[Peace-discuss] Discard the mythology of 'the Israel Lobby'...

[C. G. Estabrook]

Assertion is not demonstration. Refusing to respond to serious argument is not a 
demonstration of its falsity. It's an indication of intellectual pretense.


Morton K. Brussel wrote:
> Good according to whom? Another superficial "analysis", not unlike many 
> he writes. --mkb
> 
> On Mar 24, 2009, at 5:21 PM, C. G. Estabrook wrote:
> 
>> [A British columnist who's good on this stuff, tho' he may be a bit 
>> sanguine about J Street.  --CGE]
>>
>>
>>     Discard the mythology of 'the Israel Lobby',
>>     the reality is bad enough.
>>     They are not all-powerful, but Israel's advocates
>>     in the US do play hardball - often hurting the cause
>>     they are meant to serve
>>          o Jonathan Freedland
>>          o The Guardian, Wednesday 18 March 2009
>>
>> Now they have their Joan of Arc. Those who have long claimed that the 
>> sinister, shadowy forces of "the Israel Lobby" pull the strings of US 
>> foreign policy at last have a martyr. Last week Charles Freeman, a 
>> former diplomat, said he would not take the job he had been offered, 
>> chairing the US National Intelligence Council: he had, he said, been 
>> the victim of a campaign of "character assassination" conducted by an 
>> "Israel Lobby [willing to] plumb the depths of dishonour and 
>> indecency". In a furious statement, he declared that the "aim of this 
>> Lobby is control of the policy process".
>>
>> Those who in 2006 lapped up the thesis argued by the US academics John 
>> Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, attributing to the mighty lobby the 
>> power to divert the US from its own interests, seized on Freeman's 
>> fall as decisive proof. Walt himself declared: "For all of you out 
>> there who may have questioned whether there was a powerful 'Israel 
>> lobby'," he blogged, "think again."
>>
>> As the reception to the original Mearsheimer-Walt article showed, this 
>> is radioactive terrain. Those who wade in carelessly can find 
>> themselves burnt. The explanation is not complicated. The notion that 
>> Jews wield excessive power, and do so in mysterious ways; that they 
>> advance the interests of a foreign power; that they function as some 
>> kind of fifth column, and that as such they have often led their 
>> country into needless wars - all these are accusations that have been 
>> hurled at Jews going back many centuries. It should be no surprise 
>> that Jews' ears prick up if they think they can hear these old tunes 
>> hammered out once more.
>>
>> And yet, after several conversations with Israel supporters in both 
>> Washington and Tel Aviv, I have found no one who denies that Freeman 
>> was indeed the victim of advocates for Israel. It is quite true that 
>> many on Capitol Hill disliked Freeman's devotion to Saudi Arabia, the 
>> country where he had once served as US ambassador: he recently 
>> suggested King Abdullah be renamed "Abdullah the Great". True, too, 
>> that a critical blow came from Nancy Pelosi, the house speaker, 
>> reportedly outraged by Freeman's overly indulgent attitude towards 
>> China's rulers. But I'm reliably told that these lines of attack 
>> originated with the pro-Israel crowd. Nor have Freeman's character 
>> assassins bothered to hide their fingerprints.
>>
>> On the contrary, several have bragged about their role, among them 
>> Steve Rosen, a former official of the American-Israel Public Affairs 
>> Committee, or Aipac, who launched the attack on Freeman.
>>
>> Surely, then, as Walt claimed, this settles not only the Freeman 
>> whodunit but the larger question of the mighty "Lobby". Clearly it is 
>> every bit as vicious - and effective - as its detractors have claimed, 
>> able to derail even a new and popular administration such as Barack 
>> Obama's simply because it had the temerity to pick a man who had, 
>> among other things, condemned the Israeli occupation as "brutal 
>> oppression" - right? Not quite.
>>
>> The flaws in the Mearsheimer-Walt case remain as visible as when they 
>> were exposed by the Palestinian-American scholar Joseph Massad, Noam 
>> Chomsky and a clutch of other anti-Zionists. For one thing, if Israel 
>> and its backers really did control United States foreign policy, there 
>> would never be any divergence between them: Washington would simply do 
