April 3, 2006
"…Reflexes that ordinarily spring automatically to the defense of
open debate and free enquiry shut down – at least among much of America’s
political elite – once the subject turns to Israel, and above all the pro-Israel
lobby’s role in shaping US foreign policy…Moral blackmail – the fear that any criticism of Israeli policy and US
support for it will lead to charges of anti-Semitism – is a powerful
disincentive to publish dissenting views.
It is also leading to the silencing of policy debate on American
university campuses, partly as the result of targeted campaigns against the
dissenters…Nothing, moreover, is more damaging to US interests than the
inability to have a proper debate about the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict…Bullying Americans into consensus on Israeli policy is bad for Israel
and makes it impossible for America to articulate its own national
interests…." Financial Times, Editorial, Saturday, April 01,
2006.
Introduction
Noam Chomsky has been called the US leading
intellectual by pundits and even some sectors of the mass media. He has a large audience throughout the
world especially in academic circles, in large part because of his vocal
criticism of US foreign policy and many of the
injustices resulting from those policies.
Chomsky has nonetheless been reviled by all of the major Jewish and
pro-Israel organizations and media for his criticism of Israeli policy toward
the Palestinians even as he has defended the existence of the Zionist state of
Israel. Despite his respected reputation for
documenting, dissecting and exposing the hypocrisy of the US and European
regimes and acutely analyzing the intellectual deceptions of imperial
apologists, these analytical virtues are totally absent when it comes to
discussing the formulation of US foreign policy in the Middle East, particularly
the role of his own ethnic group, the Jewish Pro-Israel lobby and their Zionist
supporters in the government. This
political blindness is not unknown or uncommon. History is replete of intellectual
critics of all imperialisms except their own, the abuses of power by others, but
not of one’s own kin and kind.
Chomsky’s long history denying the power and role of the pro-Israel lobby
in decisively shaping US Middle East policy culminated in his recent conjoining
with the US Zionist propaganda machine attacking a study critical of the Israeli
lobby. I am referring to the essay
published by the London Review of Books entitled "The Israel Lobby and US
Foreign Policy" by Professor John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and
Professor Stephan Walt, the purged Academic Dean of the Kennedy School of
Government at Harvard University. (A complete version of the study was published
by the Kennedy School of Government in March 2006.)
Chomsky’s speeches and writing on the Lobby emphasizes
several dubious propositions.
1)
The pro-Israel
Lobby is just like any other lobby; it has no special influence or place in US
politics.
2)
The power of
the groups backing the Israel lobby are no more
powerful than other influential pressure groups
3)
The Lobby’s
agenda succeeds because it coincides with the interests of the dominant powers
and interests of the US State.
4)
The Lobby’s
weakness is demonstrated by the fact that Israel is 'merely a tool’ of US empire
building to be used when needed and otherwise
marginalized.
5)
The major
forces shaping US Middle East policy are "big oil" and the "military-industrial
complex", neither of which is connected to the pro-Israel
lobby.
6)
The interests
of the US generally coincide
with the interests of Israel
7)
The Iraq War,
the threats to Syria and
Iran are primarily a product of "oil
interests" and the "military-industrial complex" and not the role of the
pro-Israel lobby or its collaborators in the Pentagon and other government
agencies.
While in general Chomsky has deliberately refrained from specifically
discussing the pro-Israel lobby in his speeches, interviews and publications
analyzing US policy toward
the Middle East, but when he does, he follows
the above-mentioned repertory.
The problem of war and peace in the Middle East and the role of the
Israel lobby is too serious to be
marginalized as an after-thought.
Even more important, the increasing censoring of free speech and erosion
of our civil liberties, academic freedom by an aggressive lobby, with powerful
legislative and White House backers, is a threat to our already limited
democracy.
It is incumbent therefore to examine the fourteen erroneous theses of the
highly respected Professor Chomsky in order to move ahead and confront the
Lobby’s threats to peace abroad and civil liberties at home.
