed Israeli policy in Lebanon, while the rest of the world criticized it, is the Israel lobby. AIPAC and other organizations in the lobby worked overtime from start to finish to make sure that there was no daylight between American and Israeli policy.

Four days after the war began, Nathan Gutman wrote in The Jerusalem Post: "The American Jewish community has been demonstrating wall-to-wall support for Israel as it fights on two fronts. Pro- Israel organizations raised money for the Jewish state, took out advertisements in newspapers, closely monitored the media and met with legislators and staff on Capitol Hill, policymakers in the Bush administration and influential media figures. They left no stone unturned."

There are numerous examples of the major organizations at work. Here are three of them: first, there was an effort to temper the House resolution supporting Israel by supporting language urging, quote, "all sides to protect life and infrastructure." Congressman Nancy Pelosi, the House minority leader, and Senator John Warner, among others, favored that change in language. One would think that such language would be unobjectionable, if not welcome, but AIPAC, which was the main driving force behind the resolution to begin with, objected. And John Boehner, the House majority leader, kept the proposed language out. The resolution still passed 410 to 8.

Second, Chris Van Hollen, a congressman - a Democratic congressman from Maryland - wrote a letter to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on July 30th urging her, quote, "to call for an immediate cease-fire to be followed by a rapid deployment of an international force in southern Lebanon." He also wrote that, quote: "The Israeli response has now gone beyond the destruction of Hezbollah's military assets. It has caused huge damage to Lebanon's civilian infrastructure, resulted in the large loss of civilian life and produced over 750,000 refugees. Hezbollah is undeniably the culprit, but it is the Lebanese people, not Hezbollah, who are increasingly the victims of the violence. As a result, the Israeli bombing campaign supported by the United States has transformed Lebanese anger at Hezbollah into growing hostility toward Israel and the United States."

The lobby was furious with Van Hollen and quickly moved to tell the congressman in no uncertain terms that he should never have written the letter. Van Hollen met with various representatives from major Jewish organizations, who explained to him the basic facts of life in American politics. (Laughter.) The congressman apologized saying, quote: "I am sorry if my strong criticism of the Bush administration's failures has been interpreted as a criticism of Israel's conduct in the current crisis. That certainly was not my intention." He emphasized that he would continue to be an advocate for Israel and he was talking to Jewish leaders about the possibility of traveling to Israel within a few weeks.

Still, the leader of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Washington told him that, quote, "He needs to continue to reach out to the Jewish community to reassure the Jewish community he is going to be there for Israel." The ADL's regional director for Washington said that as far as he was concerned, Van Hollen's response, quote, "doesn't undo the damage of the first letter."

The third example: Early in the war, President Bush urged Israel to be careful not to topple the democratically elected government in Lebanon, which the president had helped put in power. The lobby took issue with Bush and sent him the message that it considered his rhetoric unacceptable. For example, the Jewish newspaper Forward reported on July 14th that, quote, "The Bush administration is being criticized by some Israeli and Jewish communal officials for calling on Jerusalem not to undermine the democratically elected Lebanese government," end of quote.

Abraham Foxman, the head of the ADL said, quote, "The administrations in Western countries want to shore up the Lebanese government, but it is a misguided policy to do so - and the same holds for Abu Mazen. They feel it's better than a vacuum, but you should not support what's meaningless, and we knew from the beginning that Abu Mazen would go nowhere and that the Lebanese government would be ineffective." Not surprisingly, Bush stopped talking about the need to protect the government in Beirut.

Lest you think that I'm making this up, it's worth noting that the key organizations in the lobby have been quite open and candid in discussing their influence on U.S. policy during the Lebanon war. Indeed, it is not an exaggeration to say that they have boasted of it. For example, AIPAC's president, Howard Friedman, wrote a letter to friends and supporters of his organization on July 30th, which he began by saying, "Look what we've done." He then wrote, quote: "Only one nation in the world came out and flatly declared, let Israel finish the job. That nation is the United States of America. And the reason it had such a clear, unambiguous view of the situation is you and the rest of American Jewry." It is hardly surprising, therefore, that Prime Minister Ehud Olmer recently said, "Thank God we have AIPAC - the greatest supporter and friend we have in the whole world."

