Al-Ahram Weekly Online <http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/> 23 - 29
March 2006
Issue No. 787
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Joseph Massad
Blaming the lobby
BY JOSEPH MASSAD
As someone who has been facing the full brunt of the might of the
pro-Israel lobby in the US, Joseph Massad*
<http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2006/787/op35.htm#1> explains the deceit
behind blaming the lobby for US policies towards the Palestinians and
the Arab world
------------------------------------------------------------------------
In the last 25 years, many Palestinians and other Arabs, in the United
States and in the Arab world, have been so awed by the power of the US
pro-Israel lobby that any study, book, or journalistic article that
exposes the inner workings, the substantial influence, and the financial
and political power of this lobby have been greeted with ecstatic sighs
of relief that Americans finally can see the "truth" and the "error" of
their ways.
The underlying argument has been simple and has been told time and again
by Washington's regime allies in the Arab world, pro-US liberal and Arab
intellectuals, conservative and liberal US intellectuals and former
politicians, and even leftist Arab and American activists who support
Palestinian rights, namely, that absent the pro- Israel lobby, America
would at worst no longer contribute to the oppression of Arabs and
Palestinians and at best it would be the Arabs' and the Palestinians'
best ally and friend. What makes this argument persuasive and effective
to Arabs? Indeed, why are its claims constantly brandished by
Washington's Arab friends to Arab and American audiences as a persuasive
argument? I contend that the attraction of this argument is that it
exonerates the United States' government from all the responsibility and
guilt that it deserves for its policies in the Arab world and gives
false hope to many Arabs and Palestinians who wish America would be on
their side instead of on the side of their enemies.
Let me start with the premise of the argument, namely its effect of
shifting the blame for US policies from the United States onto Israel
and its US lobby. According to this logic, it is not the United States
that should be held directly responsible for all its imperial policies
in the Arab world and the Middle East at large since World War II,
rather it is Israel and its lobby who have pushed it to launch policies
that are detrimental to its own national interest and are only
beneficial to Israel. Establishing and supporting Arab and other Middle
East dictatorships, arming and training their militaries, setting up
their secret police apparatuses and training them in effective torture
methods and counter-insurgency to be used against their own citizens
should be blamed, according to the logic of these studies, on Israel and
its US lobby. Blocking all international and UN support for Palestinian
rights, arming and financing Israel in its war against a civilian
population, protecting Israel from the wrath of the international
community should also be blamed not on the United States, the studies
insist, but on Israel and its lobby. Additionally, and in line with this
logic, controlling Arab economies and finances, dominating key
investments in the Middle East, and imposing structural adjustment
policies by the IMF and the World Bank which impoverish the Arab peoples
should also be blamed on Israel, and not the United States. Finally,
starving and then invading Iraq, threatening to invade Syria, raiding
and then sanctioning Libya and Iran, besieging the Palestinians and
their leaders must also be blamed on the Israeli lobby and not the US
government. Indeed, over the years, many pro-US Arab dictators let it
leak officially and unofficially that their US diplomat friends have
told them time and again how much they and "America" support the Arab
world and the Palestinians were it not for the influence of the pro-
Israel lobby (sometimes identified by the American diplomats in more
explicit "ethnic" terms).
While many of the studies of the pro-Israel lobby are sound and full of
awe-inspiring well- documented details about the formidable power
commanded by groups like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee
(AIPAC) and its allies, the problem with most of them is what remains
unarticulated. For example, when and in what context has the United
States government ever supported national liberation in the Third World?
The record of the United States is one of being the implacable enemy of
all Third World national liberation groups, including European ones,
from Greece to Latin America to Africa and Asia, except in the
celebrated cases of the Afghan fundamentalists' war against the USSR and
supporting apartheid South Africa's main terrorist allies in Angola and
Mozambique (UNITA and RENAMO) against their respective anti-colonial
national governments. Why then would the US support national liberation
in the Arab world absent the pro-Israel lobby is something these studies
never explain.