Fourteen
Theses
1)
Chomsky claims
that the Lobby is just another lobby in Washington. Yet he fails to observe that the lobby
has secured the biggest Congressional majorities in favor of allocating three
times the annual foreign aid designated to all of Africa, Asia and Latin America
to Israel (over 100 billion dollars over
the past 40 years). The Lobby has
150 full time functionaries working for the American-Israel Public Affairs
Committee (AIPAC), accompanied by an army of lobbyists from all the major Jewish
organizations (Anti-Defamation League, American Jewish Committee, American
Jewish Congress, etc.) and the nation-wide, regional and local Jewish
federations which hew closely to the line of the "majors" and are active in
policy and local opinion on Israel and promote and finance legislative
candidates on the basis of their adherence to the Lobby’s party line. No other lobby combines the wealth,
grass roots networks, media access, legislative muscle and single-minded purpose
of the pro-Israel lobby.
2)
Chomsky fails
to analyze the near unanimous congressional majorities which yearly support all
the pro-Israel military, economic, immigration privileges and aid promoted by
the Lobby. He fails to examine the
list of over 100 successful legislative initiatives publicized yearly by AIPAC
even in years of budgetary crisis, disintegrating domestic health services and
war induced military losses.
3)
Chomsky’s
cliché-ridden attribution of war aims to "Big Oil" is totally
unsubstantiated. In fact the
US-Middle East wars prejudice the oil interests in several strategic
senses. The wars generate
generalized hostility to oil companies with long-term relations with Arab
countries. The wars result in
undermining new contracts opening in Arab countries for US oil investments.
US oil companies have been
much friendlier to peacefully resolving conflicts than Israel and
especially its Lobbyists as any reading of the specialized oil industry journals
and spokespeople emphasize. Chomsky
chooses to totally ignore the pro-war activities and propaganda of the leading
Jewish pro-Israel organizations and the absence of pro-war proposals in Big
Oil’s media, and their beleaguered attempt to continue linkages with Arab
regimes opposed to Israel’s belligerent hegemonic
ambitions. Contrary to Chomsky, by
going to war in the Middle East, the US sacrifices the vital interests of the oil
companies in favor of Israel’s quest for Middle
East hegemony at the call and behest of the pro-Israel lobby. In the lobbying contest there is
absolutely no contest between the pro-Israel power bloc and the oil companies
when it comes to favoring Israeli interests over oil interests, whether the
issue is war or oil contracts.
Chomsky never examines the comparative strength of the two lobbies
regarding US policy toward
the Middle East. In general this usually busy researcher
devoted to uncovering obscure documentation is particularly lax when it come to
uncovering readily available documents, which shred his assertions about Big Oil
and the Israel Lobby.
4)
Chomsky refuses
to analyze the diplomatic disadvantages that accrue to the US in vetoing Security Council resolutions
condemning Israel’s systematic violations of
human rights. Neither the
military-industrial complex nor Big Oil has a stranglehold on US voting behavior
in the UN. The pro-Israel lobbies
are the only major lobby pressuring for the vetoes against the
US’ closest allies, world
public opinion and at the cost of whatever role the US could play as a 'mediator’ between the
Arabic-Islamic world and Israel.
5)
Chomsky fails
to discuss the role of the Lobby in electing Congress-people, their funding of
pro-Israel candidates and the over fifty-million dollars they spend on the
Parties, candidates and propaganda campaigns. The result is a 90% congressional vote
on high priority items pushed by the Lobby and affiliated local and regional
pro-Israel federations.
6)
Nor does he
undertake to analyze the cases of candidates defeated by the Lobby, the abject
apologies extracted from Congress-people who have dared to question the policies
and tactics of the Lobby, and the intimidation effect of its 'exemplary
punishments’ on the rest of Congress.
The "snowball" effect of punishment and payoffs is one reason for the
unprecedented majorities in favor of all of AIPAC’s initiatives. Chomsky’s feeble attempts to equate the
AIPAC’s pro-Israel initiatives with broader US policy interests is patently
absurd to anyone who studies the alignment of policy groups associated with
designing, pressuring, backing and co-sponsoring the AIPAC’s measures: The reach of the Jewish lobby far
exceeds its electoral constituency – as the one million dollar slush fund to
defeat incumbent Georgia Congresswoman, Cynthia McKinny, demonstrates. That she was subsequently re-elected on
the basis of low keying her criticism of Israel reveals
the Lobby’s impact even on consequential Democrats.
7)
Chomsky ignores
the unmatchable power of elite convocation which the Lobby has. The AIPAC annual meeting draws all the
major leaders in Congress, key members of the Cabinet, over half of all members
of Congress who pledge unconditional support for Israel and even identify
Israel’s interests as US interests.
