The Lobby and the Bulldozer: Mearsheimer, Walt and Corrie

[Tom Joad]

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/041306A.shtml

Weeks after a British magazine published a long article by two American professors titled "The Israel Lobby," the outrage continued to howl through mainstream US media.

<snip>
...last week on the op-ed page of the Washington Post, the headline was blunt: "Yes, It's Anti-Semitic." The piece flatly called the Mearsheimer-Walt essay "kooky academic work" - and "anti-Semitic."

But nothing in the essay is anti-Semitic.

Some of the analysis from Mearsheimer and Walt is arguable. A number of major factors affect Uncle Sam's Middle East policies in addition to pro-Israel pressures. But no one can credibly deny that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee is one of the most powerful lobbying groups in Washington, where politicians know that they can criticize Israel only at their political peril.

Overall, the Mearsheimer-Walt essay makes many solid points about destructive aspects of US support for the Israeli government. Their assessments deserve serious consideration.

For several decades, to the present moment, Israel's treatment of Palestinian people has amounted to methodical and despicable violations of human rights. Yet criticism of those policies from anyone (including American Jews such as myself) routinely results in accusations of anti-Jewish bigotry.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/041306A.shtml">Much more....
____________________________________________

I certainly agree with N. Solomon that there are a "A number of major factors affect Uncle Sam's Middle East policies in addition to pro-Israel pressures." Still, it would be absurd to say that AIPAC (and related organizations) makes no difference. It certainly is contrary to what AIPAC says is true.

If we really want peace for the holy land, then we must challange policies that destroy prospects for peace. Listen, for example to Jimmy Carter.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/695187.html

For more than a quarter century, Israeli policy has been in conflict with that of the United States and the international community. Israel's occupation of Palestine has obstructed a comprehensive peace agreement in the Holy Land, regardless of whether Palestinians had no formalized government, one headed by Yasser Arafat or Mahmoud Abbas, or with Abbas as president and Hamas controlling the parliament and cabinet.

Time for a change of policy. Time to confront lobbies for militarism.

[Tom Joad]

1. For those who belittle the influence of AIPAC....

Please explain your views. If AIPAC & related groups have no influence... just what purpose do they serve? And since they get millions of dollars of donations every year, for the express purpose of influencing US policy in the region... then wouldn't the idea that they have no real influence mean they are scamming their membership.... that the whole thing is just a sham?

I personally think they are indeed a very effective lobby group, that almost always gets what it wants. I also think that what they want is not shared by many americans, regardless of ethnic, religious identification. It is a lobby that supports military solutions and the continuing occupation and colonization of Palestine, as Jimmy Carter has said of Israel's current policy. Their free speech rights means they can endorse that.

People of conscience have a right and duty to oppose it.

[Coastie for Truth]

2. I will take your challenge

Look at-

* American Petroleum Institute
* National Association of Manufacturers
* US Chamber of Commerce
* North American Automobile Manufacturers Association
* American Association of Health Plans (as in the "Harry and Louise" infomercials


Compared to those Big Business lobbies with the Big Business President and the Big Business Vice president and the Big Business Congress - (to use a United States Coast Coast Guard term) - AIPAC would not make a pimple on a Big Butt Bosuns Mate's left butt cheek.

(Working in the Green, Renewable, and Alternative Energy Industry - I have been on the side of the Sierra Club and against the American Petroleum Institute and the National Association of Manufacturers and the US Chamber of Commerce and the North American Automobile Manufacturers Association - on issues like a pilot program of a tiny percentage of "zero emission vehicles." -- Been there, done there, had the colonoscopy without sedative or KY jelly)

Did you ever wonder why CARB dropped the "zero emissions" or "electric car" program. Some people paid with their careers for opposing the American Petroleum Institute and the National Association of Manufacturers and the US Chamber of Commerce and the North American Automobile Manufacturers Association.

How many Americans and Iraqis have died so far because American Petroleum Institute and the National Association of Manufacturers and the US Chamber of Commerce and the North American Automobile Manufacturers Association opposed CARB's "zero emissions" rule?

How many American working men and women will lose their well paying automobile manufacturing related jobs because American Petroleum Institute and the National Association of Manufacturers and the US Chamber of Commerce and the North American Automobile Manufacturers Association opposed CARB's "zero emissions" rule (don't take my word - read Jim Kunstler's "The Long Emergency: Surviving the Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century " - and his many op eds and web site; and read Michael Klare's "Blood and Oil : The Dangers and Consequences of America's Growing Dependency on Imported Petroleum" and "Resource Wars: The New Landscape of Global Conflict". Take a walk over and talk to Professor John Newman in Chem E or visit with Professor Severin Borenstein, director of UC Berkeley's Energy Institute. The real shocker, read and compare the with the petroleum Industry's PAC site on a - and check out my blog or Engdahl's "A Century Of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order" and Matthew Simmons' "Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy")

[Englander]

10. What has any of that got to do with Aipac?

Anything? Since Aipac was only mentioned, *once*, & the rest was blatant attempts to talk
about something, anything, just anything, *but* Aipac, the answer's self-explanatory.

