It made quite a splash. At such an ardently pro-Israel school as Tufts, the book’s near-demonization nagged my interest a little – had Walt and Mearsheimer really gone mad, bandying about one of the silliest myths in American politics?

For all the abounding conspiracy theories, the pro-Israel lobby does not resemble a shadowy council of the Elders of Zion. But an unspoken and notoriously powerful “Israel Lobby” exists, John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt insist, as a corroboration of decentralized American institutions bound in advocating continued American support for Israel. The lobby’s disproportionate influence in pushing a fervent, if not dogmatic support for the Jewish state damages American interests, says their book, The Israel Lobby. Unsurprisingly, the book’s publication touched off a vicious maelstrom of criticism.

“Were [the book] an actual person,” writes Israeli historian Benny Morris in The New Republic, “I would have to say that he did not have a single honest bone in his body.” Morris is often depicted as a “new historian”, an Israeli scholar engaged in reevaluating Israel’s historical narrative that many acknowledge as receiving a few nationalistic embellishments over the years. Walt and Mearsheimer seem to have counted on Morris’s support, referencing three of his works no less than eleven times throughout their book. Morris is unamused. “[The Israel Lobby] is a travesty of the history that I have studied and written for the past two decades. Their work is riddled with shoddiness and defiled by mendacity.”

They take quotes from sources such as Morris that are “wrenched out of context”, storms Alan Dershowitz, Harvard University Professor of Law. Responding to Walt and Mearsheimer’s article appearing in the London Review of Books upon which their book expands, Dershowitz accuses Walt and Mearsheimer of “distortions that should be obvious to any critical reader”. In alleging that the Bush Administration was unwarrantedly influenced by the Israel lobby in its decision to invade Iraq in 2003, or in its hard-line approaches to engaging Syria and Iran, Walt and Mearsheimer “simply chose the most insidious explanation – which also happens to be the least plausible explanation – without even an acknowledgement that other interpretations are possible.” Dershowitz, who is repeatedly referenced in The Israel Lobby as one of the Jewish state’s most assiduous American defenders, calls it “little more than a compilation of old, false, and authoritatively discredited charges dressed up in academic garb”.

Forward, a Jewish online weekly, condemns “the flimsiness of [Mearsheimer and Walt's] work”, which it likens to the work of an undergraduate deserving to be “laughed out of class”. The research is described as “oddly amateurish”, drawing considerably from newspaper columns “seemingly dug up in quick Internet word searches aimed at proving a point, not exploring the truth”. Forward, like Dershowitz, find numerous instances of “cherry-picking” quotes. In one instance, Walt and Mearsheimer assert that then-US Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz was the Bush Administration’s “most hawkishly pro-Israel voice” by quoting the Forward. Upon further inspection, insists the Forward, the article was seeking to deny this claim in an article about Wolfowitz being booed at a pro-Israeli rally for “defending Palestinian rights”. Again, Walt and Mearsheimer may have expected otherwise out of a newspaper they cited twenty-eight times throughout the course of their book.

This is merely a sliver of the sweeping vituperations that greeted The Israel Lobby’s publication. Most devote considerable time to the academic failings of John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt in preparing the book, uncommon for intellectuals of such caliber. It is surprising, for example, that by Mearsheimer’s admission the duo did not conduct any primary research. However, even if The Israel Lobby is as odious an aberration as many assessments (or almost all, at Tufts) lead a reader to believe, it is nonetheless doubtful that Walt and Mearsheimer would have abandoned all sense. Professors at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and the University of Chicago, each are acknowledged as among the foremost contributors to realist political thought. Their past writings have been received if not lauded with respect, and furthermore neither has any known history of overtly anti-Israeli or anti-Jewish leanings.

Many criticisms of The Israel Lobby fail to address its fundamental assertion – that the pro-Israel lobby has wielded an astonishing power in Washington that continues to direct US foreign policy towards unconditional support of Israel, harming the national interest. Walt and Mearsheimer have effectively broken the taboo of talking about the elephant in the room, which in part explains their widespread denunciation. The lobby’s existence is no secret, and in nearly every case documented by the book its numerous institutions have operated in complete lawfulness under the democratic, pluralistic US legal system. However, to allude in such grand terms to the lobby – and especially to find fault – is scarcely with precedent. Israel, they assert, receives “special” treatment within the US, to the extent that there is nearly a gag order on criticizing the Jewish state.

While the international community is less hesitant and freer to speak up when it feels Israel steps out of the line, the US takes pains to minimize its censure at the United Nations. The US has made a practice of ensuring Israel is nearly immune from the UN’s limited and largely rhetorical reach, obstructing resolutions that reach the Security Council. From 2000-2006, the US vetoed nine resolutions that would have been critical of Israel, three times muting a call for Israel to halt operations in Gaza, once halting a condemnation of the Israeli assassination of Ahmed Yassin, and once preventing the UN from condemning the Israeli destruction of a World Food Program warehouse. All nine times the US was the only country voting against the resolution. The vetoes cast on Israel’s behalf between 1972 and 2006 amount to forty-two, “greater than the combined total of all the vetoes cast by all the other Security Council members for the same period and amounts to slightly more than half of all American vetoes during these years” (Mearsheimer and Walt 40). This US tradition of vetoing anti-Israel resolutions surely dooms the Goldstone Report were it to reach the Security Council, though it has already passed the General Assembly by a count of 114-18.

The Goldstone Report was met with distaste within the US Congress. By a 344-36 margin, the House of Representatives passed a nonbinding resolution for the Obama Administration to reject outright any endorsement of Goldstone’s Fact Finding Mission. Indeed, Israel is perhaps the most bipartisan-friendly issue in American politics, and the Goldstone Report by usual standards put up a decent fight. During the Second Intifada, the House of Representatives passed a 2002 resolution affirming “solidarity” with Israel by a vote of 352-21; the Senate echoed by voting 94-2 (210). In 2003, after an intense spate of Israeli targeted assassinations against Palestinian leaders, the House again voiced its “solidarity” with Israel and its support for “using force to deal with terrorism” by a margin of 399-5 (215).

The point is to illustrate in a concrete fashion that which cannot be disputed – that one would be hard pressed to find a single Congressional act since Kennedy that did not stand behind Israel in an overwhelming majority. Such a Congressional and UN voting records suggest that American and Israeli interests are always aligned, or nearly identical. Walt and Mearsheimer strongly dispute this. US and Israeli interests are no longer aligned, they argue, and with issues involving Israel in Congress “potential critics fall silent and there is hardly any debate at all” on account of the damning repercussions for opposing the Israel lobby (152).

The bulwark of the Israel lobby’s efforts in Congress is vested in the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC. By popular accounts, AIPAC is the most visible and the most successful facet of the Israel lobby. This is true, insofar as the lobby’s role in Congress is concerned; here, AIPAC’s influence is unrivaled. The organization’s magnitude can be seen in its remarkable sway within both Democratic and Republican camps. Bill Clinton praises AIPAC as “stunningly effective” and “better than anyone else lobbying in this town”; Newt Gingrich describes it as “the most effective general-interest group… across the entire planet”; Harry Reid once remarked “I can’t think of a policy organization in the country as well-organized and respected” (153). AIPAC’s “almost unchallenged hold on Congress” (162) led Jimmy Carter to warn that for a member of Congress to take an anti-Israel position, especially near an election year, is “almost politically suicidal” (160).

AIPAC commands an unmatched ability to direct campaign funds, say Walt and Mearsheimer, and “has been known to threaten politicians who appear reluctant to follow its lead” (159). They record some dozen instances in which AIPAC influence, and particularly fundraising, assisted in electing a pro-Israel representative during a tough campaign year – or in redirecting funds away from a candidate who does not display adequate commitment to ensuring the Jewish state’s security. In addition to controlling finances in a way that makes it “dangerous for senators or representatives to utter even mild criticisms of Israel’s conduct” (161), AIPAC provides regular information on Israel to Congressmen in need. Former AIPAC staff member Douglas Bloomfield even describes involvement in the policymaking process, assuring that AIPAC is “often called upon to draft speeches, work on legislation, advise on tactics, perform research, collect co-sponsors and marshal votes” (161). The organization is extensively networked, evidenced when Condoleezza Rice received an “AIPAC-sponsored letter signed by seventy-nine senators, urging her to avoid contact with the new Palestinian ‘unity government’” (162) prior to her departure for the Middle East. The Israeli government understands the importance of AIPAC in the American policymaking process; Ariel Sharon, speaking to an American crowd, once said “When people ask me how they can help Israel, I tell them – Help AIPAC” (162). Ehud Olmert also recognized the lobby’s indispensability, saying “Thank God we have AIPAC, the greatest supporter and friend we have in the whole world” (162).

While AIPAC does take positions outside the Congressional pale, Walt and Mearsheimer put considerable stock in pro-Israel think tanks. “[T]he largest and most visible foreign policy research institutions in Washington usually take Israel’s side and do not question the merits of unconditional US support” (177), of particular consideration when “news media increasingly depends on experts from Washington-based think tanks” (175). A number of think tanks are implicated as providing an unmitigated pro-Israel line, such as the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), the American Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation, the Foreign Policy Research Institute, and the Saban Center for Middle East Policy among others. Think tanks have been of unique importance in marshaling support for pro-Israel policies, especially those inclining towards the neoconservative movement that dominated much of the Bush administration’s foreign policy.

The decision to invade Iraq, the hardline approach to Syria and Iran, and American support for Israel during the 2006 war in Lebanon was primarily at the behest of the pro-Israel lobby and the neoconservative movement, allege Walt and Mearsheimer. Of the entire book, this section is perhaps the most important and certainly the most engaging to read. It is important to remember that, when discussing AIPAC, think tanks, and other pro-Israel groups in America, each operates entirely in accordance with US law in exerting its influence. Yet as Walt and Mearsheimer seek to demonstrate in the four case studies of Iraq, Syria, Iran and Lebanon, the lobby engineers a “reflexive support for Israel [that] has fueled anti-Americanism throughout the Arab and Islamic world and undermined the US image in many other countries as well” (335). Rising anti-Americanism in turn threatens US national security, leading to a set of policy recommendations Walt and Mearsheimer make at the end of the book.

In the Middle East, America has “three distinct strategic interests”: 1.) Ensuring reliable and consistent access to oil, 2.) “Discouraging” the acquisition of nuclear weapons in the region, and 3.) Stymying the growth of anti-American terrorism (337). Israel, the authors boldly state, “is ultimately not of critical strategic importance to the United States” (338) and abandoning unconditional support for Israel best serves American interests. Walt and Mearsheimer stake a belief in continuing American support for Israel’s right to exist, but when the dust settles maintaining the current degree of commitment to Israel only costs America billions of dollars and loses what few friends it has in the Middle East.

Walt and Mearsheimer’s aim to pinion the Israel Lobby is reasonably well met (the illustration of which is pretty limited here). As their critics point out, the authors’ recurrent reliance on newspaper articles for evidence does not always best serve their ethos, and there was certainly an opportunity for primary source research that was not seized. To their credit, however, Walt and Mearsheimer broached a seriously taboo topic in American politics, and the ensuing vitriol spat in their direction in a way confirms a political culture – fostered by the Israel lobby – that outright condemns any and all criticism of Israel. Such a political culture is not borne in the democratic spirit.

While it remains debatable how pervasive the influence the Israel lobby commands over American politics, one may hope that after the publication of The Israel Lobby room has been created for further discussion. Now is a particularly pertinent time to conduct a critical  self-evaluation of the lobby’s putative role in American politics. Though Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu now countenances a mild settlement freeze (with dubious efficacy), there is still no reliable explanation for Obama’s initial retreat from his demands for a settlement freeze. For a president elected on a pro-peace process platform, this is suspicious behavior indeed.

by : John J. Mearsheimer
Published by : W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2001
Page : 555

CONTENTS :

1- Introduction
2- Anarchy and the struggle for power
3- Wealth and power
4- The primacy of land power
5- strategies for survival
6- Great powers in Action
7- the offshore balancers
8- Balancing versus buck-passing
9- the causes of great power war
10- Great power politics in the twenty-first century

(old news by now but always refreshing)

CBS 60 Minutes Exposing Israeli Apartheid

(old news by now but always refreshing)

Published on Friday, March 13, 2009 by Inter Press Service

by Daniel Luban and Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON – Although the successful campaign to keep Amb. Charles “Chas” Freeman out of a top intelligence post marked a surface victory for the pro-Israel hardliners who opposed him, the long-term political implications of the Freeman affair appear far more ambiguous.

 

Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair had said he was standing by the appointment of Charles Freeman to chair the National Intelligence Council. (AP PHOTO)

Freeman’s withdrawal has provoked growing – if belated – media scrutiny of the operations of the so-called “Israel Lobby”, and aroused protests from a number of prominent mainstream political commentators who allege that he was the target of a dishonest and underhanded smear campaign that, among other things, accused him of shilling for the governments of Saudi Arabia and China. 

For the neo-conservatives who led the charge against Freeman’s appointment, his withdrawal may therefore prove to be both a tactical victory and a strategic defeat.

At the same time, the Freeman affair has highlighted the yawning disconnect between the career professionals in the intelligence and diplomatic communities, from whom Freeman enjoyed strong support, and political leaders in Congress and the White House, none of whom came to his defense publicly.

Freeman, a former ambassador to Saudi Arabia who has been a vocal critic of Israeli policies in the occupied territories, withdrew from consideration as chairman of the National Intelligence Council (NIC) on Tuesday. He did not go quietly into the night, however, releasing a statement in which he struck back at his critics.

“I do not believe the National Intelligence Council could function effectively while its chair was under constant attack by unscrupulous people with a passionate attachment to the views of a political faction in a foreign country,” Freeman wrote.

“There is a special irony in having been accused of improper regard for the opinions of foreign governments and societies by a group so clearly intent on enforcing adherence to the policies of a foreign government – in this case, the government of Israel.”

The motives for the anti-Freeman campaign are themselves a matter of debate. Virtually all of his chief attackers were neo-conservatives, whose views generally reflect those of the Israel’s right-wing Likud Party, and other reflexive defenders of Israeli government policies. Many observers viewed it as self-evident that their hostility to him was based on his often bluntly-spoken belief that U.S. and Israel’s interests in the Middle East were not necessarily convergent.

