Pro-Israel Lobby In U.S. Under Attack

[Partridge]

If you look at the name of these committees, you have no idea what they are for, whereas the other lobbies identify themselves by their special interest. Why not Jewish supporters of Israel? But even more important for Democrats, and for some Republicans, is the money contributed by individual Jews. For example, in 2002, an Egyptian-born Israeli, named Haim Saban, who came to the United States and made billions of dollars with a Saturday morning children's program, gave $12.3 million dollars to the Democratic party, which was only about a million and a half dollars less than the arm manufacturers political action committees gave to the both political parties.

Now, this is just one man. And also Haim Saban, who founded the Saban Institute at the Brookings Institute which deals with Israeli issues,is also a big supporter AIPAC, and he funds events in Washington where AIPAC trains college students for pro-Israel advocacy. University campuses are a main battleground for the Jewish forces lobbying for Israel they have come together as the Israel Campus Coalition, 28 organizations, including AIPAC with Israel at the top of their agenda.

Today, a main lobby focus is to get to the colleges campuses to stop divestment programs directed towards Israel. They also are trying to influence the next generation of community leaders who are in the universities at the moment to act in Israel's behalf.

S.C. - To help the Palestinians get justice, those who support them -- or who at least pretend to -- must speak the truth. However, it seems as if, even in their own camp, this truth is suffocated. Do you think that in the US, as in Europe, this solidarity has failed because it is led by people who are there to put breaks on any criticism of Israel? Do you think Chomsky's influence is exercised in this way?

Jeffrey Blankfort : The pro-Palestinian movement has been totally ineffectual here for a couple of reasons. One is they refuse to recognize the role the lobby plays. That‘s like going out to play a football game, but you don’t go to the stadium, you go a shopping mall instead. If you are not on the field where the game is played you are not going to win.

So here is the most powerful lobby in the United States, which the Palestinian solidarity movement has ignored with the exception of an occasional picket of AIPAC. One of the reasons is it has been influenced by certain ideological Marxist groups that are still living in another day and age where lobbies did not play a part. I have been told by political activists that to talk about the lobby is not Marxist, or talk about the lobby is not socialist. And my response is that it exists, it’s real, and that is what's important. Also, there are many self-styled Jewish anti-Zionists in the leadership positions in the movement who claim that to blame the lobby is to provoke anti-Semitism. In this, they are what I call, "Jewish exceptionalists" who bar any criticism from acts that Jews do collectively, such as lobbying for Israel which makes them, in practice, scarcely distinguishable from Zionists

And what happens is I hear all of these people dismissing the lobby and quoting Chomsky verbatim without even mentioning his name.

His influence on them is so critical, so powerful, that they internalize Chomsky. And so what happens is you have a movement that refuses to recognize the major opponent of the Palestinians on American soil.

Chomsky came out against divestment at MIT, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he teaches, and where he was able to water down a divestment resolution. Then he came out two weeks later and attacked the whole divestment issue. He is against sanctions against Israel, he is against divestment, he has not revealed any kind of agenda that would change things other than having people “write letters to the editor”.

He never mentions Congress, he never mentions the Appropriation committees. If he mentions aid to Congress, he won’t say you have to stop it. He will mention it like it a fact of life, like it’s raining or it’s sunny. I wrote to him about this and he was not very friendly when he wrote back.

In 1988-95 I published a magazine called the Middle East Labor Bulletin which Chomsky subscribed to. In the magazine I had a special section on the Israel lobby and Congress, in which I revealed the names of the Congress people who were in bed with the lobby and I published the sources, most of which came from the Jewish press. So anyone reading the magazine would have had ample proof about control by the lobby of Congress. I recently reread some of the issues published twelve years ago, and they could have been written today, so he can't play ignorant. I just believe his early Zionist leanings and his fears for the future of Jews is so great that it's like he's a child refusing to face the truth. It is unfortunate.

Chomsky is what we call here in this country, a gatekeeper. He is also a gatekeeper on another critical subject, the events of 9/11, dismissing the many questions that have been raised about the official narrative of the Bush administration on the attack on the World Trade Centre. Chomsky says there is no basis to question Mr. Bush's 9/11 story. So most of the criticism that he is getting is from people who have been doing research on 9/11, while he continues to say the story that the Bush administration has told is the truth. So the role he pushes today on the international stage is, as far as I am concerned, a reactionary one.

He says a lot of very positive things much of which I agree with, and again, I know many people who say they were introduced to the political world by Chomsky. He has clearly turned people on. But today, it may be a dialectical situation, now he turns people off, or in the wrong direction.

S.C. – Is your thesis on Chomsky, that he ignores the influence of AIPAC and other similar institutions in US wars in the Middle East, and has a negative impact on solidarity movements, shared by many other intellectuals?

Jeffrey Blankfort: I am in a minority, but I do have an extensive mailing list, I do have a radio program, actually I have two radio programs, and one radio program happens to be in an area which is not Israeli occupied territory and where I can talk about the lobby, I can talk about Israel the way I am talking about it now. The Zionists tried to get me off the air but they were not effective.

One of the ways they intimidate people is through the various Jewish organizations. Each has taken on a different role to play. One important one is the Anti-Defamation League, whose main job is to defame, intimidate and spy on people who are critical of Israel. I was one of them who was spied on.

Its agent infiltrated our organization, the Labor Committee on the Middle East of which I was the co-founder in 1987. Then we learned that they were spying on hundreds of organizations across the political spectrum and thousands of individuals, twelve thousand individuals, six hundred organizations.

I was able to get my ADL files to find out that they had spied on me illegally, and I sued them.

I went out to court with two other activists and after ten years they agreed to settle without me having to sign a confidentiality agreement. So I always talk about this organization.

