Here, Fisk asks if the courage of Walt and Mearsheimer might give other
American writers enough spine to state the obvious. Molly Ivins's recent
commentary, after her years of being terrorized into silence, suggests that
the answer is "yes."
United States of Israel?
When two of America's most distinguished academics dared to suggest that US
foreign policy was being driven by a powerful 'Israel Lobby' whose influence
was incompatible with their nation's own interests, they knew they would
face allegations of anti-Semitism. But the episode has prompted America's
Jewish liberals to confront their own complacency. Might the tide be
turning?
By Robert Fisk
04/27/06 " <http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/article360492.ece >
The Independent" -- - Stephen Walt towers over me as we walk in the Harvard
sunshine past Eliot Street, a big man who needs to be big right now (he's
one of two authors of an academic paper on the influence of America's Jewish
lobby) but whose fame, or notoriety, depending on your point of view, is of
no interest to him. "John and I have deliberately avoided the television
shows because we don't think we can discuss these important issues in 10
minutes. It would become 'J' and 'S', the personalities who wrote about the
lobby - and we want to open the way to serious discussion about this, to
encourage a broader discussion of the forces shaping US foreign policy in
the Middle East."
"John" is John Mearsheimer, a political scientist at the University of
Chicago. Walt is a 50-year-old tenured professor at the John F Kennedy
School of Government at Harvard. The two men have caused one of the most
extraordinary political storms over the Middle East in recent American
history by stating what to many non-Americans is obvious: that the US has
been willing to set aside its own security and that of many of its allies in
order to advance the interests of Israel, that Israel is a liability in the
"war on terror", that the biggest Israeli lobby group, Aipac (the American
Israel Public Affairs Committee), is in fact the agent of a foreign
government and has a stranglehold on Congress - so much so that US policy
towards Israel is not debated there - and that the lobby monitors and
condemns academics who are critical of Israel.
"Anyone who criticises Israel's actions or argues that pro-Israel groups
have significant influence over US Middle East policy," the authors have
written, "...stands a good chance of being labelled an anti-Semite. Indeed,
anyone who merely claims that there is an Israeli lobby runs the risk of
being charged with anti-Semitism ... Anti-Semitism is something no-one wants
to be accused of." This is strong stuff in a country where - to quote the
late Edward Said - the "last taboo" (now that anyone can talk about blacks,
gays and lesbians) is any serious discussion of America's relationship with
Israel.
Walt is already the author of an elegantly written account of the resistance
to US world political dominance, a work that includes more than 50 pages of
references. Indeed, those who have read his Taming Political Power: The
Global Response to US Primacy will note that the Israeli lobby gets a
thumping in this earlier volume because Aipac "has repeatedly targeted
members of Congress whom it deemed insufficiently friendly to Israel and
helped drive them from office, often by channelling money to their
opponents."
But how many people in America are putting their own heads above the
parapet, now that Mearsheimer and Walt have launched a missile that would
fall to the ground unexploded in any other country but which is detonating
here at high speed? Not a lot. For a while, the mainstream US press and
television - as pro-Israeli, biased and gutless as the two academics infer
them to be - did not know whether to report on their conclusions (originally
written for The Atlantic Monthly, whose editors apparently took fright, and
subsequently reprinted in the London Review of Books in slightly truncated
form) or to remain submissively silent. The New York Times, for example,
only got round to covering the affair in depth well over two weeks after the
report's publication, and then buried its article in the education section
on page 19. The academic essay, according to the paper's headline, had
created a "debate" about the lobby's influence.
They can say that again. Dore Gold, a former ambassador to the UN, who now
heads an Israeli lobby group, kicked off by unwittingly proving that the
Mearsheimer-Walt theory of "anti-Semitism" abuse is correct. "I believe,"
he said, "that anti-Semitism may be partly defined as asserting a Jewish
conspiracy for doing the same thing non-Jews engage in." Congressman Eliot
Engel of New York said that the study itself was "anti-Semitic" and deserved
the American public's contempt.
Walt has no time for this argument. "We are not saying there is a
conspiracy, or a cabal. The Israeli lobby has every right to carry on its
work - all Americans like to lobby. What we are saying is that this lobby
has a negative influence on US national interests and that this should be
discussed. There are vexing problems out in the Middle East and we need to
be able to discuss them openly. The Hamas government, for example - how do
we deal with this? There may not be complete solutions, but we have to try
and have all the information available."