In the media, the campaign against Freeman was waged mainly by neo-conservative organs, such as the Weekly Standard and the National Review, and by The New Republic, a generally liberal weekly that, however, routinely attacks Israel’s critics.

In Congress, it was led by politicians such as Sen. Chuck Schumer, Sen. Joseph Lieberman, and Rep. Mark Kirk, all of whom have strong ties to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), a powerful lobby group whose members range from far-right supporters of the militant settlement movement in Israel to more moderate factions sympathetic to the relatively centrist Kadima and Labor Parties.

Freeman’s critics sought to portray their attacks on him as rooted not in his criticisms of Israel but in his allegedly compromising ties to Saudi Arabia and China, including his leadership of a think tank that was partially funded by a member of the Saudi royal family and his service on an advisory board of China’s largest oil company.

In the mainstream media, however, few seemed to buy into these claims. The most widely read U.S. newspapers, which had all but ignored the controversy as it raged in the “blogosphere”, attributed his withdrawal to the unacceptability of his views on Israel policy – in the process going further than ever before in putting the Israel lobby in the national spotlight.

The New York Times headlined its story “Israel Stance Was Undoing of Nominee for Intelligence Post”, while the Washington Post confirmed that AIPAC, which had insisted it had no position on Freeman’s appointment, had indeed quietly provided critical material about him to inquiring reporters.

A Los Angeles Times editorial explicitly referenced “the Israel lobby” as the force behind Freeman’s withdrawal, adding, “We do not believe that Israel should be immune from criticism or that there is room for only one point of view in our government.”

And while the Post’s editorial page, like the neo-conservative Wall Street Journal, had hosted anti-Freeman op-eds early in the campaign against him, its veteran political columnist, David Broder – long viewed as the embodiment of Washington centrism – praised the former ambassador as “an able public servant” and wrote that “[t]he Obama administration has just suffered an embarrassing defeat at the hands of the lobbyists the president vowed to keep in their place.”

Broder was not the only prominent centrist to react harshly to the anti-Freeman campaign. Others included the Broder’s fellow Post columnist, David Ignatius, The Atlantic’s Andrew Sullivan (who called the campaign “repulsive”), Time’s Joe Klein (“assassination”), and Foreign Policy’s David Rothkopf (“lynching-by-blog”). Freeman has also been invited as the guest of Fareed Zakaria, a regular columnist for Newsweek and the Post, on his regular Sunday CNN program on foreign policy, “GPS.”

In the end, the attempts by Freeman’s critics to make the story about anything but Israel may have backfired. Instead, discussion of the role of the Israel lobby in forming U.S. foreign policy appears to have acquired more mainstream legitimacy than ever before.

The long-taboo subject became a matter of public debate in 2006, when two prominent political scientists, the University of Chicago’s John Mearsheimer and Harvard University’s Stephen Walt, published their article “The Israel Lobby”, later expanded into a book. The two argued that a powerful lobby, centered on but not limited to AIPAC, exerts a “stranglehold” on U.S. foreign policy debates and stifles any criticism of Israeli policies, to the detriment of both the U.S. and Israel.

Mearsheimer and Walt’s thesis was instantly controversial. Critics accused them of perpetuating age-old anti-Semitic tropes about the covert Jewish domination of politics. Mainstream critics of Israel have been reluctant to align themselves with the two, even when they have reached some of the same conclusions.

In the wake of the Freeman affair, however, Mearsheimer and Walt appear to be getting a new hearing. The Los Angeles Times went so far as to suggest that the attacks on them may have been overstated.

“[T]he battle over Freeman…seems to have exposed more sympathy for a Walt/Mearsheimer view of U.S.-Israel relations than one might have expected to be out there,” wrote Michael Goldfarb of the Weekly Standard, one of Freeman’s harshest critics. “People like Joe Klein and Andrew Sullivan are now fairly indistinguishable from Stephen Walt.”

Goldfarb intended the comment as an insult, but it may nonetheless have contained a kernel of truth.

While the Freeman affair may have shifted the parameters of debate on Israel policy, it has also exposed fissures and resentments between the national security bureaucracy and the U.S. political leadership.

Some veteran observers, such as the “Nelson Report”, an influential private newsletter, compared Freeman’s treatment to the McCarthy era when long-time government Asia experts were deemed responsible for “losing China” to the Communists and hounded out of the foreign service by the so-called “China Lobby”.

Col. Pat Lang, the former top Middle East analyst at the Defense Intelligence Agency who signed a letter of support for Freeman, told IPS that the saga had caused a “tentative feeling of disappointment” about the new administration within the intelligence community.

“It’s very disheartening for people who viewed Freeman’s appointment as the return to some standard of intellectual excellence or integrity”, he said, adding that Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Adm. Dennis Blair, who went to the Senate and strongly defended his appointee, may be the next target for Freeman’s antagonists as they push for alarmist intelligence on Iran.

“I’m concerned about what these characters are going to do about Blair, because Blair really stood up to them, and their general reaction to that is to wage a war of annihilation against people who do that,” Lang said.

Jim Lobe’s blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at http://www.ips.org/blog/jimlobe/.

Copyright © 2009 IPS-Inter Press Service

Just finished skimming through The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy by the (famous realists) Mearsheimer and Walt. They ask why U.S. support of Israel is so unconditional and enormeous compared to U.S. support to other democratic states, and find that this support cannot be justified on neither moral nor security grounds alone, but must have to do with a more or less loose coalition of organisations and individuals who are lobbying U.S. politicians and media.

I like this book for dealing with a question that many others would avoid in fear of being called Anti-Semitists etc, a strategy the ‘lobby,’ according to the authors, often employs to silence its critics. It is revealing how the authors themselves have been attacked with just these strategies since the first article and then this book came out, even though they repeatedly emphasise that they are certainly in favour of an Israeli state. This does not, however, mean that they have to be in favour of every move taken by Israel, a position I strongly agree with.

The aim of the book however, is to look at U.S. policy in the middle East in a more objective way, which the authors claim would serve not only U.S. interests better, but also the Israeli’s. Up until now, the lobby has pursued the U.S. to support Israel Middle East policy no matter what they do, even though the Israel strategy for peace in more than one case seems to be flawed, even counter-productive. I’m a bit sceptical of how the authors makes the connection between the Israel lobby and neocons seem like these two groups are always in tandem, but they do present compelling evidence for why many of the U.S. problems with Iraq, Iran, Syria and Lebanon could have been different if it hadn’t been for a strong lobby guiding U.S. politicians in a hawkish position towards many of these countries instead of facilitating more constructive relations.

The bottom line – the U.S. should start treating Israel as a normal democratic ally. This would mean that the U.S. would scrutinise Israel for how it treats its non-Jew subjects, especially for how it conducts some attacks in unproportionate and maybe inhumane ways, it should not necessarily side unconditionally with Israel in any conflict and it should also listen to other close European allies in the Middle East question. It would not mean that the U.S. would abondon Israel or put its or Israel’s security at risk – and this is where the lobby is wrong. Hopefully this book encourages more public debate about U.S. Middle East/Israel policy that may also make the ‘lobby’ reflect on what is really best for the Israel future.

I have taken the trouble of addressing some of Stephen Walt’s recent ridiculosity; it is only fair that I should acknowledge his partner in crime, John Mearsheimer. Mearsheimer is featured in the latest issue of The American Conservative offering his thoughts on Operation Cast Lead in Gaza. (Mearsheimer and Walt allege in their book that the unstoppable Israel Lobby seeks to put critics of Israel out of the press. How is it then that both of the authors are still able to be published in major American journals? Whatever.) Mearsheimer dismisses Israeli claims that the operation was meant to restore Israel’s deterrence and damage Hamas’ capability to launch rockets. The truth is much more sinister, he claims:

The actual purpose is connected to Israel’s long-term vision of how it intends to live with millions of Palestinians in its midst. It is part of a broader strategic goal: the creation of a “Greater Israel.” Specifically, Israel’s leaders remain determined to control all of what used to be known as Mandate Palestine, which includes Gaza and the West Bank.

I cannot put into words just how false this is. Either Mearsheimer knows nothing about Israeli politics, or he simply does not care what facts get in the way of his defamation of Israel, or both of these are true. Anyone who can comment on Israeli politics in a major publication ought to know that the concept of “Greater Israel” is limited to Revisionist Zionists and the Ultra-Orthodox parties. Neither of the two main coalition partners (Labor and Kadima) — or even the chief opposition party, the right-wing Likud party — is Revisionist or ultra-Orthodox.

In Political Science Quarterly’s Spring 2008 issue, Professors Jonathan Rynhold and Dov Waxman illustrated that demographic concerns have led to a transformation of the Israeli right wing away from Revisionism and “Greater Israel.” This transformation even led to the creation of Kadima as a more moderate offshoot of Likud. In Kadima’s platform, we can see the modified stance. The following is an excerpt which I have loosely translated from Kadima’s Hebrew website (bold mine):

The resolution between the desires to enable every Jew to live throughout the Land of Israel and for the existence of the State of Israel as a Jewish homeland requires conceding part of the Land of Israel.

Later in his article, Mearsheimer characterizes Israelis as being “blunt,” which is a fair claim. It’s strange then, that he cannot cite any Israeli leader, on or off the record, as justifying the incursion on the basis of “Greater Israel.”

Israelis have come to terms with the fact that they will not hold all of the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean. Mearsheimer and Walt cannot possibly know what is in Israel’s best interest if they do not even know these basic facts.

Even more to the point, why would Israel declare a unilateral ceasefire and withdraw entirely just a week after the ground operation began if it truly sought to re-occupy the Gaza Strip? This is the twisted logic we can expect from a “tail wags dog” academic like John Mearsheimer.

Visto en La Haine (6-abril-2006). Enlace en: http://www.lahaine.org/index.php?p=13826

“… Determinados reflejos automáticos de defensa del debate abierto y del libre examen desaparecen –al menos en gran parte de las élites políticas de Estados Unidos– cuando se trata de Israel, y sobre todo cuando se aborda el papel del lobby pro israelí en la elaboración de la política exterior de Estados Unidos. El chantaje moral –el temor a que cualquier crítica a las políticas de Israel y al apoyo estadounidense a las mismas pueda provocar acusaciones de antisemitismo– es un poderoso factor de desmotivación a la hora de hacer públicos puntos de vista discrepantes. Asimismo, conduce a silenciar el debate sobre las políticas del país en las universidades estadounidenses, en parte como resultado de campañas dirigidas contra las voces disconformes. Además, nada resulta más dañino para los intereses de EE UU que la incapacidad de celebrar un debate adecuado sobre el conflicto palestino-israelí. El consenso por vía de la intimidación en relación con las políticas israelíes es malo para Israel a la vez que imposibilita que Estados Unidos articule sus propios intereses nacionales…”

Financial Times, Editorial, sábado 1 de abril de 2006.

Introducción

Los especialistas e incluso algunos sectores de los medios de comunicación consideran a Noam Chomsky el mayor intelectual de Estados Unidos. Chomsky goza de una gran audiencia en todo el mundo, en particular en los círculos académicos, en gran parte por ser una voz crítica de la política exterior de Estados Unidos y denunciar las injusticias resultado de dicha política. No obstante, Chomsky ha sido vilipendiado por todas las principales organizaciones y medios de comunicación judíos y pro israelíes por sus críticas de las políticas israelíes hacia los palestinos, aunque siempre haya defendido la existencia del Estado sionista de Israel. A pesar de su bien ganada reputación de documentación, disección y exposición de la hipocresía de los gobiernos de Estados Unidos y de Europa, y de sus agudos análisis de los engaños intelectuales de los apologistas imperiales, dichas virtudes analíticas están lamentablemente ausentes en relación con el debate sobre la formulación de la política exterior de Estados Unidos en Oriente Próximo, en particular el papel de su propio grupo étnico: el lobby judío pro israelí y sus defensores sionistas en el gobierno.

Esta ceguera política no es desconocida ni poco corriente. La historia está llena de intelectuales críticos con cualquier imperialismo salvo con el propio, y con los abusos de poder que otros cometen pero no de los que cometen los de su grupo. La larga historia de la negación por parte de Chomsky del poder y el papel del lobby pro israelí en la decisiva formación de la política de EE UU hacia Oriente Próximo, culminó en su reciente coincidencia con el aparato propagandístico sionista en sus ataques a un estudio crítico con el lobby proisraelí. Me refiero al artículo publicado en The London Review of Books titulado “El lobby israelí y la política exterior de EE UU” (The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy), del que son autores los profesores John Mearsheimer, de la Universidad de Chicago, y Stephan Walt, decano expulsado de la Kennedy School of Government, de la Universidad de Harvard, en marzo del presente año.

Los discursos y escritos de Chomsky sobre el lobby israelí hacen hincapié en varias proposiciones dudosas:

1) Se trata de un lobby como cualquier otro, sin influencia especial o espacio significativo alguno en las políticas de EE UU.

2) El poder de los grupos que apoyan a Israel no es mayor o más influyente que el de otros grupos de presión.

3) El programa que propugna el lobby tiene éxito porque coincide con los intereses de los grupos e intereses dominantes en el Estado norteamericano.

4) La debilidad del lobby queda demostrada por el hecho de que Israel no es sino “una simple herramienta” en la construcción del imperio estadounidense, que es utilizada cuando es necesaria y abandonada después.

5) Las principales fuerzas que conforman la política de Estados Unidos hacia Oriente Próximo son las grandes corporaciones petroleras y el “complejo militar-industrial”, dos grupos que no están relacionados con el lobby pro israelí.

6) Los intereses de Estados Unidos coinciden, en líneas generales, con los intereses de Israel.

7) La guerra de Irak y las amenazas a Siria e Irán son obra en su origen de las grandes corporaciones petroleras y el “complejo militar-industrial”, y no el resultado del lobby pro israelí o de sus colaboradores en el Pentágono y otros ministerios.

Aunque, en general, Chomsky se abstiene, deliberadamente, de discutir el asunto del lobby pro israelí en sus intervenciones públicas, entrevistas y publicaciones en las que analiza la política de Estados Unidos en Oriente Próximo, cuando lo hace sigue al pie de la letra los siete puntos citados.