Organizations like AIPAC were not the only players in the lobby who were hard at work during the recent conflict. Journalists like Charles Krauthammer and William Kristol made the case, to use Kristol's words that Israel's war is, quote, unquote, "our war." The Christian Zionists also rallied behind Israel. The recently formed Christians United for Israel held a two-day Washington-Israel summit here in the capital in mid-July. It attracted 3,500 people and participants were encouraged to express their support for Israel by sending a loud and clear message to their senators and representatives.

The executive director of another group, the Christian Friends of Israel, offered the rather un-Christian insight that, quote, "This was certainly an unprovoked attack and Israel has every right to go in and pound them." There are also a number of individuals with deep attachments to Israel in key policymaking positions inside the Bush administration. I've already mentioned John Bolton. More importantly, the two most influential advisors on Middle East affairs in the White House are both fervent supporters of Israel. Consider Elliot Abrams, the senior director at the National Security Council, who's devotion to Israel is well established. Not surprisingly, The New York Times reported during the war that he, quote, "has pushed the administration to throw its support behind Israel."

The other key figure is David Wurmser, who is Vice President Cheney's advisor on the Middle East. Wurmser, who makes no bones about his deep commitment to Israel, is one of the main authors of the famous "Clean Break" study written in 1996 for incoming Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. It advocated that Israel end the Oslo peace process and use military force to topple regimes across the Middle East.

In sum, it is clear that the lobby played a critical role in shaping U.S. policy toward Israel and the broader Middle East during the recent war between Israel and Lebanon. Nevertheless, it did so in ways that were neither in America nor the Israeli national interest.

Now, one might argue that Washington's unyielding support for Israeli policy is not the result of the lobby's influence, as we claim, but is due to the fact that the American people are deeply committed to Israel. In other words, Israel gets unconditional support because the U.S. public demands it. This line of argument is not convincing for two reasons.

First, it is clear that American citizens are more favorably disposed toward Israel than are citizens in other democracies, but this is hardly surprising since the lobby is so successful at controlling the discourse about Israel in the United States. If there was an open and freewheeling debate about the Jewish state, public opinion here would almost certainly be more in line with European and Asian public opinion on Israel.

Second, despite the one-sided discourse about Israel in the United States, public opinion is still surprisingly clear eyed when it comes to dealing with Israel. In fact, Americans have a much more critical view of Israeli policy than government officials do. And they are certainly much more hard-nosed in how they think about dealing with Israel. Thus, it is hard to argue that the policies of the Bush administration and the behavior of Congress reflect public attitudes about Israel.

To elaborate, let's look at some representative survey data on four critical issues related to the recent war in Lebanon. On the question of who is to blame for starting the conflict, in an ABC News/Washington Post poll conducted on August 3-6, 46 percent of the respondents said that Israel and Hezbollah were equally to blame - that's 46 percent. Another 7 percent blamed Israel alone. On the question of whether Israel has gone too far in its attacks, a USA Today/Gallop Poll conducted on July 21st to 23rd found that 38 percent of the respondents said that they disapproved of the military action Israel has taken in Lebanon.

On whether the United States should support Israel or remain neutral, in a CBS News/New York Times poll conducted on July 21 to July 25th, 40 percent of the respondents said the United States should not publicly support either Israel or Hezbollah, but should say and do nothing. Seven percent favored criticizing Israel and another 14 percent were unsure what to do; 39 percent favored supporting Israel. On whether the United States and Israel should agree to an immediate cease-fire, a July 19th, 2005, CNN poll found that 43 percent of the respondents said that Israel should agree to a cease-fire as soon as possible.

In short, there's a marked asymmetry between how Americans think about Israel and the recent conflict in Israel and what the U.S. government has done. Thus, one cannot argue that the actions of the Bush administration and the Congress during the 33-day war were largely a reflection of American public opinion.

The second alternative explanation which one sometimes hears is that the United States is in fact the driving force behind the war in Lebanon and Israel is merely its client state. Israel, in other words, is a loyal ally doing the Bush administration's dirty work. There are two reasons to doubt this claim.

First, if this claim was true, Israel's bombing offensive would have been confined to southern Lebanon and great care would have been taken to protect and strengthen the Lebanese government. After all, President Bush made it clear at the start of the crisis that he did not want to endanger the government in Beirut, which he had worked so hard to install. More generally, the United States almost certainly would not have sought to set Lebanon back 20 years, as called for by Israel's chief of staff.

