Embarrassing and dangerous

[Behind the Aegis]

Last week a report entitled "The Jewish Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy" was published in the London Review of Books. Two reputable professors, one from Harvard, Stephen Walt, and the other from University of Chicago, John Mearsheimer, wrote a shameful document as far as its arguments go, and an embarrassing one as far as its academic level is concerned.

The sole purpose of the article is to prove the baseless claim that the pro-Israel lobby leads the American administration by the nose and, in effect, dictates to presidents their Middle East policies. The result, they say, is a policy that not only doesn't match American interests, but indeed sabotages them.

The two write that "the lobby's activities are not a conspiracy of the sort depicted in tracts like the Protocols of the Elders of Zion," but disgracefully the paper they produced is not far in spirit from those "protocols." They depict the pro-Israel lobby as a multi-armed octopus, with a hand in everything, a nearly magical influence over all elected American officials, who are forced to bend to its will for fear of harm.

Walt and Mearsheimer wonder why American support for Israel is so massive. After all, the conventional explanations are invalid.

more...

[JDPriestly]

1. Bush's ties to the Saudis are stronger than those to Israel in my view

[Behind the Aegis]

2. I agree...to an extent.

It's not even really the Saudis, it is the oil owners. If SA were to dry up today, they'd be dropped so fast their heads would spin! No hand-holding in the Rose Garden; hell, their calls wouldn't even get returned!

The only lobby that controls the current White House is big business, mainly oil!

[CJCRANE]

7. It's actually

the oil monarchies that Bushco have the strongest ties to.

Iraq was, and Syria is, a secular socialist country which preferred to do business with Russia rather than the US. Iran, though religious, also has no monarchy and has strong business ties with Russia and China.

Those few simple facts point to the War on Terror not being about stopping terrorism, spreading democracy or human rights. It's a simple smash and grab on countries that won't do business with Bushco.

On edit: notice also that Bushco are modelling themselves and America on the oil monarchies so that they ultimately will have absolute power over a pseudo-theocratic nation of have-mores and have-nots.

[treegiver]

3. Think civilizations...

The Administration's political ties in the Mideast, as everywhere, are to religious fanatics on all sides.

E.g., I doubt that we'll attack Iran. They already have a theocracy. Look to secular Syria instead: they supposedly have the missing WMD.

I strongly suspect that if all goes according to plan, a few years down the road all of us "People of the Book" will be allies against the Godless Chicom (or the Confucians, or Sinics, or whatever Huntington is calling them lately.) Remember, we have always been at war with Eastasia.

[HysteryDiagnosis]

4. And maybe a war on termites..... the trees will rejoice.... welcome

to DU treegiver.... :)

[CJCRANE]

6. That's the 800 pound

gorilla in the room that the MSM won't talk about.

There's a massive conflict of interest there on so many issues.

[CJCRANE]

10. I always wonder

why the 9/11 MIHOP crowd don't even talk about this and seem to concentrate on "controlled demolitions" and such-like.

[Orangeone]

12. The Saudi's

at least give us oil. What does Israel give the US for all the billions we give?

[teryang]

5. Israel is a conundrum born of flawed notions of nation-statehood

Israel is representative of the paradigm conflict arising from attaching ethnicity to nationhood, and religion to the state. Civil and human rights and international law go to wayside. Hannah Arendt's work on anti-semitism explains the relationship between the flawed origins of the western concept of the nation state, colonialism, and the rise of totalitarianism.

It is characteristic that discussions of this subject, when it comes to Israel, naturally devolve to a rationalization of partition and the representation that partition is a solution or resolution of a "democratic" nations problem. Ironically, emerging totalitarian leaders of the fascist period between the world wars focused on partitioning and ejecting ethnic populations as well. So that legacy is stood on its head.

In America, the dangerous connection between religion and the state is exploited by republican demagogues and unscrupulous popular culture politico-evangelists like Hagee, Falwell, Robertson, et al, who created the mass movement focused on events in the middle-east, the bible, and Israel(the holy land) in particular. Central to this are the politics of christian religious fundamentalism and its grinding attack on the rationalist underpinnings of the US Constitution and Bill of Rights. This mass movement and its propaganda arm are supported by the current republican leadership as an essential part of its mass electoral appeal. This is the political center of gravity of the American attack on human rights at home and our belligerence abroad, not Israel.