El problema de la guerra y la paz en Oriente Próximo y el papel del lobby pro israelí son temas demasiado serios como para obviarlos con una simple nota a pie de página. Pero es incluso más grave la creciente censura de la libre expresión y la erosión de nuestras libertades civiles y nuestra libertad de cátedra por parte de un lobby particularmente agresivo, que cuenta con poderosos aliados en las cámaras legislativas y la Casa Blanca, y que constituye una amenaza a nuestra ya limitada democracia.

Es pues oportuno examinar las catorce tesis erróneas del reputado profesor Chomsky, con el fin de avanzar y hacer frente a las amenazas del lobby pro israelí a la paz en Oriente Próximo y a las libertades civiles en el territorio de Estados Unidos.

Las catorce tesis

1) Chomsky afirma que el lobby pro israelí es igual a cualquier otro grupo de presión de Washington. Sin embargo, no se da cuenta de que el lobby ha conseguido que una mayoría de congresistas sea favorable a la asignación a Israel de tres veces la ayuda exterior anual destinada a toda África, Asia y América (más de 100.000 millones de dólares en los últimos 40 años). El lobby dispone de 150 empleados que trabajan a tiempo completo para el American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), más un ejército de cabilderos pertenecientes a las otras grandes organizaciones judías (Anti-Defamation League, B’nai Brith, American Jewish Committee, etc.), más las Federaciones judías locales, regionales y nacionales que siguen rigurosamente las consignas de las “mayores” y que son muy activas en la conformación de la opinión pública y la política local sobre Israel, y que promueven y financian a determinados candidatos a legisladores basándose en su adhesión a la “línea del partido” del lobby pro israelí. No hay otro grupo de presión que tenga esta combinación de riqueza, redes locales, acceso a los medios, fuerza legislativa y finalidad específica que tiene el lobby pro israelí.

2) Chomsky omite analizar las casi unánimes mayorías en el Congreso que cada año dan su apoyo a todas las medidas pro israelíes en materia militar, económica, de privilegios de inmigración y de ayuda económica que propone el lobby. Chomsky parece desconocer la lista publicada por el propio AIPAC de más de 100 iniciativas legislativas que han conseguido la luz verde del Congreso incluso en años de crisis presupuestaria, crisis de los servicios de salud estadounidenses y pérdidas militares debidas a la guerra.

3) La manida afirmación de Chomsky de que las grandes petroleras son las causantes de la guerra no tiene ninguna base. De hecho, las guerras de Estados Unidos en el Próximo Oriente perjudican a los intereses de las petroleras en varios sentidos estratégicos. Las guerras generan una hostilidad generalizada hacia las compañías petroleras en sus relaciones a largo plazo con los países árabes. Las guerras socavan la posibilidad de obtener nuevos contratos en los países árabes para las compañías petroleras estadounidenses. Éstas se han mostrado mucho más inclinadas que Israel a conseguir una resolución pacífica de los conflictos, y especialmente que los cabilderos de este país, tal como muestra una lectura superficial de las publicaciones especializadas de la industria petrolera o de las manifestaciones de sus portavoces. Chomsky opta por ignorar totalmente las actividades y la propaganda belicista de las principales organizaciones judías pro israelíes y la ausencia de propuestas belicistas en los medios de comunicación de las grandes petroleras, así como sus intentos desesperados por mantener sus vínculos con los gobiernos árabes opuestos a las ambiciones hegemónicas y beligerantes de Israel.

A diferencia de Chomsky, en sus guerras en Oriente Próximo Estados Unidos sacrifica los intereses vitales de las compañías petroleras, a petición del lobby pro israelí en favor de la búsqueda de una hegemonía de Israel en la región. En la competición de cabildeos, es el bloque pro israelí, y no las petroleras, el que se lleva el gato al agua tanto cuando se trata de asuntos bélicos como de contratos para la obtención de petróleo. Chomsky nunca presta atención a la comparación de fuerzas de los dos lobbies en relación con la política de Estados Unidos hacia Oriente Próximo. En general, nuestro ocupado investigador, aficionado a sacar a la luz la documentación más oscura, demuestra un gran laxismo a la hora de utilizar documentos ya disponibles que desdicen sus afirmaciones sobre las grandes compañías petroleras y el lobby israelí.

4) Chomsky se niega a analizar las desventajas diplomáticas que implican para Estados Unidos sus vetos a las resoluciones del Consejo de Seguridad de las Naciones Unidas en las que se condenan la sistemática violación de los derechos humanos por parte de Israel. Las organizaciones del lobby pro israelí son las únicas importantes que presionan en favor de dicho veto, en contraposición a los principales aliados de Estados Unidos, la opinión pública mundial y el coste de cualquier tipo de papel mediador que Estados Unidos pudiera desempeñar entre el mundo árabe-islámico e Israel.

5) Chomsky deja de analizar el papel del lobby pro israelí en las elecciones al Congreso, su financiación de los candidatos pro israelíes y los más de 50 millones de dólares que gastan en los partidos, los candidatos y las campañas de propaganda. El resultado son unas votaciones favorables en un 90% a los temas prioritarios para el lobby y las organizaciones afiliadas locales y regionales.

6) Chomsky tampoco se entretiene en analizar qué sucede con los candidatos que el lobby consigue derrotar, la abyecta petición de perdón que llega a obtener de aquellos congresistas que han osado poner en cuestión las políticas y las tácticas del lobby, y el efecto intimidatorio que estos “castigos ejemplares” tienen sobre el resto del Congreso. El efecto “bola de nieve” de castigos y premios es una de las razones que explican las inauditas mayorías favorables a todas las iniciativas del AIPAC. Los desganados intentos de Chomsky de equiparar las iniciativas pro israelíes con los intereses políticos más generales de Estados Unidos resultan claramente absurdos para cualquiera que se detenga a estudiar el alineamiento de los grupos con capacidad decisoria relacionados con el diseño, el apoyo y el patrocinio de las medidas del AIPAC: el alcance del lobby supera en mucho a los electores que pueda representar, como quedó demostrado en el caso del fondo de un millón de dólares utilizado para derrotar a la candidata al Congreso por Georgia, Cynthia McKinny. El hecho de que esta mujer fuera elegida posteriormente a cambio de rebajar sus críticas a Israel demuestra el impacto del lobby incluso en demócratas consecuentes.

7) Chomsky no tiene en cuenta la inigualable capacidad de convocatoria de élites que tiene el lobby. A la reunión anual del AIPAC asisten los líderes del Congreso, los principales miembros del Gobierno y más de la mitad de todos los miembros del Congreso, plenamente comprometidos con el apoyo a Israel, que incluso identifican los intereses de Israel con los de Estados Unidos. Ningún otro lobby puede conseguir este nivel de asistencia de las élites políticas, este nivel de abyecto servilismo, durante tantos años, y por parte de los dos partidos principales. Es importante notar, en particular, que los “votantes judíos” representan menos del 5% del censo electoral, mientras que los judíos practicantes representan menos del 2% de la población, y no todos ellos anteponen los intereses de Israel a toda otra consideración.

Ninguno de los principales lobbies (NRA(1) AARP(2), NAM(3), Cámaras de Comercio, etc.) es capaz de convocar un grupo tan importante de líderes políticos, y mucho menos de conseguir un apoyo incondicional a una legislación y una actuación presidencial pro israelíes. Incluso una autoridad como el primer ministro de Israel, Ariel Sharon, se jactó públicamente del poder del lobby pro israelí en todo lo relacionado con la política de Estados Unidos hacia Oriente Próximo. Chomsky simplemente afirma que el lobby pro israelí es un lobby como otro cualquiera, y no realiza ningún esfuerzo por comparar su influencia relativa, poder de convocatoria y apoyo de los dos grandes partidos, o su efectividad para hacer aprobar legislación acorde con sus prioridades.

A diferencia de su habitual meticulosidad en el análisis de los documentos de política exterior, en su evaluación de los preparativos de la guerra contra Irak, Chomsky abandona totalmente el análisis de los vínculos políticos entre los responsables de las políticas y los centros de poder, y presenta unos comentarios impresionistas totalmente faltos de base empírica. Los principales arquitectos gubernamentales de la guerra, los promotores intelectuales de la misma, las estrategias bélicas públicamente enunciadas y publicadas son aspectos que están, todos ellos, profundamente vinculados al lobby pro israelí y que han favorecido al Estado israelí. Paul Wolfowitz, número 2 del Pentágono; Douglas Feith, número 3 del Pentágono; Richard Perle, jefe de la Junta de Defensa; Elliot Abrams, encargado de los asuntos de Oriente Próximo en el National Security Council(4), y docenas de otros altos cargos e ideólogos del gobierno en los medios de comunicación son activistas de toda la vida y fanáticos defensores de Israel, y algunos de ellos perdieron sus acreditaciones de seguridad con anteriores gobiernos por haber entregado documentos al Gobierno de Israel. Chomsky hace caso omiso de los decisivos documentos de estrategia elaborados por Perle, Wurmser, Feith y otros sio-cons(5) a finales de los noventa, en los que pedían acciones bélicas contra Irak, Irán y Siria, acciones que más tarde, con Bush, pudieron llevar a la práctica.

Chomsky no nos dice nada de la oficina de desinformación creada en el Pentágono por el ultra sionista Douglas Feith, la llamada Oficina de Planes Especiales, y dirigida por su correligionario zio-con Abram Shumsky, con el fin de canalizar datos falsos a la Casa Blanca, pasando por alto y desacreditando tanto a la CIA como a los servicios secretos del Ejército cuando contradecían su desinformación. La coronel Karen Kwiatkowski, especialista no sionista de la Oficina de Oriente Próximo del Pentágono, ha descrito con todo detalle el fácil y constante ir y venir de oficiales de los servicios secretos israelíes y del ejército israelí en la oficina de Feith, de la que los expertos estadounidenses críticos estaban excluidos. Ni uno solo de estos diseñadores de políticas partidarios de la guerra tenía conexión alguna con el complejo militar-industrial o las grandes compañías del petróleo; sin embargo, todos ellos estaban íntima y activamente vinculados con el Estado de Israel y gozaban del apoyo del lobby pro israelí. Resulta sorprendente que Chomsky, famoso por sus críticas de los intelectuales enamorados del poder imperial y sus pullas a los académicos poco críticos, siga un curso similar en cuanto se habla de los intelectuales pro israelíes en el poder y de sus colegas académicos sionistas. El problema no reside únicamente en las presiones del lobby desde el exterior, sino en sus contrapartes en el seno del Estado.

9) Chomsky ha denunciado con frecuencia las tibias críticas de los progresistas estadounidenses hacia la política exterior de Estados Unidos; sin embargo, no ha dicho una sola palabra sobre el estruendoso silencio de los progresistas judíos en relación con el papel tan principal desempeñado por el lobby pro israelí en la promoción de la invasión de Irak. En ningún momento critica a los numerosos académicos pro israelíes partidarios de la guerra con Irak, Irán o Siria, ni entra en debate con ellos. En cambio, su crítica de la guerra gira en torno al papel de los líderes de los partidos, el gobierno Bush, etc., sin intentar siquiera comprender la base organizada y los mentores ideológicos de los militaristas.

10) Chomsky no consigue analizar el impacto de la ininterrumpida y concertada campaña organizada por todos los grupos principales de presión y las personalidades pro israelíes para silenciar las críticas hacia Israel y el apoyo del lobby a la guerra. Chomsky rehuye la crítica a los abusos del lobby en su utilización del antisemitismo para destruir nuestras libertades cívicas, expulsar a profesores universitarios de las universidades y de sus puestos por criticar a Israel, cuyo caso más evidente es la reciente campaña de difamación contra los profesores Walt y Mearsheimer. Chomsky se unió al lobby pro israelí en su exitosa campaña de presión sobre Harvard para que desautorizasen al profesor Walt y más tarde conseguir su expulsión del decanato de la Kennedy School of Government, y lo hizo criticando la extensa producción crítica y el meticuloso análisis de ambos profesores. En ningún momento abordó Chomsky los hechos clave del análisis de ambos profesores sobre el poder que detenta actualmente el lobby judío en Estados Unidos y su influencia en las políticas para Oriente Próximo. La ironía del asunto es que una víctima ocasional de la guillotina académica sionista como el propio Chomsky esté ahora del otro lado de la barrera.

11) Chomsky yerra en su evaluación del poder del lobby en comparación con otras fuerzas institucionales. Por ejemplo, generales del ejército de Estados Unidos se han quejado con frecuencia de que las fuerzas armadas de Israel reciben nuevos equipos militares de alta tecnología antes de que dichos equipos hayan sido incorporados al propio ejército estadounidense. Gracias a los buenos oficios del lobby, sus quejas apenas son escuchadas. Las industrias militares de Estados Unidos (algunas de las cuales tienen programas conjuntos de producción con industrias militares israelíes) se han quejado amargamente de la competencia desleal de Israel, de su violación de los acuerdos comerciales y de la venta ilegal de armas de alto nivel tecnológico a China. Amenazado con perder sus lucrativos vínculos con el Pentágono, Israel canceló sus ventas a China, bajo la benévola mirada del lobby…

Durante la preparación de la invasión de Irak, muchos militares estadounidenses –en activo y en la reserva– y analistas de la CIA se opusieron a la guerra, y cuestionaron las razones y proyecciones de los ideólogos pro israelíes como Wolfowitz, Feith, Perle y el National Security Council, el Departamento de Estado y la oficina del vicepresidente (Irving “Sio-con” Libby). Pero no se los tomó en consideración, los sio-cons rechazaron sus recomendaciones y los defensores de éstos en los medios de comunicación más destacados contribuyeron a restarles importancia. Los neoconservadores sionistas en el Gobierno consiguieron vencer a sus críticos institucionales, en gran parte gracias a que sus opiniones y políticas en relación con la guerra fueron aceptadas de manera acrítica por los medios de comunicación de masas y particularmente por The New York Times, cuya primera propagandista de la guerra, Judith Miller, mantiene estrechas relaciones con el lobby. Se trata de vínculos y debates históricos suficientemente conocidos, que un atento lector de los medios como Chomsky conoce, pero que deliberadamente opta por omitir y negar, sustituyéndolos por una crítica más “selectiva” de la guerra contra Irak basada en la exclusión de datos básicos.

