[Peace-discuss] Blaming the Lobby (counter-argument)

[David Green]

Blaming the lobby
Joseph Massad
March 23-29, 2006
Al-Ahram Weekly

Unless the Jewish lobby loosens its grip on
Washington's foreign policy, the US should expect a
change in its standing among Arabs, writes Joseph 
Massad

(Summary)

"The pro-Israel lobby plays the same role that the
China lobby played in the 1950s and the Cuba lobby
still plays to this day. The fact that it is more
powerful than any other foreign lobby on Capitol Hill
testifies to the importance of Israel in US 
strategy and not to some fantastical power that the
lobby commands independent of and extraneous to the US
"national interest." The pro-Israel lobby could not
sell its message and would not have any influence if
Israel was a communist or anti-imperialist country or
if Israel opposed US policy elsewhere in the world."

-------------------------------

In the last 25 years, many Palestinians and other
Arabs, in the United States and in the Arab world,
have been so awed by the power of the US pro-Israel 
lobby that any study, book, or journalistic article
that exposes the inner workings, the substantial
influence, and the financial and political power of
this lobby have been greeted with ecstatic sighs of
relief that Americans finally can see the "truth" and
the "error" of their ways. 

The underlying argument has been simple and has been
told time and again by Washington's regime allies in
the Arab world, pro-US liberal and Arab ntellectuals,
conservative and liberal US intellectuals and former 
politicians, and even leftist Arab and American
activists who support Palestinian rights, namely, 
that absent the pro- Israel lobby, America would at
worst no longer contribute to the oppression of Arabs
and Palestinians and at best it would be the Arabs'
and the Palestinians' best ally and friend. What makes
this argument persuasive and effective to Arabs?
Indeed, why are its claims constantly brandished by
Washington's Arab friends to Arab and American
audiences as a persuasive argument? I contend that the
attraction of this argument is that it exonerates the
United States' government from all the responsibility
and guilt that it deserves for its policies in the
Arab world and gives false hope to 
many Arabs and Palestinians who wish America would be
on their side instead of on the side of their enemies.

Let me start with the premise of the argument, namely
its effect of shifting the blame for US policies from
the United States onto Israel and its US lobby. 
According to this logic, it is not the United States
that should be held directly responsible for all its
imperial policies in the Arab world and the Middle
East at large since World War II, rather it is Israel
and its lobby who have pushed it to launch policies
that are detrimental to its own national interest and
are only beneficial to Israel. Establishing and
supporting Arab and other Middle East dictatorships,
arming and training their militaries, setting up 
their secret police apparatuses and training them in
effective torture methods and counter-insurgency to be
used against their own citizens should be 
blamed, according to the logic of these studies, on
Israel and its US lobby. 

Blocking all international and UN support for
Palestinian rights, arming and financing Israel in its
war against a civilian population, protecting 
Israel from the wrath of the international community
should also be blamed not on the United States, the
studies insist, but on Israel and its lobby.
Additionally, and in line with this logic, controlling
Arab economies and finances, 
dominating key investments in the Middle East, and
imposing structural adjustment policies by 
the IMF and the World Bank which impoverish the Arab
peoples should also be blamed on Israel, and not the
United States. Finally, starving and then invading 
Iraq, threatening to invade Syria, raiding and then
sanctioning Libya and Iran, besieging the Palestinians
and their leaders must also be blamed 
on the Israeli lobby and not the US government.
Indeed, over the years, many pro-US Arab 
dictators let it leak officially and unofficially that
their US diplomat friends have told them time and
again how much they and "America" support the Arab
world and the Palestinians were it not for the
influence of the pro-Israel lobby (sometimes
identified by the American diplomats in more explicit 
"ethnic" terms). 

While many of the studies of the pro-Israel lobby are
sound and full of awe-inspiring well- documented
details about the formidable power commanded by 
groups like the American Israel Public Affairs
Committee (AIPAC) and its allies, the problem with
most of them is what remains unarticulated. For 
example, when and in what context has the United
States government ever supported national 
liberation in the Third World? The record of the
United States is one of being the implacable enemy of
all Third World national liberation groups, 
including European ones, from Greece to Latin America
to Africa and Asia, except in the celebrated cases of
the Afghan fundamentalists' war against the USSR 
and supporting apartheid South Africa's main terrorist
allies in Angola and Mozambique 
(UNITA and RENAMO) against their respective
anti-colonial national governments. Why then would the
US support national liberation in the Arab world
absent 
the pro-Israel lobby is something these studies never
explain.