The person who spied on me for the ADL, was also working for South African intelligence. We had a big anti-apartheid movement in this country. Basically, Israel, the Israel lobby and South Africa were on the same page, very close allies. They were allies socially, culturally and militarily. This is something that unfortunately the anti-apartheid movement also refused to deal with because of Zionist pressure.

I would say the problem with building a real political movement in the United States is blocked by Zionists and their refusal, like Chomsky, to openly deal with Zionism and its role in this country.

Back in 1988, when in the early months of the first Intifada, the anti-intervention movement refused to support a demand that Israel end its occupation of Palestinian land, a Native American a leader told me that the problem with the American movement was that there are too many Liberal Zionists in it. And this is the truth.

I never use his name, because if I publish it, he will then be attacked as being anti-Semitic.

I have been attacked as a self-hating Jew, as an anti-Semite, but it does not matter to me because I consider the accusation of anti-Semitism to be the first refuge of scoundrels. Patriotism is the last refuge, anti-Semitism is the first. In this country it has been used to silence so many people. And this is one of the reasons I am against specifically Jewish organizations wanting to lead the fight for Palestine. What happens is that there are many anti-Zionist Jews, or who claim to be anti-Zionist, who say "we, as anti-Zionists Jews, should provide the leadership so that other people will see that not all the Jews are for Israel”.

And I am totally against that because all Americans pay their taxes and thus support Israel. And this is an American issue. And by putting it out that Jews are the leaders, that Jews, anti Zionists Jews are doing this, what it says to non-Jews is: they can do this because they are Jewish. It has been tried, so far it has been a failure.

So when I speak, I speak not as a Jew, but as a human being. That's why when I first went to the Middle East in 1970, to Lebanon and Jordan, I did not tell people I was Jewish. I did not go there as a Jew, I went there as a journalist.

It was not important to be South African to oppose apartheid, it was not necessary to be a Nicaraguan to oppose the Contras, or to be a Vietnamese to oppose the Vietnam war. What does being Jewish have to do with opposing what the Israelis are doing to the Palestinians. In fact, Jews should be very careful about the leadership role. It is not the place for Jews, for people who identify as Jews. The irony is that the people who are most quoted, who speak most on this issue in the US are all Jews who are ultimately protective of Israel.

Chomsky, of course, is the most important one. They criticize Israel, you see, because that's important, you have to do that, but they deflect the main responsibility on to the US and thus while not absolving Israel, shield it from punishment such as sanctions, boycotts and divestment.

[Partridge]

S.C. – You just said that you were accused of anti-Semitism. Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, for example, was recently accused by the French dailies "Liberation" and "Le Monde" of having uttered "anti-Semitic" remarks. Do you not think that this accusation has become more difficult to exploit in the face of a pubic opinion that has discovered that it has been manipulated for political ends?

Jeffrey Blankfort : Well, they see it, but they are afraid to speak of it. Because the price for criticizing Jews, as Jews, is big in the US. But also, as you see, in France, in Germany, in Canada, and so on, Austria. You can criticize any other national group, but to criticize Jews collectively, not Jews as Jews, but the Jewish establishment is to jeopardize your career.

So even if, privately, people say one thing, they won't say it publicly. I occasional help to get progressive Palestinians and Israelis interview ed by the media in the San Francisco area. It used to be more open, I would say, on mainstream radio than it is today. Back in 1984, I was able to place an Israeli soldier, a reservist, who refused to serve in Lebanon, on the biggest radio talk show in San Francisco. He told the truth about the Lebanon war, that the Palestinians were not shelling Lebanon, and in second hour of the program, which was broadcast to a national audience, someone, with a strong accent, called and asked "who is responsible for putting this communist on the air?" The talk show host said that he was, but in fact it was the producer who had arranged for my friend to be on the air. Very soon afterward, that talk show host, who was the most popular radio programmer in San Francisco, was replaced by a Zionist who is there to this day and who is such a Zionist that every year, when they have an Israeli Day celebration in San Francisco, he is the master of ceremonies. On the airwaves, on the major networks, you will find either among the owners or the more important decision making positions, people who are clearly Zionists. The head of CBS news, Leslie Moonves, for example, is the great-nephew of David Ben Gurion.

Most people cannot or don't want to believe it when I speak of Jewish influence in the media. I read the Jewish press, and they have information on that subject that does not get published in the mainstream press. This is basically where I get most of my information, and I have found it to be credible. One paper that is particularly useful is the Forward, a Jewish weekly that is like the Wall Street Journal for Jews, because it has a lot of good information that you don’t find in any other publication.

What is most interesting is that most of the people I know, who are fighting for the Palestinians in the US, never read the Jewish press. And to me, if you don’t do that, you are not serious. Because we cannot do anything in this country about what is happening in Palestine directly. But what we can do in the United States is work to weaken Israel’s support here, to expose the Israel lobby and undermine Israel's position in the United States. When we weaken Israel’s support, we strengthen the Palestinian position.

SC : Aren't a number of people, touched by the misery of the Palestinians and the Iraqis, more and more conscious that the media lies?

Jeffrey Blankfort : Well, of course, the newspapers are lying, but while there is more information on the internet, that, too, even from our side, is not always reliable and we have to be careful not just to believe something we read there because it is what we want to believe.