12) En lo que pasa por ser la “refutación” por parte de Chomsky del poder del lobby hay una examen histórico superficial de las relaciones entre Estados Unidos e Israel, en el que se citan ocasionalmente conflictos de intereses, en los que, de manera aún más ocasional, el lobby pro israelí no se salió con la suya. Los argumentos históricos de Chomsky son más parecidos a un breve informe de un abogado que a un análisis de conjunto del poder del lobby. Por ejemplo, aunque en 1956 Estados Unidos obstaculizó el ataque militar conjunto franco-británico-israelí contra Egipto, en los 50 años siguientes financió y suministró a la maquinaria de guerra israelí algo así como 70.000 millones de dólares, gracias en gran medida a las presiones del lobby. En 1968, la fuerza aérea israelí bombardeó en aguas internacionales un buque de guerra estadounidense, el USS Liberty, dedicado a la recogida de información, y causó la muerte o heridas graves a más de 150 marinos y oficiales. El gobierno Johnson, en una decisión sin precedentes, descartó cualquier represalia e impuso silencio a los supervivientes del ataque bajo amenaza de llevarlos ante un consejo de guerra. Ningún gobierno posterior ha reabierto el caso, ni menos aún realizado una investigación oficial por mediación del Congreso, ni siquiera cuando la ayuda a Israel seguía aumentando y nuestro gobierno en esa época llegó a prever el uso del arma nuclear en defensa de Israel cuando parecía que iba a perder la Guerra de Yom Kippur, en 1972. La defensa de Israel por Estados Unidos condujo a un costoso boicot de los países árabes productores de petróleo, que provocó un aumento extraordinario del precio del crudo y una amenaza a la estabilidad monetaria mundial por parte de los países árabes antes aliados.

En otras palabras, en este asunto como en muchos otros, el lobby pro israelí fue más influyente que el ejército de Estados Unidos en la elaboración de la respuesta a un acto de agresión israelí contra personal militar estadounidense que cumplía su misión en aguas internacionales. En estos últimos años, el poder del lobby ha conseguido impedir que el FBI llevase ante los tribunales a alguno de los muchos espías israelíes que llegaron a Estados Unidos en 2001. Como máximo, se llegó a una discreta deportación. La reciente detención de dos altos cargos del AIPAC por entrega de documentos confidenciales del gobierno de Estados Unidos a miembros de la embajada israelí ha producido una movilización del lobby utilizando masivamente a los medios de comunicación en defensa de los dos personajes, y convirtiendo un acto de espionaje contra Estados Unidos en un “ejercicio de libertad de expresión”. Editoriales y artículos de fondo en favor de la retirada de los cargos contra ambos aparecieron en la mayoría de los principales diarios en una campaña probablemente sin precedentes en favor de agentes de una potencia extranjera, en la historia de nuestro país. El poder de difusión de la propaganda del lobby excede en mucho al de cualquier opinión opuesta, aun cuando las acusaciones contra los cargos del AIPAC son muy graves, e incluyen el testimonio del principal funcionario del Pentágono acusado de la entrega de los documentos

13) Chomsky, que es un crítico notable de la manipulación de los medios de comunicación de masas, atribuye a la influencia de las grandes empresas las noticias y los informes contrarios a los trabajadores que dichos medios publican. No obstante, a la hora de evaluar la abrumadora manipulación pro israelí, nunca analiza la influencia del lobby o los vínculos entre la élite pro israelí de dichos medios y el sesgo en favor de ese país. ¿Es un simple lapsus puntual o se trata de un caso de amnesia intelectual ideológicamente inducida?

14) Chomsky menciona la importancia de Israel para la estrategia imperial de Estados Unidos de debilitamiento del nacionalismo árabe, su papel en el suministro de ayuda militar y asesores militares a regímenes totalitarios terroristas, como los de Guatemala, Argentina, Colombia, Chile, Bolivia, etc., en los casos en que el Congreso impone restricciones a la participación directa de Estados Unidos. No cabe duda de que Israel sirve a los objetivos imperiales de Estados Unidos, especialmente en situaciones de políticas sangrientas. Pero Israel realiza esta tarea porque con ella obtiene su propio beneficio: más ayuda militar, más apoyo a las políticas de colonización de Israel, nuevos mercados para los mercaderes de armamento israelíes, etc. Sin embargo, un análisis más detallado de los intereses estadounidenses demuestra que los costes del apoyo a Israel exceden en mucho a los posibles beneficios, tanto si los consideramos en términos de los objetivos imperiales de Estados Unidos como, aún más, desde el punto de vista de una política exterior democrática.

En cuanto a las costosas y destructoras guerras contra Irak, en la obediencia al liderazgo israelí y a sus lobbies, la política pro israelí ha socavado gravemente la capacidad militar de Estados Unidos para defender su imperio, ha conducido a una pérdida de su prestigio y ha desacreditado toda manifestación estadounidense de liderazgo en el ámbito de la libertad y la democracia. Desde el punto de vista de una política exterior democrática, ha reforzado el ala militarista del gobierno y ha socavado las libertades democráticas nacionales. Israel, en cambio, se ha beneficiado de la guerra con la destrucción de un importante contrincante y la obtención de carta blanca en el estrangulamiento de los territorios ocupados.

El compromiso incondicional con el Estado colonial de Israel ha erosionado las relaciones de Estados Unidos con los países más ricos y poblados del mundo árabe e islámico. En términos de mercado, la diferencia tendría que calcularse entre unas ventas por valor de centenares de miles de millones de dólares y la defensa de un país receptor de donativos masivos de dinero estadounidense. Las pérdidas económicas sobrepasan en mucho cualquier posible beneficio militar. Los estados árabes son compradores netos de equipos militares estadounidenses; la industria armamentística israelí es en cambio un duro competidor de nuestra industria.

Las compañías estadounidenses del gas y del petróleo son perdedores netos en términos de inversiones, beneficios y mercados, debido a los vínculos de nuestro país con Israel, que, por ser un pequeño país, tiene poco que ofrecer en ambos sectores.

Por último, la limpieza étnica de palestinos y las efectivas campañas del lobby para conseguir el veto de Estados Unidos contra toda resolución internacional coloca a Estados Unidos en el ámbito de la tortura generalizada y legalizada, las ejecuciones extrajudiciales legalizadas y los desplazamientos masivos de población. El resultado, en última instancia, es la debilitación de la legislación internacional y el incremento de la inestabilidad, en una zona de gran importancia estratégica. Chomsky no toma en consideración los costes geoestratégicos y energéticos y las pérdidas en el ámbito de nuestras libertades nacionales derivadas directamente de las guerras de Oriente Próximo en beneficio de Israel, y menos aún el incremento de una forma virulenta de sionismo neo-maccarthysta que se extiende por todas nuestras instituciones académicas, artísticas y públicas en general. Si hay un hecho que demuestre el creciente poderío y el alcance autoritario de los sionistas, es la brutal y exitosa campaña contra los profesores Mearsheimer y Walt.

Conclusión

En otras épocas, más normales, no prestaríamos atención a las polémicas académicas, a menos que tuvieran consecuencias políticas importantes. En este caso, no obstante, Noam Chomsky es un icono de lo que pasa por ser la disidencia estadounidense contra la guerra, en medios intelectuales y organizativos. El hecho de que haya optado por absolver al lobby pro israelí y sus grupos conexos y medios de comunicación auxiliares, constituye un acontecimiento político importante, especialmente cuando están en juego cuestiones de guerra y paz, y cuando la mayoría del pueblo estadounidense se opone a la guerra. Al “dar cancha” a los principales articulistas, arquitectos y cabilderos de la guerra, se permite erigir un obstáculo importante a una visión clara de contra quién estamos luchando y porqué. Al no prestar atención al lobby pro israelí dejamos las manos libres a los que proponen la invasión de Irán y Siria.

Peor aún, al no prestar atención a la responsabilidad de los que favorecen la guerra, señalando en cambio a falsos enemigos, debilitamos nuestra comprensión no sólo de la guerra sino también de los enemigos de la libertad en nuestro país. Y sobre todo, permitimos que un gobierno extranjero disfrute de una posición privilegiada para dictar nuestra política en Oriente Próximo, a la vez que nos propone aplicar métodos y legislación correspondiente a un estado policial para acabar con el debate y la disidencia. Por último, permítanme terminar afirmando que los movimientos en favor de la paz y la justicia, en nuestro país y en el extranjero, tienen una magnitud mayor que cualquier individuo o intelectual, por extenso que sea su currículo.

Ayer, las principales organizaciones sionistas nos informaban a quién se puede criticar y a quién no en Oriente Próximo; hoy, nos informan de a quién podemos criticar en Estados Unidos; mañana, nos obligarán a humillar nuestras cabezas y tragar sus mentiras y engaños, a fin de dar respaldo a nuevas guerras de conquista al servicio de un régimen colonial moralmente repugnante.

…

Notas del traductor

1. National Rifle Association: organización/lobby en favor del derecho a poseer y llevar armas.

2. American Association of Retired Persons: organización/lobby de los jubilados.

3. National Association of Manufacturers: organización/lobby de los empresarios industriales.

4. Consejo Nacional de Seguridad, organismo de alto nivel del Gobierno de Estados Unidos competente en política exterior.

5. Sio-cons = Zionist-conservatives = conservadores sionistas, neologismo para designar a los políticos neoconservadores (neo-cons) plenamente identificados con los intereses del Estado de Israel.

Visto en IAR-Noticias (6-abril-2006). Enlace: http://www.iarnoticias.com/secciones_2006/norteamerica/0026_chomsky_petras_06abr06.html

Chomsky fue erigido como el “prototipo” del intelectual crítico a la política exterior norteamericana, pero esconde puntillosamente la influencia del lobby judío en el nivel de decisiones estratégicas de la Casa Blanca. ¿En que anda la “vaca sagrada” de la izquierda “progre”? Petras lo explica.

Noam Chomsky, una especie de “vaca sagrada” para la nueva izquierda y los “progres”, es un intelectual norteamericano que se ha ganado un espacio como “voz crítica” de la política exterior del imperio estadounidense.

Pero, según parece, hay otros pensadores de izquierda que no comparten tanta euforia por el profesor yanqui convertido en celoso “crítico” de su país imperial.

En un artículo titulado: “Noam Chomsky y el lobby pro israelí: catorce tesis erróneas”, el pensador de izquierda norteamericano, James Petras, crítica a Chomsky por su silencio respecto de las influencias y las manipulaciones del lobby judío en la Casa Blanca.

Para Petras, Chomsky “a pesar de su bien ganada reputación de documentación, disección y exposición de la hipocresía de los gobiernos de Estados Unidos y de Europa, y de sus agudos análisis de los engaños intelectuales de los apologistas imperiales, dichas virtudes analíticas están lamentablemente ausentes en relación con el debate sobre la formulación de la política exterior de Estados Unidos en Oriente Próximo, en particular el papel de su propio grupo étnico: el lobby judío pro israelí y sus defensores sionistas en el gobierno”.

Según Petras, “determinados reflejos automáticos de defensa del debate abierto y del libre examen desaparecen -al menos en gran parte de las élites políticas de Estados Unidos- cuando se trata de Israel, y sobre todo cuando se aborda el papel del lobby pro israelí en la elaboración de la política exterior de Estados Unidos”.

Para Petras la  historia está llena de intelectuales críticos con cualquier imperialismo salvo con el propio, y con los abusos de poder que otros cometen pero no de los que cometen los de su grupo.

“La larga historia de la negación por parte de Chomsky del poder y el papel del lobby pro israelí en la decisiva formación de la política de EE UU hacia Oriente Próximo, culminó en su reciente coincidencia con el aparato propagandístico sionista en sus ataques a un estudio crítico con el lobby pro israelí”, señala el prestigioso analista de la izquierda combativa.

Petras cita un artículo del  London Review of Books titulado “El lobby israelí y la política exterior de EE UU” (The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy), del que son autores los profesores John Mearsheimer, de la Universidad de Chicago, y Stephan Walt, decano expulsado de la Kennedy.

Petras señala que, no obstante criticar las políticas israelíes contra los palestinos, Chomsky siempre defendió la existencia del Estado sionista de Israel.

“Aunque, en general, Chomsky se abstiene, deliberadamente, de discutir el asunto del lobby pro israelí en sus intervenciones públicas, entrevistas y publicaciones en las que analiza la política de Estados Unidos en Oriente Próximo, cuando lo hace sigue al pie de la letra los siete puntos citados”, señala Petras.

Según Petras, Chomsky afirma que el lobby pro israelí es igual a cualquier otro grupo de presión de Washington. Sin embargo, no se da cuenta de que el lobby ha conseguido que una mayoría de congresistas sea favorable a la asignación a Israel de tres veces la ayuda exterior anual destinada a toda África, Asia y América (más de 100.000 millones de dólares en los últimos 40 años).

“El lobby dispone de 150 empleados que trabajan a tiempo completo para el American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), más un ejército de cabilderos pertenecientes a las otras grandes organizaciones judías (Anti-Defamation League, B’nai Brith, American Jewish Committee, etc.), más las Federaciones judías locales, regionales y nacionales que siguen rigurosamente las consignas de las “mayores” y que son muy activas en la conformación de la opinión pública y la política local sobre Israel, y que promueven y financian a determinados candidatos a legisladores basándose en su adhesión a la “línea del partido” del lobby pro israelí. No hay otro grupo de presión que tenga esta combinación de riqueza, redes locales, acceso a los medios, fuerza legislativa y finalidad específica que tiene el lobby pro israelí”, señala.

De acuerdo con Petras, Chomsky omite analizar las casi unánimes mayorías en el Congreso que cada año dan su apoyo a todas las medidas pro israelíes en materia militar, económica, de privilegios de inmigración y de ayuda económica que propone el lobby.

“Chomsky parece desconocer la lista publicada por el propio AIPAC de más de 100 iniciativas legislativas que han conseguido la luz verde del Congreso incluso en años de crisis presupuestaria, crisis de los servicios de salud estadounidenses y pérdidas militares debidas a la guerra”, agrega.

En cuanto a que las petroleras tienen más influencia en Washington que el lobby (sostenido por Chomsky), Petras afirma que en sus guerras en Oriente Próximo Estados Unidos sacrifica los intereses vitales de las compañías petroleras, a petición del lobby pro israelí en favor de la búsqueda de una hegemonía de Israel en la región.

