Harvard's Pseudo-Scholarship
on Israel *
(Updated November 2006)
Harvard’s John F.
Kennedy School of Government has published* a
paper, “The Israeli Lobby and U.S.
Foreign Policy,” by Stephen Walt, the
academic dean of the school, and John Mearsheimer
a University of Chicago political scientist,
that is one of the most flawed analyses
to be produced in recent years.
- Introduction
- Relations With Israel
- Apologists
for Terrorism
- Questioning Israeli Values
- Distorting the Peace Process
- Rewriting History
- It's
The Lobby's Fault
- Conspiracy Theories
- Blaming Israel for Palestinian Failures
- Anger Over Iraq
- Defending Syria
- Minimizing the Iranian Threat
Introduction
Since the publication of
their paper, Walt and Mearsheimer have become
celebrities and have given up the pretense
of scholarship. Appearing before the fervently
anti-Israel Council on American-Islamic Relations
(CAIR) in August 2006, Mearsheimer and Walt
rehashed the specious
arguments from their article that are deconstructed
below and presented new
unfounded accusations, most notably
that “Israel had
been planning to strike at Hizballah for
months before the July 12 kidnaping of its
soldiers” and that Israel briefed
the Bush Administration on their intentions
and received an enthusiastic endorsement
for their plans for war in Israel. No credible
Middle East analyst has supported this idea
and, when asked if he had any “hard
evidence” for this accusation. Mearsheimer
could not produce a single example.
Throughout their appearance,
the professors demonstrated their ignorance
of Middle East affairs and Washington politics.
For example, Mearsheimer spoke about the
influence the groups have over “John
Boner, the House majority leader,” and
Rep. Chris “Von” Hollen (D-Md.).
As Washington Post reporter Dana Milbank
noted (August
29, 2006), it should be John
Boehner (pronounced “BAY-ner”)
and Van Hollen. “Such gaffes would
be trivial,” Milbank observed, “ if
Mearsheimer weren’t claiming to be
an authority on Washington and how power
is wielded here.”
Milibank also pointed out that Mearsheimer
selectively reported data about public opinion,
citing a USA Today/Gallup poll showing that
38 percent of Americans disapproved of Israel’s military
campaign while ignoring the same
poll’s finding that 50 percent approved,
and that “Americans blamed Hezbollah,
Iran, Syria and Lebanon far more than Israel
for the conflict.”
Milibank also noted how they blurred “the
line between academics and activism” by
accepting a “Fight the Israel Lobby” button.
Given this context, it is much easier to
understand the motivations behind their 41-page “working
paper” on the lobby. The document has
an astounding 40 additional pages of footnotes,
many from post-Zionists and
anti-Israel sources, in an apparent effort
to give this diatribe against Israel and
its supporters the veneer of respectability.
The distortions and outright inaccuracies
in the paper demonstrate, however, that documentation
does not make a paper scholarly.
Relations
With Israel
In the second paragraph,
the authors make the astounding statement
that since 1967 “the
centerpiece of U.S.
Middle East policy has
been its relationship with Israel” (p.
1). Relations with Israel have since 1948
been only one of five interests the United
States has in the region. The others are
oil, economics, stability, and security.
From 1967 to 1989, the Cold War shaped U.S.
policy far more than concern with Israel
and, since 1989, a variety of other interests
have occupied policymakers attention, including
two wars in Iraq and terrorism.
Moreover, policy toward Israel is driven
largely by the desire to increase regional
stability and security to insure the supply
of oil and maximize trade with the Arabs.
The authors devote several
paragraphs (p. 2) to discussing U.S. aid
to Israel. They
bemoan the amount given to Israel, but fail
to explain the context in which it is given,
notably the fact that Israel must compete
with enemies who have virtually unlimited
budgets to purchase arms. They fail to note
that Israel agreed
to reduce its economic aid and it will
soon not receive any. They suggest that there
is no accountability for military aid, but
the truth is that nearly three-fourths of
the money is spent in the United States,
generating jobs and profits for more than
1,000 companies in 46
states.
The paper says (p. 2) that Israel received
money to develop the Lavi aircraft, which “the
Pentagon did not want or need.” The
Lavi was not meant for U.S. use. It also
claims that Israel receives access to intelligence
denied to its NATO allies. This is improbable
and neither of the sources listed have access
to intelligence. They also are outdated.
The same paragraph falsely states that the
U.S. “turned a blind eye towards Israel’s
acquisition of nuclear weapons.” Even
the most cursory research into this subject
would reveal numerous
documents showing U.S.
concern and an effort to discourage Israel’s
development of these weapons.
It is correct that the United
States has vetoed a
number of UN resolutions
(p. 3), but the authors do not show that
this is in any way conflicts with the national
interest. On the contrary, blocking one-sided
resolutions was consistent with the American
effort to serve as an honest broker. The
volume of vetoes is simply a function of
the disproportionate number of resolutions
condemning Israel. Still, what the authors
fail to note is the number of times the United
States has not vetoed resolutions and
gone along with UN resolutions criticizing
Israel. The paper makes no reference to the
fact that Israel is consistently the top
supporter of the United States at the UN
in contrast to the Arab states, which oppose U.S. positions 80% of the time.
