The Lobby Strikes Back
December 12, 2007
Mearsheimer and Walt are still in the Lobby’s crosshair. Justin Raimondo’s caustic take on the brouhaha occasioned by the two scholars’ visit to Princeton is worth reading. And here is a decent review from Scott McConnell.
One prism through which to gauge the impact of John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt’s The Israel Lobby and American Foreign Policy is a September incident involving Barack Obama. His campaign had placed small ads in various spots around the Internet, designed to drive readers to its website. One turned up on Amazon’s page for the Walt and Mearsheimer book. A vigilant watchdog at the New York Sun spotted it and contacted the campaign: Did Obama support Walt and Mearsheimer?
The answer came within hours. The ad was withdrawn. Its placement was “unintentional.” The senator, his campaign made clear, understood that key arguments of the book were “wrong,” but had definitely not read the work himself. In short, Walt and Mearsheimer had reached a pinnacle of notoriety.
Though The Israel Lobby was on the way to best-sellerdom and has become perhaps the most discussed policy book of the year, the presidential candidate touted as the most fresh-thinking and intellectually curious in the race hastened to make clear he had not been corrupted by the toxic text.
The episode illustrates one of the book’s central arguments: the Israel lobby is powerful, and American politicians fear its wrath. Any Democrat running for president—drawing on a donor stream that is heavily Jewish, very interested in Israel, and perceived as hawkish—would have reacted as Obama did.
In their book’s introduction, Walt and Mearsheimer summarize the consequences of this power. In an election year, American politicians will differ radically on domestic issues, social issues, immigration, China, Darfur, and virtually any other topic. But all will “go to considerable lengths to express their deep personal commitment to one foreign country—Israel—as well as their determination to maintain unyielding support for the Jewish state.” The authors find this remarkable and deserving of analysis, which they provided first in a paper, posted last year on Harvard’s Kennedy School website and published in the London Review of Books, and now expanded into a book.
This is not the first time a prominent American has taken on the subject. George Ball, undersecretary of state in the Johnson and Kennedy administrations and the government official most prescient about Vietnam, a bona fide member of the Wall Street and Washington establishments, called for the recalibration of America’s Israel policy in a much noted Foreign Affairs essay in 1977, and at the end of his life co-authored a book on the subject with his son. Eleven-term congressman Paul Findley, defeated after a former AIPAC president called him “a dangerous enemy of Israel,” wrote a book that became a bestseller, and there are others.
But no one with the combined skills and eminence of Walt and Mearsheimer has before addressed the subject systematically. These two are mandarins of American academia, having reached the top of a field that attracts smart people. They have tenure, job security, and professional autonomy most journalists lack. They have the institutional prestige of Harvard and the University of Chicago behind them. Most importantly, they bring first-rate skills of research, synthesis, and argument to their task.
One might wish that their book had been different in some ways—more literary, more discursive, more precise in some of its definitions, deeper in some areas, more (my favorite, from blogger Tony Karon) “dialectical.” But The Israel Lobby is an extraordinary accomplishment, completed with great speed—a dense, factually based brief of an argument that is often made but rarely made well.
In public appearances discussing their book, Walt and Mearsheimer are tremendously effective: measured, facts at their fingertips, speaking with the fluency of men accustomed to addressing demanding audiences. Most of all, while treating a subject where hyperbole is common, they are moderate. They are respectful of Israel, admiring of its accomplishments, and extremely aware that criticism of Israel or the Israel lobby can turn ugly and demagogic. As might be expected of top scholars in America, they are fully conscious of what Jews have suffered in the past and how much anti-Semitism has been a moral blot on the West as a whole. So while they have none of the excessive deference, guilt feelings, and reluctance to engage so typical of the remaining WASP elite, they are very well-modulated. Their detractors would have preferred loose-tongued adversaries, Palestinians whose words are raw with loss and resentment, a left wing anti-Zionist like Noam Chomsky, or genuine anti-Semites. Instead, with Walt and Mearsheimer, they are encountering something like the American establishment of a vanished era at its calm, patriotic best.
It is obvious that The Israel Lobby, both the article and the book, would be extremely unwelcome to those pleased with the status quo. Under the current arrangement, the United States gives Israel $3-4 billion in aid and grants a year—about $500 per Israeli and several orders of magnitude more than aid to citizens of any other country. Israel is the only American aid recipient not required to account for how the money is spent. Washington uses its Security Council veto to shield Israel from critical UN resolutions and periodically issues bland statements lamenting the continued expansion of Israeli settlements on the Palestinian land the Jewish state has occupied since 1967. When Israel violates U.S. law, as it did in Lebanon by using American-made cluster bombs against civilian targets, a low-level official may issue a mild complaint. These fundamentals of the relationship go unchallenged by 95 percent of American politicians holding or running for national office.
Walt and Mearsheimer’s goal was to ignite a conversation about the lobby—which they define expansively as an amorphous array of individuals, think tanks, and congressional lobbying groups that advocate Israeli perspectives—and its consequences, which they believe are damaging to America’s core strategic interests in the Middle East. They support Israel’s existence as a Jewish state, and while they readily summarize Israeli blemishes, drawing on Israeli sources and the arguments of the country’s revisionist “new historians,” they are fully aware that no modern state has been built without injustices. They seek a more normal United States relationship with Israel, rather like we have with France or Spain, and an Israeli-Palestinian peace settlement that can start to drain the poison out of American relations with the Arab world.
At least in a preliminary sense, they have started a discussion. The initial working paper on the Kennedy School website was downloaded 275,000 times, throwing Israel’s most ferocious partisans into a panic. Deploying a McCarthyite tactic, the New York Sun quickly sought to link the authors to white supremacist David Duke. The New Republic published a basketful of hostile pieces. Several pro-Israel congressmen initiated an embarrassing effort—ignored by the institution’s president—to get the Naval War College to cancel scheduled lectures by the two. In a column about “the Mearsheimer-Walt fiasco,” neoconservative writer Daniel Pipes summed up his dilemma: it would have been better, Pipes said, to have ignored the essay by “two obscure academics” so that it disappeared “down the memory hole” instead of becoming “the monument that it now is.” Pipes was wrong about this. Hostile reaction to the piece hadn’t inspired a quarter of a million downloads. With the United States mired in a quagmire in Iraq, increasingly detested in the Muslim world, and wedded to an Israel policy that, beyond America’s borders, seems bizarre to friend and foe alike, Walt and Mearsheimer had touched a topic that was crying out for serious analysis.