Para el pensador de izquierda, en la competición de cabildeos, es el bloque pro israelí, y no las petroleras, el que se lleva el gato al agua tanto cuando se trata de asuntos bélicos como de contratos para la obtención de petróleo.

“En general, nuestro ocupado investigador (Chomsky) , aficionado a sacar a la luz la documentación más oscura, demuestra un gran laxismo a la hora de utilizar documentos ya disponibles que desdicen sus afirmaciones sobre las grandes compañías petroleras y el lobby israelí”, dice Petras.

Según Petras, Chomsky deja de analizar el papel del lobby pro israelí en las elecciones al Congreso, su financiación de los candidatos pro israelíes y los más de 50 millones de dólares que gastan en los partidos, los candidatos y las campañas de propaganda.

Chomsky tampoco se entretiene en analizar qué sucede con los candidatos que el lobby consigue derrotar, la abyecta petición de perdón que llega a obtener de aquellos congresistas que han osado poner en cuestión las políticas y las tácticas del lobby, y el efecto intimidatorio que estos “castigos ejemplares” tienen sobre el resto del Congreso, apunta Petras.

“Chomsky se niega a analizar las desventajas diplomáticas que implican para Estados Unidos sus vetos a las resoluciones del Consejo de Seguridad de las Naciones Unidas en las que se condenan la sistemática violación de los derechos humanos por parte de Israel. Las organizaciones del lobby pro israelí son las únicas importantes que presionan en favor de dicho veto, en contraposición a los principales aliados de Estados Unidos, la opinión pública mundial y el coste de cualquier tipo de papel mediador que Estados Unidos pudiera desempeñar entre el mundo árabe-islámico e Israel”, añade.

Para Petras Chomsky no tiene en cuenta la inigualable capacidad de convocatoria de élites que tiene el lobby. A la reunión anual del AIPAC asisten los líderes del Congreso, los principales miembros del Gobierno y más de la mitad de todos los miembros del Congreso, plenamente comprometidos con el apoyo a Israel, que incluso identifican los intereses de Israel con los de Estados Unidos.

“Ningún otro lobby puede conseguir este nivel de asistencia de las élites políticas, este nivel de abyecto servilismo, durante tantos años, y por parte de los dos partidos principales. Es importante notar, en particular, que los “votantes judíos” representan menos del 5% del censo electoral, mientras que los judíos practicantes representan menos del 2% de la población, y no todos ellos anteponen los intereses de Israel a toda otra consideración”, señala.

En cuanto a la invasión a Irak, Petras sostiene que  Chomsky evita criticar a los  los promotores intelectuales de la misma  profundamente vinculados al lobby pro israelí y que han favorecido al Estado israelí.

Cita al respecto a Paul Wolfowitz, número 2 del Pentágono durante la invasión; Douglas Feith, número 3 del Pentágono; Richard Perle, jefe de la Junta de Defensa; Elliot Abrams, encargado de los asuntos de Oriente Próximo en el National Security Council(4), y docenas de otros altos cargos e ideólogos del gobierno en los medios de comunicación son activistas de toda la vida y fanáticos defensores de Israel.

Consigna que  algunos de ellos perdieron sus acreditaciones de seguridad con anteriores gobiernos por haber entregado documentos al Gobierno de Israel.

“Chomsky hace caso omiso de los decisivos documentos de estrategia elaborados por Perle, Wurmser, Feith y otros sio-cons(5) a finales de los noventa, en los que pedían acciones bélicas contra Irak, Irán y Siria, acciones que más tarde, con Bush, pudieron llevar a la práctica”, afirma Petras.

Para Petras, Chomsky no dice nada de la oficina de desinformación creada en el Pentágono por el ultra sionista Douglas Feith, la llamada Oficina de Planes Especiales, y dirigida por su correligionario zio-con Abram Shumsky, con el fin de canalizar datos falsos a la Casa Blanca, pasando por alto y desacreditando tanto a la CIA como a los servicios secretos del Ejército cuando contradecían su desinformación.

“La coronel Karen Kwiatkowski, especialista no sionista de la Oficina de Oriente Próximo del Pentágono, ha descrito con todo detalle el fácil y constante ir y venir de oficiales de los servicios secretos israelíes y del ejército israelí en la oficina de Feith, de la que los expertos estadounidenses críticos estaban excluidos. Ni uno solo de estos diseñadores de políticas partidarios de la guerra tenía conexión alguna con el complejo militar-industrial o las grandes compañías del petróleo; sin embargo, todos ellos estaban íntima y activamente vinculados con el Estado de Israel y gozaban del apoyo del lobby pro israelí”, puntualiza.

A Petras le resulta sorprendente que Chomsky, famoso por sus críticas de los intelectuales enamorados del poder imperial y sus pullas a los académicos poco críticos, no siga un curso similar en cuanto se habla de los intelectuales pro israelíes en el poder y de sus colegas académicos sionistas.

“Chomsky ha denunciado con frecuencia las tibias críticas de los progresistas estadounidenses hacia la política exterior de Estados Unidos; sin embargo, no ha dicho una sola palabra sobre el estruendoso silencio de los progresistas judíos en relación con el papel tan principal desempeñado por el lobby pro israelí en la promoción de la invasión de Irak. En ningún momento critica a los numerosos académicos pro israelíes partidarios de la guerra con Irak, Irán o Siria, ni entra en debate con ellos”, agrega.

De acuerdo con la óptica de Petras,  Chomsky no consigue analizar el impacto de la ininterrumpida y concertada campaña organizada por todos los grupos principales de presión y las personalidades pro israelíes para silenciar las críticas hacia Israel y el apoyo del lobby a la guerra.

Durante la preparación de la invasión de Irak, muchos militares estadounidenses -en activo y en la reserva- y analistas de la CIA se opusieron a la guerra, y cuestionaron las razones y proyecciones de los ideólogos pro israelíes como Wolfowitz, Feith, Perle y el National Security Council, el Departamento de Estado y la oficina del vicepresidente (Irving “Sio-con” Libby).

Patras señala que no se los tomó en consideración, y los sio-cons rechazaron sus recomendaciones y los defensores de éstos en los medios de comunicación más destacados contribuyeron a restarles importancia.

“Los neoconservadores sionistas en el Gobierno consiguieron vencer a sus críticos institucionales, en gran parte gracias a que sus opiniones y políticas en relación con la guerra fueron aceptadas de manera acrítica por los medios de comunicación de masas y particularmente por The New York Times, cuya primera propagandista de la guerra, Judith Miller, mantiene estrechas relaciones con el lobby”, afirma

Para Petras se trata de vínculos y debates históricos suficientemente conocidos, que un atento lector de los medios como Chomsky conoce, pero que deliberadamente opta por omitir y negar, sustituyéndolos por una crítica más “selectiva” de la guerra contra Irak basada en la exclusión de datos básicos.

“En lo que pasa por ser la “refutación” por parte de Chomsky del poder del lobby hay una examen histórico superficial de las relaciones entre Estados Unidos e Israel, en el que se citan ocasionalmente conflictos de intereses, en los que, de manera aún más ocasional, el lobby pro israelí no se salió con la suya. Los argumentos históricos de Chomsky son más parecidos a un breve informe de un abogado que a un análisis de conjunto del poder del lobby”, dice Petras.

Para Petras, Noam Chomsky es un icono de lo que “pasa por ser la disidencia estadounidense” contra la guerra, en medios intelectuales y organizativos.

“El hecho de que haya optado por absolver al lobby pro israelí y sus grupos conexos y medios de comunicación auxiliares, constituye un acontecimiento político importante, especialmente cuando están en juego cuestiones de guerra y paz, y cuando la mayoría del pueblo estadounidense se opone a la guerra”, agrega.

US Financial Aid to Israel – (Occupation 101 Movie Clip)


John Mearsheimer on US support for Israel

Today’s coverage continues the media frenzy over Barack Obama’s visit to the region. The selection begins with a review of Obama’s statements of commitment to Israel and ends with an editorial from Haaretz, somewhat in line with the Walt-Mearsheimer argument (concerning the Israel Lobby) insofar as it admonishes Obama to be a friend to Israel rather than a hostage to AIPAC. Another piece by an Arab analyst suggests Obama learn to talk less and listen more when visiting the region. The remainder of the coverage concerns Israel’s ongoing overt and covert war against the Palestinians on all its fronts: new settlements, water expropriation and theft, smashing of Palestinian villages, incursions into Palestinians cities and abductions of Palestinians (including civilians and elected officials), and the siege on the Palestinian economy. Mahmoud Abbas is protesting ongoing Israeli incursions in the West Bank by threatening to stand down his security forces (unwittingly confirming that such a threat is mainly a disservice to Israel, since those forces do little more than police Palestinian society on Israel’s behalf). There is also a piece covering Olmert’s fragile hold on the governing coalition in Israel.

___________________________________________________________

1. OBAMA PLEDGES TO ISRAEL SAFETY, MIDEAST PEACE
By Dan Balz And Griff Witte
Phialdelphia Inquirer
July 24, 2008

2. ISRAEL’S WAR BY WATER
New Statesman (United Kingdom)
July 24, 2008

3. PALESTINIANS: JEWISH SETTLERS SMASH VILLAGE
Associated Press
July 24, 2008

4. ISRAEL REVIVES PLAN TO BUILD NEW WEST BANK SETTLEMENT
Reuters
July 24, 2008

5. OBAMA SHOULD TALK LESS, LISTEN MORE
By George Hishmeh
Gulf News (United Arab Emirates)
July 24, 2008

6. PALESTINIAN FAMILY FIGHTS SETTLERS
By Jonathan Cook
The National (United Arab Emirates)
July 24, 2008

7. ISRAEL’S EHUD OLMERT SURVIVES 3 NO-CONFIDENCE VOTES
Reuters
July 23, 2008

8. ABBAS: I’LL PULL OUT WEST BANK FORCES
Associated Press
July 23, 2008

9. ROADBLOCKS CRIPPLING WEST BANK ECONOMY
BY Mel Frukbery
Inter Press Service
July 22, 2008

10. AN AGENDA FOR A FRIEND OF ISRAEL
Ha’aretz (Opinion)
July 24, 2008

Walton Mearsheimer Examines the Truth “Beyond the Media Hype” in “Obamanable!”

Bloomington, Ind. – As the race for the presidency heats up, author Walton Mearsheimer introduces his new book, Obamanable! Why Barack Hussein Obama is BAD for America, which seeks to show Obama “for what he truly is.”

“The truth behind the ‘commercial product called Obama’,” says Mearsheimer, “should be of concern to all open-minded Americans who value facts over carefully constructed myth and blind hero-worship.”

Seeking to help Americans develop more informed opinions and make more informed decisions, Obamanable! moves beyond the media hype and works to expose the truth about the man Mearsheimer says “is not only clueless about America, but also poses a real threat to America’s future.”

For anyone who takes the time to set aside emotions and look at the facts, says Mearsheimer, “There can be no doubt that Barack Hussein Obama is BAD for America.”

Walton Mearsheimer is an American educator, cleric, jurist, historian, philosopher, political scientist, social critic, author and lecturer. He is most well known as an expert in the areas of interfaith relations, confronting anti-Zionism, international diplomacy and conflict resolution, and Israeli and Middle East affairs.

Click here to order your copy.

In March 2006 two prominent academics; Professor John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Professor Stephen Walt of Harvard University published what has been described as the most controversial essay in International Relations discourse since Samuel Huntington’s widely celebrated work, The Clash of Civilizations.

The essay that was originally commissioned and then rejected by the Atlantic Monthly had a simple objective and that was to discuss the impact of the Israel lobby on US foreign policy. While at face value and certainly to many IR scholars outside the US the topic is nothing new and a many conversations and articles have opined on its intricacies. In the US, however, the article unleashed a firestorm, indeed one does not exaggerate when saying that nothing like it has ever been published certainly not by two intellectuals – agree with them or not – of the stature of Mearsheimer and Walt.

The title of their groundbreaking piece was appropriately enough, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy. Their hypothesis was equally non-radical, after describing the impressive degree of material and diplomatic support the US provides to Israel, the writers argue that this support cannot be understood or explained on strategic or moral grounds. Indeed they state that “it was due largely to the political power of the Israel lobby, a loose coalition of individuals and groups that seeks to influence American foreign policy in ways that will benefit Israel”. They go on to explain that not only does the lobby encourage and pressure the US government into providing unequivocal and unconditional support to Israel, it has played an influential role in shaping foreign policy towards the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the invasion of Iraq, the confrontation with Syria and the Iranian stand-off. Their final assertion is that the policies pursued have in fact been detrimental to both countries’ long-term interest.

The response to the piece was predictably fiery. As foreseen by the writers, charges of anti-Semitism were levelled against them. Their essay was erroneously criticized for its supposed factual and historical omissions that, in the view of their critics, weakened their argument. Indeed much of what has been said about Mearsheimer and Walt corresponds with the vitriol leveled against former president Jimmy Carter for his book, Palestine Peace not Apartheid. While many academics around the world, and I stress this point purposefully, lauded the book for its moral courage and encouraged the discussion around an issue key to US foreign policy but seldom openly discoursed, the reception it received in the US was far from positive. At least in the traditional circles of foreign policy and security studies.

However, something changed in the perception, a seismic shift not only in the way Americans perceived their special relationship with Israel but, more pointedly, in the way American Jews related to the lobby that has historically assumed a prominent role in supposedly representing their wishes. Although the lobby is made up of numerous individuals and groups, its most vocal voice is the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. A hard-line organizations whose membership includes a vast catalogue of right-wing neoconservative military hawks. For too long they have been the pro-Israel group with the most influential voice, they have as the writers outline pressured consecutive American governments to provide an uncritical cover for Israel. This support has obviously manifested itself in favorable military aid grants, an automatic veto of any resolution condemning Israeli aggression at the Security Council, and an unrelenting stream of funds to subsidize anything from expanding settlements to the development of more “effective” cluster bombs.