Second, there's actually little evidence that the Bush administration planned the offensive and then pushed Israel to execute it. In fact, the available evidence suggests that Israel had planned the Lebanon campaign in the months before the events of July 12th, which it used as a pretext for launching it. Israel undoubtedly briefed the United States about the plan and got Bush's endorsement. But giving Israel the green light is not the same as using Israel as a client state.

In conclusion, neither of the alternative explanations can account for American policy during the recent war in Lebanon, nor can one find the compelling strategic or moral rationale that explains why the United States provided Israel with unyielding support while the rest of the world criticized Israeli behavior in Lebanon. In fact, the lobby was the main driving force behind U.S. Middle East policy, as it has been since the late 1960s. The war in Lebanon has been a disaster for the Lebanese people, as well as a major strategic setback for the United States and for Israel. The lobby played a key role in enabling Israel's counterproductive response by preventing the United States from exercising independent influence.

In this case, as in so many others, the lobby's influence has been harmful to U.S. interests, but also harmful to Israel as well. Until the lobby begins to favor a different approach or until its influence is weakened, U.S. policy in the region will continue to be hamstrung to everyone's detriment.

Thank you. (Applause.)

MR. SAYLOR: Thank you very much. We have about 15 to 20 minutes for questions, so we'll get started right off the bat.

First question: How can elected officials be convinced to support a balanced Mideast policy when they do not gain benefits from standing on principle? And I'd remind our panelists that we've been asked to come to the podium and answer questions.

MR. WALT: I think this is a very difficult question, and it's a very difficult challenge because the institutions that are currently arrayed to encourage support for Israel are quite powerful and quite well funded. And if you're a congressman whose constituents don't care one way or the other, but a few of your constituents care a lot and you know that there's a lot of PAC money that will go to any of your opponents, you have trouble. So I think, at least as a first step, the thing we want to have is a more open conversation about this. That's the main reason why John and I have been doing this work. We want to try and get a conversation so that politicians who do unconditionally support Israel down the line start facing questions from their constituents as to why they're doing that. Until they perceive a political price for policies that aren't in the American national interest, they're likely to keep doing this. One way -- and in fact, I think probably the best way to try and instill that is to try and educate the American people more broadly, educate members of the media more broadly, and again, try and foster a climate where we can have an open and serious conversation about those issues.

MR. SAYLOR: Our second question: What about the U.S. Arms Export and Control Act and the Neutrality Act that bars -- excuse me, I'm trying to read someone else's handwriting -- that bars Americans and the Israeli army from attacking friendly nations?

MR. MEARSHEIMER: The problem with legislation like that is that when you talk about what is a friendly nation or what is an enemy nation, it's very easy to find spin doctors who can define any particular nation as either a friend or a foe depending on the particular circumstances. So there are real limits to what you're going to be able to do and a result of formal legislation.

I think the real key to making American policy smarter is to create a situation where American leaders are more or less independent of pressures from organizations in the lobby and can do what they think is in the best interest of the United States. And if that situation obtains, I think in most cases American leaders will do the smart thing for the United States, and I think in most cases -- certainly not all cases -- that will redound to the benefit not only of Israel but other states in the region.

I think -- and I think Steve made this point clear in his presentation -- that if the United States had been free of the lobby's influence for most of the past three decades, we would have pushed politics in the region in ways that would have created a more peaceful environment. This is not to say for one second that we would have produced nirvana in the area. Steve and I are both realists. We understand that international politics is a nasty and dangerous business. But on the other hand, I think if the United States had been more independent in its foreign policy over the past few decades, we could have gone a long way towards making the Middle East more stable than it is today, which, again, is not to say we would have made it paradise on earth.

MR. SAYLOR: Our next question: What, in your opinion, was the turning point for which AIPAC really began controlling U.S. foreign policy? Was it under Reagan?

MR. WALT: First of all, I'd object to the premise of the question. I don't think AIPAC controls foreign policy. I think again, as I said in my remarks, I think there's a very profound influence particularly on key issues in the Middle East. But I think it's a mistake to view this as some kind of either secret cabal that controls our foreign policy or that gets its way on absolutely every issue. Then, if you -- now to answer the spirit of the question, not the exact wording of the question, I think if you look historically, AIPAC begins to have substantially more influence after the Six-Day War, when American support for Israel begins to increase, and then it really takes off, I think, in the 1980s, partly because of just internal reforms within the organization -- it gets more effective; it does better jobs with fundraising and things like that; also, because it's becoming very adroit at selling this strategic ally argument, which, again, at the height of the Cold War and especially in the Reagan era, you could make a reasonably plausible case. But by the time the 1990s roll around and the Cold War comes to an end, it's sufficiently well institutionalized, sufficiently effective, and, I might add, there have been enough sufficiently well-publicized cases of congressmen having their careers ended because they advocated a position that AIPAC didn't particularly like. Then at that point, it really begins to have a very profound influence on American foreign policy.