And the book could do more than the article. Arguments could be filled out, footnotes could be easily read. The 2006 Lebanon War—which saw the American Congress endorse the Israeli bombardment by the kind of margin that would satisfy Nicolae Ceausescu, while seeming genuinely puzzled that moderate Arab leaders did not join their applause —was analyzed as a test case. A book could continue the discussion and deepen it. But the book’s enemies (how odd that a book could have enemies, but there is no better word for it) had time to prepare their ideological trenches, and within a month or two of publication, one could see the shape of the defense.
By the end of October, two months after The Israel Lobby appeared in stores, there had not been a single positive review in the mass-market media. For a long time it seemed that no editor dared trust the subject to a gentile, causing blogger Philip Weiss to ask cheekily, “Do the goyim get to register an Opinion Re Walt/Mearsheimer?” By then, the Wall Street Journal editorial page, the New York Sun, and The New Republic between them must have printed 25 attacks on Walt and Mearsheimer, virtually all of them designed to portray the authors as beyond the pale of rational discourse.
Anti-Semitism was not a credible charge. The authors make clear that the lobby isn’t representative of the views of all or even most American Jews, and they support an Israel within recognized boundaries. Their recommendation that the United States treat Israel like a normal country is hard to demonize. Ditto their repeated assertions that lobbying is a perfectly normal part of the American system and that conflicted or divided loyalties have become commonplace in the modern world. But what many did was to discuss the book in a context of anti-Semitism, to convey the impression that The Israel Lobby was a deeply anti-Semitic book without explicitly saying so. Thus Jeffrey Goldberg, in a 6,000-word New Republic piece, introduced Walt and Mearsheimer after a detour through Osama bin Laden, Father Coughlin, Charles Lindbergh, and, of course, David Duke. He eventually called the book “the most sustained attack … against the political enfranchisement of American Jews since the era of Father Coughlin.”
Samuel G. Freedman in the Washington Post opened his discussion of the book by invoking the New Testament concept of original sin, whose burden one can escape only through acceptance of Jesus Christ. A passage from Romans, Freedman claims, framed the book’s argument—“if unintentionally.” When was the last time the Washington Post introduced a serious foreign affairs book with Bible talk that had no bearing on the work in question?
One of several Wall Street Journal attacks on the work claimed, “it is apparently the authors’ position that … [in the face of Arab lobbying efforts] American Jews are obliged to stay silent.” This statement is more than a misrepresentation of Walt and Mearsheimer’s argument, it is a flat-out lie. Did the editors who assigned and published the piece know this? Was discrediting the book so important that normal American journalistic standards had to be waived?
Another track of the demonization campaign was the repeated effort to cancel the authors’ appearances or to demand that opposing speakers be invited to “rebut” their noxious views, a format hardly typical for authors on book tours. Unfortunately, these initiatives sometimes succeeded, as when the Chicago Council for Global Affairs cancelled an event at a venue where the two professors had spoken many times before. Some efforts to marginalize the book were more like parody, as when Congressman Elliot Engel complained that Professor Mearsheimer had been invited to participate in a Columbia University forum on academic freedom.
It would be naïve to think that the campaign waged against the authors had no impact. It managed to muddy the debate about the book. Even on some of the wonkier Washington blogs, where there was manifest interest in contending with the book’s arguments, the focus got shifted to whether The Israel Lobby was anti-Semitic. As one frustrated commenter on Ezra Klein’s blog wrote, “[P]art of the theory is that the power of the ‘lobby’ is to effectively remove certain topics from the debate. And the closest we come to debating those topics is a meta-discussion of whether debating those topics is appropriate or some evidence of anti-semitism/self hating Jewry.” Klein rued that “marginalizing the authors as anti-semitic is more effective than arguing back their viewpoint.”
The barrage also had an intimidation effect, a sort of “shock and awe” for the political journalism set. What humble book-review editor could fail to be impressed by the sheer volume of rhetoric painting the book as disreputable or avoid wondering what bombs might explode under his own career if he asked former national security adviser Brent Scowcroft or Palestinian-American professor Rashid Khalidi to review the book. Television producers took note as well. While Mearsheimer managed an amiable ten minutes on “The Colbert Report,” the authors got nowhere near the regular public-affairs discussion shows. Scholars and writers got the message: if men as esteemed in their field as Walt and Mearsheimer were subject to the Coughlin/Duke treatment and had their appearances cancelled, surely those less cushioned by tenure and eminence had good cause to keep silent. This probably explained the sheer ferocity of the campaign against The Israel Lobby.
Not all the negative reviews were as egregious as those cited above. But those that tried to address the substance of the book tended to land weak blows. Les Gelb’s critique in the New York Times was representative. His central point was that if the Israel lobby—actually, he incorrectly claimed that Walt and Mearsheimer called it a “Jewish lobby” —was indeed so powerful, why has every American president over the past 40 years “privately favored” the return of the Palestinian territories and the establishment of a Palestinian state, and why has Washington consistently “expressed displeasure” at Israel’s settlement expansion? This is precisely the question to which Walt and Mearsheimer provide an answer. If, as is indeed the case, most American presidents have “privately” sought Israeli withdrawal, and since Israel is extraordinarily dependent on American largesse, why has the United States never seriously put pressure on Israel to stop the settlements and give back the land? How did Israel manage to move 400,000 settlers into the West Bank in 40 years, often using American funds, if this was contrary to the wishes of every president? Gelb goes on to acknowledge that Walt and Mearsheimer were prescient in their opposition to Bush’s Iraq folly, but asserts that the Israel lobby had nothing do with the decision to go to war. Bush and Cheney needed no lobbying on this point, and they don’t about Iran either.