No other lobby can secure this degree of attendance of the political
elite, this degree of abject servility, for so many years, among both major
parties. What is particularly
important is the "Jewish electorate" is less than 5% of the total electorate,
while practicing Jews number less than 2% of the population of which not all are
'Israel Firsters’. None of the
major lobbies like the NRA, AARP, the National Association of Manufacturers, the
National Chamber of Commerce can convoke such a vast array of political leaders,
let alone secure their unconditional support for favorable pro-Israel
legislation and Executive orders.
No less an authority as the Prime Minister of Israel, Ariel Sharon,
boasted of the power of the pro-Israel lobby over US Middle East policy. Chomsky merely asserts that the
Pro-Israel lobby is just like any other lobby, without any serious effort to
compare their relative influence, power of convocation and bi-partisan support,
or effectiveness in securing high priority legislation.
8)
In his analysis
of the run-up to the US-Iraq War, Chomsky’s otherwise meticulous review of
foreign policy documents, analysis of political linkages between policymakers
and power centers is totally abandoned in favor of impressionistic commentaries
completely devoid of any empirical basis.
The principal governmental architects of the war, the intellectual
promoters of the war, their publicly enunciated published strategies for the war
were all deeply attached to the Israel lobby and
worked for the Israeli state.
Wolfowitz, number 2 in the Pentagon, Douglas Feith, number 3 in the
Pentagon, Richard Perle, head of the Defense Board, Elliot Abrams in charge of
Middle East affairs for the National Security Council, and dozens of other key
operatives in the government and ideologues in the mass media were life-long
fanatical activists in favor of Israel, some of whom had lost security
clearances in previous administrations for handing over documents to the Israeli
government. Chomsky ignores the key
strategy documents written by Perle, Feith and other ZionCons in 1996 demanding
bellicose action against Iraq, Iran and Syria, which they subsequently
implemented when they took power with Bush’s election. Chomsky totally ignores the
disinformation office set up in the Pentagon by ultra Zionist Douglas Feith –
the so-called 'Office of Special Plans’ – run by fellow ZionCon Abram Shumsky -
to channel bogus "data" to the White House – bypassing and discrediting CIA and
military intelligence which contradicted their disinformation. Non-Zionist specialist in the Pentagon’s
Middle East office, Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski, described in great detail the
easy and constant flow of Mossad and Israeli military officers in and out of
Feith’s office while critical US experts were virtually
barred. None of these key
policymakers promoting the war had any direct connection to the
military-industrial complex or Big Oil, but all were deeply and actively tied to
the State of Israel and backed by the Lobby. Astonishingly Chomsky, famous for his
criticism of intellectuals enamored with imperial power and uncritical
academics, pursues a similar path when it concerns pro-Israel intellectuals in
power and their Zionist academic colleagues. The problem is not only the "lobby"
pressuring from outside, but their counterparts within the
State.
9)
Chomsky
frequently derides the half-hearted criticism by liberals of US foreign policy, yet he nowhere raises a single
peep about the absolute silence of Jewish progressives about the major role of
the Lobby in promoting the invasion of Iraq. At no point does he engage in debate or
criticism of the scores of Israel First academic supporters of war with
Iraq, Iran or Syria. Instead his criticism of the war
revolves around the role of Party leaders, the Bush Administration etc… without
any attempt to understand the organized basis and ideological mentors of the
militarists.
10) Chomsky fails to analyze the impact of the
concerted and uninterrupted campaign organized by all major US pro-Israel lobbies and personalities to
silence criticism of Israel and the Lobby’s support for
the war. Chomsky’s refusal to
criticize the Lobby’s abuse of anti-Semitism to destroy our civil liberties,
hound academics out of the universities and other positions for criticizing
Israel and the Lobby is most evident
in the recent smear campaign of Professors Walt and Mearsheimer. While the Lobby successfully pressured
Harvard to disclaim Professor Walt and eventually force his resignation from the
Deanship at the Kennedy School at Harvard, Chomsky joined the
Lobby in condemning their extensive critical scholarship and meticulous
analysis. At no point does Chomsky
deal with the central facts of their analysis about the Lobby’s contemporary
power over US Middle East policy.
The irony is Chomsky himself an occasional victim of academic Zionist
hatchet jobs; this time he is on the givers’ end.
11) Chomsky fails to assess the power of the
Lobby in comparison with other institutional forces. For example top US Generals have frequently complained that
Israeli armed forces receive new high tech military hardware before it has
become operational in the US. Thanks to the Lobby, their complaints
are rarely heeded.