The statement that “the United States
also comes to Israel’s rescue in wartime
and takes its side when negotiating peace” (p.
3) is simply false. The United States imposed
arms embargoes against Israel in 1948 and 1967, opposed its involvement in the 1956
Sinai campaign, suspended arms shipments
and frequently criticized it’s actions
during the Lebanon
War, and resupplied Israel
in 1973 only when it appeared Israel might
be defeated by the Soviet-supplied Arab states
that had launched a surprise attack. Contrary
to the authors’ claims, the United
States played no role in the negotiations
that preceded the Oslo
Accords and frequently
took the Palestinians’ side in the
subsequent negotiations, forcing Israel,
for example, to withdraw from additional
territory in 1998 despite the failure of
the Palestinian
Authority to meet its obligations
under the agreements.
Even when the authors get
it right, they find a way to criticize U.S.
support for Israel. While correctly noting
Israel’s
value as a strategic
asset during the Cold
War (p. 4), they claim it complicated relations
with the Arab world and use the Arab oil
embargo as evidence. But why blame U.S.
policy and Israel for an action the Arabs
took for their own economic and political
interests? And what would have been the cost
to American interests if the United States
had allowed the Soviet Union to dictate the
outcome of the 1973 War? The authors have
no trouble identifying the U.S. and Israeli
influence on events, but pretend the rest
of the world has nothing to do with them.
More significantly, an objective analysis
of U.S. Middle East policy would show that
in direct opposition to the authors’ view,
U.S.-Arab relations have improved as U.S.
ties with Israel have grown progressively
stronger.
They question Israel’s strategic value
because it did not prevent the Iranian revolution
(p. 4). On what do they base the idea that
the United States relied on Israel to prevent
the fall of the Shah or to defend Gulf oil
supplies? This was never part of any U.S.
security formula.
The authors go further and
claim Israel has actually become a “strategic
burden” (p.
4) because the U.S. didn’t use Israeli
bases during the first Gulf
War and because
it diverted resources (Patriot missiles)
to defend Israel. Actually, the U.S. did
make use of some Israeli
facilities and materials during the war.
Moreover, the decision to keep Israel out
of the war was not a reflection of Israel’s
inability to contribute, it was a decision
President Bush made based on what many believed
was an unjustified fear the coalition against Iraq would break up. The shipment of Patriots
to Israel did nothing to hurt the capability
of U.S. forces and ultimately did Israel
more harm than good as the missiles were
found to be ineffective.
Apologists for Terrorism
A particularly outrageous
statement is that the terrorist threat “implies
that Washington should give Israel a free
hand in dealing with the Palestinians and
not press Israel to make concessions until
all Palestinian terrorists are imprisoned
or dead” (p. 4). It has never been
the goal of Israel or the U.S. to kill or
imprison all terrorists. It is actually the
responsibility of the Palestinian Authority,
according to the agreements it signed, to
arrest all the terrorists and dismantle the
terrorist infrastructure. Israel has repeatedly
said that if the Palestinians fulfilled their Oslo and road
map commitments,
it would have no need to pursue terrorists.
The authors, however, are not interested
at all in Palestinian obligations. Up until
it became clear that neither Yasser
Arafat nor his successor Mahmoud
Abbas had
the will and ability to negotiate peace,
the United States consistently pressured
Israel to make concessions to the Palestinians.
The authors repeat the canard
that terror is a response to Israel’s “prolonged
campaign to colonize the West
Bank and Gaza
Strip” (p. 5). How then can they
explain the long history of terror that preceded
Israel’s capture of those territories?
How is it colonization for Israelis to move
to areas such as Hebron and Gush
Etzion where
they lived before being expelled by the Arabs?
Why don’t
Israelis have the right to live in areas
that are in dispute. Of course, Israel has
now disengaged from Gaza and
the terror has continued unabated, but the
authors simply ignored that fact.
The paper
says that the United States is not threatened
by groups that terrorize Israel, but more
Americans were killed by Hizballah than
by any other terrorist group except those
murdered on 9/11 by al-Qaeda. Excluding 9/11,
approximately 700 Americans
have been killed and 1,600 wounded
in terrorist attacks since 1970, many by Palestinian
terror organizations.
Another false assertion
is that “many
al-Qaeda leaders, including bin Laden, are
motivated by Israel’s presence in Jerusalem and
the plight of the Palestinians” (p.
5). The fact is bin Laden's antipathy toward
the United States has never been related
to the Arab-Israeli conflict. As Egyptian
President Hosni Mubarak noted, “Osama
bin Laden made his explosions and then started
talking about the Palestinians. He never
talked about them before” (Newsweek,
October 29, 2001).
The authors insist the United
States wouldn’t
be worried about Iran, Iraq or Syria if
not for Israel (p. 5). Iran’s antipathy
toward the United States, however, dates
back decades and has nothing to do with Israel.
