“THE ISRAEL LOBBY AND US FOREIGN POLICY”: QUACKING LIKE A DUCK

When America panics, it goes hunting for scapegoats.

--Frank Rich, New York Times

Quite a few in the media picked up on The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy paper by two Harvard academics. In The US's geopolitical nightmare William Engdahl writes:

The most fascinating indication of a sea-change within the US political establishment toward the Bush Doctrine and those who are behind it is the developing debate around the 83-page paper, first published on the official website of Harvard University, criticizing the dominant role of Israel in shaping US foreign policy.

Note very carefully: “dominant role of Israel in shaping US foreign policy”—in other words the Israel lobby distorted US policy away from its own interests and towards Israel’s. So much so, apparently, that some of the US elite got sufficiently fed up to finally start debating Israel’s responsibility for the consequences of the US misguided foreign policy.

Indeed, the article quotes some of the two authors’ “conclusions about the Israel lobby's goals” (emphasis added):

· "No lobby has managed to divert foreign policy as far from what the American national interest would otherwise suggest, while simultaneously convincing Americans that US and Israeli interests are essentially identical."

· US supporters of Israel promoted the war against Iraq. The senior administration officials who spearheaded the campaign were also in the vanguard of the pro-Israel lobby, eg Wolfowitz; under secretary of defense for policy Douglas Feith; Elliott Abrams, Mideast affairs at the White House; David Wurmser, Mideast affairs for Cheney; Richard Perle, first among neo-con equals, chairman of the Defense Policy Board, an influential advisory body of strategic experts.

· A similar effort is now under way to bomb Iran's nuclear facilities.

· The American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) is fighting registering as foreign agents because this would place severe limitations on its congressional activities, particularly in the legislative electoral arena. American politicians remain acutely sensitive to campaign contributions and other forms of political pressure and major media outlets are likely to remain sympathetic to Israel no matter what it does.

Let’s get this straight: the only superpower, whose global preponderance those Neocons believed was unparalleled, relied for its foreign policy on—gulp—the “capacities of Israel”, and was somehow manipulated and exploited by Israel’s lobby to act against its own interests? And this is the serious issue that deserves debating?

Consider now the US doctrines/policies to which the Israel lobby supposedly drove the US:

The chance was to deliver on the US strategic goal of control of petroleum resources globally, to ensure the US role as first among equals over the next decade and beyond … There the president outlined a radical departure in explicit US foreign policy in two vital areas: a policy of preventive war, should the US be threatened by terrorists or by rogue states engaged in the production of weapons of mass destruction; second, the right of self-defense authorized the US to launch preemptive attacks against potential aggressors, cutting them off before they were able to launch strikes against the US.

Are these the kind of perceptions of US interest that would be induced by the Israel lobby? Are these perceptions of Israel’s interests, not the US’s?

In fact, by their own evidence, the circumstances were quite the opposite of what the Harvard authors claim:

Authors Walt and Mearsheimer also note that Perle and Feith put their names to a 1996 policy blueprint for Benjamin Netanyahu's then incoming government in Israel, titled, "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm" (Israel). In that document, Perle and Feith advised Netanyahu that the rebuilding of Zionism must abandon any thought of trading land for peace with the Palestinians, ie, repeal the Oslo accords. Next, Saddam Hussein must be overthrown and democracy established in Iraq, which would then prove contagious in Israel's other Arab neighbors. That was in 1996, seven years before Bush launched a near-unilateral war for regime change in Iraq … For all this to succeed, Perle and Feith wrote, "Israel would have to win broad American support." To ensure this support, they advised the Israeli prime minister to use "language familiar to Americans by tapping into themes of past US administrations during the Cold War, which apply as well to Israel". An Israeli columnist in Ha'aretz accused Perle and Feith of "walking a fine line" between "their loyalty to American governments and Israeli interests".

So it’s the US policy makers who “advised” the Israeli prime minister on how to fit within what they perceived the US interests, and tried to make him believe that was Israel’s interest too. Thus, it looks like US policy makers manipulated the Israeli government to do their bidding with Congress and the US public, rather than the other way around (which is how Ha’aretz concern could be interpreted).

There is no disputing that the lobby exerted itself in the US political system. But it did so not differently or more than any other interest group, domestic or foreign. In fact, what is really driving US policy, domestic and foreign, almost exclusively are corporate interests, and almost always against the national and public interest (see, for example, HOSTILE TAKEOVER and OVERTHROW), to the point of decimating the society. Engdahl seems oblivious to the fallacy of the lobby argument when he proceeds to discuss the application of exactly the same US doctrines and policies with respect to Latin America, China and North Korea, for which the Israel lobby cannot possibly be held responsible.

The notion that Israel’s lobby drove US policy against US’s own interests is preposterous on its face. Why, then, do the professors, Engdahl and others now single out Israel’s role as the one that lacks appropriate debate and should be challenged?

Well, suppose your society experiences dire consequences and approaches a crisis. If you came from the right, from an elite business oriented academic institution, and advise a government by corporations for corporations, wouldn’t you want to distract the public away from the real root of flawed US policies? And if you came from the left and do not want to accept and admit the other real root of the policies—an uninformed, apathetic, gullible public who permits its own manipulation and exploitation (see, for example, this week’s political quote)—what would you likely do? A scapegoat would do nicely in both cases.

Now, how did anti-semitism arise and express itself in history? In times of societal crisis, particularly where the population is uneducated and uninformed, there are always those who point to scapegoats, preferably ethnic/racial/foreign, and quite often Jews fit the bill. The difference is that now the Jews have a state, are no longer reduced to reliance on morally apathetic others to save them (like, for example, the Darfur people had to). And scapegoating a state rather than a people can obscure a racist streak.

Engdahl writes:

The paper was written by two highly respected US foreign-policy realists and consultants to the State Department. The authors are neither neo-Nazi skinheads nor anti-Semites. Mearsheimer is political-science professor and co-director of the Program on International Security Policy at the University of Chicago. Walt is academic dean and a chaired professor at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. Both are members of the Coalition for a Realistic Foreign Policy.

Note, first, the trick of contrasting the authors with neo-Nazi skinheads: since they are not that, they must be OK. And second, the implicit notion that “highly respected” (let’s assume they are) academic consultants to government are incapable of racism; if you believe that, I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.

In fact, racism in general, and anti-semitism in particular occur at all levels of society, and the more educated and sophisticated the affected, the better they are at obscuring it. Academic status does not automatically absolve one of the capacity for racism, if history, including the American one, is any guide.

So, if it quacks like a duck…

Posted 5/19/06