US defense industries
(some of whom have joint production contracts with Israeli military industries)
have bitterly complained of Israel’s unfair competition, violation of trade
agreements and the illegal sale of high tech weaponry to China. Under threat of losing all their
lucrative ties with the Pentagon, Israel cancelled sales to China, while the
Lobby looked on… During the run-up to the US invasion of Iraq, many active and
retired military officials and CIA analysts opposed the War, questioned the
assumptions and projections of the pro-Israel ideologues in the Pentagon like
Wolfwitz, Feith, Perle and in the National Security Council, the State
Department and the Vice President’s office (Irving 'ZionCon’ Libby). They were over-ruled, their advice
dismissed by the ZionCons and belittled by their ideological backers writing in
the major print media. The position
of the ZionCons in the government successfully overcame their institutional
critics in large part because their opinion and policies toward the war were
uncritically accepted by the mass media and particularly by the New York Times whose primary war
propagandist, Judith Miller, has close links with the Lobby. These are well known historical linkages
and debates which a close reader of the mass media like Chomsky was aware of ,
but deliberately chose to omit and deny, substituting more 'selective’ criticism
of the Iraq war based on the exclusion of
vital facts.
12) In what passes for Chomsky’s "refutation"
of the power of the Lobby is a superficial historical review of US-Israel
relations citing the occasional conflict of interests in which, even more
occasionally, the pro-Israel lobby failed to get its way. Chomsky’s historical arguments resemble
a lawyer’s brief more than a comprehensive review of the power of the
Lobby. For example, while in 1956
the US objected to the joint
French-British-Israeli attack on Egypt, over the next 50 years the
US financed and supplied the Israeli
war machine to the tune of $70 billion dollars, thanks largely to the pressure
of the Lobby. In 1967, the Israeli
air force bombed the US intelligence gathering ship, the
USS Liberty, in international waters and strafed to US Naval personnel killing
or wounding over 200 sailors and officers.
The Johnson Administration, in a historically unprecedented move, refused
to retaliate and silenced the survivors of the unprovoked attack with threats of
'court-martial’. No
subsequent administration has ever raised the issue, let alone conducted an
official Congressional investigation, even as they escalated aid to Israel and
prepared to use nuclear weapons to defend Israel when it seem to be losing the
Yom Kippur War in 1973. The
US defense of
Israel led to the very costly Arab
oil boycott, which brought on a massive increase in the price of oil and the
animosity of former Arab allies threatening global monetary stability. In other words, in this as in many other
cases, the pro-Israel lobby was more influential than the US armed forces in shaping US response to
an Israeli act of aggression against American service men operating in
international waters. In recent
years, the power of the Lobby has seriously inhibited the FBI’s prosecution of
the scores of Israeli spies who entered the US in 2001. The most that was done was their quiet
deportation. The recent arrest of
two AIPAC officials for handing confidential government documents over to
Israeli embassy officials has led the pro-Israel lobby to mobilize a massive
media campaign in their defense, converting an act of espionage against the US
into an 'exercise of free speech’.
Editorials and op-ed articles in favor of dismissal of the charges have
appeared in most of the leading newspapers in what must be the most
unprecedented campaign in favor of agents of a foreign government in
US history. The power of the propaganda reach of the
Lobby far exceeds any countervailing power, even though the case against the
AIPAC officials is very strong, including the testimony of the key Pentagon
official convicted of handing them the documents.
13) Chomsky, a highly reputable critic of the
bias of the mass media, attributes corporate ties to their anti-workers news
reports. However when it comes to
the overwhelming pro-Israel bias he has never analyzed the influence of the
Israel lobby, the link between the
pro-Israel media elite and the pro-Israel bias. Merely a blind spot or a case of
ideologically driven intellectual amnesia…?
14) Chomsky cites Israel’s importance for US
imperial strategy in weakening Arab nationalism, its role in providing military
aid and military advisers to totalitarian terrorist regimes (Guatemala,
Argentina, Colombia, Chile, El Salvador, and so on) when the US Congress imposes
restrictions to direct US involvement.