This last area is easily the most disputed point between Walt and Mearsheimer and those reviewers who sought to answer their book rather than smear it. The Israel lobby, the two assert, helped drive the United States into Baghdad. It couldn’t have done it by itself—that required 9/11 and Bush and Cheney. But, argue Mearsheimer and Walt, “absent the lobby’s influence, there almost certainly would not have been a war. The lobby was a necessary but not sufficient condition for a war that is a strategic disaster for the United States.”
This is a powerful polemical charge, if only because tens of millions of Americans who could care less who has sovereignty over the West Bank recognize that the Iraq War has been a painful failure on every level. But is it true? The Economist says the argument about Iraq “doesn’t quite stand up,” but might make sense if “neoconservatives and the Israel lobby were the same thing.” Leonard Fein, who writes on the dovish Americans for Peace Now website, called the charge “monstrous” and accused the authors of treating the lobby and neoconservatives “as if the two are interchangeable.” Are they?
On one aspect of the argument, the historical record is clear. The two authors do valuable service by documenting the near hysterical “attack Iraq now” recommendations made by various Israeli politicians to American audiences during the run-up to the war. Benjamin Netanyahu, whom the U.S. Congress customarily treats with the kind of deference it might reserve for a Lincoln returned from the dead, warned senators and congressmen that Saddam was developing nukes that could be delivered in suitcases and satchels, and Shimon Peres told Americans that Saddam was as dangerous as bin Laden. The lobbying was so blatant that some political consultants warned Israel to cool it, lest Americans come to believe that the war in Iraq was waged “to protect Israel rather than to protect America.” AIPAC, too, pushed for the invasion. It is clear that the Israel lobby, as everyone understands it, was part of the rush-to-war atmosphere that swept the capital in 2002.
But the critics do have a point: AIPAC and similar groups played a comparatively minor part in the frenzy. But what of the neoconservatives, who had openly pushed for war against Saddam since the late 1990s and who held several key posts in the Bush administration?
For Walt and Mearsheimer, neoconservatives are an integral part of the lobby, and indeed, for their argument to make sense, the lobby has to be defined broadly. Of course there is AIPAC, which exists to influence Congress, and its myriad associated groups that raise money for candidates. The recent emergence of Christian Zionism as an electoral force is an important addition, adding ethnic and social diversity and increased political weight to the lobby. This is a sociologically and psychologically rich area, which the authors don’t explore as deeply as they might. What currents in American Protestantism suddenly made Israel so compelling? It is interesting to learn, for example, that in 1979, Menachem Begin gave Jerry Falwell a private jet as a gift and soon after bestowed upon him the Jabotinsky Medal for “outstanding achievement.” (Other recipients include Elie Wiesel and Leon Uris.) But such facts, intriguing as they are, don’t entirely speak for themselves. And whatever enhanced political clout Christian Zionism brought to the lobby, it did not include access and influence to inner decision-making sanctums of the Pentagon and White House or the ability to start a war.
That required the neoconservatives. The path that took the United States from 9/11 to Iraq has yet to be precisely documented, but it is generally accepted that Bush, Cheney, and other key policymakers became converts to neoconservative views after the attack, if they weren’t already sympathetic. This is important because neoconservatism has a broad gravitational pull that more focused lobbying groups, no matter how effective, can never match.
It is one thing to motivate a senator or congressman to vote for “pro-Israel” legislation—and AIPAC does that well. The recent Kyl-Lieberman bill labeling Iran’s military “terrorist” was reportedly first drafted by AIPAC, and an AIPAC aide’s boast that he could have the signatures of 70 senators on a napkin within 24 hours was altogether believable.
But that kind of lobbying has obvious limitations. How many of those 70 senators would vote the lobby’s way while discretely rolling their eyes, disliking the pressure they are subjected to but willing to go along because it is the course of least resistance? People don’t start wars for such reasons.
Neoconservatism is something far more than advocacy of the interests of a foreign country. It is a full-blown ideological system, which shapes the way people interpret events and view their own society and its relation to the world. Yes, its foreign-policy views are strongly pro-Israel. The main shapers of neoconservatism would readily argue that their foreign-policy positions were good for Israel, while those they opposed imperiled the Jewish state. No one who has spent time with major neocons would doubt the centrality of Israel to their worldview or their attachment to the no-compromise-with-Arabs parts of the Israeli political spectrum. But such attitudes come embedded in a larger set of viewpoints, which are now fairly disseminated among the American elite. While it is one thing for a lawmaker to accommodate the Israel lobby over something like the Kyl-Lieberman bill, it is quite another for an executive-branch policymaker to see the world through a neocon perspective, to have fully internalized slogans like “moral clarity” and “Islamofascism” and “the lessons of appeasement” and elevated them as lodestars.
Neoconservatives did play a crucial role in preparing the Iraq War—in the press, in generating dubious intelligence conclusions and piping them into the executive branch, and in framing an argument that George Bush would be “surrendering” to terror if he didn’t attack Iraq. It was a performance that more conventional lobbying organizations like AIPAC or the Zionist Organization of America couldn’t match in their wildest dreams. Walt and Mearsheimer don’t go into this history deeply. (In The Assassin’s Gate, New Yorker writer and author George Packer gives one of the most nuanced portraits of the attitudes of the Bush administration’s intellectuals, exploring the difficult to pin down matter of how intellectuals’ attitudes seep into policy choices.) But in view of their convictions and pivotal positions inside the executive branch and ability to shape policy at the very top, to say that neoconservatives “overlap” with the Israel lobby hardly does them justice: the faction might more properly be described as, to borrow the well-known phrase, the highest stage of the Israel lobby.
