Mearsheimer, Walt bring Israel lobby controversy here

By Paul Haist

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When the World Affairs Council of Oregon announced that it would present the authors of the controversial new book “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy,” public response was so strong they had to find a larger venue.

Authors John J. Mear­sheimer and Stephen M. Walt drew a capacity crowd to the Hilton Hotel Grand Ballroom the evening of Oct. 24 to hear the pair discuss, first, whether there is a powerful pro-Israel lobby in the United States and, if so, how does it work, and, second, is the lobby’s impact positive or negative for the United States and also for Israel.

Given the intense media coverage the book has received in academic, government and Jewish circles, no one was surprised that the two academics found evidence of a highly influential Israel lobby and that they think what it has achieved is not in the best interest of the United States.
   
Walt is the Robert and Rene Belfer Professor of International Affairs at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. He holds a B.A. in international relations from Stanford University and an M.A. and Ph.D. in political science from the University of California, Berkeley.

   
Mearsheimer is the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science and the co-director of the Program on International Security Policy at the University of
Chicago. He graduated from West Point and received his Ph.D. from Cornell University.
   
Walt spoke first in Portland, making the case—not surprisingly given his second topic—that there is a powerful Israel lobby in America and then broadly outlining its methodologies.
   
His opening remarks were intended to disarm critics.
   
“When the subject is Middle East policy and you bring up the Israel lobby…there are some groups in the lobby that are quick to attack anyone who questions the policies that they are advocating,” said Walt.
   
Allowing that any discussion of modern Israel “takes place in the shadow of centuries of anti-Semitism…and events like the Holocaust,” he added, “if you talk about a powerful interest group that is mostly but not exclusively comprised of Jews, some may think you are saying there is some kind of conspiracy to control American foreign policy.”
   
He took several minutes to disavow any bias on his part and that of his colleague Mearsheimer.
   
“I want to make it clear at the outset that John and I reject every one of those various anti-Semitic conspiracy theories,” said Walt.
   
While Walt believes “there is a strong moral case for Israel’s existence, based on the long history of anti-Semitism” and that he and Mearsheimer “believe the United States should come to its aid if its survival is in jeopardy,” he stated unequivocally that Israel’s “existence is fortunately not in jeopardy today and past crimes against the Jewish people do not justify a blank check for Israel now.”
   
He said, “A lobby is defined by the political agenda it favors, not by ethnicity and not by religion.”
   
For him and Mearsheimer, he explained, “the Israel lobby is just an interest group like lots of other interest groups in the United States [whose] activities are entirely appropriate and legitimate.”
   
He continued, “We also think that the activity of the Israel lobby as it impacts U.S. foreign policy is a subject that reasonable people ought to be able to talk about openly.”
   
Only then did he turn to his stated topic.
   
He defined the Israel lobby as “a loose coalition of individuals and groups that works openly to influence American foreign policy in a pro-Israel direction.”
   
Chief among the lobby’s constituent groups he named the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the Anti-Defamation League, the Zionist Organization of America, Christians United for Israel, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, the American Enterprise Institute, The Weekly Standard and The New Republic.
   
Walt noted that the Israel lobby has been extremely effective.
   
“The late Itzhak Rabin once said that America’s support for Israel is, quote, ‘without compare in modern history,’ and he was right,” he said.
   
He noted that Israel is the largest recipient of American economic and military aid, noting that it does so in spite of the fact that it is not a poor country, and “it gets this aid even when it does things America opposes, like building settlements in the occupied territories.”
   
Emphasizing the longstanding U.S. diplomatic and military support for Israel, Walt observed also that “Israel is rarely if ever criticized by American officials, and certainly not by anybody who aspires to high office in the United States.”
   
Asking why this is so, he replied to his own question: “The usual answer is that Israel is a vital strategic asset and a country that shares our values.”
   
But Walt does not agree.
   
“If you step back and look at those arguments objectively, they don’t actually explain it very well. Israel may have been a strategic asset during the Cold War, but the Cold War is now over.”
   
He disputed also that America and Israel are always on the same wavelength when it comes to national values.
   
“Israel’s treatment of its own Arab citizens and of its Palestinian subjects is sharply at odds with U.S. values, not consistent with them at all. Nor is Israel’s behavior significantly better than that of the Palestinians,” said Walt.
   
Then he said that by its conduct toward the Palestinians Israel shares in the blame for terror attacks against America.
   
“Today, giving Israel nearly unconditional support is one of the reasons we have a terrorism problem,” said Walt.
   
He was cautious not to lay all the blame at Israel’s doorstep, but held to the view that “on balance, unconditional support for Israel is a strategic liability.”
   
The Israel lobby works in two main ways, according to Walt.
   
First, he said, it is highly effective in Washington. It helps people sympathetic to its views to get elected to office or appointed to key government jobs. It also provides incentives to politicians to embrace positions it favors. It helps to draft legislation and provides talking points for politicians.
   
He singled out AIPAC as especially effective, calling it “a highly professional organization, very effective with a large grassroots base,” but he also gave lots of credit to AIPAC’s several allies in the lobby.
   
The lobby’s second strategy, said Walt, is “to try to shape the public discourse and perceptions so that Israel is viewed favorably by most Americans.”
   
