The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy
By John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 484 pages, $26
The authors of the new book “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy” are in the enviable position of having some of their toughest opponents helping to make one of the book’s chief points.
There can scarcely be a member of the reading public unaware of the thesis of John J. Mearsheimer, a University of Chicago professor, and Stephen M. Walt, a faculty member at Harvard University. As they said in a 2006 essay in the London Review of Books, the Israel lobby is a loose coalition of pressure groups that works to twist U.S. foreign policy to Israel’s benefit, and America’s national interests suffer as a result. One of its techniques is to silence critics of Israel.
As if on cue, the Chicago Council on Global Affairs in July canceled a September speaking engagement by Walt and Mearsheimer. Council President Marshall Bouton said he preferred that the authors appear in a forum balanced by an opposing viewpoint and denied that council board members who are Jewish or pro-Israeli groups influenced his decision or pressured him. Mearsheimer and Walt said they felt political pressure was behind the move. In October 2006, the Polish Consulate in New York nixed an appearance by historian Tony Judt, who doubles as critic-in-residence of Israel for The New York Review of Books. That incident is also cited as an example of the Israel lobby’s muscle-flexing by Mearsheimer and Walt, who also point to the case of Norman Finkelstein, a sharp-tongued critic of Israel recently denied tenure by DePaul University.
I can testify to a centerpiece of Mearsheimer and Walt’s thesis: that American Jews are eager to contribute financially to politicians favorable to Israel. More than once I’ve been invited to a fundraiser for a gentile congressman from a small town with no more Jewish presence than an occasional showing of a Woody Allen movie. The hostess will explain sotto voce: “He is very strong on Israel.”
The mountain of reasons Mearsheimer and Walt submit for their assertion that Israel doesn’t deserve America’s support are essentially variations on a theme: When Jews aren’t doing bad things they are doing things badly. Some say U.S. support has been partially repaid by Israel’s sharing the fruits of its vaunted intelligence agencies. Mearsheimer and Walt counter: “One former CIA official reports being ‘appalled at the lack of quality of the [Israeli] political intelligence on the Arab world.'” Mearsheimer and Walt say if the Israelis have a security issue, it’s of their making: “Israel does have a serious terrorism problem, but that is mainly the consequence of colonizing the Occupied Territories.” It could seem that way on a bucolic campus in Cambridge, Mass., or Chicago. But probably not so to those up close. Terrorism was part of their experience long before Israel conquered the West Bank and Gaza in 1967 — indeed, long before there was a state of Israel. In 1929, Arabs massacred many Jews of Hebron, the survivors having to abandon the city.
The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs has a listing of terrorist attacks prior to the Six-Day War, its laconic prose suggesting a more-complex reality than Mearsheimer and Walt’s picture: March 17, 1954, terrorists kill the driver and 11 passengers on an Israeli bus; March 24, 1955, terrorists throw hand grenades into a wedding party, killing a young woman; April 11, 1956, terrorists kill three children and a youth worker in a synagogue; etc., etc.
Mearsheimer and Walt pose a question that’s on many Americans’ minds: How did the U.S. get bogged down in Iraq? For several reasons, they say, “But absent the lobby’s influence, there almost certainly would not have been a war.” “Almost certainly” is strong language from professors who bill themselves as political scientists. It has the ring of religious or ideological commitment. Claiming to know something “almost certainly” invites scoffers to search high and low for evidence of the contrary.
Actually, they don’t have to look farther than Page 291 of this book. There we learn that Israel wanted the U.S. to focus on Iran because of its anti-Israeli animus and nuclear ambitions. “Nevertheless, [Israeli Prime Minister Ariel] Sharon and his lieutenants recognized by early 2002 that the United States was determined to confront Iraq first and deal with Iran after Saddam [Hussein] had been removed from power.”
In other words, the Bush administration made a decision, after which Israel lined up as a loyal supporter, and, Mearsheimer and Walt claim, the lobby always lines up behind Israel. In the world of scientific inquiry, the cause has to come before the effect — but seemingly not in the mental world of Mearsheimer and Walt.
For 2,000 years, Jews have been blamed for the evils others suffered. If crops failed, it was the Jews’ fault. If children went missing, it was because Jews abducted them to make Passover wine. Now, say Mearsheimer and Walt, if the U.S. has problems in the Muslim world, it’s the Israel lobby’s fault. If the Palestinians and Israelis have yet to lay down their arms, the Jews are to blame.
To that single-minded focus, they are willing to sacrifice consistency. On Page 93 of their account, we learn that Israel was out to grab all of the former British Mandate in Palestine in 1948, yet on the next page they write, “But in fact Ben-Gurion had already negotiated a deal with King Abdullah of Transjordan to divide up Palestine.” Ultimately, “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy” raises a taxonomic issue: What do you call it when someone reaches a conclusion — It’s the Jews’ fault — others previously have?
Art historians offer a clue. If a painting turns up that looks like a Raphael but doesn’t quite seem to be by the master, it may be listed as “in the school of Raphael.”
In that sense, Mearsheimer and Walt’s book could be viewed as being in the school of anti-Semitism. The authors repeatedly deny being anti-Jewish, say Israel has a right to exist and admire some of its achievements. Yet granting Jews their existence and blaming them for the world’s ills are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Fifth Century theologian St. Augustine and his followers held Jews should not be eliminated but kept around to witness their evil.
“The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy” contains a touch of the paranoid, a bit of a-conspiracy-so-vast thinking. The lobby includes “individuals who occasionally write letters supporting Israel to their local newspaper.” The book paints a lovely picture of life without the lobby’s pernicious influence. Absent an obdurate Israel and American Jewish money that buys U.S. politicians’ support, our country wouldn’t be reviled abroad. Syria and Iran would join the community of law-abiding nations. Al Qaeda might not have the U.S. in its sights.
The book offers such a comforting portrait of a post-Israel-lobby world, it’s hard after reading it to return to a less-chiaroscuro reality. Who wouldn’t rather live in a fantasy land where, as in Hollywood cowboy movies, the good guys and bad guys are easily distinguished by their white and black hats?
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rgrossman@tribune.com