Moreover, as an ideological movement, neoconservatism has a reach that more focused pro-Israel advocacy could never duplicate. Does one call Donald Rumsfeld a neoconservative? Few do. While obviously quite capable, he isn’t known as an intellectual, isn’t Jewish (though of course not all neocons are Jewish), isn’t an ex-liberal or leftist. He is usually described as a Republican “nationalist,” though he pretty much delegated Iraq policy to men—Paul Wolfowitz, Doug Feith, and others—who fit most classical definitions of “neoconservative.” But there are connections: in the 1980s Rumsfeld was enlisted by Midge Decter to chair the neoconservative Committee for the Free World, so certainly the neocon cast of mind was not unfamiliar to him. In short, just as the boundaries of the Israel lobby are blurry, so are those of neoconservatism. The revival of terms like “fellow traveler” would probably be helpful.
The most striking aspect of the reception of The Israel Lobby was the distance between the reviews in the U.S. and those abroad. In England, reviewers for the major papers (including the Murdoch-owned Times) treated the book’s argument as self-evidently true. Geoffrey Wheatcroft, author of a prize-winning book on Zionism, noted in The Guardian that it must be obvious to a 12 year old that the Israel alliance, “far from advancing American interests, gravely damages them and has hindered every American endeavour in Arab countries or the whole Muslim world.” Israel’s most influential paper, Ha’aretz, ran a review by Daniel Levy, who was involved in the last serious round of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. He told his readers that Walt and Mearsheimer’s most shrill detractors either had “not read the book, are emotionally incapable of dealing with harsh criticism of something they hold so close, or are intentionally avoiding substantive debate on the issue.” Like others, Levy draws a line between the neocons and the Israel lobby proper and explains the Iraq War as a sort of perfect storm: Bush and Cheney, 9/11, many neoconservatives in the executive branch, and for the first time a Republican administration with Christian Zionists as a substantial part of its electoral base. He regrets that mainstream parts of the lobby have been co-opted by the neocons and closes with a plea for moderate Israelis to take American politics seriously and devote as much attention to forming American alliances as the Israeli Right does. This is very welcome advice, for Americans as well, because, as Walt and Mearsheimer stress (and Levy helpfully repeats), it is not Israel per se but Israel as an occupier that constitutes a major strategic liability for the United States.
But it should be noted that casual newspaper readers in Israel, in Britain, and soon in the rest of Europe, where the book is being translated into seven languages, are being treated to far more nuanced and serious discussion of The Israel Lobby than Americans have been.
At least there has been the blogosphere. One wouldn’t know it from the major American newspapers or magazine reviews, but a fresh breeze is beginning to blow. The Israel Lobby did receive more attention on the serious blogs than any other book this year. M.J. Rosenberg, the director of policy analysis for Israel Policy Forum and a prominent “two-state solution” advocate, describes the influence of the book as enormous: “Capitol Hill staffers are talking about the book, everybody is arguing about it, people are intrigued. … it has opened up discussion.”
Despite, or perhaps because of, ferocious attacks in The New Republic and the Wall Street Journal, The Israel Lobby made it onto the New York Times bestseller list. It remained there only a couple of weeks, soon displaced by Alan Greenspan’s memoir and Laura Ingraham’s latest. But the book’s influence is still early in its trajectory. International sales will be large, there will be paperback editions, and the book will be assigned in course readings. The Israel Lobby will be around a long time, perhaps longer than AIPAC itself. Israeli peace activist Uri Avnery has already compared the work to Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Philip Weiss to Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring. To build upon Tony Karon’s analogy that glasnost is breaking out in the American Jewish community, and that younger Jews are questioning Israel like never before, The Gulag Archipelago didn’t receive good reviews in Russia when it came out either.
Walt and Mearsheimer haven’t written the last word on American-Israeli relations. Other books, more psychologically probing and more discursive, are in the works or waiting to be written. But in clearing the first path since the pivotal date of 9/11, these two authors have done their country a great service.
below is a review of the M&W book on amazon.com…..worth following up:
“Too vague, too late, November 25, 2007
By Igor Ahlefeldt (Vladivostok, Russia)
The notion that is pushed in some mainstream media that this book is somewhat controversial is totally missing the point. This book is uncontroversial. Apart from the authors’ analysis of the Hizbollah movement, which is excellent and to the point, the conclusions the authors draw from the facts they collect are consistently watered-down and I suspect intentionally so.
The authors claim the Israel lobby is just like any other lobby, only more effective, better organized and better funded. This is where they miss from the start. The authors fail to understand the control that Israel through the Lobby sways over the US judiciary, military and the US intelligence community. They fail to understand how the Lobby has betrayed the US prior to, during and following September 11, they fail to mention the lock, stock and barrel takeover of the US armed forced by Israel, and they fail to mention the role of Dov Zakheim in this takeover.
The authors should have all the faculties and resources needed to understand and to analyse better and we shall just have to speculate why they have left us with such an incomplete work. The book is worth reading for two reasons; its references and as a guide to the misconceptions of its authors, which I am afraid are quite common.”
The W and M book pinpoints in a timely analysis the link between the Lobby and the Iraq attack.
What the Lobby and their powerful neo-con allies would rather we not dwell on is the identity of interest between the geo-strategic priorities of US and Israeli imperialism that have helped persuade the US to do Israel’s bidding in the Middle East and thereby get thoroughly bogged down in an unwinnable war against a people that have proved intractably resistant to the plans of imperialists since WW1.
As American mothers grieve for the loss of their sons in Iraq the Israeli scapegoat will prove increasingly attractive and the so-called identity of interest between Washington and Israeli elites will come come under the spotlight.
What the M and W piece could even more usefully have done is to have linked the Israeli Lobby with other groups that have come to exercise such a powerful influence on US foreign as well as domestic policy.
The China Lobby came close to provoking nuclear war over Taiwan due to its influence on pivotal figures like Henry Luce the press baron,and Eisenhower’s Secretary of State,John Foster Dulles.This lobby was hot for war on the Korean peninsula in the late 1940s and 50s.