[Scurrilous]

3. AIPAC's Complaint (Eric Alterman)

<snip>

"The University of Chicago's John Mearsheimer is among America's most admired political scientists. Stephen Walt is the academic dean and a chaired professor at Harvard's Kennedy School. Neither man has ever made any remotely racist or anti-Semitic utterance in the public sphere. And yet because they recently published an essay in The London Review of Books and (with full scholarly apparatus) on the Kennedy School website that critically and--this is key--unsentimentally examines the role of the "Israel lobby" in the making of US foreign policy, these two scholars have been subjected to a relentless barrage of vituperative insults in which the accusation "anti-Semite" is merely the beginning. Just a few of the most colorful: "Crackpot" (Martin Peretz); "Could have been written by Pat Buchanan, by David Duke, Noam Chomsky, and some of the less intelligent members of Hamas" (Alan Dershowitz); "As scholarly as...Welch and McCarthy--and just as nutty" (Max Boot); "puts The Protocols of the Elders of Zion to shame" (Josef Joffe); "resembles nothing so much as Wilhelm Marr's 1879 pamphlet The Victory of Judaism Over Germandom" (Ruth Wisse); "dishonest so-called intellectuals...entitled to their stupidity" (New York Representative Eliot Engel).

One is tempted to point out that the authors themselves predicted the likelihood of such a reception, and by provoking it they have proved their point. They note--relying on research by yours truly--that pro-Israel voices dominate punditocracy discourse and add that the lobby almost always plays the "anti-Semite" card to stifle debate about Israel's behavior in general and its own actions in particular. Machers at official Jewish organizations--accurately characterized in the paper as far more belligerent than the Jewish community generally--have suggested in circulated e-mails that Israel supporters might want to threaten the Kennedy School's funding. The school's administration has distanced itself from the controversy by removing its imprimatur from the paper and posting Dershowitz's attack on it at the same web address. If any young scholars--without the protective armor that Walt and Mearsheimer's reputations afford, to say nothing of tenured professorships--are considering research into a similar topic, well, they won't need a weatherman to know which way this (idiot) wind blows.

One is also tempted to infer that what scares the character assassins into such self-revealing fits of ferocity is the fear that the authors have revealed the unhappy truths they'd rather suppress. We have an ex-New York Times executive editor admitting that he favored Israel in the paper's coverage, and it's not even Abe Rosenthal. They quote the longtime editorial page editor of the Wall Street Journal saying, "Shamir, Sharon, Bibi--whatever those guys want is pretty much fine by me." They quote former AIPAC officials bragging about Jewish power and influence in Congress and the executive branch and supplement this with a variety of US officials complaining of the power of this network to get what it wants, regardless of the merits of a given argument. The authors also focus a laser beam on the lobby's take-no-prisoners attitude toward any politician who departs from the lobby's line--up to and including Howard Dean's innocuous pronouncement that the United States should play an "even-handed role" in the Middle East. Finally, they demonstrate that while it contains the word "American" in its name, AIPAC does Israel's bidding, pure and simple.

more

[Coastie for Truth]

4. Big Oil, the Chamber of Commerce, the NAM and and the Health Insurors

are minor leaguers compared to AIPAC? Right?

[Scurrilous]

5. No.

From the article:

"Third, while it's fair to call AIPAC obnoxious and even anti-democratic, the same can often be said about, say, the NRA, Big Pharma and other powerful lobbies. The authors note this but often seem to forget it. This has the effect of making the Jews who read the paper feel unfairly singled out, and inspires much emotionally driven mishigas in reaction."

[Coastie for Truth]

6. May be mishigas

Third, while it's fair to call AIPAC obnoxious and even anti-democratic, the same can often be said about, say, the NRA, Big Pharma and other powerful lobbies. The authors note this but often seem to forget it. This has the effect of making the Jews who read the paper feel unfairly singled out, and inspires much emotionally driven mishigas in reaction.
---www.thenation.com/doc/20060501/alterman

The American Petroleum Institute and the Big Three go a little bit beyond mishigas and and merely being obnoxious. They go to such techniques as "Swift Boating" and "Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation" and frivolous disciplinary actions against environmental lawyers and lawyers asserting environmental causes.