Iran is important because of its size, strategic
location, and petroleum reserves and would
be a focus of our attention if Israel did
not exist. As discussed below, U.S. concerns
with Iraq and Syria are also based on interests
separate from Israel. The authors argue
that it’s not a “strategic disaster” if
any or all of these states acquired nuclear
weapons. This is a view at odds with virtually
every strategist in the United States and
most Western nations. The fact that Britain,
Germany and France have led the campaign
to prevent
Iran from developing the bomb shows how out of touch the authors are with
those knowledgeable about the region.
The suggestion that Israel’s possession
of nuclear weapons is the reason the other
countries want them (p. 6) is also contrary
to the facts. Iran, for example, has nothing
to fear from Israel and first wanted nuclear
weapons to offset the bomb program of their
rivals in Iraq. They now are committed to
this path for nationalistic reasons that
have nothing to do with Israel. If Israel
gave up its arsenal tomorrow, there is no
reason to believe the Muslim nations would
not accelerate their efforts to get their
own nuclear arms in the hope that they would
then have a qualitative advantage over Israel.
To try to make the point
that Israel is the cause of problems between
the Islamic world and the west, the authors
cite a letter from 52 former British diplomats
to Tony Blair (p. 6). Setting aside the historic
Arabist orientation of the British Foreign
Office, the proposition ignores the range
of more fundamental causes of conflict such
as the Arab/Islamic nations’ rejection
of Western values. Blair, himself, does not
believe the diplomats and has adopted a pro-Israel
policy during his term. In fact, the British
policy is one more example of the fallacy
of the authors’ thesis that an all
powerful pro-Israel lobby is responsible
for all of the ills of the Middle East because
the United Kingdom has no corrollary to the
U.S. lobby.
The paper questions Israel’s
strategic value because the authors say Israel
is not a loyal ally (p. 6). Why? Because
they say Israel doesn’t do everything
the United States wants. Well, as a sovereign
nation, Israel sometimes has to determine
its own national priorities and these sometimes
create conflicts with the United States.
The authors might have noted that U.S. divisions
are more profound with many NATO allies,
such as France, but that does not lead them
to question France’s value. Moreover,
the American public does see Israel as a reliable
ally, ranking it after Great Britain,
Canada and Australia and ahead of Japan,
France, Germany and other allies.
The paper asserts (p. 7)
that Israel is “portrayed
as weak and besieged,” but that has
not been the case for decades. Israel is
not weak, it is strong, but it is still facing
threats from terrorists and countries that
consider themselves at war with Israel (Iran, Syria, Libya, Saudi
Arabia). The authors
are again wrong when they suggest that Israel
was Goliath rather than David in the 1948, 1956 and 1967 wars.
In 1948, Israel was invaded by all its neighbors
and its own leaders believed their chances
of victory were only 50-50. In 1956, Israel
was victorious in part because of support
from France and Great Britain. In 1967, Israel’s
quick victory came as a shock because it
was perceived as David. The authors
also conveniently neglect to mention the 1973
War in which Israel was nearly defeated.
Questioning Israeli Values
An outright calumny is the
author’s
assertion that Israel does not share America’s
liberal democratic values (p. 8). They assert
that citizenship is based on blood kinship
and insist this is why Israeli Arabs are
treated as second-class citizens. If blood
kinship was the sole basis of citizenship,
one-fifth of the population could
not be citizens. In fact, however, all Israelis,
Jew and non-Jew, are equal under the law.
Israel is not a perfect society, and discrimination
still exists, but that is the case in the
United States as well. Americans have had
nearly 230 years to address the inequalities
so it should not be surprising that Israel
has not resolved all of its social ills in
its first 60 years of independence. Moreover,
Israel stands out in the Middle East as the
only country that shares
American values.
The authors make the absurd claim that Israel’s
democratic status “is undermined by
its refusal to grant the Palestinians a viable
state of their own” (p. 8). Israel’s
democracy is independent of the Palestinians.
The fact that the Palestinians don’t
have a state can be traced back decades to
the first peace
plans that they rejected
because they allowed for the existence of
a Jewish state. Palestinians who are citizens
of the state enjoy full rights, but Israel
has no obligation to permit those living
in the territories those same guarantees.
Furthermore, roughly 98 percent of the Palestinians
in the territories are denied fundamental
liberal values by the Palestinian
Authority that is responsible for their well-being.
The authors say Israel is “colonizing
lands on which Palestinians have long dwelt” without
presenting any evidence of any such connection
to those lands or acknowledging the longstanding
Jewish presence and claims to parts of the West
Bank.
Distorting
the Peace Process
Another falsehood is the
claim that the Zionists were
not interested in the partition of Palestine
(p. 9). They take a Ben-Gurion quotation
cited from post-Zionist authors to suggest
that it was the Jews rather than the Palestinians
who had a policy of stages whereby they expected
to expand beyond the partition lines to take
over all of Palestine. The facts show otherwise.
It was the Zionists who
reluctantly accepted chopping up their homeland
into the kind of cantons the Palestinians
now complain about in the hope that this
would bring peace. While the Jews accepted partition and,
today, again offer the Palestinians a partition
plan, it is the Arabs who have repeatedly
rejected any proposal that would not lead
to the destruction of Israel.