The Israeli lobby's influence is exaggerated because its merely is a focal point for demagoguery and christian fundamentalist mass politics in the US. This is something the defense contractors and oil interests represented by Cheney, Rumsfeld and Bush patronize and exploit. It is, in the most basic sense, their political cover and central to their obscurantist theocratic mass movement. Israel's colonial relationship with Palestinians and the focus on "terrorism" is another paradigm exploited by the American national security apparatus and the corporate media to justify our aggression elsewhere in the middle east. Corporate America, the American defense department, and the international oil majors have no problem with any of this. I don't think that the Israeli state does either. It is however, a historical accident, that they are a convenient rallying point for the political constellation that supports American aggression abroad.

[JDPriestly]

11. Israel was created as part of the overall peace plan after WWII.

The survivors of the NAZI concentration camps could not be safely released into the European countries in which they had previously lived. There was no place for them to go. Some of them wanted to go to Israel and were allowed to do so. I believe the Russians were actually the first to vote for the Establishment of the Israeli state in the United Nations. Actually, Great Britain was reluctant to support an Israeli state. Many members of the American government also opposed the idea of an Israeli state. Truman vetoed the opposition to Israel within his government. That is why we supported it. There is an excellent documentary on this. I'm sorry I don't recall the name of it. You can get it on Netflix.

Having lived in Europe for many years, I can tell you that Israel is not the only major change to the map of the world, and the Palestinians were by no means the only people to be displaced or to lose their dream of a homeland (and remember there was no or virtually no Palestinian state prior to WWII) due to the major geographical changes that were made to end WWII. The Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian conflicts of the '90s resulted from some of the compromises made. And that is just the beginning. The Russian domination of Eastern Europe was also the unfortunate result of deals made or claimed to have been made just to end WWII.

It is my understanding that, until 1917, what Palestinians now claim as their homeland was actually part of the Ottoman Empire. At that point, I believe it became a British Protectorate and pretty much remained that until the partition into Palestinian and Israeli parts.

Many, many people from all over Europe including many Jews immigrated to the U.S. after WWII. We accepted them as Americans as we have many Palestinians since that time. We live together in peace with Americans of Israeli/Jewish and Palestinian and many, many other origins or affiliations because we respect human rights and religious freedom.

By the way, based on my experience as a non-Jew, I have to say that in many parts of Europe, anti-semitism (anti-Jewish sentiment) is alive and well. Oddly enough, I observed less of it among Germans than among people of some of the other nations.

[teryang]

13. And similar map making after WWI resulted in concentration....

...camps in Europe. Europe just exported its intolerance. My point concerns the ethnicity/nation state model, which is fundamentally flawed. Israel now practices the partitioning of the fascist interwar states in Europe that produced it historically. It isn't exactly the same but the problems are analagous and spring from the same historical roots. Further modern Balkanization in Yugoslavia springs from similar flawed ideology of nation-statehood, which focuses on ethnicity and perogatives rather than human rights.

The best intentions in the world don't change the negative dynamics. Historical claims of right to territory are irrelevant to the phenomenon, except inasmuch as they are symtomatic of intolerance and its motivation.

[JDPriestly]

14. It wasn't the map-making that caused the concentration camps.

Life isn't perfect. What applies to one group applies to another. My ancestors settled certain territories. Their names are on the original land grant deeds. I don't claim a historical right to the land, but I have a great love for it even if I've never lived there. I feel tied to communities where my ancestors built churches and hunted game where no European had stepped. People just have a sense of origin. I feel tied to certain European countries just because my ancestors came from there several hundred years ago. It's strange but true. There is plenty of room for both Palestinians and Israelis to live comfortably in their area. It's a matter of time until the Palestinians realize that they are better off living in peace with the Israelis than at war with them.

[teryang]

15. Yeah right

An intrinsicly flawed concept of government will succeed when the victims of it realize they are better off.

[TheBaldyMan]

8. Jr rolled over and gave Sharon every concession

he asked for, I suppose he did it because his grasp of foreign policy is so poor. In spite of the road map, in spite of all advice to the contrary he just said 'Sure Mr Prime Minister, anything you want' even the Israelis were stunned when he agreed to everything.

Let me make clear that this isn't proof of a causal link but it does look very incriminating to the rest of the world. I'd disagree with the idea that groups like AIPAC are dictating foreign policy mainly because of the Israeli administration being caught off balance by Bush's accession to every demand. If they had known they were going to get 100% of what they asked for they would probably have toned their demands down a bit.

[CJCRANE]

9. It's a double gift though..

just think who else benefits from having the arab street focussing their anger on Israel..