The Bay Area, used to have seven or eight newspapers. Now there are barely two and a half. And they have become more like English tabloids, they are competing with television. Unlike Europe, the quality of television here is very poor, and people have become addicted to it. And they are also addicted to portable musical instruments like CD and MP3 players, and now there is the iPod. It is not very promising and also the political arena here doesn’t give much opportunity to play. We have two parties that, essentially, are the same, two wings of the capitalist party. One pacifies the people, that's the Democrats, and the other eliminates them, that's the Republicans. They argue or pretend to about domestic issues, but when it comes to Israel they lock arms together. So for example you may have women in Congress fighting for the right to have an abortion. They join with the most right wing, anti-women members of Congress in the Senate when it comes to supporting Israel. This is never commented on or discussed within the left! It is very depressing because I don’t see much change although there were a couple of protests at local AIPAC meetings, but there is no clear connection made between the lobby and Congress and what is going on in Israel-Palestine. And I don’t see much improvement taking place. So, I cannot even say what can happen that will change it. At some point, there will be a change. I don’t know how it’s going to come around, how it’s going to come about. But I don’t see at the moment any bright prospect for the future.

S.C. – If the orientation of the media doesn't change, and if the influence of the pro-Israeli lobby continues apace in the States without ever being denounced by the left, don't you think that will give Israel a free hand to continue to foment wars against Iran, Syria, and Palestine?

Jeffrey Blankfort : The neo-cons who are almost exclusively Jewish and the Israel lobby got the US into the war in Iraq. The father of the President, the first George Bush was against it, the oil companies were against it. And despite the fact that the war is going so badly, they did not have to pay a political price because only a few isolated columnists, and but a few from the left, and none representing the anti-war movement in this country, wrote articles about that. So now, the same forces are now pushing for a US confrontation with Iran, although I don’t think that will happen, simply because the United States is bogged down in Iraq. Besides, should the US attack Iran, the troops that the US has trained in Iraq who are very pro-Iranian and connected to the two parties the SCIRI and the Dawa that were founded in Iran in 1982 and fought on the side of Iran against Saddam, will certainly respond and Iraq will explode even more than it already has. That is why I don't think the US is going to do it, even though everybody over here seems to think so. But if the US does attack Iran, that is the ultimate proof that the Zionist lobby has total control over US policy, and I don't think it is at that point now. What is happening is interesting: Bush is weak at the moment, Republicans are deserting him, he has lost votes in Congress, he will get his Supreme Court Justice, Alito, approved but AIPAC has criticized him for being soft on Iran; AIPAC has criticized him publicly for not pushing Iran before the Security Council, even though AIPAC knows that if the US brought Iran before the Security Council they w ill not get the vote against Iran. There is considerable speculation that Israel will attack Iran, even if the US is hesitant, because this is an election year and Israel knows and the lobby knows that anything Israel does at such times will be applauded by Congress and we may end up with the same result in Iraq.

It's interesting that newspapers note as do newscasters on the air, that no criticism is likely to be made of Israel by the president or members of Congress during an election year but they never explain why. The left, led by Chomsky, pretends to be unaware that the question even exists. The irony is, if you read the mainstream press, you will find more about what is going on in terms of the lobby, than if you read the left press, such as it is. The newspaper, The Forward, is a more important newspaper to read because it tells what’s going on with the lobby, and more recently the investigation into AIPAC which the left, again, pays no attention to. Others ask, if AIPAC is so strong, why would they investigate AIPAC ? My response is there are people in Washington, in the intelligence department, in the intelligence agencies who, for their own reasons, are very much worried about the Israelization of US foreign policy. And these people in Washington, or people who used to work in Washington, have had a long term fight against the Israel lobby. The left, again, is not a participant in this, unfortunately. And this is why you have people who know what Israel is doing in Washington, what the lobby is doing in Washington and they want to stop it.

S.C. – To come back to that which separates you from Chomsky on the Palestinian question, could we say that you want the Palestinians to win while Chomsky doesn't want the Israelis to lose?

Jeffrey Blankfort : I wouldn't put it exactly that way but I do believe that the Palestinians have the priority to decide what happens in Israel and Palestine and that Chomsky is more concerned about the future of Israel and the welfare of Jews. He opposes a one-state solution and I believe single state is the only answer but I don’t argue here for that because we are not the ones to determine that. But I do give the priority to the Palestinians and he gives it to the Israelis. And that's the difference between us.

[Partridge]

As it goes, I don't believe Blankfort is 100% (nor do I believe Chomsky is) - but the important question here is - why is this discussion taking place in the pages and websites of the microleft, and not in the mainstream?

(That was a rhetorical question!)

[Partridge]

The Lobby and the Bulldozer
Norman Solomon - Alternet

Israel's treatment of Palestine has amounted to methodical human rights violations. Yet criticism of those policies results in accusations of anti-Jewish bigotry.
Weeks after a British magazine published a long article by two American professors titled "The Israel Lobby," the outrage continued to howl through mainstream U.S. media.

A Los Angeles Times op-ed article by Council on Foreign Relations senior fellow Max Boot helped to set a common tone. He condemned a working paper by professors John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt that was excerpted last month in the London Review of Books.

The working paper, Boot proclaimed, is "nutty." And he strongly implied that the two professors -- Mearsheimer at the University of Chicago and Walt at Harvard -- are anti-Semitic.

Many who went on the media attack did more than imply. On April 3, for instance, the same day that the Philadelphia Inquirer reprinted Boot's piece from the L.A. Times, a notably similar op-ed appeared in the Boston Herald under the headline "Anti-Semitic Paranoia at Harvard."

And so it goes in the national media echo chamber. When a Johns Hopkins University professor weighed in 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 U.S. 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.

The U.S. media reaction to the essay by professors Mearsheimer and Walt provides just another bit of evidence that they were absolutely correct when they wrote: "Anyone who criticizes Israel's actions or argues that pro-Israel groups have significant influence over U.S. Middle Eastern policy -- an influence AIPAC celebrates -- stands a good chance of being labeled an anti-Semite. Indeed, anyone who merely claims that there is an Israel Lobby runs the risk of being charged with anti-Semitism, even though the Israeli media refer to America's 'Jewish Lobby.' In other words, the Lobby first boasts of its influence and then attacks anyone who calls attention to it. It's a very effective tactic: anti-Semitism is something no one wants to be accused of."