The authors also resurrect the discredited
arguments that Israel had a policy to transfer
the Palestinians and drove 700,000 Palestinians
into exile (p. 9). If they had read the source of these claims more closely, they would
have seen that his research did not support
this conclusion and that, contrary to the
authors’ claims, he did provide evidence
that many Arabs
fled because their leaders
told them to do so.
The paper falsely reports
(p. 10) that “Israeli
leaders have repeatedly sought to deny the
Palestinians’ national ambitions.” On
the contrary, Israel has since 1967 expressed
a willingness to trade land for security.
The Palestinians, however, have rejected
each overture and responded to concessions
of land with greater terror. Had the Palestinians
accepted the autonomy
plan offered by Menachem
Begin as part of the Israel-Egyptian
peace treaty, they would today have a
state. If they had fulfilled the terms of
the Oslo
agreements, they would today have a state.
If they had accepted the Barak
offer at Camp
David, they would today have a state,
and if they had fulfilled the terms of the
road map for peace, they would today have
a state.
The authors’ repetition
of the canard that Barak offered the Palestinians
a set of “Bantustans” also
exposes their limited research (p. 10). Clearly,
they failed to read the book by Clinton’s
chief negotiator, Dennis Ross, or the many
articles that documented the generosity
of the Israeli offer and Yasser
Arafat’s unwillingness to make peace under any conditions.
The myopia of the authors
is apparent in the claim that “Israel’s
conduct is not morally distinguishable from
the actions of its opponents” (p. 10).
Perhaps they can provide a list of all the
Israeli suicide
bombers who have blown up
Palestinian schools, buses and cafes. The
evidence for the authors’ claim is
that Zionists in the 1940s engaged in terror
tactics. It is true that some Jews did employ
terrorism at that time and they were condemned
for doing so by the Zionist establishment.
This is in contrast to the Palestinian
Authority which is the sponsor of the terror against
Jews today.
Rewriting History
The paper accuses the Zionists of “ethnic
cleansing,” an outrageous claim for
which there is no evidence (p. 11). To the
contrary, it is easily refuted by the fact
that 150,000 Palestinians were allowed to
remain as citizens of Israel and that the
Zionists always anticipated a significant
Arab population within the state’s
borders.
Once again citing post-Zionist
histories, the authors claim that between
1949 and 1956 “Israeli
security forces killed between 2,700 and
5,000 Arab infiltrators, the overwhelming
majority of them unarmed” (p. 11).
That’s a pretty wide margin of error
and fails to put into context the terror
war being waged by the Arabs at that time.
The suggestion that large numbers were unarmed
raises the question of why they were infiltrating.
Here’s part of what the authors left
out: During roughly the same period, Israel
reported to the UN 1,843
cases of armed robbery and theft, 1,339 cases
of armed clashes with Egyptian armed forces,
435 cases of incursion from Egyptian controlled
territory, and 172 cases of sabotage perpetrated
by Egyptian military units and fedayeen in
Israel. These incidents killed 101 Israelis
and left 364 wounded. In 1956 alone, 28 Israelis
were killed and 127 wounded (Security Council
Official Records, S/3706, October 30, 1956,
p. 14).
The authors accuse the IDF of
excessive violence in the Palestinian
War because the
ratio of Palestinians killed is higher than
that of the Israelis (p. 11). They are now
equating Israelis who are killed riding on
buses and sipping coffee at cafes with Arabs
killed by troops trying to prevent these
atrocities. Would the authors be happier
if the figures were even? Isn’t it
enough for them that nearly
2,000 Israelis have been murdered?
The disproportionate number of Palestinian
casualties is primarily a result of the number
of Palestinians involved in violence and
is the inevitable result
poorly-trained irregulars attacking
a well-trained regular army. The unfortunate
death of noncombatants is largely due to
the habit of Palestinian gunmen and terrorists
using civilians as shields. Moreover, Israeli
troops do not target innocent Palestinians,
but Palestinian terrorists do target Israeli
civilians.
On page 12 we learn the
authors are apologists for terror. They say
the Palestinians’ “behavior
is not surprising” because they “believe
they have no other way to force Israeli concessions.” Terrorism
is not Israel’s fault. It is not the
result of “occupation.” And it
certainly is not the only response available
to the Palestinians’ discontentment.
Palestinians have an option for improving
their situation, it is called negotiations.
And that is not the only option either. The
Palestinians could also choose the nonviolent
path taken by Martin Luther King or Gandhi.
They have chosen, however, to pursue a war
of terror instead of a process for peace.
It's
The Lobby's Fault
The thesis of the paper is not really addressed
until page 13 when the authors start to make
the case that it is the “Israel
Lobby” that
is responsible for distorting U.S. policy.
They start with a distortion of their own
by suggesting that Israel is not a salient
issue for Jews by citing a survey showing
that 36% of American Jews are not emotionally
attached to Israel. The American Jewish Committee,
however, has asked a similar question for
several years and found in 2005 that 77%
of American Jews feel fairly or very close
to Israel.