The United States has had a consistent policy since World War II of
fighting all regimes across the Third World who insist on controlling
their national resources, whether it be land, oil, or other valuable
minerals. This extends from Iran in 1953 to Guatemala in 1954 to the
rest of Latin America all the way to present-day Venezuela. Africa has
fared much worse in the last four decades, as have many countries in
Asia. Why would the United States support nationalist regimes in the
Arab world who would nationalise natural resources and stop their
pillage by American capital absent the pro-Israel lobby also remains a
mystery unexplained by these studies. Finally, the United States
government has opposed and overthrown or tried to overthrow any regime
that seeks real and tangible independence in the Third World and is
especially galled by those regimes that pursue such policies through
democratic elections. The overthrow of regimes from Arbenz to Goulart to
Mossadegh and Allende and the ongoing attempts to overthrow Chavez are
prominent examples, as is the overthrow of nationalist regimes like
Sukarno's and Nkrumah's. The terror unleashed on populations who
challenged the US-installed friendly regimes from El Salvador and
Nicaragua to Zaire to Chile and Indonesia resulted in the killing of
hundreds of thousands, if not millions by repressive police and
militaries trained for these important tasks by the US. This is aside
from direct US invasions of South East Asian and Central American
countries that killed untold millions for decades. Why would the US and
its repressive agencies stop invading Arab countries, or stop supporting
the repressive police forces of dictatorial Arab regimes and why would
the US stop setting up shadow governments inside its embassies in Arab
capitals to run these countries' affairs (in some cases the US shadow
government runs the Arab country in question down to the smallest detail
with the Arab government in question reduced to executing orders) if the
pro-Israel lobby did not exist is never broached by these studies let
alone explained.
The arguments put forth by these studies would have been more convincing
if the Israel lobby was forcing the United States government to pursue
policies in the Middle East that are inconsistent with its global
policies elsewhere. This, however, is far from what happens. While US
policies in the Middle East may often be an exaggerated form of its
repressive and anti- democratic policies elsewhere in the world, they
are not inconsistent with them. One could easily make the case that the
strength of the pro-Israel lobby is what accounts for this exaggeration,
but even this contention is not entirely persuasive. One could argue
(and I have argued elsewhere) that it is in fact the very centrality of
Israel to US strategy in the Middle East that accounts, in part, for the
strength of the pro-Israel lobby and not the other way around. Indeed,
many of the recent studies highlight the role of pro-Likud members of
the Bush administration (or even of the Clinton administration) as
evidence of the lobby's awesome power, when, i t could be easily argued
that it is these American politicians who had pushed Likud and Labour
into more intransigence in the 1990s and are pushing them towards more
conquest now that they are at the helm of the US government. This is not
to say, however, that the leaders of the pro-Israel lobby do not
regularly brag about their crucial influence on US policy in Congress
and in the White House. That they have done regularly since the late
1970s. But the lobby is powerful in the United States because its major
claims are about advancing US interests and its support for Israel is
contextualised in its support for the overall US strategy in the Middle
East. The pro- Israel lobby plays the same role that the China lobby
played in the 1950s and the Cuba lobby still plays to this day. The fact
that it is more powerful than any other foreign lobby on Capitol Hill
testifies to the importance of Israel in US strategy and not to some
fantastical power that the lobby commands independent of and extraneous
to the US "national interest." The pro-Israel lobby could not sell its
message and would not have any influence if Israel was a communist or
anti-imperialist country or if Israel opposed US policy elsewhere in the
world.
Some would argue that even though Israel attempts to overlap its
interests with those of the US, that its lobby is misleading American
policy- makers and shifting their position from one of objective
assessment of what is truly in America's best interest and that of
Israel's. The argument runs as follows: US support for Israel causes
groups who oppose Israel to hate the US and target it for attacks. It
also costs the US friendly media coverage in the Arab world, affects its
investment potential in Arab countries, and loses its important allies
in the region, or at least weakens these allies. But none of this is
true. The United States has been able to be Israel's biggest backer and
financier, its staunchest defender and weapon-supplier while maintaining
strategic alliances with most if not all Arab dictatorships, including
the Palestinian Authority under both Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas.