MR. SAYLOR: Next question: You said that the U. S. gave Israel a green light to smash Hezbollah. Do you have hard evidence that the war was premeditated?

MR. MEARSHEIMER: There have been a bevy of articles that have been produced which quote prominent Israeli strategists, civilian strategists, and government insiders who make it clear that Israel feared Hezbollah's missile threat. And by the way, I think this is perfectly understandable. I think if anyone of us was an Israeli, we would have deeply concerned about Hezbollah's missile threat. So Israel was looking at this missile threat, and it decided that using military force against it made sense. I find it hard to believe that people as experienced in warfare as the Israelis could have been foolish enough to believe that air power alone could have taken out the Hezbollah missiles, much less Hezbollah.

But for some reason, they came to that conclusion, that with air power alone, Israel could lance the boil. They came up with a plan, and they briefed it to the United States in the weeks and months before July 12th.

And it was made clear to the United States that all that was needed was a pretext to launch this air campaign to deal with the missile threat. And the Israelis and the Americans and virtually everybody else understood that there was enough back and forth between Hezbollah and Israel taking place over time that an event that would eventually come up that the Israelis could use as a cover for launching this offensive.

You want to remember, I pointed out to you that it was not Hezbollah that first started bombing cities in northern Israel; it was the Israelis who first started bombing civilian infrastructure in Lebanon, because the Israelis were loaded for bear, so to speak, when the event happened on July 12th. So I think from everything we know that's in the public record at this point in time, it seems quite clear that Israel had planned this event -- this offensive before July 12th.

MR. SAYLOR: The next question is split up, with one for each of the professors. Why did Professor Walt single out Wolfowitz and Feith for blame and not their non-Jewish boss Rumsfeld? And then, the question to Professor Mearsheimer: What would have been an acceptable response by Israel to a raid on its territory and missiles hitting its cities?

MR. WALT: I singled out Wolfowitz and Feith because I think they were critical members in driving the case for war, moreso than Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld. I could have mentioned non-Jewish people like John Bolton as well, who I think is a very strong supporter of Israel and is a big advocate of going to war as well. So this wasn't a statement about being Jewish one way or the other. It was a statement of what you were supporting in terms of how to deal with Iraq.

I didn't mention, but I explicitly mentioned to Cheney and Bush on the other side, that in the first nine months of the Bush administration, it's clear from, again, what we've been able to read in the public record, that Wolfowitz was pushing for the United States to take action against Iraq, but he was unable to persuade Bush that it was a good idea and unable to persuade Cheney it was a good idea. There's even some reports -- I don't know how accurate they are -- that Bush was starting to get annoyed by this; that, you know, Wolfowitz kept bringing this up all the time, and he eventually gets told to stop because it's getting on the president's nerves. But the point is, after September 11th, then the political stars realign a little bit, and Bush and Cheney come on board. Which is why, again, we say the lobby was a necessary condition for getting the war. Absent its pressure, you wouldn't have had it. They'd been pushing it for a long time. But absent 9/11, you wouldn't have gotten the war in Iraq either. That was critical to shaping the political calculations.

MR. MEARSHEIMER: The question was what do I think would have been an appropriate alternative response by Israel.

First of all, I think that Israel probably should have used some military force against Hezbollah in response to what happened on July 12th. I think it should have been much more selective and much more limited, in large part because using mass massive military force was counterproductive. It just didn't make good strategic sense. And again, I do not understand why the Israelis themselves, given all their experience fighting in the Middle East, didn't understand this.

But I think that using massive military force the way they did between July 12th and August 14th was a major mistake. It should have been a much more limited attack, and they certainly should have ramped down their rhetoric. It was very foolish to say that the principal goal here is to destroy Hezbollah, and we're going to do that, and all we need is for the Unites States to give us another week or two to do that. Heck, the Israelis were in Lebanon for 18 years, between 1982 and 2000, and they couldn't defeat Hezbollah. Why in God's name did they think that they could defeat Hezbollah from the air in three or four weeks? This was just not going to happen.