Sadly, few media outlets in the United States are willing to confront this "very effective tactic." Yet it must be challenged. As the London-based Financial Times editorialized on the first day of this month: "Moral blackmail -- the fear that any criticism of Israeli policy and U.S. support for it will lead to charges of anti-Semitism -- is a powerful disincentive to publish dissenting views. It is also leading to the silencing of policy debate on American university campuses, partly as the result of targeted campaigns against the dissenters."

The Financial Times editorial noted: "Reflexes that ordinarily spring automatically to the defense of open debate and free enquiry shut down -- at least among much of America's political elite -- once the subject turns to Israel, and above all the pro-Israel lobby's role in shaping U.S. foreign policy."

The U.S. government's policies toward Israel should be considered on their merits. As it happens, that's one of the many valid points made by Mearsheimer and Walt in their much-vilified essay: "Open debate will expose the limits of the strategic and moral case for one-sided U.S. support and could move the U.S. to a position more consistent with its own national interest, with the interests of the other states in the region, and with Israel's long-term interests as well."

But without open debate, no significant change in those policies can happen. That inertia -- stultifying the blood of the body politic by constricting the flow of information and ideas -- is antithetical to the kind of democratic discourse that we deserve.

Few other American academics have been willing to expose themselves to the kind of professional risks that John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt took by releasing their provocative paper. And few other American activists have been willing to expose themselves to the kind of risks that Rachel Corrie took when she sat between a Palestinian home and a Caterpillar bulldozer in Gaza three years ago.

The bulldozer, driven by an Israeli army soldier on assignment to demolish the home, rolled over Corrie, who was 23 years old. She had taken a nonviolent position for human rights; she lost her life as a result. But she was rarely praised in the same U.S. media outlets that had gone into raptures over the image of a solitary unarmed man standing in front of Chinese tanks at the time of the Tiananmen Square massacre.

In sharp contrast to the high-tech killers who run the Israeli military apparatus and the low-tech killers who engage in suicide bombings, Rachel Corrie put her beliefs into practice with militant nonviolence instead of carnage. She exemplified the best of the human spirit in action; she was killed with an American-brand bulldozer in the service of a U.S.-backed government.

As her parents, Cindy and Craig Corrie, said in a statement on her birthday a few weeks after she died: "Rachel wanted to bring attention to the plight of the Palestinian people in the Occupied Territories, a people she felt were largely invisible to most Americans."

In the United States, the nonstop pro-Israel media siege aims to keep them scarcely visible.

Norman Solomon is the author of the new book, "War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death."

[Partridge]

Breaking the silence: The overwrought response to John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt's brave paper only confirms its thesis
Jaun Cole - Salon.com

John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Stephen Walt of Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government have put their hands into a hornet's nest with their paper in the London Review of Books, titled "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy." As political scientists who routinely analyze U.S. foreign policy, they have gained a reputation for lucid and principled argument, but outside the halls of academia are not exactly household names. In daring to simply describe the well-known operations of the Israel lobby, however, they have made themselves targets of a massive smear campaign. Ironically, this reaction is just what their paper predicted.

Fair and gentlemanly to a fault, and widely respected in their discipline, the two professors are impossible to imagine as fire-breathing racial bigots, devious purveyors of blatant falsehoods or wild-eyed conspiracy theorists prone to ignore obvious evidence, but these are the sort of epithets being hurled at them by their critics.

In "The Israel Lobby," Mearsheimer and Walt argue that U.S. policy toward the Middle East has been dangerously skewed by a powerful pro-Israel lobby, which inhibits free discussion of the issues and has made the pro-Israeli position a political sacred cow. Congress, they point out, virtually never criticizes Israel: It is an untouchable subject. And this taboo has had enormous consequences, which are themselves off limits for discussion. Because America's blank-check support for Israel arouses enormous Arab and Muslim rage, Israel is a strategic liability, not an asset.

Nor, Mearsheimer and Walt argue, is there any moral reason for America to act against its own interests by supporting Israel come what may. Citing distinguished Israeli historians and journalists, they demythologize Israel's history, demonstrating that the root of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is the historical fact that "the creation of Israel entailed a moral crime against the Palestinian people" -- a crime that Israel's founders explicitly acknowledged, and that has never been rectified. They discuss Israel's illegal, almost 40-year-old occupation and colonization of Palestinian land, and its flawed democracy, which explicitly discriminates against Arabs.

They do not raise these points to smear Israel or single it out for special criticism -- as political realists, they are well aware that no state is perfect -- but simply to argue that it is not entitled to special treatment. America's self-interest dictates that the Jewish state should be approached like any other nation, which it manifestly is not.

Mearsheimer and Walt are at pains to point out that there is nothing sinister or conspiratorial about the Israel lobby: Lobbying is a legitimate political practice and Israel is entitled to be defended by interest groups as much as any other nation. What they do argue is that the Israel lobby has extraordinary power, and that some of the policies it espouses are inimical to America's national interests. Above all, they seek to end the taboo, enforced by knee-jerk accusations of anti-Semitism, that has prevented a full and open discussion of these issues.