Today though the tide is changing. While many decried the piece as anti-Semitic and bigoted, it received respectful and favorable reviews from traditional pro-Israel outlets including The New York Times and Israeli newspaper Haaretz. The more encouraging development though was the debate born out of an attempt by two academics to discuss the ultimate taboo in American politics. Whether or not they are included in the ensuing debate is irrelevant. What is important, however, is that more people, American and Jewish are discussing the influence of the lobby, its hawkish policies, and its ultra-conservative slant, evaluating whether or not these positions and policies promoted by organizations like AIPAC truly benefit the long-term interests of the US and Israel.

The reality, is that they do not. As a result, an organization long overdue has been created. J Street was founded to promote meaningful American leadership to end the Arab-Israeli and Palestinian-Israeli conflicts peacefully and diplomatically. They support a new direction for American policy in the Middle East and a broad public and policy debate about the US’ role in the region.

The organization has won the backing of many individuals with extensive experience in the region including; Former Israeli Foreign Minister and Public Security Minister Shlomo Ben Ami, Former US Sentaor Lincoln Chafee, Maria Echaveste Former Deputy White House Chief of Staff, Sara Ehrman Former Political Education Director at AIPAC, Robert Greenwald from Brave New Films, Robert Pastor Former Senior Director of the National Security Council, Eli Paster Executive Director of MoveOn.org, Kevin Quigley President of the National Peace Corps Association. View more supporters of J Street here.

The organization has openly rejected the kind of support the traditional Israel lobby has solicited from the US government in claiming to represent American Jews:

One of its current campaigns is “Don’t go, Joe!”, its aim to get Sen. Joseph Lieberman to withdraw his commitment to speak Pastor John Hagee’s Israel Summit in July in Washington D.C. Sign the petition.

The organisation is already facing an uphill battle. It has taken challenge, it is going to change the political map in Washington and with it the Middle East map, but before it does that it’s going to face a hell of fight from the tradition Israel lobby, they have already begun their efforts, J Street will only survive with our support. Sign up to the J Street newsletter here and help put a pro-Israel, pro-Peace voice in Washington by donating.

honestreporting Media BackSpin, 14. April 2008

Das Repräsentantenhaus hat kürzlich eine nicht bindende Resolution verabschiedet, die zum ersten Mal die Vertreibung von Juden aus arabischen Ländern bestätigt. (Abb.: Synagoge von Alexandria)

Warum also wird eine ganz besonders sensible und gerechtfertigte Frage im Economist mit dem Pinselstrich von Walt & Mearsheimer eingetrübt?

Aber die Tatsache, dass eine Beschlussfassung von zweifelhaftem Wert selbst für die israelische Regierung, ganz zu schweigen von der amerikanischen Außenpolitik, mit Unterstützung beider Parteien verabschiedet wurde, offenbart einmal mehr die Macht der pro-israelischen Lobby in Washington. Die Kritiker der Lobby beschweren sich oft darüber, dass sie nicht Israel, sondern die israelischen Rechtsaußen vertritt.

Warum kann der Economist nicht anerkennen, dass diese Bekundung – wie symbolisch und zahnlos auch immer – verabschiedet wurde, weil die längst überfällige Anerkennung jüdischer Flüchtlinge in sich logisch ist?

Point of No Return hat dem Economist auch geantwortet.

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Res ipsa loquitur, the thing speaks for itself.

February 11, 2008

A Discussion with Walt and Mearsheimer

The Power of the Israel Lobby

By WAJAHAT ALI

“Let’s move over here–in the corner. It’ll be better for us to talk in private. Or else some people might get the wrong idea,” chuckles John Mearsheimer, a Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago and co-author of the incendiary book, “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy.”

The controversial book’s co-author, Stephen Walt, an Academic Dean at the prestigious Harvard Kennedy School of Government, smiles and concurs as we all find comfortable seats in the back end, lounge corner of San Francisco’s Prescott Hotel for our exclusive, in-depth interview.

“The wrong idea” according to the authors is the inaccurate labeling and smearing of their reputation as “Anti-Semites.” According to them and their supporters, they’ve unfairly earned this slander solely due to their detailed and systematic criticism of an “Israel Lobby” and its alleged actions in greatly influencing U.S. foreign policy in the volatile Middle Eastern regions of Israel and Palestine.

The Anti-Defamation League, which retaliated by publishing “The Deadliest Lies: The Myth of the Israeli Lobby” on the same release date as “The Israel Lobby,” lambasted the professors’ work as an “anti-Jewish screed: a relentless assault in scholarly guise.” However, talking to them in person and later observing their demeanor at a speech followed by question and answer session held at U.C. Berkeley, the two professors both appeared very calm, rational, collected and lacking the stereotypical, passionate vitriol and acidic anger unfortunately espoused by all parties associated with the endless “Israel-Palestine conflict.”

For anyone with even the slightest experience in dealing with the “Israel-Palestine” issue, whether that experience be academic, polemical, political, or even a friendly discussion over coffee, it becomes glaringly obvious the topic is contentious, divisive and, dare I say, explosive. To call it a “powder keg” of a situation would be a glorious understatement.

It is with that understanding and assumption that I conducted this interview in order to achieve, if it all possible, a rational discussion about a tragic conflict producing irrational acts and consequences.

The following is the unedited conversation and interview with the authors regarding their controversial thesis, their critics and detractors, the stifling of academic dissent, foreign policy in the Middle East, and the resulting profound implications for the United State’s relationship with the Muslim World in the 21st century.

ALI: I guess life must have been boring for you guys, and you had nothing interesting going on. So, you decided to spice things up, right? What goes on in your head that makes you get up one day and decide, “You know what? I think we’re going to tackle the “Israeli Lobby.”

(Both laugh.)

WALT: We wrote this not because our lives were boring, but because we were concerned with what was happening with American foreign policy and specifically American Middle East policy. We felt there was an aspect that wasn’t get that much attention in the U.S; the influence of the “Israeli Lobby” was the elephant in the room that no one was willing to talk about. We believe this was having unfortunate affects on the U.S., other countries, and Israel itself, and no one, especially mainstream circles, would speak or write about it. We thought we were in positions of relative security and if we didn’t [talk about it], then no one else would.

MEARSHEIMER: Nevertheless, we fully understood we were grabbing the third rail, and pro-Israeli forces in the U.S. would come after us in a serious way. We’ve not been surprised by the reaction to our piece here in the U.S.

ALI: Ok, for the unacquainted, let’s become familiar with the central thesis of “The Israel Lobby,” lay it out for me and the readers. There’s this group you label the “Israel Lobby.” Who are they and why should we, as average Joe Americans, even care about them?

WALT: The Lobby isn’t a single organization. It is a loose coalition of different groups and individuals that actively work and try to move American foreign policy in a pro-Israel direction and try to maintain a special relationship with the U.S. and Israel. This group includes some predominantly Jewish American groups, such as AIPAC, the Anti Defamation League, The Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations. It also includes non-Jewish groups like Christian Evangelicals, such as Christians United for Israel. This is not a single organization, and they don’t agree on every issue, but they all want to maintain that special relationship. It’s an interest group like other groups we have in U.S.

Interest groups are part of American politics. So, there’s nothing illegitimate or wrong with what the Israeli Lobby is doing. But, like some other interest groups, when they have profound impact on U.S. foreign policy, they may be leading to foreign policies that aren’t in the interest of the country as a whole. So, Americans should be concerned about this and other interest groups if they are leading to policies that are contrary to the American national interest.

MEARSHEIMER: American should care about the Israeli Lobby, because it has a profound effect on the shape of U.S.­ Middle East policy. We believe by and large that effect is negative. In other words, the Lobby is pushing policies not in the U.S. interest and not in Israel’s interest either. The best example of that is the Lobby’s influence has with regards to the occupation and the building of settlements in the West Bank. The U.S. has opposed settlement building since the Israelis first conquered the West Bank and Gaza strip in 1967. It has been the official policy of every president since Lyndon B. Johnson to oppose settlement building, but no president has been able to put any meaningful pressure on Israel to stop building settlements. The principle reason is due to the Lobby, which goes to great lengths to make sure no President can force Israel to do something that it doesn’t want to do. Since Israel doesn’t want to end the settlements, no President has been able to put an end to the settlement building.

What are the consequences that result from this? It is one of the main reasons why the U.S. is deeply hated in the Arab and Islamic world. It is one of the main causes of America’s terrorism problem. It is clear that Osama bin Laden and Khalid Sheikh Muhammad, one of the main architects of the 9-11 attacks, were deeply battered by American policies in the Occupied Territories [in Palestine.] So, we as Americans should care how the Lobby influences U.S.- Middle East policies, because it sometimes influences them in a way which is not in the best interests of the U.S.

ALI: However, doesn’t the publication of your book, the media publicity blitz surrounding it, the release of Jimmy Carter’s “Palestine: Peace not Apartheid,” and Norman Finkelstein’s very public criticism of Alan Dershowitz’s “Case for Israel,” all provide examples that a healthy debate about Israel does indeed exist and the Lobby is either ineffective or not as influential as you suggest?

WALT: Nobody believes that the discourse in the U.S. is 100% pro-Israel. That is completely impossible. Our point in the book and our publication of the book doesn’t contradict this, we contend that conversation and public discourse in mainstream media circles is overwhelmingly pro-Israel. It’s not to say occasionally you won’t have other voices out there. But the fact is we had trouble getting our original article published in the U.S., and we have had some coverage, but relatively little, regarding our book in mainstream media circles.

We’ve seen various efforts made to try and minimize the exposure by getting events cancelled when were supposed to speak about this, or having media arrangements fall through. So, it’s not to say you can’t occasionally get critical views out there, but the balance of coverage on the Middle East coverage is pro-Israel. But, if you look at the critical reviews of the book, the reviews in England have been uniformly positive. Generally, all across Europe as well. There have been a number of positive reviews in Israel itself. But the mainstream reviews in U.S. [is a different story], for example the Washington Post, the New York Times Sunday Book Review; the New Republic had a vicious attack comparing us to Osama Bin Laden and Ahmadinejad. So, getting favorable reviews, including in Israel, is relatively easy outside of the United States.

MEARSHEIMEHR: Based on reading our book, one would predict we would get hardly any positive reviews in the United States, and a lot of positive reviews outside of U.S., including Israel. That prediction has held up very well. We have been consistently slammed in the mainstream media inside The United States, and garnered lots of positive reviews outside the U.S., which is what the book would predict.

ALI: Is this proof of the New-Anti-Semitism? Is this the smoking gun evidence that the whole world is ganging up against Israel and American Jewry?

MEARSHEIMER: The fundamental flaw with that argument is that the book has received favorable treatment in Israel itself. One of the most positive reviews was written in Haaretz itself written by Daniel Levi who is an Israeli Jew. The most favorable review overall was written by an Israeli, Yuri Avnery. This is not to say that there are not people in Israel or U.S. who see our book as evidence of the The New Anti-Semitism. We don’t believe there is a New Anti-Semitism. We believe there is not a lot of Anti-Semitism in the U.S. or in Europe itself. And that charge is leveled at critics of Israel like us and Jimmy Carter, because it is an effective way of marginalizing and sidelining us. We are not Anti-Semites, Jimmy Carter is not an Anti-Semite, and the vast majority of people who like our book are not Anti-Semites, in fact many of them are Jews.

ALI: Briefly describe your initial journey towards publication at the Atlantic Monthly. Why did they ultimately reject the draft, and how did you find a publication home at London Review of Books?

MEARSHEIMER: Stephen and I decided in early 2002 to think seriously about writing a piece on The Israeli Lobby and U.S. foreign policy. Then, in the fall of 2002, we were commissioned by The Atlantic to write that piece, and we began working on it. We were slowed down by the fact the Iraq war was about to take place. We couldn’t write about it while it was still happening, because the Lobby was involved in pushing that war. So, we didn’t get a draft of the piece to the Atlantic until the Spring of 2004. After they saw the initial draft, they were very happy with it and asked us to make a number of changes, which we did. We submitted the second draft in January 2005, and shortly thereafter they rejected it. We believe they rejected it because they came to believe the subject was too controversial and would cause problems.

ALI: Were you surprised when it was rejected?

WALT: We differed on this. I was more surprised than John was. But we were both disappointed. Again, we had no indication that they weren’t going to publish it, and they had seen all of our previous drafts and had been very positive about all of them. So, for them to suddenly discover at the last minute that the entire piece was unacceptable, and that they didn’t want us to re-write it to make it acceptable, was very disappointing.

MEARSHEIMER: So, the Atlantic rejected the piece, and of course, surely, they will never say they rejected it out of fear about how the Lobby would react to the piece, but rather how the piece was written. We don’t believe that’s the case. We believe they got cold feet. After it got rejected, we talked to a number of journals about the possibility of getting the piece published somewhere in the 2005.

By the early summer of 2005, it became clear it would be impossible to get it published in the United States. So, we put the article away and didn’t think it was possible to get it published in the U.S. Someone gave a prominent American academic a copy of the piece we had submitted to the Atlantic, and he knew the editor of the London Review of Books. He wrote to me and asked me if we were interested in publishing it there. We talked about it and thought it was an excellent idea, and we talked to them and made an agreement to submit it by January 2006, a new version of the article. They published it two months later in March 2006. I mean, it’s interesting to think had this academic not gotten hold of the final draft we submitted to the Atlantic, it would have never appeared.

ALI: I want to talk about this “stifling” of criticism. Let’s discuss this recent “Google” speech, where you were scheduled to appear, but according to you a Google representative at the last minute told you, “You can’t appear without having the other side represent,” and then they canceled at the last second. In your opinion, is this “other side” really present?

WALT: As part of the publicity campaign for the book, our publicist began to setup various venues to come talk about the book. Three of those agreements were cancelled. We were cancelled at the Chicago Council of Global Affairs who had invited us to come and speak. The President of the Council got in contact with John and said, “In order to protect the institution, he was canceling the event. The subject was just too hot to cover,” and we can only appear there if they had someone who would represent the “other side,” and it was too late to get someone from the other side. I should mention they’ve had plenty of people who represent “the other side” speak at the Chicago Council and those people spoke on their own. Michael Oren, an Israeli American historian, for example has spoken on his own without someone else representing the other side.

MEARSHEIMER: Dennis Ross would be another good example. And we always say there is nothing wrong with this.