>> "the Lobby's" bidding. But that is hardly the case. One can go back to 
>> the mid-1980s, when Israel and its friends begged the Reagan 
>> administration not to sell Awacs surveillance planes to Saudi Arabia - 
>> to no avail: the Saudis got their planes. Or spool forward to 1991 
>> when George Bush pressured Israel to attend a peace conference against 
>> its will and withheld $10bn in much-needed loan guarantees unless 
>> Israel agreed to freeze settlements on occupied land. You might 
>> mention Israel's proposed arms sales to China: Washington compelled 
>> Israel to back down, first in 2000 and again in 2005. More awkwardly, 
>> Israel has long sought the release of those who spied for it against 
>> the US. Washington has consistently refused.
>>
>> Chomsky asks a useful question. If the US has been led to behave the 
>> way it does in the Middle East by the cunning "Israel Lobby", how come 
>> it behaves the same way elsewhere? "What were 'the Lobbies' that led 
>> to pursuing very similar policies throughout the world?" As for the 
>> Middle East, Chomsky quotes the scholar Stephen Zunes: "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 ..."
>>
>> The naive assumption at work here is that the American dog has no 
>> interests of its own, leaving it free to be wagged by the pro-Israel 
>> tail. It's a convenient view, casting the great superpower as a 
>> hapless, and essentially innocent, victim. But guess what: the US 
>> emphatically does have its own strategic interests - oil chief among 
>> them - and it guards them fiercely. Support for Israel as a loyal, 
>> dependable ally - ready to take on Arab and other forces that might 
>> pose a threat to those interests - has served America's purposes well. 
>> That's why the US acts the way it does, not because Aipac tells it to.
>>
>> Perhaps the most powerful example - if only because so many believe 
>> the reverse to be true - is the Iraq war. Plenty of Mearsheimer-Walt 
>> followers reckon it was the "Lobby" wot done it: it was Israel that 
>> pushed for war. But as Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to 
>> Colin Powell, and others have explained, Israel's leaders in fact 
>> repeatedly warned against an attack on Saddam, fearing it would 
>> distract from, and embolden, what it regarded as the real threat, 
>> namely Iran. As it happened, they were right.
>>
>> So the myth of an all-powerful Israel lobby, pulling the strings, is a 
>> delusion. But it's equally false to pretend that Aipac and its allies 
>> don't exist or exert genuine influence. They do and they play 
>> hardball, as the Freeman affair has vividly demonstrated. (Indeed, the 
>> negative publicity that has resulted may make this victory a pyrrhic 
>> one.)
>>
>> Viewed this way, clearly and through a lens unclouded by exaggeration 
>> and mythology, they are to be strenuously opposed. Their attempt to 
>> limit the voices heard in Washington is not just an offence against 
>> pluralism, it also hurts the very cause Aipac purports to serve: Israel.
>>
>> Aipac's approach - not so much pro Israel as pro the Israeli right 
>> wing - ends up pushing US politicians away from the policies Israel 
>> itself needs, specifically the dialogue with enemies and territorial 
>> concessions that are necessary if Israel's long-term future is to be 
>> secured.
>>
>> The good news is that alternatives are emerging. Founded last year, J 
>> Street styles itself as a "pro-Israel, pro-peace" advocacy 
>> organisation, thereby creating a space for those US politicians who 
>> support Israel but believe the policy of recent Israeli governments is 
>> hurting Palestinians and imperilling the future of the Jewish state. 
>> Aipac and its allies have had the monopoly on Israel advocacy for too 
>> long. Let's hope the Freeman episode prompts America's leaders to take 
>> a hard look at them, to see them as they really are: not all-powerful 
>> - and not always right either.
>>
>> freedland at guardian.co.uk
>> _______________________________________________
>> Peace-discuss mailing list
>> Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net
>> http://lists.chambana.net/cgi-bin/listinfo/peace-discuss
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Peace-discuss mailing list
> Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net
> http://lists.chambana.net/cgi-bin/listinfo/peace-discuss