The paper is not without its flaws. The authors' use of the term "Israel lobby" is at times too broad, simultaneously trying to encompass classic pressure politics and much fuzzier belief systems and taboos. Their tendency to use the term in this slightly elastic, one-size-fits-all way explains the caveats of even some outspoken critics of the Israel lobby, like the Nation's Eric Alterman. Their insistence that America's Middle East policies are centered on Israel ignores the importance of oil. Nor do they explore the history of the "special relationship" between Israel and the U.S. and the way that Israel has become a myth in the American mind, to the point where it is perceived by many as being actually part of America. The belief in the "special relationship," which is a powerful force, is not entirely the product of the Israel lobby. And on pressure politics, they could have been more specific in detailing examples of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee's clout in Congress and the executive branch. (Journalist Michael Massing has documented this clout in pieces in the New York Review of Books and the Nation, among other places.) But these weaknesses are comparatively minor, and certainly do not justify the vitriol that has been directed against them.

That a powerful pro-Israel lobby exists and plays a significant role in determining America's Middle East policies may be controversial here, but everywhere else in the world, it is taken as virtually axiomatic. As Geoffrey Wheatcroft noted in a piece on the controversy over the paper in the Boston Globe, "On the eastern side of the Atlantic, it has long been recognized that there is an intimate connection between the United States and Israel, in which AIPAC clearly plays a major role. The degree to which this has affected American policy, up to and including the war in Iraq, has been discussed calmly by sane British commentators -- though also, to be sure, played up maliciously by bigots. In America, by contrast, there has been an unmistakable tendency to shy away from this subject." Wheatcroft quotes Michael Kinsley, who noted in Slate in 2002 that "the connection between the invasion of Iraq and Israeli interests had become 'the proverbial elephant in the room. Everybody sees it, no one mentions it.'"

Predictably, most of paper's harshest critics have avoided engaging its key arguments. Instead, they have raised straw men, attempted to shift the debate to the question of whether it is even acceptable to raise the subject, and either hinted or outright alleged that Mearsheimer and Walt are bigots. These tactics allow critics to sidestep all the crucial questions raised by the paper, while at the same time signaling to others tempted to comment that if they stick their heads up, they will be cut off.

The logical fallacy of guilt by association characterizes many of the more strident responses. For example, the staunchly pro-Israel paper the New York Sun gleefully pounced on white supremacist David Duke's endorsement of "The Israel Lobby." But in 1989, Duke ran as a Republican for a seat in the Louisiana House of Representatives. Would it be fair to tar the Republican Party with Duke? It isn't important with whom Duke agrees -- he is a crank. It is important who agrees with him. No one in his or her right mind would accuse Walt and Mearsheimer of doing so.

Other critics have accused the authors of anti-Semitism, which is to say, of racial bigotry. Eliot A. Cohen of the School of Advanced International Studies of Johns Hopkins University published an emotional attack on the authors in the Washington Post, saying "yes, it's anti-Semitic." Harvard professor Alan Dershowitz also accused Mearsheimer and Walt of bigotry. The Harvard Crimson reported that "Dershowitz, who is one of Israel's most prominent defenders, vehemently disputed the article's assertions, repeatedly calling it 'one-sided' and its authors 'liars' and 'bigots.'" Dershowitz went so far as to allege that the paper paralleled texts at neo-Nazi sites. No one who actually knows either Mearsheimer or Walt, as this author does, could possibly find Dershowitz's charges plausible. Again, such arguments are red herrings, implying guilt by association. Because he cannot refute the substance of the paper, Dershowitz must compare his academic colleagues to neo-Nazis. (And he has the gall to actually deny that critics of Israel tend to be smeared as anti-Semites.)

The charge of anti-Semitism (where what is really meant is any criticism of Israeli policy and/or the Israel lobby) is unacceptable and antidemocratic. I have suffered from it a fair amount because I have written critically about Israel, in particular its creeping colonization of the West Bank -- a U.S.-backed policy that is largely responsible, along with George W. Bush's Iraq war, for America's record-low popularity in the Arab and Muslim world.

Dershowitz penned a quick response, which he elbowed onto the Web page of the Kennedy School at Harvard. No other working paper has been treated this way, with instant rebuttals being posted to it. Both Dershowitz's attempt to impugn the characters of the authors and the fact that he was given privileges not granted others only confirm some of the main allegations of the original paper. (In contrast, Harvard has not rushed to put up a response from, say, a pro-Palestinian academic.)

After clearly implying that Mearsheimer and Walt are driven by anti-Semitic motives, he attempts to impugn their scholarship. Dershowitz identifies a few minor errors, but he cannot obscure the actual history of Palestinian displacement and dispossession at the hands of Israelis.

For example, Dershowitz makes much of the fact that the authors quote Israeli founding father David Ben-Gurion misleadingly, creating the impression that in the late 1930s he was advocating the violent expulsion of the Palestinians. In fact, as Dershowitz points out, in the quote Ben-Gurion was not calling for expulsion, but expressing a bizarre conviction that the small Zionist state he then envisaged would persuade the Palestinians to relinquish their claim on an independent state in the rest of Palestine. What Dershowitz does not mention is that Ben-Gurion's "plan" was so fantastic as to bring into question his sincerity in stating it as he did. Israeli historian Benny Morris noted, Ben-Gurion "always refrained from issuing clear or written expulsion orders; he preferred that his generals 'understand' what he wanted done. He wished to avoid going down in history as the 'great expeller.'" And in fact, when push came to shove in 1947 and 1948, Ben-Gurion did explicitly order expulsions, as at Lydda and Ramla, and was implicated in others by virtue of being in command at the time. Ben-Gurion also kept the 700,000 expelled Palestinian refugees from ever returning or being given reparations: Their villages were razed, their houses bulldozed or taken over, their orchards seized.