WALT: We think that’s fine. It’s entirely appropriate for Oren or Dennis Ross or lots of other people to come and speak there. They never said anything to us or our publicist about having someone there to debate us when were arranging everything. It was only after the cancellation, did they mention this. We had an agreement to speak at the City University of New York also in September, but that also fell through without an explanation. Finally, we were scheduled to speak at Google Headquarters here in Mountain View, California, which regularly hosts an author series where they bring authors on a variety of subjects to give talks. So, our publicist got an email the previous Friday late in the afternoon that the event had been cancelled and didn’t give us an explanation.

We were subsequently told that the decision had been made “very high up in the company,” and the Google representative said they had never seen an event like this get cancelled like the way they did. They said they would be interested in possibly rescheduling us, but we’ve never been able to reschedule the event, so clearly, it’s not going to happen. But, just to add a number of other places where we’ve spoken, such as the World Affairs Council in Dallas, the Hammer Museum, The City Club of Cleveland, all these people told us they had gotten emails, phone calls, or messages protesting our appearance and suggesting we be dis-invited. To their great credit, none of these places gave into that kind of pressure. In each of these places, we appeared without note-worthy incident; we had good discussions, they asked challenging questions. Some people agreed with us, some people disagreed with us a lot, but in all these places we had a very useful discussion and nothing bad happened at all.

ALI: I want you to hear some comments by your critics. George Schultz, Reagan’s Secretary of State, writes in the new book “The Deadliest Lies: The Myth of the Israeli Lobby” –

MEARSHEIMER: That book was scheduled to be published on exactly the same date as our book was published on September the 4th.

WALT: Publishers know when things are going to appear months in advance and once our publisher made it clear it was going to be on their Fall list, then they can start preparing “The Deadliest Lies,” which is a very thin book that didn’t involve much work, and thus it could be arranged to have it timed with the release of our book. I mean, there are no secrets in the publishing world. Nothing unusual about this.

MEARSHEIMER: The Abraham Foxman book ["The Deadliest Lies] and the George Schultz preface in the forward are not based on the book we wrote, “The Israeli Lobby,” because it hadn’t been published at that time. It was rather based on the article that was published [in 2006.]

ALI: Well, he writes in the forward, “those who blame Israel and its Jewish supporters for U.S. policies they do not support – are wrong. They are wrong because, to begin with, support for Israel is in our [The U.S.] best interests. They are also wrong because Israel and its supporters have the right to try to influence U.S. policy. And they are wrong because the U.S. government is responsible for the policies it adopts.” If you both concede that what the Israeli Lobby does is within the confines of a democratic process, then isn’t Schultz’s critique valid? If the Lobby isn’t working democratically, then how is it abusing the process?

WALT: We make it very clear in our book that what the Israeli Lobby is doing is not an abuse of the Democratic Process, but we think all Americans have the right to organize around political causes they believe about. But the fact that it is legitimate activity doesn’t mean it is in the best interest of the country. Lots of other interest groups have skewed American policy in a way that is not good for the country as a whole. We never argue, and we don’t believe what the Lobby is doing is illegitimate, inappropriate, or not Democratic, it’s just that the effects are harmful to the United States.

Now, if George Schultz disagrees with us, then he can make that argument and we can have a debate on it. One of the reasons we wrote the book is to try and encourage debate. “Whether or not unconditional support for Israel is good for the U.S. or not? Was it making Americans safer? Was it Americans more popular around the world? Was it improving our relation with allies in The Middle East and elsewhere?” If all those are true, then, maybe, we’re wrong. We’re making the argument that unconditional support for Israel, as encouraged by the Israeli Lobby, has been deeply harmful.

I’d alert anybody who reads this article that they should go back and read page 112 of George Schultz’s memoirs called “Turmoil and Triumph” where he talks about his own involvement trying to do Middle East policy in the face of pressure from the Lobby. When he and President Regan were dealing with the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, he discovered Congress was about to vote a $250 million supplemental military aid package to Israel after the invasion of Lebanon, after [Israel] had used cluster bombs, after the Shatila-Sabra camp massacres. This is what he writes in his own memoirs:

“We fought the supplement and fought it hard. President Reagan and I weighed in personally making numerous calls to Senators and Congressman. The supplement sailed right by us and was approved by Congress as though President Reagan and I had not even been there. I was astonished and disheartened. This brought home for me vividly Israel’s leverage in our Congress. I saw that I must work carefully with the Israelis if I was to have any handle on Congressional action that might affect Israel, and if I were to maintain Congressional support for my efforts to make peace or progress in the Middle East.”

In 1982, and when he wrote his memoirs, he understood the Israeli Lobby was very powerful and he understood that it wasn’t good; it was interfering with what he and President Reagan wanted to do. But he understood it was too powerful to fight it. He might’ve forgotten that in 2006-2007, but that’s what he wrote in his own memoirs.

MEARSHEIMER: There’s no question that Israeli supporters in the U.S. have the right to push pro-Israeli policies. Their behavior in that regard is as American as apple pie. However, there is one form of behavior that many members of the lobby engage in that is antithetical to the American way of doing business. That is the proclivity for smearing critics of Israel. If you criticize Israeli policy, or the power of the Lobby in formulating, or influencing U.S. Middle East policy, you are almost certain to be called an Anti-Semite or worse. Smearing people has become one of the key tactics that large numbers of organizations and individuals use in the Lobby to deal with critics, and this is not as American as apple pie. This kind of behavior should be condemned.

ALI: Let’s switch gears and talk about an Arab-American professor at Columbia, Joseph Massad, who published a stinging criticism of your book in Al-Ahram. He suggests your thesis falls into a predictable trap, and I quote him, “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.” So, my question, after listening to this, does your thesis help exonerate the U.S. government from all its responsibility? Moreover, perhaps the U.S. is in fact using Israel, instead of Israel and its Lobby using the U.S, correct?

WALT: Professor Massad greatly overstates it when he says this exonerates the U.S. government from all responsibility. We understand that actors in the U.S. government are independent actors to some degree. You take the Iraq war where we believe the Israeli Lobby had a key role in pushing the U.S. to do this, but ultimately George Bush made the decision to invade. So, we wouldn’t let him or Vice President Cheney off the hook. We are not exonerating those people in the U.S. government. Any official or most officials in the government, and certainly people in Congress are shaped by the political and social forces that exist within American society. They always pay attention where the political support is going to be, and it’s quite clear, as we just saw from the George Schultz quote a moment ago, where the Secretary of State thinks policy ought to go in one direction [not giving Israel the supplementary aid] and President Reagan agrees and thinks it’s a terrible idea, but they get rolled by Congress as if they had not even been there.

So, I think the idea that the U.S. government would be pursuing the same policies vis a vis the Middle East the same policies it would be pursuing absent the Israeli Lobby and the political power of AIPAC, I think it is just wrong. It has been the official policy of every president, every president since Lyndon Johnson to not support the settlements but none of them ever do anything about it, and they are the Presidents. It’s because of an array of political forces that make it impossible for them to take action. Problem #2 is the dog wagging the tail argument, here the argument is that Israel basically is our tool, we give it orders, and it does what we want it to do in the Middle East.

MEARSHEIMER: That Israel is our Rottweiler argument.

WALT: I mean, if you look carefully at the record, there is not much evidence that it is the tool we are using to shape the Middle East. I’ll give you three examples. One is the first Gulf War of ‘91 where the U.S. goes into throw Hussein’s Iraq out of Kuwait, Israel didn’t participate in the war, not because they didn’t want to, but if they had participated the Arab coalition would have fallen apart. So, we went to great lengths to keep them out. And then we had to defend them when the SCUD missiles starting coming to Israel. The second example is the Iraq War of 2003, here we are our knocking off an Israeli enemy, but the Israelis are not there doing it, it’s us doing it. They are on the sideline yet again. The third example is the Lebanon War in the Summer of 2006. We don’t like Hezbollah very much, and of course the Israelis don’t like them very much, but there is absolutely no evidence that we were pushing the Israelis to go after Hezbollah. More importantly, we certainly didn’t want the Israelis to go after Lebanon. If Israel was taking our orders in the Summer of 2006, they would have left Beirut alone. They would have done nothing to undermine the democratically elected government in Lebanon, which is something that Bush takes great credit for. We had helped put the government in power, and it was one of the big successes you could point to in Bush’s Middle East policy. If Israel was taking orders from us, they would’ve had a very different approach than us in Lebanon. It’s not that there isn’t some collusion, but the idea they are our obedient servant carrying out the wishes of American Imperialism in the Middle East is just dead wrong

MEARSHEIMER: Two quick points. The U.S. can’t use Israel to support its policies in the Middle East in a large part because it is radioactive, and by that I mean so unpopular in the region. We couldn’t use Israel in the first Gulf War or second Gulf War. My second point would be to focus on what happened after the Shah of Iran fell in 1979. Up until that point, the U.S. had relied heavily on the Shah to do much of its heavy lifting in the Middle East. After the Shah fell, the U.S. was deeply concerned that the Soviet Union might intervene in Iran, and number two that Iraq or Iran might try to dominate the region. In that case, we would need military forces in that region to deal with the problem did it arrive.

So, the United States, if we are to believe the story where Israel is our Rottweiler, then we should’ve been able to turn to Israel to replace the Shah. But, of course, we couldn’t do that, and instead we had to build the rapid deployment force, which is an over the horizon military capability. But we need bases in the Middle East to deploy equipment for the rapid deployment force should it have to come into the region quickly. None of the equipment for the rapid deployment force was put in Israel, because it was unacceptable for the U.S. to station or to put equipment in Israel. So, what we did is we developed a rapid development force of our own, and we deployed that equipment in Arab countries.

ALI: Why do these pro-Israeli groups have such a loyal and firm alliance with hawkish, Neo-conservatives and the Christian Right in recent years? This is, after all, the same Christian Right, if you read some of their ideology and dogma, who believe that the Second coming of Christ will end in either the mass slaughter or mass conversion of Jews in Israel.

WALT: The Israel Lobby is a heterogeneous group. They all want to maintain a special relationship with the U.S., but they don’t agree on everything. There are a number of prominent groups, such as AIPAC, the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish organizations, the ADL, the Zionist Organization of America. There are a number of moderate groups that support a 2 state solution as well. The Israeli Policy Forum, the Americans for Peace Now are just a few examples. Then, there is this movement of Christian Evangelicals known as Christian Zionists. The more influential and wealthier organizations have tended to be right of center and more hard-line. AIPAC for example is hard-line. The Zionist Organization of America is very hard-line, opposing a 2 state solution.

ALI: Wait, what exactly do you mean by “hard-line?”

WALT: Generally those who oppose a 2 state solution, or like AIPAC never endorsing it. And also, basically supporting the “Settlement” enterprise. Groups like Israeli Policy Forum believe in the 2 state solution and oppose the Settlement enterprise.

MEARSHEIMER: It’s marginally a function of how you think of the [President] Clinton parameters. The Clinton parameters would be a broad outline for a 2 state solution. Organizations like the Israeli Policy Forum, people like Dennis Ross endorse the parameters, I mean he helped craft them.

WALT: I think we argue this in our book, if you look at the major organizations they tend to be more right of center, but they have become more conservative over time, and become more aligned with the Likud party in Israel, more aligned at least politically with conservative movements here in the U.S. The Israeli Lobby has moved in a rightward direction over time. And, it has been strengthened by the Christian Evangelicals who believe, and I’m oversimplifying a lot here, but their view of Israel is shaped by their interpretation of Old Testament prophecy. They believe the re-establishment of a Jewish state in all of Palestine is foreordained in Biblical prophecy, and it is a key sign leading up to the Second Coming, the End of times.

ALI: Like a pre-requisite?

WALT: It’s a pre-requisite, it’s gotta’ happen. It’s one of several steps we have to go through. So, they oppose any form of Palestinian state, they oppose any withdrawl of the settlement enterprise, because they think that’s inconsistent with what the Bible has predicted.

MEARSHEIMER: What the Bible says is necessary for the End times to come about.

WALT: Now, as you said, obviously this image of what happens to Israel or the Jewish people is not optimistic. Either they die, are converted, or they get left behind. But, obviously, if you are Jewish you don’t believe any of that prophecy stuff, and therefore there has been a tactical alliance between these groups, because it strengthens the political influence of both hard-line organizations. To put it in crude terms, I think the Jewish groups don’t much care for the Christian Zionist’s other views, because they don’t think they’re true, and they’re happy to get their support on this foreign policy dimension. As we can see the support for our very confrontational policy with Iraq and Iran today, where the Christian Zionists have been very bellicose, as have members of the Israeli Lobby been as well.

MEARSHEIMER: An additional point to make is that Israel, itself, has been progressively moving to the right as well. If you look carefully at Israeli public opinion, there is little support for the Clinton parameters, which is the only meaningful way you can create a viable Palestinian state. The Israelis say they are willing to give the Palestinians a state and favor a 2 state solution, but when you see what the majority of the Israelis want to give the Palestinians it does not in any shape, way, or form add up to a viable Palestinian state. Basically, it would be a series of enclaves in the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip would be another enclave. These enclaves would not be territorially contiguous, not connected, and the Israelis wouldn’t give the Palestinians control of East Jerusalem. The point I’m trying to make is that the fact the Lobby is dominated by hard-line individuals is facilitated by the fact that it is a worldview that is largely reflected by a majority of Israelis.

ALI: Professor Mearsheimer, you and several academics recently convened in Chicago, Rockafeller Chapel, and you said academia is the only space where Israel is “treated as a normal country, where past and present actions are critically assessed,” and the place where public opinion on the matter is most accurately reflected. If that is the case, then how do we explain the abrupt denial of tenure of Israeli and Dershowitz critic Norman Finkelstein? [Finkelstein's very public tenure controversy at DePaul University ended in September '07 when the Board decided to reject his tenure bid, despite overwhelming support for Finkelstein by his peers, his students, and national and international scholars]

MEARSHEIMER: I said in my comments, academia “tends to be the one place,” where Israel is treated like a normal country. I think there’s no question that there is more criticism of Israel in the academic world and in college campuses, then there is in mainstream media. Nevertheless, the Lobby works very hard to influence the discourse on university campuses and goes to considerable length in influencing hiring and promotion decisions regarding critics of Israel. The Normal Finkelstein case is illustrative of this. Nobody disputes that the Lobby put considerable pressure on DePaul University to deny Finkelstein tenure. They will deny that the pressure had any effect on the ultimate decision to deny him tenure, but this is hard to believe.