There is little doubt that Israel serves US imperial purposes,
especially in situations where bloody politics are involved. But Israel did so because it benefited from doing so
– it increased military revenues, gained backers favoring Israel’s
colonial policies, provided markets for Israeli arms dealers etc. However, a more comprehensive analysis
of US interests demonstrates that the costs of supporting Israel far exceed the
occasional benefit, whether we consider advantages to US imperial goals or even
more so from the vantage point of a democratic foreign policy. With regard to the costly and
destructive wars against Iraq, following Israel’s lead and its lobbies, the
pro-Israel policy has severely undermined US military capacity to defend the
empire, has led to a loss of prestige and discredited US claims to be a champion
of freedom and democracy. From the
viewpoint of democratic foreign policy it has strengthened the militarist wing
of the government and undermined democratic freedoms at home. Israel benefits, of course, because the war
destroyed a major secular adversary and allowed it to tighten its stranglehold
on the Occupied
Territories.
The unconditional commitment to the Israeli colonial state has eroded US
relations with the richest and most populous states in the Arab and Islamic
world. In market terms the
difference is between hundreds of billions of dollars in sales versus defending
a receiver of massive US aid handouts. The economic losses far outweigh any
small-scale questionable military benefits. The Arab states are net buyers of
US military hardware. The Israeli arms industry is a stiff
competitor.
US oil and gas
companies are net losers in terms of investments, profits and markets because of
the US ties to
Israel which, because of its small
market, has little to offer in each of the above categories.
Finally Israel’s
ethnic cleansing of Palestinians and the Lobby’s effective campaign to secure US
vetoes against international resolutions puts the US on the side
of widespread, legalized torture, legalized extrajudicial executions and illegal
massive population displacement.
The end result is the weakening of international law and increased
volatility in an area of great strategic importance. Chomsky takes no account of the
geo-strategic and energy costs, the losses in our domestic freedoms resulting
directly from the Middle East wars for Israel, and even less of the rise of
a virulent form of Zionist Neo-McCarthyism spreading throughout our academic,
artistic and other public and private institutions. If anything demonstrates the Zionists’
growing power and authoritarian reach, the brutal and successful campaign
against Professors Mearsheimer and Walt confirm it, in spades.
Conclusion
In normal times one would give little attention to academic polemics
unless they have important political consequences. In this case, however, Noam Chomsky is
an icon for the US anti-war movements and what stands
for intellectual dissent. That he
has chosen to absolve the pro-Israel lobby and its affiliated groups and media
auxiliaries is an important political event, especially when questions of war
and peace hang in the balance, when the majority of Americans oppose the
war. Giving a 'free ride’ to the
principle authors, architects and lobbyists in favor of the war is a positive
obstacle to achieving clarity about who we are fighting and why. To ignore the pro-Israel lobby is to
allow it a free hand in pushing for the invasion of Iran and Syria. Worse, to distract from their
responsibility by pointing to bogus enemies is to weaken our understanding not
only of the war, but also of the enemies of freedom in this country. Most of all, it allows a foreign
government a privileged position in dictating our Middle East policy, while
proposing police state methods and legislation to inhibit debate and
dissent. Let me conclude by saying
that the peace and justice movements, at home and abroad, are bigger than any
individual or intellectual – no matter what their past
credentials.
Yesterday the major Zionist organizations told us who we may or may not
criticize in the Middle East, today they tell us who we may criticize in the
United States, tomorrow they will tell us to bend our heads and submit to their
lies and deceptions in order to engage in new wars of conquest at the service of
a morally repugnant colonial regime.
ZNet | Foreign Policy
The Israel Lobby?
I've
received many requests to comment on the article by John Mearsheimer
and Stephen Walt (henceforth M-W), published in the London Review of
Books, which has been circulating extensively on the internet and has
elicited a storm of controversy. A few thoughts on the matter
follow. It
was, as noted, published in the London Review of Books, which is far
more open to discussion on these issues than US journals -- a matter of
relevance (to which I'll return) to the alleged influence of what M-W
call "the Lobby." An article in the Jewish journal Forward quotes M as
saying that the article was commissioned by a US journal, but rejected,
and that "the pro-Israel lobby is so powerful that he and co-author
Stephen Walt would never have been able to place their report in a
American-based scientific publication." But despite the fact that it
appeared in England, the M-W article aroused the anticipated hysterical
reaction from the usual supporters of state violence here, from the
Wall St Journal to Alan Dershowitz, sometimes in ways that would
instantly expose the authors to ridicule if they were not lining up (as
usual) with power.