Throughout the discussion
of the lobby, the authors repeatedly refer
to Israel’s “expansionist
policies” (pp. 13-14, 25, 40) without
presenting any evidence for the use of this
phrase. On the contrary, Israel is the only
“expansionist” power in history
that has repeatedly given up territory (after
the 1956
war, signing the treaty
with Egypt and the Oslo
agreements). Most recently, Israel evacuated the
entire Gaza
Strip and a part
of Samaria. In addition, Israeli
leaders have repeatedly offered
to withdraw from as much as 97% of the territories in
exchange for peace with the Palestinians,
a fact never mentioned in the paper.
In describing the lobby,
the paper mentions only Jews, evangelical
Christians, and gentile neoconservatives
as supporters of Israel (p. 14). In highlighting
the evangelicals and neocons, the authors
suggest a narrow base of support for Israel
and pick out two groups that are particularly
controversial among liberals and the more
general public. What the authors fail to
do is mention the broad-based support for
Israel reflected by the most recent Gallup
poll (February
2006), which found that sympathy for
Israel was 59 percent compared to only 15
percent for the Palestinians. One remarkable
aspect of the lobby they ignore is that its
members cross boundaries of race, gender,
age and ideology.
For a paper purporting to be based on scholarship,
it is particularly weak in its discussion
of the well-researched area of interest group
behavior (p. 15). The authors assert that “pro-Arab
interest groups are weak to non-existent,” but
fail to define or examine the Arab
lobby.
It is true that pro-Arab organizations are
weak, but the lobby also includes the petrodiplomatic
complex, which is far more influential.
A major theme of the section
on the lobby is that the pro-Israel community
is determined to stifle debate and negative
news about Israel (p. 15). It is true that
the lobby, like other interest groups, wants
to make its case, but to suggest that Middle
East politics is not the subject of heated
debate in Congress, the Executive Branch
and the media is simply to put one’s
head in the sand. No shortage of information
is available on all sides of the issues,
and much of the critical analysis comes from
Israel, where the raucous democracy and freewheeling
press routinely publicize the good, the bad
and the ugly of Israeli society and politics.
The authors describe the
effectiveness of the Israeli lobby, but make
a specious logical jump to the conclusion
that AIPAC, the pro-Israel community’s
principal representatives to public officials,
is a “de facto
agent for a foreign government” (p.
17). This has been a claim of Israel’s
detractors for some time and part of their
campaign to place lobbying restrictions on
the organization, but AIPAC does not represent
the government of Israel and its employees
are not paid by Israel. AIPAC represents
the views of the majority of Americans who
believe a strong U.S.-Israel relationship
is in America’s interest. AIPAC’s
policies often coincide with Israeli positions,
but not always, and the organization has
studiously avoided taking positions on some
of the more contentious issues of Israeli
politics, such as settlements.
If the authors had read
the literature, in particular, The
Water's Edge And Beyond, they would
have seen the evidence does not support their
claim that “the
Lobby also has significant leverage over
the Executive branch” (p. 17). The
lobby’s influence is primarily over
economic issues decided in the Legislature.
It has very little influence on the Executive
and virtually none on issues of war and peace,
regardless of where they are decided.
Conspiracy
Theories
The paper says that the
lobby makes support for Israel a litmus test
for administration appointments. As evidence,
the authors contend that Jimmy
Carter did
not appoint George Ball Secretary of State
because of the lobby’s
opposition (p. 18). This is unlikely, especially
since other Carter appointees (such as National
Security Adviser Brzezinski) were not much
more to the lobby’s liking. Moreover,
George H.W. Bush did not hesitate to appoint
James Baker as Secretary of State even though
he was known for his hostile views.
The authors also completely ignore the historically
Arabist-dominated State Department, which
is where most Middle East policies are discussed
and determined.
To bolster the conspiracy
theory that Jews are running U.S. Middle
East policy, the authors single out pro-Israel
individuals
– Martin
Indyk, Dennis
Ross, and Aaron Miller (they somehow
forgot Orthodox Jew Daniel
Kurtzer)
– who
served in the Clinton
Administration (p. 18).
They don’t present any evidence, however,
that these individuals shifted policy in
a more pro-Israel direction. On the contrary,
if you look at the views of Ross and Indyk
before they joined the administration, it
is possible to make the exact opposite case,
that the State Department influenced them
(or they simply did their job of representing
the President’s policy) and they became less
supportive of pro-Israel policies they had
previously advocated.
No one in the Israeli lobby
would agree with the authors’ proposition
that its “perspective on Israel is
widely reflected in the mainstream media” (p.
19). One of the few things virtually all
American Jews agree on is that the media
is biased against Israel. They
do acknowledge that the New
York Times is
not part of this list, but they cite Max
Frankel’s memoirs to suggest that the Times still has a pro-Israel bias. For an
academic paper, this is not a very serious
analysis of the media and ignores the impact
of frequently critical outlets such as the Washington Post, CNN and NPR as well as the
wire services. The assertion that the “American
media contains few criticisms of Israeli
policy” (p. 20) makes one wonder if
the authors actually venture outside their
ivory tower to watch television, listen to
the radio or read newspapers.
