Subject: [ZNN] Walt and Mearshimer: With Friends Like These, Who Needs
Anti-Semites?
<a
href="http://www.bluetruth.net/2007/09/walt-and-mearshimer-with-friends-like.html";>
Walt and Mearshimer: With Friends Like These, Who Needs Anti-Semites?</a>
Posted at http://www.bluetruth.net
Along with about 150 other people, I checked out the Berkeley stop of the
Stephen Walt/John Mearshimer book tour last week. For the rabid anti-Zionists,
their book "The Israel Lobby" gives Israel-bashing the mainstream academic
pseudo-legitimacy that they have desperately sought for years. It was not only
correct, but also easy, to dismiss fringe figures such as Noam Chomsky (who
somehow parlayed his expertise in linguistics into extreme leftist politics)
and Norman Finkelstein (who somehow parlayed professional failure at 3
different universities into becoming the Jew most beloved by anti-Semites).
Walt and Mearshimer bring much more gravitas to the debate. However, they bring
very little else that is new, and their analysis of history and politics in the
Middle East conveniently leaves out much that undermines their thesis.
Nonetheless, those of us who stand up for Israel (or, in Walt/Mearshimer terms,
are part of "The Lobby") need to know what they say and where th
ey have gone wrong; their work, like Jimmy Carter's recent screed, will be a
staple of the other side's repertoire for quite a while.
The first thing I noticed at the Berkeley event, despite the fact that it was
co-sponsored by Tikkun and moderated by Michael Lerner, was the presence of
several well-known local anti-Zionist activists, one of whom was busy handing
out postcards advertising the now-annual protest at the December AIPAC dinner
in Oakland. (For those unsure of the nomenclature, "anti-Zionist" describes
those opposed to the existence of Israel as a Jewish state-- whether they be
virulent Jew-haters, pie-in-the-sky "one state solution" idealists, or Neturei
Karta ultra-Orthodox extremists). The table at the event held only copies of
the W&M book and a flyer from Gush Shalom describing "millions starving in
Gaza" (which, if it were actually occurring, would of course be accompanied by
extensive video on the same Hamas TV station that airs the wonderful children
's show featuring Farfur the Martyr Mouse and Nahool the Jihad Bee). Lerner
introduced the speakers as being "on the cutting edge of a
central issue facing our country" and of course touted the new issue of Tikkun
magazine which apparently will laud M&W's book and promote the same thesis.
So, what is their thesis anyway? Stephen Walt began by describing two main
questions:
1. Is there a powerful pro-Israel lobby and how does it work?
2. Is that lobby good for the US and is it even good for Israel?
Walt comes across as a friendly, articulate academic, someone you'd enjoy
having as a professor. He doesn't get mean and he doesn't use words carelessly.
He specifically acknowledges the sensitivity of writing and talking about this
issue because of the history of anti-Semitism and in particular "bizarre
conspiracy theories such as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion", and goes on
to specific ally reject such theories. Yet without batting an eye he then
immediately claims that any critic of Israel is labeled an anti-Semite.
He makes several specific points. One is that the dollar amount of US aid to
Israel comes to $500 for each Israeli citizen, and that Israel has the 29th
largest economy in the world so doesn't need that level of assistance. The
other is that the level of US diplomatic support for Israel, and lack of
criticism from US politicians, is without parallel. He then attacks the two
most commonly cited reasons for these: that Israel is a vital strategic ally
and that Israel shares American values of freedom and democracy. Walt admits
that Israel might indeed have been a strategic ally during the Cold War , but
that not only is this in the past, but also that Israel is one of the reasons
that we have a terrorism problem. Again, he is very careful to say "one of the
reasons", not "the only" or even "the main" reason. He then goes on to say that
no other democracies get the same level of support and that Israel's treatment
of its own Arab population (much less its treatment of the West
Bank Arabs who are not citizens) doesn't measure up to American values. He
does go as far as to say that Israel, in its actions to defend itself, "doesn't
act any better" than its adversaries, striking a moral equivalence between the
IDF that attempts to avoid civilian casualties and the mass murderers of Hamas
and Islamic Jihad who celebrate the deaths of women, children and senior
citizens in buses and restaurants. Not a word about the fact that Israel has
terrorist gangs on its borders armed with rockets, not a word about the terror
war launched by Arafat in 2000, not a word about 60 years of genocidal threats
against the Jewish state. Listening to Walt, one would think Israel is located
in central Europe surrounded by friendly neighbors but just can't manage to get
along with them.