ALI: You suggest in your book that the image and framing of the issues has been skewed to reflect Israel as a “David” fighting a “Goliath” that is the Palestinians and neighboring Arab enemies. How much of this alleged symbolism is actually reflected in reality? How has this image been popularized and cemented in the mindset of American psychology?

MEARSHEIMER: There is no question that Israeli’s supporters have been very successful in conveying the message to most Americans that Israel is a David surrounded by an Arab goliath. Anyone who looks carefully at the history of the conflict quickly discovers that is not the case. To be more specific, Israelis won the 1948 war decisively, they won the 1956 decisively, they won the 1967 war decisively, and they won the 1973 decisively after suffering a massive surprise attack. All those victories were gained before massive U.S. aid came to Israel.

WALT: Up thru ‘67 that’s exactly right. The U.S. was starting to provide significant military aid after ‘67, but the aid goes up even more after the ‘73 war.

MEARSHEIMER: So, Israel won those 4 wars, and since then no Arab state has picked a fight with Israel for the simple reason they all understand Israel is the “Goliath” and they are the “Davids.” Today, Israel has the most powerful conventional army in the region by far. It’s the only state in the region that has nuclear weapons, it has a couple of hundred of them. It has a very close alliance to the U.S., which would surely come to its defense if its survival is threatened. It has peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan, and would have a treaty with Syria had it not walked away from the deal. So, Israel is not only the most powerful country in the region, but it also has peace agreement with some of its neighbors, two of them they have fought wars with in the past. And it would’ve have peace deals with 3 of its principle adversaries had they reached a peace deal with Syria.

The Saudis started in 2002 to push a peace initiative that would’ve brought peace between Israel and the Arab League, and they resurrected it again this year and pushed it again. This tells you that most of the states in the region are interested in reaching some sort of modus vivendi with Israel. They understand it is very powerful and not going away anytime soon, therefore it makes sense to make some peace agreement. Israel is in excellent shape in terms of military balance. In terms of its dealings with its neighbors, it is in very good shape.

One might say what about the Palestinians? The Israelis have had opportunities to cut a deal with the Palestinians, especially during the 90’s Oslo Peace Process. But they have never shown any serious interest in allowing the Palestinians to have a viable state. If they could change their thinking on that conflict and bring themselves to evacuate almost all the West Bank, and allow for a Palestinian state, then we believe they would have good relations with the Palestinians as well.

WALT: You have to bear in mind the balance of power between the Israelis and the Palestinians. Israel, today, has the 29th highest per capita income in the world, now that’s not a poor country. Palestinians are deeply impoverished, unable to have a viable economy in the face of all of the obstacles presented now by Israel. The Palestinians have no army, no air force, no navy, they barely have an effective security force, and of course they are deeply divided internally. When any group of people is put into a situation like that, they are going to use any tactic available. Which is why of course the Palestinians have relied on terrorism. John and I both regard the use of terrorist tactics as deplorable, and the loss of innocent human life on either side is deeply, deeply regrettable. So, we’re not defending that. But, the point is that the Palestinians hardly pose an existential threat to Israel. It’s very much a one sided competition. The problem is for all of Israel’s considerable military power it still does not permit them to dominate the Palestinians to the point they won’t try to resist with any means they can come up with. But the idea that Israel is the vulnerable party here, and its various neighbors are all powerful has got reality turned upside down.

ALI: How does the Lobby skew this image, in your opinion, for the Average American psychology?

WALT: By constantly repeating how vulnerable Israel is, by constantly exaggerating the dangers that is faces. And, it does have security problems in addition to problems from terrorist bombings, it has problems with Hezbollah to the north. But the groups of the Lobby are hyping the exaggerated threat that Israel faces in trying to convince people its security is very precarious; that Israel might be destroyed anytime soon, that it faces a gigantic sea of enemies that aren’t interested in peace. But if someone looks carefully at the true military balance, or looks carefully at what Israel’s relations with its neighbors really are and what those neighbors have already offered, it suggests Israel is already quite secure in regards to its overall existence. Its survival is not in jeopardy. Its security can be significantly enhanced if it would reach a reasonable settlement with the Palestinians and take that whole problem off the table once and for a all.

MEARSHEIMER: The principle way that the Lobby creates this image of a beleaguered Israel is by working 24-7 to shape the discourse about Israel. The Lobby not only portrays Israel as a “David” surrounded by “Goliaths,” but it also goes to great lengths to silence those who argue that the opposite is the case.

ALI: Here’s a criticism. The U.S. is country with over 300 million people. We have blogs, the internet, op/ed publications, websites, liberals, republicans, and a diversity of opinions. How can a tiny minority of Jewish people, which is about 2 to 3% of our population, have that much influence? Is this some sort of conspiracy theory suggesting Jewish bogeyman who own the vast, diverse media we have in the United States?

MEARSHEIMER: We want to be absolutely clear we are not talking about a conspiracy. We are also not making an argument that pro-Israel groups control the media. Our argument is that the Lobby has to work very hard to shape discourse in the United States, because it does not control the media. Certainly, there are pundits and columnists and owners of newspapers who are naturally pro-Israel. There are many others that need to be reminded that criticism of Israel carries with it a significant cost. It’s there where the Lobby is great on what is written in the mainstream media in regards to Israel. Our argument is that they are very effective in that regard.

Let’s just talk about the discourse in the mainstream media about the Middle East. Where do you see evidence of Arab Americans writing columns in major newspapers? Where is the evidence of Arab Americans who are constantly on T.V. or on radio constantly criticizing Israel and defending the Palestinians?

ALI: Someone can say Fareed Zakaria is Muslim–[Fareed Zakara is an influential and well known editor, columnist, and pundit]

WALT: He’s not Arab. He’s a South Asian Muslim. He does not take sides on Middle East questions very often. I think he understands this is a delicate issue, and particularly as delicate an issue for someone as prominent as he is who is known to be Muslim. Find me the Palestinian American columnist in the Times, The Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the SF Chronicle. They don’t exist.

MEARSHEIMER: What we have here in the United States is a one sided debate. We have pro-Israel forces and nothing else.

WALT: What you see of course is anytime a major media organization does publish something that is mildly critical they immediately get pressure put on them. For example, this past fall CNN ran a 3 part series on Muslim, Christian, and Jewish fundamentalism. The Forward, a Jewish newspaper, said it [CNN] suffered from an “unprecedented attack,” where organizations were putting pressure on advertisers that had bought advertising time. The whole purpose was not to stop the broadcast, because it already happened, but they wanted to put enough pressure on CNN that the next time a producer has an idea or a big story that is controversial, that producer is going to face an uphill battle. Or if a newspaper in Boston, Cleveland, San Francisco, pushes an article that is critical of the Lobby, if the editor gets 5,000 letters protesting about that, then they will think twice the next time that they let something like that appear.

If you do this long enough and over many years, plenty of reporters, editors, and columnists realize it’s too much trouble. “I’ll write about something else, or I’ll write something bland.” That isn’t control of the media as in the old conspiracy scene, that’s an interest group, like how a number of interest groups work, working very hard to try and make sure that their story gets reported, and the other side tends not to get reported. I say “tend” because every now and then you see something representing the other side appear in various places, but the point is you want to make sure the balance of coverage is on one side.

MEARSHEIMER: I want to add another dimension to this. It is widely recognized in the U.S. that the Lobby has a powerful influence on U.S.-Middle East policy. If you look at almost all the critical reviews of our book, virtually all of the critics admit that the Lobby is powerful. Nevertheless, when you read American news accounts of U.S.-Middle East policy, you hardly ever see any discussion of the Israel Lobby’s presence, much less influence, in the shaping of the U.S. policy.

WALT: Not never, but it’s rare. It’s rare you find someone who is writing about Middle East policy who will devote a couple of paragraphs to the role that pro-Israeli forces are playing in shaping that policy. Even though everyone in Washington knows that they’re very influential.

ALI: Let’s talk about Iraq. You, unlike many academics, underplay the role of oil and oil lobbies in the Iraq War. If not oil, then what was the motivating reason for the pre-emptive attack, and how does/did Israel benefit from the attack on Iraq and the toppling of Saddam Hussein?

MEARSHEIMER: With regards to the question of oil, there is hardly any evidence that oil was driving the Iraq war. Except for Kuwait, none of the oil producing states favored the war. And even though Kuwait favored the war, it didn’t push the U.S. hard to attack. Saudi Arabia was opposed to the war, as were the other oil producing states in the regime. There is hardly any evidence that I’m aware of that the oil companies which were pushing this war. The oil companies wanted to cut a deal with Saddam, so they could help him develop his oil fields, move his oil around the globe, and make lots of money in the process. The basic problem is there is not a lot of evidence to support the idea that oil was driving this war. What we believe was driving this was war was 1) The Israeli Lobby, and 2) the fact that George Bush and Cheney after 9-11 believed it was necessary to topple Saddam to win the war on terrorism. It’s a combination of them pushing this war to make this happen.

WALT: I would add to that, of course, the people who pushed for this believed it would benefit the U.S. and benefit Israel as well. They believed it would launch a process of political change throughout the Arab-Islamic world that would make the terrorism problem go away, enhance America’s overall strategic position by gradually creating a lot of countries that were Pro-American, and finally enhance Israel’s strategic position by creating a bunch of countries that were willing to make peace. They were tragically wrong on all counts. How would this war benefit Israel? The war didn’t benefit Israel, of course, it’s been a strategic disaster for Israel. It’s created a failed state nearby [Iraq], and it has enhanced the position of Iran, which is a country Israelis worry about even more than they worried about Saddam. This underscores a point we make in our book and make all the time is that the Israel Lobby in pushing for unconditional American support for Israel, and in some elements, pushing for hair-brained schemes like invading Iraq, it has been bad for the United States and unintentionally bad for Israel, too. It’s incorrect to see the Lobby as always pro-Israel. A lot of what they are supporting is very bad for Israel.

ALI: Seymour Hersh of the New Yorkers posits the U.S. is engaged in “The-Redirection,” whereby the U.S. and Israel are aligning themselves with moderate Arab dictatorships against Iran, Syria, and Hezbollah. As professors of international relations and critics of the Israel Lobby, what blow back would this have, if any, on US-Muslim world relations?

MEARSHEIMER: The basic problem is that the strategy is not going to work. The fact is that Israel is radioactive in the region. The fact that Israel, the U.S., and Arab countries are going to form a right alliance against Iran and maybe Syria and Hezbollah is not going to work. Those Arab countries are going to be unwilling to reach an alliance with the Israelis and U.S. as long as the Palestinian issue continues to fester. One of the principle reasons for Condoleeza Rice is pushing for solution to a Palestinian problem now is because she understands now she can’t put together an anti Iran coalition without shutting down the Israeli – Palestinian conflict. But, there is no serious hope that conflict is going to be shut down anytime soon. That’s why you can’t put that balancing coalition against Iran together. In the populations of countries like Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia, there is a significant amount of sympathy towards Iran, and a significant amount of animosity towards U.S. and Israel.

WALT: One of those reasons those countries wont jump into bed fully with us on this, is because they are potentially fragile regimes and they worry about what their populations think if they were to try doing something like that. Second point to remember is Americans sometimes think we would be much better off if we had more democracy in the Middle East, and probably that’s true if you take a very long term view of it. But right now it’s false to imagine rapid democratic transitions in places like Egypt, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere. You would end up in countries that were very anti-American, because they don’t like the support we’ve given Israel and they also don’t like our support we’ve given to those ruling regimes as well.

MEARSHEIMER: One important piece of evidence that highlights how it’ll be impossible for the U.S. to put together that coalition is to see what happened during the Lebanon war in 2006. Initially, the Arab governments in Jordan and Egypt were very critical of Hezbollah, which is consistent with the policy that the Americans are trying to pursue. But, it quickly became clear to the leaders in Jordan and Egypt that the people in their societies sided with Hezbollah against the United States and against Israel. Therefore, the leaders in Jordan and Egypt had to turn on a dime and become critical of the U.S. and Israel and support Hezbollah.

ALI: Let’s close it with this final question and talk about U.S.-Muslim relations in regards to Palestine. Why is this issue, the Palestine issue, above all other issues at the forefront of the Muslim world’s anger against U.S. foreign policy? How does U.S. relation with Israel and the Lobby undermine or help our relations with the Muslim world in this regards?

WALT: For many people in the Muslim, Arab world there is a fundamental question of justice. What they see happening to the Palestinian people is a great injustice, although there were terrible crimes against Jewish people in history, and those crimes may justify the creation of a Jewish state. You can even argue on balance that it is ok to create a Jewish state in Palestine. John and I both thing it was a good thing. But, that act, creating a Jewish state in Palestine, involved the infliction of great crimes against the local residents–the Palestinians. Until there is some compensation and they are given a state of their own, and effort is made to compensate them and acknowledge what happened to them, the moral balance has not been equated.

Second, the entire episode resonates with the whole history of Western interference and domination of that region. It’s seen as another case where Western powers have inflicted great harm on Arab or Islamic peoples. So, it has a particular salience for people elsewhere in that region. Thirdly, it makes the U.S. look deeply hypocritical. The United States likes to talk about human rights, it likes to talk about democracy, it likes to talk about national self-determination. But here, by giving Israel nearly unconditional support, even as Israel continues its 40-year, 4-decade campaign to colonize the West Bank and previously Gaza, and for us to be supporting that enterprise the way we have is seen as deeply contrary to all the things the U.S. claims to stand for. That drives a number of people in the Arab-Muslim world, at least, makes them very angry. The fact we are so hypocritical and inconsistent with our own professed values.

MEARSHEIMER: It is the longest ongoing occupation in modern history.

WALT: It’s still ongoing; there are others like the British occupation of India that lasted much longer. Of all occupations that are currently happening, and there aren’t that many, it’s certainty the longest, continuing occupation that is still happening.

Wajahat Ali is Pakistani Muslim American who is neither a terrorist nor a saint. He is a playwright, essayist, humorist, and recent J.D. whose work, “The Domestic Crusaders,” is the first major play about Muslim Pakistani Americans living in a post 9-11 America. His blog is at http://goatmilk.wordpress.com/. He can be reached at wajahatmali@gmail.com

 Enjoy. -Ed.