The authors are clearly bothered by the
lobby’s interest in holding academics
accountable for their work (p. 21). They
claim it is a “transparent attempt
to blacklist and intimidate scholars” but
it is nothing of the sort. This is the charge
academics use to insulate themselves from
scrutiny. Professors maintain that academic
freedom allows them to say anything they
want, but they wish to deny everyone else
the freedom to question their work. The paper
misrepresents what happened at Columbia University,
where one department became so well-known
for hostility to Israel, and its scholarship
so severely compromised, that it became a
national scandal. The authors suggest nothing
was amiss and the problems were all a product
of outside agitators.
The paper says that Jewish
groups are trying to eliminate criticism
of Israel from campuses (p. 22), but this
is incorrect. Criticism of Israel is widespread
today and many Jews are themselves detractors,
but the lobby is not trying to prevent criticism.
What many people do protest is the misuse
of academic freedom to license anti-Semitism.
Though faculty may prefer to be beyond scrutiny,
their work is subject to review, and, if
the scholarship is found wanting, professors
should not be immune to criticism.
The authors completely misrepresent
legislative initiatives to reform a government
funding program that has provided money for
area studies (p. 22). The proposed reforms
of Title VI have nothing to do with monitoring
what professors say about Israel, as they
claim. The idea is to create an advisory
board, similar to those for other grant programs,
that will oversee the program to see that
the money is spent for the intended purpose.
The authors try to preempt
any criticism of their shoddy scholarship
by repeating the canard that anyone who criticizes
Israel is labeled an anti-Semite (p. 24).
Criticizing Israel does not necessarily make
someone anti-Semitic. The determining factor
is the intent of the commentator. Legitimate
critics accept Israel’s right to exist,
whereas anti-Semites do not. Anti-Semites
use double standards when they criticize
Israel, for example, denying Israelis the
right to pursue their legitimate claims while
encouraging the Palestinians to do so. Anti-Semites
deny Israel the right to defend itself, and
ignore Jewish victims, while blaming Israel
for pursuing their murderers. Anti-Semites
rarely, if ever, make positive statements
about Israel. Anti-Semites describe Israelis
using pejorative terms and hate-speech, suggesting,
for example, that they are “racists” or “Nazis.” A
glance at any Israeli newspaper will reveal
a surfeit of articles questioning particular
government policies. Anti-Semites, however,
do not share Israelis’ interest in
improving the society; their goal is to delegitimize
the state in the short-run, and destroy it
in the long-run. There is nothing Israel
could do to satisfy these critics. Readers
of the paper can decide for themselves iff
the authors have crossed the line from legitimate
criticism to anti-Semitism.
The paper uses the divestment
decision of the Church of England as an example
of legitimate protest of Israelis policy.
But the former Archbishop of Canterbury called
the decision “a
most regrettable and one-sided statement” that “ignores
the trauma of ordinary Jewish people,” displays
the Church’s “propensity to reduce
complex issues to black and white” and
makes him “ashamed to be an Anglican” (Jerusalem
Post, February 8, 2006). More generally,
the former President of Harvard, Larry Summers
called divestment efforts anti-Semitic and
said “Serious and thoughtful people
are advocating and taking actions that are
anti-Semitic in their effect, if not their
intent.” [Address
at morning prayers,
Memorial Church, Cambridge, Massachusetts,
(September 17, 2002), Office of the President,
Harvard University]
Blaming
Israel for Palestinian Failures
The authors argue that President
Bush backed
Israel’s “hard-line” approach
after lobby pressure led the President to
abandon efforts to halt Israel’s “expansionist
policies” to reduce anti-American sentiment
and undermine al-Qaeda (pp. 25-26). This
is erroneous on multiple levels. First, the
authors never define what they mean by Israel
taking a hard line, but the pejorative language
suggests they find the policy problematic. Ariel
Sharon’s policy was straightforward,
that is, he would not give in to terror and
expected the Palestinians to fulfill their
promises to end violence. This was consistent
with the view of President Bush. Rather than
having an expansionist policy, Sharon also
had earlier made a dramatic change from his
earlier views and openly supported the creation
of a Palestinian state in the West
Bank and Gaza
Strip. Furthermore,
the notion that anti-American sentiment in
the Middle East could be erased by pressuring
Israel ignores the broad range of economic,
political and religious grievances of Muslims
and Arabs that have nothing to do with Israel.
Finally, al-Qaeda’s anti-Western
agenda, and desire to recreate the Muslim
empire, is unrelated to Israel.
More specifically, the authors mistakenly
claim that Bush demanded that Israel end
its Operation Defensive Shield because it
was damaging America’s image in the
Arab/Islamic world (p. 27). Actually, Bush
fully supported the operation until Israeli
troops surrounded the Church
of the Nativity in Bethlehem to root out a group of terrorists who had taken refuge there. Contrary to their
claim that Israel did not withdraw, the Israelis
did, in fact, end the siege and the overall
operation. The authors once again fail to
mention the reason for the Israeli military
operation, namely, the escalation of violence
by the Palestinian Authority.
The authors imply that the
U.S. should have been more actively working
with Arafat even
though he had proven to be uninterested in
peace and unwilling to stop the violence.
They then argue that Bush has failed to help Abbas “gain
a viable state” (p.