Moreover, US companies and American investments have the largest
presence across the Arab world, most prominently but not exclusively in
the oil sector. Also, even without the pathetic and ineffective efforts
at US propaganda in the guise of the television station Al-Hurra, or
Radio Sawa and the now-defunct Hi magazine, not to mention US-paid
journalists and newspapers in Iraq and elsewhere, a whole army of Arabic
newspapers and state-television stations, not to mention myriad
satellite television stations celebrate the US and its culture,
broadcast American programmes, and attempt to sell the US point of view
as effectively as possible encumbered only by the limitations that
actual US policies in the region place on common sense. Even the
offending Al-Jazeera has bent over backwards to accommodate the US point
of view but is constantly undercut by actual US policies in the region.
Al-Jazeera, under tremendous pressure and threats of bombing from the
United States, has for example stopped referring to the US occupation
forces in Iraq as "occupation forces" and now refers to them as
"coalition forces". Moreover, since when has the US sought to win a
popularity contest among the peoples of the world? Arabs no more hate or
love the United States than do Latin Americans, Africans, Asians, or
even and especially Europeans.
Finally we come to the financial argument, namely that the US gives an
inordinate amount of money to Israel -- too exorbitant a cost that is
out of proportion to what the US gets in return. In fact, the United
States spends much more on its military bases in the Arab world, not to
mention on those in Europe or Asia, than it does on Israel. Israel has
indeed been very effective in rendering services to its US master for a
good price, whether in channelling illegal arms to central American
dictatorships in the 1970s and 1980s, helping pariah regimes like Taiwan
and apartheid South Africa in the same period, supporting pro-US,
including Fascist, groups inside the Arab world to undermine nationalist
Arab regimes, from Lebanon to Iraq to Sudan, coming to the aid of
conservative pro- US Arab regimes when threatened as it did in Jordan in
1970, and attacking Arab nationalist regimes outright as it did in 1967
with Egypt and Syria and in 1981 with Iraq when it destroyed that
country's nuclear reactor. While the US had been able to overthrow
Sukarno and Nkrumah in bloody coups, Nasser remained entrenched until
Israel effectively neutralised him in the 1967 War. It is thanks to this
major service that the United States increased its support to Israel
exponentially. Moreover, Israel neutralised the PLO in 1982, no small
service to many Arab regimes and their US patron who could not fully
control the organisation until then. None of the American military bases
on which many more billions are spent can claim such a stellar record.
Critics argue that when the US had to intervene in the Gulf, it could
not rely on Israel to do the job because of the sensitivity of including
it in such a coalition which would embarrass Arab allies, hence the need
for direct US intervention and the uselessness of Israel as a strategic
ally. While this may be true, the US also could not rely on any of its
military bases to launch the invasions on their own and had to ship in
its army. American bases in the Gulf did provide important and needed
support but so did Israel.
AIPAC is indeed powerful insofar as it pushes for policies that accord
with US interests and that are resonant with the reigning US imperial
ideology. The power of the pro-Israel lobby, whether in Congress or on
campuses among university administrators, or policy-makers is not based
solely on their organisational skills or ideological uniformity. In no
small measure, anti- Semitic attitudes in Congress (and among university
administrators) play a role in believing the lobby's (and its enemies')
exaggerated claims about its actual power, resulting in their towing the
line. But even if this were true, one could argue, it would not matter
whether the lobby has real or imagined power. For as long as Congress
and policy-makers (and university administrators) believe it does, it
will remain effective and powerful. I of course concede this point.
What then would have been different in US policy in the Middle East
absent Israel and its powerful lobby? The answer in short is: the
details and intensity but not the direction, content, or impact of such
policies. Is the pro- Israel lobby extremely powerful in the United
States? As someone who has been facing the full brunt of their power for
the last three years through their formidable influence on my own
university and their attempts to get me fired, I answer with a
resounding yes. Are they primarily responsible for US policies towards
the Palestinians and the Arab world? Absolutely not. The United States
is opposed in the Arab world as elsewhere because it has pursued and
continues to pursue policies that are inimical to the interests of most
people in these countries and are only beneficial to its own interests
and to the minority regimes in the region that serve those interests,
including Israel. Absent these policies, and not the pro-Israel lobby
which supports them, the United States should expect a change in its
standing among Arabs. Short of that, the United States will have to
continue its policies in the region that have wreaked, and continue to
wreak, havoc on the majority of Arabs and not expect that the Arab
people will like it in return.
* The writer is associate professor of modern Arab politics and
intellectual history at Columbia University. His recent book The
Persistence of the Palestinian Question was published by Routledge.
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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