Walt doesn't exactly admit to being shocked by some of the responses to his
work - it's all part of his desire to keep "discourse" in the academic
arena, I suspect, though it probably won't work. But no-one could be
anything but angered by his Harvard colleague, Alan Dershowitz, who
announced that the two scholars recycled accusations that "would be seized
on by bigots to promote their anti-Semitic agendas". The two are preparing
a reply to Dershowitz's 45-page attack, but could probably have done without
praise from the white supremacist and ex-Ku Klux Klan head David Duke -
adulation which allowed newspapers to lump the name of Duke with the names
of Mearsheimer and Walt. "Of Israel, Harvard and David Duke," ran the
Washington Post's reprehensible headline.
The Wall Street Journal, ever Israel's friend in the American press, took an
even weirder line on the case. "As Ex-Lobbyists of Pro-Israel Group Face
Court, Article Queries Sway on Mideast Policy" its headline proclaimed to
astonished readers. Neither Mearsheimer nor Walt had mentioned the trial of
two Aipac lobbyists - due to begin next month - who are charged under the
Espionage Act with receiving and disseminating classified information
provided by a former Pentagon Middle East analyst. The defence team for
Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman has indicated that it may call Secretary of
State Condoleezza Rice and National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley to the
stand.
Almost a third of the Journal's report is taken up with the Rosen-Weissman
trial, adding that the indictment details how the two men "allegedly sought
to promote a hawkish US policy toward Iran by trading favours with a number
of senior US officials. Lawrence Franklin, the former Pentagon official,
has pleaded guilty to misusing classified information. Mr Franklin was
charged with orally passing on information about a draft National Security
Council paper on Iran to the two lobbyists... as well as other classified
information. Mr Franklin was sentenced in December to nearly 13 years in
prison..."
The Wall Street Journal report goes on to say that lawyers and "many Jewish
leaders" - who are not identified - "say the actions of the former Aipac
employees were no different from how thousands of Washington lobbyists work.
They say the indictment marks the first time in US history that American
citizens... have been charged with receiving and disseminating state secrets
in conversations." The paper goes on to say that "several members of
Congress have expressed concern about the case since it broke in 2004,
fearing that the Justice Department may be targeting pro-Israel lobbying
groups, such as Aipac. These officials (sic) say they're eager to see the
legal process run its course, but are concerned about the lack of
transparency in the case."
As far as Dershowitz is concerned, it isn't hard for me to sympathise with
the terrible pair. He it was who shouted abuse at me during an Irish radio
interview when I said that we had to ask the question "Why?" after the 11
September 2001 international crimes against humanity. I was a "dangerous
man", Dershowitz shouted over the air, adding that to be "anti-American" -
my thought-crime for asking the "Why?" question - was the same as being
anti-Semitic. I must, however, also acknowledge another interest. Twelve
years ago, one of the Israeli lobby groups that Mearsheimer and Walt fingers
prevented any second showing of a film series on Muslims in which I
participated for Channel 4 and the Discovery Channel - by stating that my
"claim" that Israel was building large Jewish settlements on Arab land was
"an egregious falsehood". I was, according to another Israeli support group,
"a Henry Higgins with fangs", who was "drooling venom into the living rooms
of America."
Such nonsense continues to this day. In Australia to launch my new book on
the Middle East, for instance, I repeatedly stated that Israel - contrary to
the anti-Semitic conspiracy theorists - was not responsible for the crimes
of 11 September 2001. Yet the Australian Jewish News claimed that I
"stopped just millimetres short of suggesting that Israel was the cause of
the 9/11 attacks. The audience reportedly (and predictably) showered him in
accolades."
This was untrue. There was no applause and no accolades and I never stopped
"millimetres" short of accusing Israel of these crimes against humanity.
The story in the Australian Jewish News is a lie.
So I have to say that - from my own humble experience - Mearsheimer and Walt
have a point. And for a man who says he has not been to Israel for 20 years
- or Egypt, though he says he had a "great time" in both countries - Walt
rightly doesn't claim any on-the-ground expertise. "I've never flown into
Afghanistan on a rickety plane, or stood at a checkpoint and seen a bus
coming and not known if there is a suicide bomber aboard," he says.
Noam Chomsky, America's foremost moral philosopher and linguistics academic
- so critical of Israel that he does not even have a regular newspaper
column - does travel widely in the region and acknowledges the ruthlessness
of the Israeli lobby. But he suggests that American corporate business has
more to do with US policy in the Middle East than Israel's supporters -
proving, I suppose, that the Left in the United States has an infinite
capacity for fratricide. Walt doesn't say he's on the left, but he and
Mearsheimer objected to the invasion of Iraq, a once lonely stand that now
appears to be as politically acceptable as they hope - rather forlornly -
that discussion of the Israeli lobby will become.