The Catholic Lobby became especially influential in the post-war period particularly with the Chiefs of Staff,State Department and Cardinal Spellman,Senators Mansfield and Kennedy promoting a forward policy in SE Asia,especially Laos and Vietnam.
The Cuban exiles and now the Saudi Lobby,which has to a large degree replicated Israeli tactics in its efforts to garner influence with US elites-these all provide powerful lessons in how determined minorities can penetrate and gain influence in the corridors of power of the corporate fascist state which is the US.
I actually agree with both of you. The review Michael Thompson posted makes a valid point; the deficiencies of M&W’s thesis can hardly be overlooked. But I think this was more of a strategic decision on their part. Even with their tepid critique they have successfully shaken the lobby’s foundations. But more importantly they have opened the space for more trenchant critiques (James Petras’s book, for example).
Freeborn is right, that the book appeared at a very crucial time, and its impact is palpable (as in the case of the NIE). Equally important is their contribution towards the recognition of the neocons as being a part of the lobby. This has put the more hawkish elements on the defensive, and more recently they have been relying on AIPAC-bankrolled liberals, such as Jane Harman, to table new pro-Israel legislation.
Mr.Muhammad Idrees Ahmad ,
Should I belive in a Muslim lobby, all pervading Europe? In a masonic one ? From high politics to the color of public toilet lavatories?
Not even financial and economics lobbies are so powerfull, it seems to you and alikes,like those SOME JEWS lobbies in US you are speaking about.
By now, you should know that begining with all that stuff about jewish omnipotence “protocolizing the world from Tzion” will end like this:getting pure antisemitic crap fromm Mother Russia (vide supra).
PS
YOUR chossing of the cartoon from Danish Cartoon file relationed “The Drouth, Summer 2006″ in which Shoa denial legistation it is compared to racist Vs free speech legislation, this is sheer manipulation: comparision should have been made with Xtian Iconography in daily press.
Here in Spain, despite Roman Church protests , Roman Iconography it is used in different ways to critized or moke Roman church or roman high rank officials declarations with no burning consecuenties, if not due to Roman Church own wises, to a 200 hundred year war of ideas and men which has put totalitarian religions “in contexts”
Luis umpiérrez, a roman catholic .
Should I belive in a Muslim lobby, all pervading Europe?
There is no reason why shouldn’t, so long as you can find one.
Here in Spain, despite Roman Church protests , Roman Iconography it is used in different ways to critized or moke Roman church or roman high rank officials declarations with no burning consecuenties
Wasn’t it Spain that recently gagged the press from publishing an innocuous cartoon deemed disrespectful to the the Royal family?
Sir/Madam
“”Should I belive in a Muslim lobby, all pervading Europe?”"
–There is no reason why shouldn’t, so long as you can find one.
“Please, just type Saudi lobbies or
Arab lobbies in Google, exactly the same thing you do when talking about jewish ones.Lobbing exists, the emphasis must be put on “all pervading” Is there an all pervading protocolizing jewish lobby in US or Europe?: NO”
“”Here in Spain, despite Roman Church protests , Roman Iconography it is used in different ways to critized or moke Roman church or roman high rank officials declarations with no burning consecuenties”"
—Wasn’t it Spain that recently gagged the press from publishing an innocuous cartoon deemed disrespectful to the the Royal family
“OK, you are right, touché, it was Spain, nobody said it is a perfect country. All Spanish citizens are working hard -¡don´t go away, remain with us, muslims citizens too, please!- to get it perfect; By now we have taken god and alikes from heaven to look at them in the eye ; we are working to get kings and siblings and hard conservatives attorneys from throne too.
Anayway, no body got torched for those cartoons in Spain, and it is a kind of advancement from Holy Inquisition good old days. And still we can reprint things like this:
http://www.elmundo.es/elmundo/2007/12/13/comunicacion/1197546983.html
Have a look, it is funny; by the way:
fun·ny (fn)
adj. fun·ni·er, fun·ni·est
1.
a. Causing laughter or amusement.
b. Intended or designed to amuse.
AND
sense of humour :
A sense of humour is the ability to experience humour, a quality which all people share although the extent to which an individual will personally find something humorous depends on a host of absolute depends on a host of absolute and relative variables, including geographical location, culture, maturity, level of education, intelligence, and context.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humor”
Yours.
Luis Umpiérrez , Canary Islands, Spain
Arab lobbies in Google, exactly the same thing you do when talking about jewish ones.Lobbing exists, the emphasis must be put on “all pervading” Is there an all pervading protocolizing jewish lobby in US or Europe?: NO”
As George Galloway put it, Mt. Everest is also just one mountain amongst others. We know the exact figures for how much financial contributions each lobby makes in the US political system. Here are the figures for 1992-2003:
All Arab lobbies combined: $800,000
The Israel Lobby: $60m
Also, the figure for the Israel lobby does no include personal donations, such as the $12.3m donated by Haim Saban in 2000 alone. Which is more than the combined total of what all the oil majors have paid in the past 10 years.
Wright,dear correspondent, Mt. Everest it is a good chunk of a rock.But,there are others, non antisemitic,reasons to explain “altitudes”, there are sheere socioeconomic and historical explanations; for example, in Europe and US, jews were, mainly, but not always and not every where, an overwhelming urban population. What does it means? That they were THERE,in the urban context,learning the mechanism of the world of the future,where we are now (technologically, politically,educational,financial…the urban net through the world) when our fathers were in the fields.So they are overrepresented in those areas–if they were not purposely exterminated, like in sweet Spain– the same way non jewish elites are overrepresented in all those areas and others. But still there are more simple reasons :
“…Jews have the highest percentage voter turnout of any ethnic group. Though the Jewish population in the United States is roughly six million (about 2.3% of the total U.S. population), roughly 94% live in 13 key electoral college states. These states alone are worth enough electoral votes to elect the president.”