28). Doesn’t Abbas have any role to
play in working for this state? Yet again,
the authors are unwilling to suggest the
Palestinians have any responsibility for
their plight, that it is only the U.S. and
Israel that are preventing the establishment
of a state.
They go on to blame a series
of Israeli policies for Abbas’s failure
to improve the lives of the Palestinians
and the ultimate victory of Hamas in
the 2006
election (p. 28). They ignore the repeated
concessions Israel made to bolster Abbas
(e.g., facilitating
the Palestinian elections,
releasing prisoners and withdrawing troops
from parts of the territories) that were never
reciprocated by any effort on his part to
fulfill his principal obligation to stop
terror. They also fail to explain why it
should be up to Israel to help Abbas when
he was unwilling to take the measures necessary
to stabilize the PA. The Hamas victory
also had less to do with Israeli policy
than Palestinian anger
over the corruption in the PA (conveniently
ignored by the authors).
Another indication of where
the authors stand is their reference to the “security
fence” (p. 28). Why put the phrase
in quotation marks unless they want to suggest
that it is not a fence built to protect Israelis
from terror?
The author’s claim
that “maintaining
U.S. support for Israel’s policies
against the Palestinians is a core goal of
the Lobby” is also
inaccurate (p. 29). If this were a serious
analysis of interest groups, they would have
noted that a principal distinction between
the Israeli and Arab lobbies is that the
former focuses primarily on strengthening
the U.S.-Israel
relationship and less on
anti-Arab policies. By contrast, the Arab
lobby rarely attempts to promote policies
for the Arabs and lobbies almost exclusively
to weaken ties with Israel. The Israeli
lobby now supports the creation
of a Palestinian state, supported aid to
the PA prior to the Hamas victory and has
consistently supported a negotiated settlement
of the conflict with the Arabs.
Anger Over
Iraq
The authors’ bias is particularly
clear when they discuss Iraq, which they
call a “costly quagmire” (p.
34). The war, which has nothing to do with
the Arab-Israeli conflict, is so central
in their minds that they spend more space
(5 pages of the 41) on it than on any other
topic. They are obviously frustrated and
angry about the decision to go to war with
Iraq and seek to blame Israel and its supporters
for what they see as an effort “to
make Israel more secure” (p. 29). They
even go so far as to suggest that the mistaken
belief that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction
was the fault of Israeli intelligence.
President Bush decided Iraq posed a threat
to the United States because U.S., British,
and other intelligence agencies all believed
Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction
and was pursuing a nuclear capability that
could have been used directly against Americans
or could have been transferred to terrorists
who would use them against U.S. targets.
The removal of Saddam
Hussein was also designed
to eliminate one of the principal sponsors
of terrorism. The war in Iraq liberated the
Iraqi people from one of the world’s
most oppressive regimes. Even in the Arab
world, where many people objected to the
U.S. action, no Arab leader rose to Saddam
Hussein’s defense.
It is true that Israel will
benefit from the elimination of a regime
that launched 39 missiles against it in 1991,
paid Palestinians to encourage them to attack
Israelis, and led a coalition of Arab states
committed to Israel’s destruction.
It is also true, however, that many Arab
states benefitted from the removal of Saddam
Hussein, in particular, Saudi
Arabia and Kuwait.
As for the role of American
Jews, it is important to remember that Jews
comprise less than three percent of the U.S.
population and were hardly the most vocal
advocates of the war. On the contrary, the
Jewish community had divisions similar to
those in the country as a whole (even the
authors note that Jews were less supportive
than the rest of the country), and most major
Jewish organizations avoided taking any position
on the war. Meanwhile, public opinion polls
showed that a significant majority of all
Americans initially supported the President’s
policy toward Iraq.
The authors also repeat
other war critics’ claim
that prominent Jewish officials in the Bush
Administration pushed for the war; however,
only a handful of officials in the Administration
were Jewish, and not one of the President’s
top advisers at the time — the Secretary
of Defense, Secretary of State, Vice President,
or National Security Adviser — was
Jewish.
One small curiosity in the
paper is the claim that scholars like Bernard
Lewis and Fouad Ajami helped convince Cheney
to support the war (p. 31). They present
no evidence for this, but what exactly is
the problem with the Vice President consulting
with perhaps the two leading authorities
on the Middle East? Obviously, the problem
is that he didn’t
consult and listen to people like the authors
who had different opinions but no expertise
in the field. And while the whole paper is
supposed to be about the Israeli lobby, and
this specific section about the its role
in fomenting war, the authors fail to note
that neither scholar is part of the lobby.
Lewis is Jewish, but never was known for
participating in Israel advocacy and Ajami
is a Lebanese Muslim.
In another example of their
ignorance of the subject on which they’re
writing, the authors claim “pro-Israel
forces have long been interested in getting
the U.S. military more directly involved
in the Middle East, so it could help protect
Israel” (p.
34). To the contrary, one of the principal
arguments of the lobby has always been that
Israel has never asked the U.S. to defend
it or to send soldiers to fight on its behalf.
While the idea of
a formal military alliance is occasionally
discussed, the lobby as a whole has generally
opposed this, in large measure because of
the fear that a defense treaty might limit
Israel’s
freedom of action.