So they should have had very limited goals, rhetorically. They should have given Hezbollah a sharp rap, and that should have been the end of it.

MR. SAYLOR: And this'll be the question that we use to wrap up our session. How can American Muslims, Arab-Americans, and people of other faiths take back our foreign policy and make it more balanced?

MR. WALT: Boy, now you're expecting me to be a real miracle worker. (Laughter.)

You know, I guess I am a big believer still in the basic roots of American democracy. And I believe that although very powerful countries like the United States can do things that are foolish for quite some time without paying an enormous price because we're big and powerful, ultimately the costs of those policies do get recognized. We're seeing the costs of one of our follies every day in Iraq now -- costly for us, costly for the Iraqi people, dangerous for all countries in the region. So eventually, reality does start to impose itself on our consciousness.

I think what all Americans of different faiths and different political backgrounds can do is demand a little bit more of your elected representatives, ask them harder questions, inform yourselves about different things that are happening in the world, don't take one side as gospel immediately, and in particular do everything you can to encourage an open and sober debate. Don't let people who have views you might disagree with get marginalized or smeared. Recognize that one of the great strengths of democracy is the fact that we can argue about issues. I think the more that that tends to happen in the United States, the more we're going to see American foreign policy on this and on many other issues revert to something that's more consistent with our broader national interests.

Thank you very much. (Applause.)

MR. SAYLOR: Ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, I would like to thank you all very much. We have two particular groups to thank, and that is our panelists for being willing to come down to Washington today to speak with us. But equally, thank you very much because while what they have to say is very important, it's also very important that people be out there listening. We appreciate it. If you would like to learn more about the organization, please visit us at CAIR.com. Thank you. (Applause.)

The Israel Lobby – Unparalleled Influence

Haitham Sabbah — Sat, 18 Mar 2006 19:57:13 +0000

Example: Pro-Israel activists block travel reform
By Ori Nir, The Forward, March 17, 2006

Jewish organizations played a leading role in defeating the effort, launched in response to the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal, to ban privately funded trips for members of Congress...[Complete article]

"What is this?" you are asking. Ok, bear with me a little please...

Dear friends,

Please read this outstanding report then sit down this weekend and write (and lobby to get published) a letter to the editor in your local papers and/or your government representative.

Poor 1st world citizens,
Sam

So I did (since my weekend is Thursday and Friday) and I must tell you, it is A MUST READ!

We all know that in the United States, discussing US-Israeli relations, as a subject for debate or investigation, or to raise the issue, is to immediately expose oneself to accusations of anti-Semitism. This is one of the most remarkable features of political discourse in the United States. But two of America's leading political scientists have now broken this taboo.

John Mearsheimer, Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago, and Stephen Walt, Professor of International Affairs at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, in a dispassionate and thorough exposition, they pulled the veil back on the "Israel Lobby", its influence on Washington and its effect on Middle East politics.

In a very long article (its 24 pages are well worth printing out) I'm posting here the abstract and an extended passage that describes the make-up of the Lobby and its operation in Congress (once you read, you will understand the example I inserted at the top of this post).

ABSTRACT
The centerpiece of U.S. Middle East policy is its intimate relationship with Israel. Though often justified as reflecting shared strategic interests or compelling moral imperatives, the U.S. commitment to Israel is due primarily to the activities of the "Israel Lobby." This paper describes the various activities that pro-Israel groups have undertaken in order to shift U.S. foreign policy in a pro-Israel direction.

"There is a moral dimension here as well. Thanks to the Lobby, the United States has become the de facto enabler of Israeli expansion in the Occupied Territories, making it complicit in the crimes perpetrated against the Palestinians. This situation undercuts Washingtonï¿½s efforts to promote democracy abroad and makes it look hypocritical when it presses other states to respect human rights. US efforts to limit nuclear proliferation appear equally hypocritical given its willingness to accept Israelï¿½s nuclear arsenal, which only encourages Iran and others to seek a similar capability."