[Partridge]

Dershowitz insists that, contra Mearsheimer and Walt's assertions, the mainstream American media offers full and critical coverage of Israel. This is a laughable contention to anyone who has compared American press coverage of Israel with that offered by the rest of the world. Even some American officials have noted the extremely limited nature of U.S. coverage of Israel. In an April 9 Op-Ed in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette titled "Of Course There Is an Israel Lobby," ambassador Edward Peck wrote, "Knowing the fiercely negative reactions to accurate, detailed reporting of controversies surrounding Israel, the media fail to cover Israel's violations of every principle for which the United States -- and Israel -- loudly proclaim they stand. There is only rare, skimpy coverage of the ongoing Israeli mass punishments, house demolitions, illegal settlements, assassinations, settler brutality, curfews and beatings. On the other hand, the blind Palestinian rage generated by decades of receiving humiliating, savage suppression in their homeland is reported in lurid, bloody detail."

Above all, Dershowitz sets up the straw man that the authors claim that a central "cabal" of "Jews" tightly controls the U.S. press and the U.S. government and prevents them from criticizing Israel. Like other critics, including noted warmonger Max Boot, Dershowitz charges that Mearsheimer and Walt are conspiracy theorists who subscribe to what Dershowitz calls "a paranoid worldview" shared by the likes of David Duke and Pat Buchanan.

This charge -- with its obvious implications that Mearsheimer and Walt are anti-Semites in the Henry Ford/Protocols of the Elders of Zion tradition -- is refuted by every word they have written. In fact, Mearsheimer and Walt are at pains to make clear that there is no "cabal," and that the pro-Israel lobby is a lobby like any other (although more powerful and sacrosanct than most.)

Here's their definition: "We use 'the Lobby' as shorthand for the loose coalition of individuals and organizations who actively work to steer US foreign policy in a pro-Israel direction. This is not meant to suggest that 'the Lobby' is a unified movement with a central leadership, or that individuals within it do not disagree on certain issues. Not all Jewish Americans are part of the Lobby, because Israel is not a salient issue for many of them. In a 2004 survey, for example, roughly 36 per cent of American Jews said they were either 'not very' or 'not at all' emotionally attached to Israel.

"Jewish Americans also differ on specific Israeli policies. Many of the key organizations in the Lobby, such as the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, are run by hardliners who generally support the Likud Party's expansionist policies, including its hostility to the Oslo peace process. The bulk of US Jewry, meanwhile, is more inclined to make concessions to the Palestinians, and a few groups -- such as Jewish Voice for Peace -- strongly advocate such steps. Despite these differences, moderates and hardliners both favor giving steadfast support to Israel."

It should be noted that it was Mearsheimer and Walt's publisher who capitalized the word "Lobby." But in any case, they make numerous distinctions. They are not talking about Jews as a whole or about a unified phenomenon. They acknowledge that Christian Zionists are a key element of the lobby. They depict no conspiracy. Insofar as they talk about the lobby's "manipulation," its "influence" and its "stranglehold" over American policy -- words that Dershowitz cites as indicating their conspiratorial and unsavory bent -- well, that is what powerful lobbies do. They manipulate, influence and, in best-case scenarios, achieve a stranglehold over policy.

The storm over the authors' characterization of the lobby has shifted attention from the most unassailable part of their paper: Their contention that America's unqualified support for Israel has enraged the Arab and Muslim world, served as an important source of anti-American terrorism and hurt America's ability to pursue the war on terror.

Anyone who has spent any time in the Arab or Muslim world knows that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and America's support for Israel's unjust treatment of the Palestinians, are the main sources of anger at America and have been for decades. In a recent Zogby poll, one question that was asked of Arab publics was whether their dislike of the United States was because of its values or its policies. Here are the percentages that said it was because of U.S. policies in the region: Jordan, 76; Morocco, 79; Lebanon, 80; Saudi Arabia, 86; United Arab Emirates, 75; Egypt, 90. Another question was why people thought the U.S. invaded and occupied Iraq. Here are the percentages for those who believed it was to "protect Israel": Jordan, 64; Morocco, 82; Lebanon, 82; Saudi Arabia, 44; Egypt, 92. That is, not only are Americans disliked for their invasion of an Arab country, but the Arab public generally attributes the assault to a desire to protect Israel. All those instances when the Americans vetoed U.N. Security Council censures of Israel for its predations against Palestinians or neighbors, all those tens of billions of dollars in aid the U.S. gave Israel, all the times it winked at atrocities such as the 1982 invasion of Lebanon and indiscriminate shelling of Beirut have added up over time.

Arabs and Muslims like Americans and democracy just fine in principle. What they don't like is U.S. foreign policy. Their main grievance before 2003 was of U.S. complicity in the dispossession of the Palestinians. Now they have another major objection, the U.S. occupation of Iraq -- and they clearly see the two as related. I am not arguing that the Arab public is correct, only that critics are blind if they cannot see that it is knee-jerk U.S. support for the worst Israeli policies that has soured Arabs and Muslims on the United States. To avoid accepting this conclusion, we would have to believe that they have consistently lied to pollsters for decades, and we would have to take it upon ourselves to represent the Arabs and Muslims, since they cannot represent themselves.

None of this is hard to understand. The United States is not generally hated by, say, Thais, or Paraguayans, or Cameroonians. This is because we have not done anything to them. We have, however, abetted an epochal wrong against the Palestinian people, with whom Arabs and Muslims feel a similar kinship to that felt by mid-19th century Americans with the Texans trapped at the Alamo. For obvious reasons, an open discussion of the causes and consequences of their anger against us is vital for our national security.

The outraged and dismissive reaction to Mearsheimer and Walt's paper illustrates their thesis. The United States faces severe challenges in the Middle East, including issues having to do with Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, al-Qaida and what to do about the Israeli-Palestinian situation now that Hamas has won the Palestinian elections. A debate about the best policies to achieve American interests is being made difficult or impossible by the tactics of intimidation deployed on both sides of the Atlantic. With a possible war against Iran being floated by the Bush administration, the stakes are far too high not to have the full and open discussion we never had before Iraq. When Ben Franklin exited the Constitutional Convention, he was asked what kind of government the United States would have. "A republic, if you can keep it," he is said to have replied. If we cannot even discuss the shape of U.S. foreign policy toward the Middle East without a lynch mob forming, we won't be able to keep it.