Defending
Syria
The authors make the totally unsupportable
claim that “Israeli leaders did not
push the Bush Administration to put its crosshairs
on Syria before March 2003, because they
were too busy pushing for war against Iraq” (p.
36). The authors apparently are unaware of
any Middle East history relating to Syria
before or after that date. They don’t
mention Syria’s support for Hizballah in Lebanon and insurgents in Iraq. They don’t
mention Syria’s occupation of Lebanon
or role in the assassination of the former
Lebanese prime minister, which provoked the UN to
condemn Syria. The authors claim that
Israel was pushing for regime change in Syria
when, in fact, many Israeli analysts were
doing the opposite.
The authors don’t seem to approve
of legislation that places sanctions
on Syria and imply it was passed at the behest of
the Israeli lobby (p. 36). They give no credence
to the possibility that some or all of the
398 House members and 89 senators who voted
for the bill might have thought it was a
good idea to call for Syria to end its occupation
of Lebanon, give up its weapons of mass destruction
and stop supporting terrorism.
The suggestion that “Syria was not on bad terms with Washington before
the Iraq war” further illustrates
the authors’ lack
of knowledge about the region. Apparently
they are not aware that
Syria has long been on the list of state
sponsors of terrorism and has been frustrating
U.S. peacemaking efforts in the region for
decades. Still, the authors conclude if it
were not for the lobby, “U.S. policy
toward Damascus would have been more in line
with the U.S. national interest,” (p.
37) though they never explain what the alternative
policy would be or how it would be in America’s
interest.
Minimizing
the Iranian Threat
In a final myopic example,
the authors suggest that U.S. concern with Iran’s
nuclear program is a product of the lobby’s
pressure. They argue “Iran’s
nuclear ambitions do not pose an existential
threat to the United States” and that
America can live with a nuclear Iran as easily
as a nuclear Soviet Union, nuclear China,
or nuclear North Korea (p. 38). No one suggests
that Iran poses an existential threat to
the U.S. North Korea doesn’t pose such
a danger either, but few people suggest that
is a reason to ignore its nuclear program.
The United States still
has strong reasons to prevent Iran from going
nuclear because it is developing missiles
that may one day be able to reach the United
States and can already hit U.S. troops in
the region. Iran can threaten U.S. Arab allies.
As the principal state sponsor of terror,
the risk of Iran giving a device to terrorists
cannot be discounted. Iran’s
president has threatened to destroy Israel,
threatened the United States and suggested
it will share its technology with other nations.
The authors ignore the fact that America’s
allies, France, Germany and Britain have
actually been leading the campaign to stop
Iran. Finally, only writers with no knowledge
of the Islamic Republic of Iran could suggest
that a nuclear arsenal there would be no
different than bombs in the Soviet Union,
China or North Korea.
The authors summarize their argument with
the completely erroneous and hyperbolic claim
that “the United States does most of
the fighting dying, rebuilding and paying” for
Israel’s security (p. 39). Israel does
not ask the U.S. to fight its battles and
no American soldiers have died in defense
of Israel. The U.S. pursues its own interests
in the Middle East, and these sometimes coincide
with those of Israel, but often do not.
The authors say the lobby “increases
the terrorist danger that all states face” (p.
40), a statement that is so patently absurd
that it shouldn’t require a response.
The U.S. and its allies face terror threats
because the terrorists reject our way of
life, our values, and our Judeo-Christian
heritage. Israel and its supporters could
disappear tomorrow and terror against us
would continue.
It is not until page 40 that the authors
lay their cards on the table and reveal their
real agenda, namely to see the United States “pressure
Israel to make peace.” It is a fitting
conclusion because it encapsulates the message
of the entire paper that the Arabs have no
role to play in the region and that everything
depends on Israel and its relationship with
the United States. The Palestinians have
no responsibility to do anything, Israel
must be forced to capitulate to their demands.
The report claims the lobby is campaigning
for regime change in Iran and Syria. No such
campaign exists. The lobby seeks to change
policy in both places and the changes it
seeks are consistent with U.S. policy goals
and the views of most Americans (who in recent
polls say Iran is the greatest danger to
the U.S.).
The report also falsely claims the lobby
organizes blacklists and boycotts. It does
no such thing. On the contrary, it is professors
with views similar to the authors’ who
have organized boycotts of academics in Israel
and called for divestment from Israeli companies.
The authors claim the lobby
discouraged Israel from seizing opportunities
for a peace
treaty with Syria and the implementation
of the Oslo
accords (p. 40). Where do they
get this information since they offer no
evidence to support it? What peace treaty
was Syria ever
prepared to sign? Israel has repeatedly said
it wants peace with Syria, with the full
support of the lobby, but Syria has never
said it is willing to make peace with Israel.
And Israel implemented the Oslo accords with
the support of the lobby. It was the Palestinians
who never fulfilled their promises and it
was only after Israel had repeatedly traded
land for more terror that the accords became
irrelevant
* - Harvard
logos that originally appeared on
the report’s
front page have been removed and the paper now carries a new disclaimer that says the
authors are “solely responsible” for
the content and
that Harvard and the University
of Chicago “do not take positions
on the scholarship of individual faculty.” |