The Israel Lobby
By John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, London Review of Books, March 23, 2006

For the past several decades, and especially since the Six-Day War in 1967, the centrepiece of US Middle Eastern policy has been its relationship with Israel. The combination of unwavering support for Israel and the related effort to spread 'democracy' throughout the region has inflamed Arab and Islamic opinion and jeopardised not only US security but that of much of the rest of the world. This situation has no equal in American political history. Why has the US been willing to set aside its own security and that of many of its allies in order to advance the interests of another state? One might assume that the bond between the two countries was based on shared strategic interests or compelling moral imperatives, but neither explanation can account for the remarkable level of material and diplomatic support that the US provides.

Instead, the thrust of US policy in the region derives almost entirely from domestic politics, and especially the activities of the 'Israel Lobby'. Other special-interest groups have managed to skew foreign policy, but no lobby has managed to divert it as far from what the national interest would suggest, while simultaneously convincing Americans that US interests and those of the other country - in this case, Israel - are essentially identical.

[...]

... if neither strategic nor moral arguments can account for America's support for Israel, how are we to explain it?

The explanation is the unmatched power of the Israel Lobby. We use 'the Lobby' as shorthand for the loose coalition of individuals and organisations who actively work to steer US foreign policy in a pro-Israel direction. This is not meant to suggest that 'the Lobby' is a unified movement with a central leadership, or that individuals within it do not disagree on certain issues. Not all Jewish Americans are part of the Lobby, because Israel is not a salient issue for many of them. In a 2004 survey, for example, roughly 36 per cent of American Jews said they were either 'not very' or 'not at all' emotionally attached to Israel.

Jewish Americans also differ on specific Israeli policies. Many of the key organisations in the Lobby, such as the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organisations, are run by hardliners who generally support the Likud Party's expansionist policies, including its hostility to the Oslo peace process. The bulk of US Jewry, meanwhile, is more inclined to make concessions to the Palestinians, and a few groups ï¿½ such as Jewish Voice for Peace ï¿½ strongly advocate such steps. Despite these differences, moderates and hardliners both favour giving steadfast support to Israel.

Not surprisingly, American Jewish leaders often consult Israeli officials, to make sure that their actions advance Israeli goals. As one activist from a major Jewish organisation wrote, 'it is routine for us to say: "This is our policy on a certain issue, but we must check what the Israelis think." We as a community do it all the time.' There is a strong prejudice against criticising Israeli policy, and putting pressure on Israel is considered out of order. Edgar Bronfman Sr, the president of the World Jewish Congress, was accused of 'perfidy' when he wrote a letter to President Bush in mid-2003 urging him to persuade Israel to curb construction of its controversial 'security fence'. His critics said that 'it would be obscene at any time for the president of the World Jewish Congress to lobby the president of the United States to resist policies being promoted by the government of Israel.'

Similarly, when the president of the Israel Policy Forum, Seymour Reich, advised Condoleezza Rice in November 2005 to ask Israel to reopen a critical border crossing in the Gaza Strip, his action was denounced as 'irresponsible': 'There is,' his critics said, 'absolutely no room in the Jewish mainstream for actively canvassing against the security-related policies ... of Israel.' Recoiling from these attacks, Reich announced that 'the word "pressure" is not in my vocabulary when it comes to Israel.'

Jewish Americans have set up an impressive array of organisations to influence American foreign policy, of which AIPAC is the most powerful and best known. In 1997, Fortune magazine asked members of Congress and their staffs to list the most powerful lobbies in Washington. AIPAC was ranked second behind the American Association of Retired People, but ahead of the AFL-CIO and the National Rifle Association. A National Journal study in March 2005 reached a similar conclusion, placing AIPAC in second place (tied with AARP) in the Washington 'muscle rankings'.

The Lobby also includes prominent Christian evangelicals like Gary Bauer, Jerry Falwell, Ralph Reed and Pat Robertson, as well as Dick Armey and Tom DeLay, former majority leaders in the House of Representatives, all of whom believe Israel's rebirth is the fulfilment of biblical prophecy and support its expansionist agenda; to do otherwise, they believe, would be contrary to God's will. Neo-conservative gentiles such as John Bolton; Robert Bartley, the former Wall Street Journal editor; William Bennett, the former secretary of education; Jeane Kirkpatrick, the former UN ambassador; and the influential columnist George Will are also steadfast supporters.

The US form of government offers activists many ways of influencing the policy process. Interest groups can lobby elected representatives and members of the executive branch, make campaign contributions, vote in elections, try to mould public opinion etc. They enjoy a disproportionate amount of influence when they are committed to an issue to which the bulk of the population is indifferent. Policymakers will tend to accommodate those who care about the issue, even if their numbers are small, confident that the rest of the population will not penalise them for doing so.