[PhilosophyGenius]

"The United States Congress is Israeli occupied territory."- Pat Buchanan

"Israel controls the United States Senate. We should be more concerned about the United States' interests." - William Fulbright (US Senator and Chairman of the US Foreign Relations committee)

[Partridge]

Breaking the Last Taboo: The United States of Israel?
Robert Fisk

Stephen Walt towers over me as we walk in the Harvard sunshine past Eliot Street, a big man who needs to be big right now (he's one of two authors of an academic paper on the influence of America's Jewish lobby) but whose fame, or notoriety, depending on your point of view, is of no interest to him. "John and I have deliberately avoided the television shows because we don't think we can discuss these important issues in 10 minutes. It would become 'J' and 'S', the personalities who wrote about the lobby - and we want to open the way to serious discussion about this, to encourage a broader discussion of the forces shaping US foreign policy in the Middle East."

"John" is John Mearsheimer, a political scientist at the University of Chicago. Walt is a 50-year-old tenured professor at the John F Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. The two men have caused one of the most extraordinary political storms over the Middle East in recent American history by stating what to many non-Americans is obvious: that the US has been willing to set aside its own security and that of many of its allies in order to advance the interests of Israel, that Israel is a liability in the "war on terror", that the biggest Israeli lobby group, Aipac (the American Israel Public Affairs Committee), is in fact the agent of a foreign government and has a stranglehold on Congress - so much so that US policy towards Israel is not debated there - and that the lobby monitors and condemns academics who are critical of Israel.

"Anyone who criticises Israel's actions or argues that pro-Israel groups have significant influence over US Middle East policy," the authors have written, "...stands a good chance of being labelled an anti-Semite. Indeed, anyone who merely claims that there is an Israeli lobby runs the risk of being charged with anti-Semitism ... Anti-Semitism is something no-one wants to be accused of." This is strong stuff in a country where - to quote the late Edward Said - the "last taboo" (now that anyone can talk about blacks, gays and lesbians) is any serious discussion of America's relationship with Israel.

Walt is already the author of an elegantly written account of the resistance to US world political dominance, a work that includes more than 50 pages of references. Indeed, those who have read his Taming Political Power: The Global Response to US Primacy will note that the Israeli lobby gets a thumping in this earlier volume because Aipac "has repeatedly targeted members of Congress whom it deemed insufficiently friendly to Israel and helped drive them from office, often by channelling money to their opponents."

But how many people in America are putting their own heads above the parapet, now that Mearsheimer and Walt have launched a missile that would fall to the ground unexploded in any other country but which is detonating here at high speed? Not a lot. For a while, the mainstream US press and television - as pro-Israeli, biased and gutless as the two academics infer them to be - did not know whether to report on their conclusions (originally written for The Atlantic Monthly, whose editors apparently took fright, and subsequently reprinted in the London Review of Books in slightly truncated form) or to remain submissively silent. The New York Times, for example, only got round to covering the affair in depth well over two weeks after the report's publication, and then buried its article in the education section on page 19. The academic essay, according to the paper's headline, had created a "debate" about the lobby's influence.

They can say that again. Dore Gold, a former ambassador to the UN, who now heads an Israeli lobby group, kicked off by unwittingly proving that the Mearsheimer-Walt theory of "anti-Semitism" abuse is correct. "I believe," he said, "that anti-Semitism may be partly defined as asserting a Jewish conspiracy for doing the same thing non-Jews engage in." Congressman Eliot Engel of New York said that the study itself was "anti-Semitic" and deserved the American public's contempt.

Walt has no time for this argument. "We are not saying there is a conspiracy, or a cabal. The Israeli lobby has every right to carry on its work - all Americans like to lobby. What we are saying is that this lobby has a negative influence on US national interests and that this should be discussed. There are vexing problems out in the Middle East and we need to be able to discuss them openly. The Hamas government, for example - how do we deal with this? There may not be complete solutions, but we have to try and have all the information available."

Walt doesn't exactly admit to being shocked by some of the responses to his work - it's all part of his desire to keep "discourse" in the academic arena, I suspect, though it probably won't work. But no-one could be anything but angered by his Harvard colleague, Alan Dershowitz, who announced that the two scholars recycled accusations that "would be seized on by bigots to promote their anti-Semitic agendas". The two are preparing a reply to Dershowitz's 45-page attack, but could probably have done without praise from the white supremacist and ex-Ku Klux Klan head David Duke - adulation which allowed newspapers to lump the name of Duke with the names of Mearsheimer and Walt. "Of Israel, Harvard and David Duke," ran the Washington Post's reprehensible headline.

The Wall Street Journal, ever Israel's friend in the American press, took an even weirder line on the case. "As Ex-Lobbyists of Pro-Israel Group Face Court, Article Queries Sway on Mideast Policy" its headline proclaimed to astonished readers. Neither Mearsheimer nor Walt had mentioned the trial of two Aipac lobbyists - due to begin next month - who are charged under the Espionage Act with receiving and disseminating classified information provided by a former Pentagon Middle East analyst. The defence team for Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman has indicated that it may call Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley to the stand.

Almost a third of the Journal's report is taken up with the Rosen-Weissman trial, adding that the indictment details how the two men "allegedly sought to promote a hawkish US policy toward Iran by trading favours with a number of senior US officials. Lawrence Franklin, the former Pentagon official, has pleaded guilty to misusing classified information. Mr Franklin was charged with orally passing on information about a draft National Security Council paper on Iran to the two lobbyists... as well as other classified information. Mr Franklin was sentenced in December to nearly 13 years in prison..."