The United States has had a consistent policy since
World War II of fighting all regimes across the Third
World who insist on controlling their national 
resources, whether it be land, oil, or other valuable
minerals. This extends from Iran in 1953 to Guatemala
in 1954 to the rest of Latin America all the way 
to present-day Venezuela. Africa has fared much worse
in the last four decades, as have many countries in
Asia. Why would the United States support nationalist
regimes in the Arab world who would nationalise
natural resources and stop their pillage by American
capital absent the pro-Israel lobby also 
remains a mystery unexplained by these studies.
Finally, the United States government has 
opposed and overthrown or tried to overthrow any
regime that seeks real and tangible independence in
the Third World and is especially galled by 
those regimes that pursue such policies through
democratic elections. The overthrow of 
regimes from Arbenz to Goulart to Mossadegh and
Allende and the ongoing attempts to overthrow Chavez
are prominent examples, as is the overthrow of 
nationalist regimes like Sukarno's and Nkrumah's. The
terror unleashed on populations who challenged the
US-installed friendly regimes from El Salvador and 
Nicaragua to Zaire to Chile and Indonesia resulted in
the killing of hundreds of thousands, if not millions
by repressive police and militaries trained for these 
important tasks by the US. This is aside from direct
US invasions of South East Asian and Central American
countries that killed untold millions for 
decades. Why would the US and its repressive agencies
stop invading Arab countries, or stop supporting the
repressive police forces of dictatorial Arab regimes
and why would the US stop setting up shadow
governments inside its embassies in Arab capitals to
run these countries' affairs (in some cases the US
shadow government runs the Arab country in question
down to the smallest detail with the Arab government
in question reduced to executing orders) if the 
pro-Israel lobby did not exist is never broached by
these studies let alone explained. 

The arguments put forth by these studies would have
been more convincing if the Israel lobby was forcing
the United States government to pursue policies in 
the Middle East that are inconsistent with its global
policies elsewhere. This, however, is far from what
happens. While US policies in the Middle East may 
often be an exaggerated form of its repressive and
anti- democratic policies elsewhere in the world, they
are not inconsistent with them. One could 
easily make the case that the strength of the
pro-Israel lobby is what accounts for this
exaggeration, but even this contention is not entirely
persuasive. 
One could argue (and I have argued elsewhere) that it
is in fact the very centrality of Israel to US
strategy in the Middle East that accounts, in part,
for the strength of the pro-Israel lobby and not the
other way around. Indeed, many of the recent studies
highlight the role of pro-Likud members of the Bush 
administration (or even of the Clinton administration)
as evidence of 
the lobby's awesome power, when, i t could be easily
argued that it is these American politicians who had
pushed Likud and Labour into more intransigence in 
the 1990s and are pushing them towards more conquest
now that they are at the helm of the US 
government. This is not to say, however, that the
leaders of the pro-Israel lobby do not regularly brag
about their crucial influence on US policy in 
Congress and in the White House. That they have done
regularly since the late 1970s. But the lobby is
powerful in the United States because its major claims
are about advancing US interests and its support for
Israel is contextualised in its support for the
overall US strategy in the Middle East. The pro-Israel
lobby plays the same role that the China lobby played
in the 1950s and the Cuba lobby still plays to this
day. The fact that it is more powerful than any other
foreign lobby on Capitol Hill testifies to the
importance of Israel in US 
strategy and not to some fantastical power that the
lobby commands independent of and extraneous to the US
"national interest." The pro-Israel lobby could not 
sell its message and would not have any influence if
Israel was a 
communist or 
anti-imperialist country or if Israel opposed US
policy elsewhere in 
the 
world. 

Some would argue that even though Israel attempts to
overlap its 
interests 
with those of the US, that its lobby is misleading
American policy- 
makers and 
shifting their position from one of objective
assessment of what is 
truly in 
America's best interest and that of Israel's. The
argument runs as 
follows: US 
support for Israel causes groups who oppose Israel to
hate the US and 
target it 
for attacks. It also costs the US friendly media
coverage in the Arab 
world, 
affects its investment potential in Arab countries,
and loses its 
important 
allies in the region, or at least weakens these
allies. But none of 
this is 
true. The United States has been able to be Israel's
biggest backer and 
financier, 
its staunchest defender and weapon-supplier while
maintaining strategic 
alliances with most if not all Arab dictatorships,
including the 
Palestinian 
Authority under both Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas.
Moreover, US 
companies and 
American investments have the largest presence across
the Arab world, 
most 
prominently but not exclusively in the oil sector.
Also, even without 
the pathetic 
and ineffective efforts at US propaganda in the guise
of the television 
station 
Al-Hurra, or Radio Sawa and the now-defunct Hi
magazine, not to mention 
US-paid journalists and newspapers in Iraq and
elsewhere, a whole army 
of Arabic 
newspapers and state-television stations, not to
mention myriad 
satellite 
television stations celebrate the US and its culture,
broadcast 
American programmes, 
and attempt to sell the US point of view as
effectively as possible 
encumbered only by the limitations that actual US
policies in the 
region place on 
common sense. Even the offending Al-Jazeera has bent
over backwards to 
accommodate 
the US point of view but is constantly undercut by
actual US policies 
in the 
region. Al-Jazeera, under tremendous pressure and
threats of bombing 
from the 
United States, has for example stopped referring to
the US occupation 
forces in 
Iraq as "occupation forces" and now refers to them as
"coalition 
forces". 
Moreover, since when has the US sought to win a
popularity contest 
among the 
peoples of the world? Arabs no more hate or love the
United States than 
do Latin 
Americans, Africans, Asians, or even and especially
Europeans.