Walt then describes "The Lobby" (somehow, one feels the capitalization even
when he is speaking) as a loose coalition of organizations specifically
including AIPAC, the Anti-Defamation League, the Zionist Organization of
America, the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, the Jewish
Institute for National Security Affairs and unnamed Christian Evangelical
groups. He talks about AIPAC's work in building support for Israel within
Congress and in trying to shape the public discourse about Israel. While he
concedes that this is entirely legal and open activity, he also refers to a
number of members of the House and the Senate who were "driven from office" by
AIPAC; he specifically cites recent elections (Cynthia McKinney, Lincoln
Chaffee) as well as more distant ones (Paul Findlay, Charles Percy and Roger
Jepson, the latter two targeted because of their vote for Ronald Reagan's sale
of AWACS to Saudi Arabia in the 1980's-- a sale which went forward despite
strong objections from AIPAC.). He returns to the charge that AIPAC's efforts
to stifle debate "almost always" include labeling critics of Israel as
anti-Semites, without any supporting references. Apparently, AIPAC's power
extends to the opinion pages of America's newspapers, and is the reason why
there are no "dissenting voices" such as Robert Fisk in the UK, or Akiva Eldar
and Amira Hass from Ha'aretz. Walt must not read the San Francisco Chronicle,
where George Bisharat appears so frequently he might as well have his own
byline. Walt does acknowlege that most Americans have a favorable view of
Israel, but that this doesn't mean that they support it unconditionally.
For those of us who are card carrying members of "The Lobby", the recitation of
AIPAC's successes is nothing new; we hear it at the annual membership meetings
and we hear it when we talk to our local AIPAC leaders. Whether such open self-
celebration of success is helpful or counter-productive should now be a matter
of some serious discussion within AIPAC.
Interestingly, Walt explicitly endorsed Israel's existence as a Jewish state
and said that the US should come to its aid if its existence is threatened; he
didn't see any current existential threat to Israel, however.
Mearshimer took on the second question with a very different style from Walt;
he's much more aggressive and attacking. He also is the one to present the
arguments that are staples of the far left and the extreme right, that the
influence of "The Lobby" is so pervasive that it was one of the main driving
forces for the US invasion of Iraq, and that the policies it promotes are a
major source of terrorism. He spent a lot of his time tying the 9/11 attacks to
US support for Israel as well. Mearshimer acknowledged that the neocons who
pushed for the war with Iraq did believe that this would be good for the US,
and denies claims that t his was a "Jewish" war, citing opinion polls showing
that the American Jewish community had less support for the war in 2003 than
the public in general. By the same standard, he assigns causality for the war
to the Israel lobby because opinion polls showed that most Israelis supported
an attack on Saddam Hussein. He got a lot of mileage out of an
editorial in the Forward from 2004 which quoted AIPAC's executive director,
Howard Kohr, as having taken credit for pushing the use of force against
Saddam.
Mearshimer echoed Walt's support of Israel as a Jewish state within the 1967
borders "with minor territorial adjustments" and also stated that the US should
come to its aid if its existence is threatened. It wasn't clear what would
constitute an existential threat to M&W, since they are very concerned about
being drawn into military action against Iran, which is frantically pursuing
nuclear weapons and has made no secret of its desire to destroy Israel. His
prescription for peace between Israel and the Arabs was simply telling Israel
that they "must make peace" with their neighbors and withdraw from most of the
West Bank. Not a single mention of Palestinian terror. Not a word about
Palestinian refusal to give up on the so-called "right of return". Not any hint
that Israel completely withdrew from Gaza and was rewarded with a Hamas terror
entity. In Mearshimer's world, the responsibility lies solely with Israel.
Interesting how he then, with such a shallow approach to the
complexities of the conflict, claims to know that The Lobby has been bad for
Israel.
During the question period (and the only challenges to W&M were from those who
disagreed with their support for the existence of a Jewish state within any
borders at all) they also made note of a detailed response to critics of their
original 2006 paper posted on their website "Israel Lobby Book.com". Indeed,
this is a 30 page document, half of which is devoted to rebutti ng Benny
Morris's refutation of their misuse of Morris' work in their paper.
Supporters of Israel need to take them seriously. W&M are well-spoken, and they
try to pre-empt any charges of anti-Semitism both by their claim that any
opponents of The Lobby are tarred with that brush, and by making very clear
statements of support for the Jewish state. The fact remains, though, that many
of their arguments echo the old canard of "Jews control the media" and "Jews
control Congress", just with the more genteel substitution of "Israel Lobby"
for "Jews". The argument that Osama bin Laden is motivated by the Palestinian
issue falls flat on its face when his "messages" to the American people have
barely even paid lip service to the Palestinian cause--but if the argument is
repeated enough, imagine the backlash should there be another terror attack on
American soil. And despite their credentials, their scholars hip IS sloppy. One
of many important critical reviews of their work is by Leslie Gelb in this past
Sunday's New York Times, which points out that
Israel did indeed offer, at Camp David in 2000, exactly the prescription
offered by Mearshimer-- and of course Ehud Olmert ran for office on virtually
the same platform.
Lerner closed the event by calling upon the audience to join organizations that
apparently pass his criteria for acceptability mentioning not only Tikkun of
course, but also Americans for Peace Now, B'rit Tzedek v'Shalom, and Jewish
Voice for Peace. The irony that JVP stands at anti-Israel demonstrations along
with jihadist wannabes flying the Hamas and Hezbollah flags, and features
anti-Zionist speakers at their events, is lost on Lerner. And I left the event
wondering what W&M really think about the much bigger irony: that while they
themselves insist that they are neither anti-Israel n or anti-Semitic, many of
their biggest fans are. Stand outside the Oakland AIPAC dinner in December, see
the rally which was being promoted at this talk, and look for yourself.
Copyright 2007 by DrMike. Please forward this article with the URL.
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