“The disproportionate influence of the American Jewish population is in direct contrast with the electoral involvement of Arab-Americans. There are approximately 1.2 million Arabs in the United States, and roughly 38 percent of them are Lebanese, primarily Christians, who tend to be unsympathetic to the Arab lobby’s goals. This reflects another major problem for the Arab lobby — inter-Arab disunity. This disunity is reinforced by the general discord of the Arab world, which has twenty-one states with competing interests. The Arab lobby is thus precluded from representing “the Arabs.”
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/US-Israel/lobby.html
In fact, quite the opposite,Palestinian influence, in some way, may be more desproportionated :
“Only about 70,000 Palestinians (6 percent of all Arab-Americans) live in the United States, but their views have received disproportionate attention because of their political activism. Similarly, a great deal of attention has focused on the allegedly growing political strength of Muslims in the United States, but fewer than one-fourth of all Arab-Americans are Muslims according to the Arab-American Institute.”
Anyhow, let´s not forget arabs petro-diplomatic lobbies, even if the own nature of its political regimes and the clumsiness of their public relations managers makes the image of arab petrocountries not appealing to citizens in US and Europe.
http://www.bushwatch.com/bushmoney.htm
But even Mt.Everest has History.So does american foreign policy.American capitalism did not needed jews for latin american interventions since early XIX century:
“The great turning point of American foreign policy came in the early 1890s, during the second Cleveland Administration. It was then that the U.S. turned sharply and permanently from a foreign policy of peace and non-intervention to an aggressive program of economic and political expansion abroad. At the heart of the new policy were America’s leading bankers, eager to use the country’s growing economic strength to subsidize and force-feed export markets and investment outlets that they would finance, as well as to guarantee Third World government bonds. The major focus of aggressive expansion in the 1890s was Latin America, and the principal Enemy to be dislodged was Great Britain, which had dominated foreign investments in that vast region.”"
http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard66.html
If American foreign policy has now a precise direction in the Middle East, first lets ask ourselves for the interest of american imperialism in the near east regional context of the time of superpowers competency. If you try to explain american capitalism on an ethnic basis,not a class or socioeconomic one, then, dear correspondent, you have a problem, and it is called antisemitism.
There are american citizens which happens to coalesced in public opinions commites, others in pro israely lobbism,which it is right of american democracy, and happens that such a thing it is quite legitimated in a country that have a tradition in public action and liberties.
The fight should be on extend those liberties, and fight any kind of antidomination structures,not only the ones that uses american citizens of a determinated ethnicity ,and make it really significative the fight for true civil, political and economic rights, by breaking top to down power structures.And make democracy really participative and, necessarily,anticapitalistic, not antijewish.
Yours
Luis Umpiérrez. Canary Islands,Spain
First of all, you haven’t presented any information that contradicts the fact that US political system is disproportionately funded by Jewish, the prominent among whom are staunch Zionists.
Secondly, what has the occupation of Palestinian territories got to do with US capitalism?
Mr. Idress:
1)
“First of all, you haven’t presented any information that contradicts the fact that US political system is disproportionately funded by Jewish, the prominent among whom are staunch Zionists. ”
Of course I have not,sir. Quite on the contrary ,I have given information from what it is probably an american jewish lobby
about how much they are over-represented in funding american politics.
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/US-Israel/lobby.html
They even seem quite proud of it.Then,Why? They explain why it culturally and sociologically and geographically it happens, in the link above.It is part of the american political tradition to see this activism as fair –in the liberal democracy own terms–, and they seems doing pretty well.
I am not being cynical. Even if I am my self prone to digression, it must be rememberd that the subjects of the present discussion are:
Do or do not
–American jewish lobbies permeated, and prescribe, the U.S. political agenda on Israel matters.
It is or it is not
–The U.S. foreing policy is dictated by american jewish lobbies.
Mr.Idress, I still think the answer to both questions it is negative if the things and presented this way:
“We give a level of aid and unconditional support that undermines our own interests in the region, and makes the task of fighting terrorism directed at the United States much more difficult. With the end of the Cold War, the divergence of American and Israeli interests is even more radical, yet the “special relationship” persists and grows even more perilously “special.” ”
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=12042
Because it´s presented in ethnic way: The JEWS are confederating against the the very interests of the AMERICAN people.
But who are the “WE” and who does Mr.Raimondo means by “OUR”
And what kind of “INTERESTS” are those.? You should know better, the aid it is for WEAPONS which happens to be AMERICANS and there are very strong conections between arms and the oil families in U.S.:
“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist”.” (Eisenhower)
This has to do with hard capitalism,with class rule,racial segregation and prejudices too, with explotation and cuasi-democracy, with power nets. Not with judaism or jews protocolizing in the dark. Yes, there are jewish lobbies ADDING it force to OTHERS WASP-FULL interests –which surely are not the thought of ALL jewish american organizations– in order to get their own aims. Show the people how the system work instead of signaling THE JEW AS SOURCE of all wrong.
2) “Secondly, what has the occupation of Palestinian territories got to do with US capitalism?”
Of course the territories are under ocupation and illegally colonized by cultural, religious and military reasons, engendered in Israel among the far right political spectrum, and only very bad ill-tolerated abroad, between “friends” of Israel(Friends in the real world?) for others causes,for example, not worsening the situation when your own money and relation in the area are at stake.Who losses? Yes.
–Modern time fiancial capitalism forced adjustment worlwide after the debt crisis of the 70s and early 80s which forced economic liberalization in all nations.And now this it is a good piece of paper:
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/gutwein160606.html
that will explain the relation between american, and worldwide, capitalism and the jewish settlers of Judea being undisturbed by israeli politician of the day.
Yours.
Luis Umpiérrez, Canary Islands, Spain.
–The U.S. foreing policy is dictated by american jewish lobbies.
No one makes that claim. US foreign policy on the Middle East is dictated by the Israel lobby, which is not all Jewish. It also includes christian zionists.
Because it´s presented in ethnic way: The JEWS are confederating against the the very interests of the AMERICAN people.
Thats what YOU are saying. Raimondo’s argument is intelligent and nuanced. So its a strawman.
But who are the “WE” and who does Mr.Raimondo means by “OUR”
And what kind of “INTERESTS” are those.?