In its basic operations, the Israel Lobby is no different from the farm lobby, steel or textile workers' unions, or other ethnic lobbies. There is nothing improper about American Jews and their Christian allies attempting to sway US policy: the Lobby's activities are not a conspiracy of the sort depicted in tracts like the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. For the most part, the individuals and groups that comprise it are only doing what other special interest groups do, but doing it very much better. By contrast, pro-Arab interest groups, in so far as they exist at all, are weak, which makes the Israel Lobby's task even easier.

The Lobby pursues two broad strategies. First, it wields its significant influence in Washington, pressuring both Congress and the executive branch. Whatever an individual lawmaker or policymaker's own views may be, the Lobby tries to make supporting Israel the 'smart' choice. Second, it strives to ensure that public discourse portrays Israel in a positive light, by repeating myths about its founding and by promoting its point of view in policy debates. The goal is to prevent critical comments from getting a fair hearing in the political arena. Controlling the debate is essential to guaranteeing US support, because a candid discussion of US-Israeli relations might lead Americans to favour a different policy.

A key pillar of the Lobby's effectiveness is its influence in Congress, where Israel is virtually immune from criticism. This in itself is remarkable, because Congress rarely shies away from contentious issues. Where Israel is concerned, however, potential critics fall silent. One reason is that some key members are Christian Zionists like Dick Armey, who said in September 2002: 'My No. 1 priority in foreign policy is to protect Israel.' One might think that the No. 1 priority for any congressman would be to protect America. There are also Jewish senators and congressmen who work to ensure that US foreign policy supports Israel's interests.

Another source of the Lobby's power is its use of pro-Israel congressional staffers. As Morris Amitay, a former head of AIPAC, once admitted, 'there are a lot of guys at the working level up here' - on Capitol Hill - 'who happen to be Jewish, who are willing ... to look at certain issues in terms of their Jewishness ... These are all guys who are in a position to make the decision in these areas for those senators ... You can get an awful lot done just at the staff level.'

AIPAC itself, however, forms the core of the Lobby's influence in Congress. Its success is due to its ability to reward legislators and congressional candidates who support its agenda, and to punish those who challenge it. Money is critical to US elections (as the scandal over the lobbyist Jack Abramoff's shady dealings reminds us), and AIPAC makes sure that its friends get strong financial support from the many pro-Israel political action committees. Anyone who is seen as hostile to Israel can be sure that AIPAC will direct campaign contributions to his or her political opponents. AIPAC also organises letter-writing campaigns and encourages newspaper editors to endorse pro-Israel candidates.

There is no doubt about the efficacy of these tactics. Here is one example: in the 1984 elections, AIPAC helped defeat Senator Charles Percy from Illinois, who, according to a prominent Lobby figure, had 'displayed insensitivity and even hostility to our concerns'. Thomas Dine, the head of AIPAC at the time, explained what happened: 'All the Jews in America, from coast to coast, gathered to oust Percy. And the American politicians - those who hold public positions now, and those who aspire - got the message.'

AIPAC's influence on Capitol Hill goes even further. According to Douglas Bloomfield, a former AIPAC staff member, 'it is common for members of Congress and their staffs to turn to AIPAC first when they need information, before calling the Library of Congress, the Congressional Research Service, committee staff or administration experts.' More important, he notes that AIPAC is 'often called on to draft speeches, work on legislation, advise on tactics, perform research, collect co-sponsors and marshal votes'.

The bottom line is that AIPAC, a de facto agent for a foreign government, has a stranglehold on Congress, with the result that US policy towards Israel is not debated there, even though that policy has important consequences for the entire world. In other words, one of the three main branches of the government is firmly committed to supporting Israel. As one former Democratic senator, Ernest Hollings, noted on leaving office, 'you can't have an Israeli policy other than what AIPAC gives you around here.' Or as Ariel Sharon once told an American audience, 'when people ask me how they can help Israel, I tell them: "Help AIPAC."' [complete article]

A PDF version of this paper with complete footnotes (an additional 40 pages!) can be downloaded here.

So, maybe you can spend few minutes of your weekend to write (and lobby to get published, as Sam said) a letter to the editor in your local papers and/or your government representative?!