He contrasted what he said was largely favorable media coverage of Israel in the United States with coverage of Israel abroad—including in Israel, where, he said, journalists are not so uniformly favorable.
   
He attributed this difference to Israel lobby tactics.
   
“Watchdog groups like ADL and CAMERA (Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America) monitor media coverage, organize boycotts and demonstrations and letter-writing campaigns against any news agencies that publish anything critical of Israel,” said Walt.
   
He accused the Israel lobby of deliberately “smearing” those who disagree with its positions.
   
“Efforts to stifle criticism often include smearing critics by accusing them of being anti-Semitic,” said Walt.
   
He noted the comment by Martin Harris of the New Republic who said that Jimmy Carter “will go down in history as a Jew hater” for his recent book “Palestine, Peace Not Apartheid.”
   
Likewise, he noted, a critic in the Washington Post said Carter’s views were very similar to those of David Duke, the former Louisiana politician and grand wizard of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.
   
And, he said “This (anti-Semitism) was a common charge leveled at us, even though there is not the slightest shred of evidence to support the charge at all. If you read our book you will find there is nothing remotely anti-Semitic about it.”
   
Mearsheimer wasted no time in getting to what would be his main points.
   
“The lobby, working with Israel itself, has pushed U.S. Middle East policy in ways that are not in the American national interest,” he said at the outset, noting also that he believes U.S. Middle East policy is not in Israel’s best interest either.
   
He focused on how U.S. support for Israel’s policies toward the Palestinians helps fuel terrorism against the United States and the lobby’s role in the decision to invade Iraq.
   
“The conventional wisdom among Israel’s supporters in the United States is that Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians has little to do with why the United States is so hated in the Arab and Islamic world, and, more importantly, little to do with our terrorism problems,” he said.
   
He pointed to “an abundance of survey data and anecdotal evidence” that he said shows U.S. support for Israel’s “brutal treatment of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank…angers if not enrages huge numbers of people in the Arab and Islamic world.”
   
Mearsheimer called U.S. support for Israel’s policy toward the Palestinians “a major cause” of terrorism. He pointed to the findings of a State Department advisory group that concluded “Citizens of these (Islamic) countries are genuinely in distress at the plight of the Palestinians and the role they perceive the United States to be playing. Not surprisingly, that anger helps fuel terrorism against the United States.”
   
U.S. support, added Mearsheimer, “motivates some individuals to attack the United States, it serves as a powerful recruitment tool for terrorist organizations and it generates sympathy and support for terrorists among huge numbers of people in the Arab world.”
   
And while the policy of every U.S. president since Lyndon Johnson has been to oppose the building of Israeli settlements in the territories, he said, “no president has been able to put meaningful pressure on Israel to stop building settlements.”
   
The reason, according to Mearsheimer, is the influence of the Israel lobby.
   
Mearsheimer ties U.S. support for what he called “Israel’s cruel treatment of the Palestinians” to the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States. He cited “historical records” and media reports that Osama bin Laden “has been deeply concerned about the plight of the Palestinians since he was a young man.”
   
He quoted the findings of the U.S. 9-11 Commission that concluded, in his words, that “U.S. support for Israel was a major cause of the 9-11 attacks. It was not the only cause, for sure, but it was a key cause.”
   
On Iraq, Mearsheimer said, “Israel, and especially the lobby were two of the driving forces behind the decision to invade Iraq.”
   
“Now that the war has gone south,” he said, “it’s common to hear Israel’s supporters say that the main organizations in the lobby did not push for the war. But that’s not true.”
   
He quoted AIPAC Executive Director Howard Kohr who he said told the New York Sun in January 2003 that one of AIPAC’s successes of the past year had been “quietly lobbying Congress to approve the use of force in Iraq.”
   
Like his colleague, Mearsheimer was careful to distinguish the Israel lobby from the Jewish community.
   
“We are sometimes accused of saying that war (in Iraq) was a Jewish war,” he said. “Nothing could be further from the truth. We pointed out in the book as we did in the article (that preceded the book) polls taken before the war showed that American Jews were 10 percent less likely to support the war than the general American public.
   
Mearsheimer concluded his remarks with his and Walt’s view of what the U.S.-Israeli relationship should be.
   
“The United States should end its special relationship with Israel; we should treat it like a normal country; we should treat it the way we treat other democracies around the world,” he said.
   
“When Israel is acting in ways that are consistent with American interests, Washington should back the Jewish state. But when Israel is acting in ways that harm U.S. interests, Washington should distance itself from Israel and use its considerable leverage to get Israel to change its behavior, just as it would do with any other country that is acting in ways that might hurt the United States.”
   
He added that America should act as “an honest broker” in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
   
“Washington should pursue an even-handed policy towards the two sides. Particularly, the United States should make it clear to Israel that it must abandon the occupied territories and allow the creation of a viable Palestinian state on those lands.”
   
Jerusalem should be told, he added, that the United States will not tolerate “Israel’s colonial expansion in the West Bank.”
   
Also like his colleague, Mearsheimer concluded his remarks by attempting again to defend against charges of anti-Israeli bias.

“None of this is to say that the U.S. should abandon Israel. On the contrary, the United States should defend Israel’s right to exist within its pre-1967 borders with minor modifications. And, most importantly, if Israel’s survival is threatened, the United States, as Steve emphasized, (should) come to its aid.”