Whatever those interests are, they are distinct from Israel’s interests. You haven’t answered, what interest of US capital is served by Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land?
You should know better, the aid it is for WEAPONS which happens to be AMERICANS and there are very strong conections between arms and the oil families in U.S.:
The voice of big oil, Baker Institute opposed the Iraq war; so did prominent oil men like Baker, Bush Sr., James Carroll etc. As regards the weapons, Israel does not pay for its weapons, they are under written by US taxpayer. If this argument had any merit, then the recent Saudi Arms deal would not have to be made conditional on the grant of $30b worth of arms for Israel. Unlike Israel, Saudis pay for their arms.
Lastly, I went through your MR article. It is replete with the kind of historical economism that Gramsci would deride, and doesn’t say anything about what the occupation has got to do with the interests of US capital.
Sir:
The U.S. foreing policy is dictated by american jewish lobbies.
“No one makes that claim. US foreign policy on the Middle East is dictated by the Israel lobby, which is not all Jewish. It also includes christian zionists. ”
—Well Sir, so it seems now that some other interest groups begin to appear in directing US foreign policy in Middle East. Should we believe that the american elites are is broader (more much broader indeed) that their pro-israeli lobbies? Perhaps this pro-israeli group it is susccefull because its agenda it is not against the general interests of the elite
“They can only believe that because they have a neutral conception of US interests, as if the US government formulates its policies based on the interest of its population. In fact, to my mind, the US government develops it approach to the world not with its population in mind, but with the interests of the entrenched global hierarchy at heart.”
http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2006-05/04prashad.cfm
Because it´s presented in ethnic way: The JEWS are confederating against the the very interests of the AMERICAN people.
“Thats what YOU are saying. Raimondo’s argument is intelligent and nuanced. So its a strawman. ”
—You are right,I apologize to Mr. Raimondo.His arguments are not made of the same stuff of Mr.David Duke.Exception made of some rubbish of the kind of de 9/11 conspiracy theory. There is in US bloggery stuff which are clearly supremacist and antisemitic and which honestly can´t be put in the same level of the current discussion.
But who are the “WE” and who does Mr.Raimondo means by “OUR”
And what kind of “INTERESTS” are those.?
“Whatever those interests are, they are distinct from Israel’s interests. You haven’t answered, what interest of US capital is served by Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land?”
— I have my doubts about that first sentence. This may be , again,a more near to right answer:
“They can only believe that because they have a neutral conception of US interests, as if the US government formulates its policies based on the interest of its population. In fact, to my mind, the US government develops it approach to the world not with its population in mind, but with the interests of the entrenched global hierarchy at heart.”
“You haven’t answered, what interest of US capital is served by Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land?”
—-Yes,sir,the question was not presented for me in this way, thats why I haven´t ,because I haven´t posed the subject in this way.I thought we have been discussing the strong backing of sovereign american foreign policy to the sovereing State of Israel and is supossed consequences in the region.And the strong conection between investment interests in US and Israel it is known: Not few american citizens and corporations have hundreds of millions,if not billions,of dollars invested in Israel high technological industrial and financial sistem.If the United Fruit Company got their share of goverment protection against Mr. Arbenz,Why not these american citizens and corporations?
The continuing of ocupation and settlemets of the palestinian territories it is rottening the Israel political classes and any foreign supporter or non-seeing-non-listening friend of israeli people should be ashamed.By the way, some selfcriticism, on the subject, from arab part would be a good news.
Then, sir, you should know better, the people of palestine –I mean every blood and flesh individual person, (not the SIMBOLIC TO THE WHOLE ARAB world people of Palestine,) doesn´t matter to corporations:americans, israelis AND arabs alike. Ask the Saudis what the hell do making very good business with the best suporters of Israel, and tell me then, please.
Why should palestinian people be more touching to the hearts of americans capitalistic corporations and lobbies than HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS, of latinoamericans murdered by fascists political regimes backed by US.Ask chileans,salvadorians, guatemalians, argentinians…
You should know better, the aid it is for WEAPONS which happens to be AMERICANS and there are very strong conections between arms and the oil families in U.S.:
“The voice of big oil, Baker Institute opposed the Iraq war; so did prominent oil men like Baker, Bush Sr., James Carroll etc. As regards the weapons, Israel does not pay for its weapons, they are under written by US taxpayer. If this argument had any merit, then the recent Saudi Arms deal would not have to be made conditional on the grant of $30b worth of arms for Israel. Unlike Israel, Saudis pay for their arms. ”
–Thanks,so there are some quarrels in the family,umm.The seniors had their first gulf war.Besides,you can forget for a while of the american lobbies and go directly to israeli sources, and check how little happy were the information services and israeli academics in middle east, with the crimminal war soon to beggin again irak, and not because of sympathetic feelings.
“Lastly, I went through your MR article. It is replete with the kind of historical economism that Gramsci would deride, and doesn’t say anything about what the occupation has got to do with the interests of US capital.”
— Again, just to remeber that we are talking of backing Israel in first place, then swallowing the toad of the ocupation, which has more complex origins, yet worth to be rejected.
My full respects for reading Gramsci;I am unable to read him directly.Had not this be the case that Mr. Gutwein´s paper it is far from economism, then we could say that economism can´t be of help
to explain the backing of american capitalism to Israel BUT yes it can economism be of full use to explain the hijacking of US foreing police in Middle East by pro israeli american lobbies.
Yours
Luis Umpiérrez,Canary Islands ,Spain
—Well Sir, so it seems now that some other interest groups begin to appear in directing US foreign policy in Middle East. Should we believe that the american elites are is broader (more much broader indeed) that their pro-israeli lobbies? Perhaps this pro-israeli group it is susccefull because its agenda it is not against the general interests of the elite
Had you actually read what is written, they were always there. This also shows that you don’t even know what M&W are arguing in the first place, yet you feel qualified to have an opinion about it.