I haven't hear such accusations made against AIPAC.

[Tom Joad]

7. How does US policy, specifically with Israel/Palestine, differ

from what AIPAC advocates?
As recently as this week, the US stood alone in supporting Israel policy in the UN.
Anyway, feel free to explain how US policy is at odds with AIPAC policy, even if most of us don't see it.

Edited to ask:
* North American Automobile Manufacturers Association
* American Association of Health Plans

These groups have more influence in U.S. policy in the Middle East?

[Coastie for Truth]

8. How do the Mearsheimer-Walt defenders

differ from the API or the NAM or the North American Automobile Manufacturers Association. They don't.

[Tom Joad]

9. Totally unfounded charge.

How is this so. Norman Solomon supports the agenda of the North American Automobile Manufacturers Association? How so? Please be specific and references would be very helpful and enlightening.

No one is saying that AIPAC is the only lobby that has influence on Capital Hill, of course there are other lobbies, and some may even have their own influence over Middle East policies.

The question that you did not answer is how U.S. policy regarding Israel/Palestine, differ from AIPAC'S policy? If US policy differs greatly from what AIPAC supports, then the conclusion would be that AIPAC is a colossal failure. I have not heard anyone say that, but that would be the alternative conclusion.

[Coastie for Truth]

11. How does US policy differ from the American Petroleum Institute policy?

How does PNAC - at its core - differ from the American Petroleum Institute. Do you really deny that the Iraqi war and even the Iranian situation are -- at their OIL based?

Do you really think that when the American Petroleum Institute, the National Association of Manufacturers, the US Chamber of Commerce, and the North American Automobile Manufacturers Association are one one side of an issue - AIPAC is any more relevant then a butt cheek pimple?

BTW - do any of ADL, or ZOA, or AIPAC use "Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation" like API's members, North American Automobile Manufacturers' Association's members, Chamber of Commerce's members, and National Association of Manufacturers's members do?

And - do any of ADL, or ZOA, or AIPAC use "Swift Boating" to anywhere near the extent that the API's members, North American Automobile Manufacturers' Association's members, the Chamber of Commerce's members, and National Association of Manufacturers' members do?


And - do any of ADL, or ZOA, or AIPAC use "Blacklisting" to anywhere near the extent that the API's members, North American Automobile Manufacturers' Association's members, the Chamber of Commerce's members, and National Association of Manufacturers' members do?

Do you really doubt where the REAL POWER is in this country. The biggest of Big Business - GM, Ford, ExxonMobile, ChevronTexaco, ConocoPhillips, IBM, SBC-ATT and their lobbies, the American Petroleum Institute, the National Association of Manufacturers, the US Chamber of Commerce, and the North American Automobile Manufacturers Association.

The naivete of some reads reads like something out of Czarist Russia or a story with Charles Coughlin and "Lucky" Lindy and Breckenridge Long and Ernest Bevin and Mark Sykes, with a dash of "Merchant of Venice" -- but not a scintilla of a hint of how and why environmental legislation and universal health legislation is always DOA.

[Tom Joad]

12. "The most important organization affecting America's relationship

with Israel" That's a quote on the AIPAC website from the New York Times. I have seen nothing presented here that refutes that.

Fortune magazine has consistently ranked AIPAC among America's most powerful interest groups.
Source: http://www.aipac.org/documents/whoweare.html

In my mind (and the people who run AIPAC completely agree with this) there is no question that AIPAC is the main motivation for the US sending billions each year to Israel. I do think other factors came into play in regards to the war in Iraq. Certainly it helped that AIPAC supported that venture, but i don't think it is the only reason Bush & co. started that war of aggression. In the last few years, each dinner/meeting there are speeches talking about the so-called Iranian threat. There is clearly a push for war against Iran. Just listen to the speeches.

The myth many people have, both from those who oppose the work of AIPAC and those that support it, is the very false notion that AIPAC represents American Jews. It does nothing of the sort. There are many Jewish people who oppose its work, many others who have no strong feelings about it.

AIPAC is a lobby for militarism, for occupation, for the status quo in Israel/Palestine. Like any other such lobby, its work should be held into account, its work exposed and debated. For those who oppose the policies it promotes, it seems entirely appropiate to protest this lobby for war.

[eyl]

13. Well

it would be harder to dismiss the Mearsheimer-Walt paper if it didn't contain a host of factual errors as well as some dodgy reasoning.

Mearsheimer's credibility on the subject isn't helped by the fact that he was one of those predicting (and warning), several years ago, that Israel would take advantage of the invasion of Iraq to expel all the Palestinians. Last I looked, the Palestinians are still there.