Walt sits in a Malaysian restaurant with me, patiently (though I can hear
the irritation in his voice) explaining that the conspiracy theories about
him are nonsense. His stepping down as dean of the Kennedy School was a
decision taken before the publication of his report, he says. No one is
throwing him out. The much-publicised Harvard disclaimer of ownership to
the essay - far from being a gesture of fear and criticism by the university
as his would-be supporters have claimed - was mainly drafted by Walt
himself, since Mearsheimer, a friend as well as colleague, was a Chicago
scholar, not a Harvard don.
But something surely has to give.
Across the United States, there is growing evidence that the Israeli and
neo-conservative lobbies are acquiring ever greater power. The cancellation
by a New York theatre company of My Name is Rachel Corrie - a play based on
the writings of the young American girl crushed to death by an Israeli
bulldozer in Gaza in 2003 - has deeply shocked liberal Jewish Americans, not
least because it was Jewish American complaints that got the performance
pulled.
"How can the West condemn the Islamic world for not accepting Mohamed
cartoons," Philip Weiss asked in The Nation, "when a Western writer who
speaks out on behalf of Palestinians is silenced? And why is it that Europe
and Israel itself have a healthier debate over Palestinian human rights than
we can have here?" Corrie died trying to prevent the destruction of a
Palestinian home. Enemies of the play falsely claim that she was trying to
stop the Israelis from collapsing a tunnel used to smuggle weapons.
Hateful e-mails were written about Corrie. Weiss quotes one that reads:
"Rachel Corrie won't get 72 virgins but she got what she wanted."
Saree Makdisi - a close relative of the late Edward Said - has revealed how
a right-wing website is offering cash for University of California at Los
Angeles (UCLA) students who report on the political leanings of their
professors, especially their views on the Middle East. Those in need of
dirty money at UCLA should be aware that class notes, handouts and illicit
recordings of lectures will now receive a bounty of $100. "I earned my own
inaccurate and defamatory 'profile'," Makdisi says, "...not for what I have
said in my classes on English poets such as Wordsworth and Blake - my
academic speciality, which the website avoids mentioning - but rather for
what I have written in newspapers about Middle Eastern politics."
Mearsheimer and Walt include a study of such tactics in their report. "In
September 2002," they write, "Martin Kramer and Daniel Pipes, two
passionately pro-Israel neo-conservatives, established a website
(www.campus-watch.org < http://www.campus-watch.org/> ) that posted dossiers
on suspect academics and encouraged students to report behaviour that might
be considered hostile to Israel... the website still invites students to
report 'anti-Israel' activity."
Perhaps the most incendiary paragraph in the essay - albeit one whose
contents have been confirmed in the Israeli press - discusses Israel's
pressure on the United States to invade Iraq. "Israeli intelligence
officials had given Washington a variety of alarming reports about Iraq's
WMD programmes," the two academics write, quoting a retired Israeli general
as saying: "Israeli intelligence was a full partner to the picture
presented by American and British intelligence regarding Iraq's
non-conventional capabilities."
Walt says he might take a year's sabbatical - though he doesn't want to get
typecast as a "lobby" critic - because he needs a rest after his recent
administrative post. There will be Israeli lobbyists, no doubt, who would
he happy if he made that sabbatical a permanent one. I somehow doubt he
will.
C 2006 Independent News and Media Limited
***************************************************************************
{Invite (mankind, O Muhammad ) to the Way of your Lord (i.e. Islam) with wisdom (i.e. with the Divine Inspiration and the Qur'an) and fair preaching, and argue with them in a way that is better. Truly, your Lord knows best who has gone astray from His Path, and He is the Best Aware of those who are guided.} (Holy Quran-16:125)
{And who is better in speech than he who [says: "My Lord is Allah (believes in His Oneness)," and then stands straight (acts upon His Order), and] invites (men) to Allah's (Islamic Monotheism), and does righteous deeds, and says: "I am one of the Muslims."} (Holy Quran-41:33)
The prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) said: "By Allah, if Allah guides one person by you, it is better for you than the best types of camels." [al-Bukhaaree, Muslim]
The prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) also said, "Whoever calls to guidance will have a reward similar to the reward of the one who follows him, without the reward of either of them being lessened at all." [Muslim, Ahmad, Aboo Daawood, an-Nasaa'ee, at-Tirmidhee, Ibn Maajah]
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