M-W deserve credit for taking a
position that is sure to elicit tantrums and fanatical lies and
denunciations, but it's worth noting that there is nothing unusual
about that. Take any topic that has risen to the level of Holy
Writ among "the herd of independent minds" (to borrow Harold
Rosenberg's famous description of intellectuals): for example, anything
having to do with the Balkan wars, which played a huge role in the
extraordinary campaigns of self-adulation that disfigured intellectual
discourse towards the end of the millennium, going well beyond even
historical precedents, which are ugly enough. Naturally, it is of
extraordinary importance to the herd to protect that self-image, much
of it based on deceit and fabrication. Therefore, any attempt
even to bring up plain (undisputed, surely relevant) facts is either
ignored (M-W can't be ignored), or sets off most impressive tantrums,
slanders, fabrications and deceit, and the other standard
reactions. Very easy to demonstrate, and by no means limited to
these cases. Those without experience in critical analysis of
conventional doctrine can be very seriously misled by the particular
case of the Middle East(ME).
But recognizing that M-W took
a courageous stand, which merits praise, we still have to ask how
convincing their thesis is. Not very, in my opinion. I've
reviewed elsewhere what the record (historical and documentary) seems
to me to show about the main sources of US ME policy, in books and
articles for the past 40 years, and can't try to repeat here. M-W
make as good a case as one can, I suppose, for the power of the Lobby,
but I don't think it provides any reason to modify what has always
seemed to me a more plausible interpretation. Notice incidentally
that what is at stake is a rather subtle matter: weighing the impact of
several factors which (all agree) interact in determining state policy:
in particular, (A) strategic-economic interests of concentrations of
domestic power in the tight state-corporate linkage, and (B) the Lobby.
The
M-W thesis is that (B) overwhelmingly predominates. To evaluate
the thesis, we have to distinguish between two quite different matters,
which they tend to conflate: (1) the alleged failures of US ME policy;
(2) the role of The Lobby in bringing about these consequences.
Insofar as the stands of the Lobby conform to (A), the two factors are
very difficult to disentagle. And there is plenty of conformity.
Let's
look at (1), and ask the obvious question: for whom has policy been a
failure for the past 60 years? The energy corporations?
Hardly. They have made "profits beyond the dreams of avarice"
(quoting John Blair, who directed the most important government
inquiries into the industry, in the '70s), and still do, and the ME is
their leading cash cow. Has it been a failure for US grand
strategy based on control of what the State Department described 60
years ago as the "stupendous source of strategic power" of ME oil and
the immense wealth from this unparalleled "material prize"?
Hardly. The US has substantially maintained control -- and the
significant reverses, such as the overthrow of the Shah, were not the
result of the initiatives of the Lobby. And as noted, the energy
corporations prospered. Furthermore, those extraordinary
successes had to overcome plenty of barriers: primarily, as elsewhere
in the world, what internal documents call "radical nationalism,"
meaning independent nationalism. As elsewhere in the world, it's
been convenient to phrase these concerns in terms of "defense against
the USSR," but the pretext usually collapses quickly on inquiry, in the
ME as elsewhere. And in fact the claim was conceded to be false,
officially, shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall, when Bush's
National Security Strategy (1990) called for maintaining the forces
aimed at the ME, where the serious "threats to our interests... could
not be laid at the Kremlin's door" -- now lost as a pretext for
pursuing about the same policies as before. And the same was true
pretty much throughout the world.
That at once raises
another question about the M-W thesis. What were "the Lobbies"
that led to pursuing very similar policies throughout the world?
Consider the year 1958, a very critical year in world affairs. In
1958, the Eisenhower administration identified the three leading
challenges to the US as the ME, North Africa, and Indonesia -- all oil
producers, all Islamic. North Africa was taken care of by
Algerian (formal) independence. Indonesia and the were taken care
of by Suharto's murderous slaughter (1965) and Israel's destruction of
Arab secular nationalism (Nasser, 1967). In the ME, that
established the close US-Israeli alliance and confirmed the judgment of
US intelligence in 1958 that a "logical corollary" of opposition to
"radical nationalism" (meaning, secular independent nationalism) is
"support for Israel" as the one reliable US base in the region (along
with Turkey, which entered into close relations with Israel in the same
year). Suharto's coup aroused virtual euphoria, and he remained
"our kind of guy" (as the Clinton administration called him) until he
could no longer keep control in 1998, through a hideous record that
compares well with Saddam Hussein -- who was also "our kind of guy"
until he disobeyed orders in 1990. What was the Indonesia
Lobby? The Saddam Lobby? And the question generalizes
around the world. Unless these questions are faced, the issue (1)
cannot be seriously addressed.