Finally we come to the financial argument, namely that
the US gives an 
inordinate amount of money to Israel -- too exorbitant
a cost that is 
out of 
proportion to what the US gets in return. In fact, the
United States 
spends much more 
on its military bases in the Arab world, not to
mention on those in 
Europe or 
Asia, than it does on Israel. Israel has indeed been
very effective in 
rendering services to its US master for a good price,
whether in 
channelling illegal 
arms to central American dictatorships in the 1970s
and 1980s, helping 
pariah 
regimes like Taiwan and apartheid South Africa in the
same period, 
supporting 
pro-US, including Fascist, groups inside the Arab
world to undermine 
nationalist Arab regimes, from Lebanon to Iraq to
Sudan, coming to the 
aid of 
conservative pro- US Arab regimes when threatened as
it did in Jordan 
in 1970, and 
attacking Arab nationalist regimes outright as it did
in 1967 with 
Egypt and 
Syria and in 1981 with Iraq when it destroyed that
country's nuclear 
reactor. 
While the US had been able to overthrow Sukarno and
Nkrumah in bloody 
coups, 
Nasser remained entrenched until Israel effectively
neutralised him in 
the 1967 
War. It is thanks to this major service that the
United States 
increased its 
support to Israel exponentially. Moreover, Israel
neutralised the PLO 
in 1982, no 
small service to many Arab regimes and their US patron
who could not 
fully 
control the organisation until then. None of the
American military 
bases on which 
many more billions are spent can claim such a stellar
record. Critics 
argue 
that when the US had to intervene in the Gulf, it
could not rely on 
Israel to 
do the job because of the sensitivity of including it
in such a 
coalition which 
would embarrass Arab allies, hence the need for direct
US intervention 
and 
the uselessness of Israel as a strategic ally. While
this may be true, 
the US al
so could not rely on any of its military bases to
launch the invasions 
on 
their own and had to ship in its army. American bases
in the Gulf did 
provide 
important and needed support but so did Israel.


AIPAC is indeed powerful insofar as it pushes for
policies that accord 
with 
US interests and that are resonant with the reigning
US imperial 
ideology. The 
power of the pro-Israel lobby, whether in Congress or
on campuses among 
university administrators, or policy-makers is not
based solely on 
their 
organisational skills or ideological uniformity. In no
small measure, 
anti- Semitic 
attitudes in Congress (and among university
administrators) play a role 
in 
believing the lobby's (and its enemies') exaggerated
claims about its 
actual power, 
resulting in their towing the line. But even if this
were true, one 
could argue, 
it would not matter whether the lobby has real or
imagined power. For 
as long 
as Congress and policy-makers (and university
administrators) believe 
it 
does, it will remain effective and powerful. I of
course concede this 
point. 


What then would have been different in US policy in
the Middle East 
absent 
Israel and its powerful lobby? The answer in short is:
the details and 
intensity 
but not the direction, content, or impact of such
policies. Is the pro- 
Israel lobby extremely powerful in the United States?
As someone who 
has been 
facing the full brunt of their power for the last
three years through 
their 
formidable influence on my own university and their
attempts to get me 
fired, I 
answer with a resounding yes. Are they primarily
responsible for US 
policies 
towards the Palestinians and the Arab world?
Absolutely not. The United 
States is 
opposed in the Arab world as elsewhere because it has
pursued and 
continues to 
pursue policies that are inimical to the interests of
most people in 
these 
countries and are only beneficial to its own interests
and to the 
minority regimes 
in the region that serve those interests, including
Israel. Absent 
these 
policies, and not the pro-Israel lobby which supports
them, the United 
States 
should expect a change in its standing among Arabs.
Short of that, the 
United 
States will have to continue its policies in the
region that have 
wreaked, and 
continue to wreak, havoc on the majority of Arabs and
not expect that 
the Arab 
people will like it in return.


____________________
The writer is associate professor of modern Arab
politics and 
intellectual 
history at Columbia University. His recent book The
Persistence of the 
Palestinian Question was published by Routledge. 



http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2006/787/op35.htm



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