“They can only believe that because they have a neutral conception of US interests, as if the US government formulates its policies based on the interest of its population. In fact, to my mind, the US government develops it approach to the world not with its population in mind, but with the interests of the entrenched global hierarchy at heart.”
Silly argument. Perhaps Prashad could explain why it is that on the interests of United States itself there could be divergences, yet no one ever questions Israel in the congress. The bills always pass without any opposition. He also conveniently ignores the fact that the Iraq war was opposed by the whole Realist camp, and the oil interests.
Because it´s presented in ethnic way: The JEWS are confederating against the the very interests of the AMERICAN people.
Yawn.
—You are right,I apologize to Mr. Raimondo.His arguments are not made of the same stuff of Mr.David Duke.Exception made of some rubbish of the kind of de 9/11 conspiracy theory. There is in US bloggery stuff which are clearly supremacist and antisemitic and which honestly can´t be put in the same level of the current discussion.
Thie famous Alan Dershowitz/Abe Foxman defence. I am still waiting for an argument.
Not few american citizens and corporations have hundreds of millions,if not billions,of dollars invested in Israel high technological industrial and financial sistem.
Is that your argument? Do you know how much US has invested in the rest of the middle east? Are you even aware of the history of conflict between the Israeli military industry, and the US MIC? Do you know about the Lavi affair? Or the AWACs deal? or the Saudi arms trade?
Once again. If you’ve got facts, I’m keen to listen. Otherwise
Then, sir, you should know better, the people of palestine –I mean every blood and flesh individual person, (not the SIMBOLIC TO THE WHOLE ARAB world people of Palestine,) doesn´t matter to corporations:americans, israelis AND arabs alike. Ask the Saudis what the hell do making very good business with the best suporters of Israel, and tell me then, please.
Why should palestinian people be more touching to the hearts of americans capitalistic corporations and lobbies than HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS, of latinoamericans murdered by fascists political regimes backed by US.Ask chileans,salvadorians, guatemalians, argentinians…
That is a non-sequitur. In order for the argument tobe valid, you have to first show how $5Billion a year to israel benefits American capital.
You should know better, the aid it is for WEAPONS which happens to be AMERICANS and there are very strong conections between arms and the oil families in U.S.:
??? Weapons that America itself pays for?
“The voice of big oil, Baker Institute opposed the Iraq war; so did prominent oil men like Baker, Bush Sr., James Carroll etc. As regards the weapons, Israel does not pay for its weapons, they are under written by US taxpayer. If this argument had any merit, then the recent Saudi Arms deal would not have to be made conditional on the grant of $30b worth of arms for Israel. Unlike Israel, Saudis pay for their arms. ”
Besides,you can forget for a while of the american lobbies and go directly to israeli sources, and check how little happy were the information services and israeli academics in middle east, with the crimminal war soon to beggin again irak, and not because of sympathetic feelings.
I also know of plenty of criticism among US academics, politicians and diplomats. How does that prove that the Israeli government wasn’t cheering on the war?
Again, just to remeber that we are talking of backing Israel in first place, then swallowing the toad of the ocupation, which has more complex origins, yet worth to be rejected.
My full respects for reading Gramsci;I am unable to read him directly.Had not this be the case that Mr. Gutwein´s paper it is far from economism, then we could say that economism can´t be of help
to explain the backing of american capitalism to Israel BUT yes it can economism be of full use to explain the hijacking of US foreing police in Middle East by pro israeli american lobbies.
I am afraid it isn’t. It is an evasion of facts. Sometimes it is best not to let dogma get in the way of facts.
Sir:
Thank you for the time you have devoted to answering my opinions -to the point of yawning, and also suffering my english .You are right that I have not read the article sent by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt to the London Review of Books.
At least, I can say that I listened to the debate
http://www.scribemedia.org/2006/10/11/israel-lobby/
but given my doubtfull level of listening in english, who knows if I got anything at all…but still I can read the points written in the link above and I can´t see yet that the pro israeli lobbies are dictating the agenda of US in the Middle East to traditionals american elites with vested interests in the area.
On the other hand,sir, and just to finish, I hope the following quoting and link will be of any use to you:
“A few characteristics of historical economism: 1. in the search for historical connections it makes no distinction between what is “relatively permanent” and what is a passing fluctuation, and by an economic fact it means the self-interest of an individual or small group, in an immediate and “dirty-Jewish” sense. In other words, it does not take economic class formations into account, with all their inherent relations, but is content to assume motives of mean and usurious self-interest, especially when it takes forms which the law defines as criminal.”
http://www.marxists.org/archive/gramsci/prison_notebooks/modern_prince/ch07.htm
Thanks again,I enjoyed your short, cutting answers.
Luis Umpiérrez, Canary Islands, Spain.
but still I can read the points written in the link above and I can´t see yet that the pro israeli lobbies are dictating the agenda of US in the Middle East to traditionals american elites with vested interests in the area.
Traditional elite do have vested interests in the area, namely to have good economic relations with the oil producing nations of the region, to which Israel has always been an impediment. So I don’t really see your point.
As for what M&W said, it couldn’t be clearer: many factors were key in taking the united states to war, but absent the lobby, the war would not have happened. And absent September 11, it won’t have happened either.
Gramsci’s remarks on economism are interesting, since you apply them in the abstract. Perhaps the the use of the word ‘dirty-Jewish’ appealed to you. But in the case of the Iraq war, the more common refrain has been ‘big oil’s interest. No one has claimed the war was fought in Jewish economic interests, so once again, your example is irrelevant. The interests of Israel and its defenders are geo-political, and ideological.
Once again, it would be best to read what someone actually has to say before having an opinion about it. Most of the arguments you make are pretty tired and old, and have already been dealt with by someone who actually has some knowledge of the history of these:
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Apr06/Blankfort11.htm
http://www.counterpunch.org/blankfort02242007.html
The recent NIE is a direct confirmation of the impact that M&W are having. All the establishment left has done all these years is merely to produce hot air.
sir:
Thank for the links .
yours
Luis Umpiérrez