When we do investigate (1),
we find that US policies in the ME are quite similar to those pursued
elsewhere in the world, and have been a remarkable success, in the face
of many difficulties: 60 years is a long time for planning
success. It's true that Bush II has weakened the US position, not
only in the ME, but that's an entirely separate matter.
That
leads to (2). As noted, the US-Israeli alliance was firmed up
precisely when Israel performed a huge service to the US-Saudis-Energy
corporations by smashing secular Arab nationalism, which threatened to
divert resources to domestic needs. That's also when the Lobby
takes off (apart from the Christian evangelical component, by far the
most numerous and arguably the most influential part, but that's mostly
the 90s). And it's also when the intellectual-political class
began their love affair with Israel, previously of little interest to
them. They are a very influential part of the Lobby because of
their role in media, scholarship, etc. From that point on it's
hard to distinguish "national interest" (in the usual perverse sense of
the phrase) from the effects of the Lobby. I've run through the
record of Israeli services to the US, to the present, elsewhere, and
won't review it again here.
M-W focus on AIPAC and the
evangelicals, but they recognize that the Lobby includes most of the
political-intellectual class -- at which point the thesis loses much of
its content. They also have a highly selective use of evidence
(and much of the evidence is assertion). Take, as one example,
arms sales to China, which they bring up as undercutting US
interests. But they fail to mention that when the US objected,
Israel was compelled to back down: under Clinton in 2000, and again in
2005, in this case with the Washington neocon regime going out of its
way to humiliate Israel. Without a peep from The Lobby, in either
case, though it was a serious blow to Israel. There's a lot more
like that. Take the worst crime in Israel's history, its invasion
of Lebanon in 1982 with the goal of destroying the secular nationalist
PLO and ending its embarrassing calls for political settlement, and
imposing a client Maronite regime. The Reagan administration
strongly supported the invasion through its worst atrocities, but a few
months later (August), when the atrocities were becoming so severe that
even NYT Beirut correspondent Thomas Friedman was complaining about
them, and they were beginning to harm the US "national interest,"
Reagan ordered Israel to call off the invasion, then entered to
complete the removal of the PLO from Lebanon, an outcome very welcome
to both Israel and the US (and consistent with general US opposition to
independent nationalism). The outcome was not entirely what the
US-Israel wanted, but the relevant observation here is that the
Reaganites supported the aggression and atrocities when that stand was
conducive to the "national interest," and terminated them when it no
longer was (then entering to finish the main job). That's pretty
normal.
Another problem that M-W do not address is the
role of the energy corporations. They are hardly marginal in US
political life -- transparently in the Bush administration, but in fact
always. How can they be so impotent in the face of the
Lobby? As ME scholar Stephen Zunes has rightly pointed out,
"there are far more powerful interests that have a stake in what
happens in the Persian Gulf region than does AIPAC [or the Lobby
generally], such as the oil companies, the arms industry and other
special interests whose lobbying influence and campaign contributions
far surpass that of the much-vaunted Zionist lobby and its allied
donors to congressional races."
Do the energy corporations
fail to understand their interests, or are they part of the Lobby
too? By now, what's the distinction between (1) and (2), apart
from the margins?
Also to be explained, again, is why US
ME policy is so similar to its policies elsewhere -- to which,
incidentally, Israel has made important contributions, e.g., in helping
the executive branch to evade congressional barriers to carrying out
massive terror in Central America, to evade embargoes against South
Africa and Rhodesia, and much else. All of which again makes it
even more difficult to separate (2) from (1) -- the latter, pretty much
uniform, in essentials, throughout the world.
I won't run through the other arguments, but I don't feel that they have much force, on examination.
The
thesis M-W propose does however have plenty of appeal. The
reason, I think, is that it leaves the US government untouched on
its high pinnacle of nobility, "Wilsonian idealism," etc., merely in
the grip of an all-powerful force that it cannot escape. It's
rather like attributing the crimes of the past 60 years to "exaggerated
Cold War illusions," etc. Convenient, but not too
convincing. In either case.
NC
http://www.zmag.org/content/print_article.cfm?itemID=9999&se
ctionID=11
Many thanks to Israel Shamir
www.israelshamir.net
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