The Wall Street Journal report goes on to say that lawyers and "many Jewish leaders" - who are not identified - "say the actions of the former Aipac employees were no different from how thousands of Washington lobbyists work. They say the indictment marks the first time in US history that American citizens... have been charged with receiving and disseminating state secrets in conversations." The paper goes on to say that "several members of Congress have expressed concern about the case since it broke in 2004, fearing that the Justice Department may be targeting pro-Israel lobbying groups, such as Aipac. These officials (sic) say they're eager to see the legal process run its course, but are concerned about the lack of transparency in the case."

As far as Dershowitz is concerned, it isn't hard for me to sympathise with the terrible pair. He it was who shouted abuse at me during an Irish radio interview when I said that we had to ask the question "Why?" after the 11 September 2001 international crimes against humanity. I was a "dangerous man", Dershowitz shouted over the air, adding that to be "anti-American" - my thought-crime for asking the "Why?" question - was the same as being anti-Semitic. I must, however, also acknowledge another interest. Twelve years ago, one of the Israeli lobby groups that Mearsheimer and Walt fingers prevented any second showing of a film series on Muslims in which I participated for Channel 4 and the Discovery Channel - by stating that my "claim" that Israel was building large Jewish settlements on Arab land was "an egregious falsehood". I was, according to another Israeli support group, "a Henry Higgins with fangs", who was "drooling venom into the living rooms of America."

Such nonsense continues to this day. In Australia to launch my new book on the Middle East, for instance, I repeatedly stated that Israel - contrary to the anti-Semitic conspiracy theorists - was not responsible for the crimes of 11 September 2001. Yet the Australian Jewish News claimed that I "stopped just millimetres short of suggesting that Israel was the cause of the 9/11 attacks. The audience reportedly (and predictably) showered him in accolades."

This was untrue. There was no applause and no accolades and I never stopped "millimetres" short of accusing Israel of these crimes against humanity. The story in the Australian Jewish News is a lie.

So I have to say that - from my own humble experience - Mearsheimer and Walt have a point. And for a man who says he has not been to Israel for 20 years - or Egypt, though he says he had a "great time" in both countries - Walt rightly doesn't claim any on-the-ground expertise. "I've never flown into Afghanistan on a rickety plane, or stood at a checkpoint and seen a bus coming and not known if there is a suicide bomber aboard," he says.

Noam Chomsky, America's foremost moral philosopher and linguistics academic - so critical of Israel that he does not even have a regular newspaper column - does travel widely in the region and acknowledges the ruthlessness of the Israeli lobby. But he suggests that American corporate business has more to do with US policy in the Middle East than Israel's supporters - proving, I suppose, that the Left in the United States has an infinite capacity for fratricide. Walt doesn't say he's on the left, but he and Mearsheimer objected to the invasion of Iraq, a once lonely stand that now appears to be as politically acceptable as they hope - rather forlornly - that discussion of the Israeli lobby will become.

Walt sits in a Malaysian restaurant with me, patiently (though I can hear the irritation in his voice) explaining that the conspiracy theories about him are nonsense. His stepping down as dean of the Kennedy School was a decision taken before the publication of his report, he says. No one is throwing him out. The much-publicised Harvard disclaimer of ownership to the essay - far from being a gesture of fear and criticism by the university as his would-be supporters have claimed - was mainly drafted by Walt himself, since Mearsheimer, a friend as well as colleague, was a Chicago scholar, not a Harvard don.

But something surely has to give.

Across the United States, there is growing evidence that the Israeli and neo-conservative lobbies are acquiring ever greater power. The cancellation by a New York theatre company of My Name is Rachel Corrie - a play based on the writings of the young American girl crushed to death by an Israeli bulldozer in Gaza in 2003 - has deeply shocked liberal Jewish Americans, not least because it was Jewish American complaints that got the performance pulled.

"How can the West condemn the Islamic world for not accepting Mohamed cartoons," Philip Weiss asked in The Nation, "when a Western writer who speaks out on behalf of Palestinians is silenced? And why is it that Europe and Israel itself have a healthier debate over Palestinian human rights than we can have here?" Corrie died trying to prevent the destruction of a Palestinian home. Enemies of the play falsely claim that she was trying to stop the Israelis from collapsing a tunnel used to smuggle weapons. Hateful e-mails were written about Corrie. Weiss quotes one that reads: "Rachel Corrie won't get 72 virgins but she got what she wanted."

Saree Makdisi - a close relative of the late Edward Said - has revealed how a right-wing website is offering cash for University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) students who report on the political leanings of their professors, especially their views on the Middle East. Those in need of dirty money at UCLA should be aware that class notes, handouts and illicit recordings of lectures will now receive a bounty of $100. "I earned my own inaccurate and defamatory 'profile'," Makdisi says, "...not for what I have said in my classes on English poets such as Wordsworth and Blake - my academic speciality, which the website avoids mentioning - but rather for what I have written in newspapers about Middle Eastern politics."

Mearsheimer and Walt include a study of such tactics in their report. "In September 2002," they write, "Martin Kramer and Daniel Pipes, two passionately pro-Israel neo-conservatives, established a website (www.campus-watch.org) that posted dossiers on suspect academics and encouraged students to report behaviour that might be considered hostile to Israel... the website still invites students to report 'anti-Israel' activity."

Perhaps the most incendiary paragraph in the essay - albeit one whose contents have been confirmed in the Israeli press - discusses Israel's pressure on the United States to invade Iraq. "Israeli intelligence officials had given Washington a variety of alarming reports about Iraq's WMD programmes," the two academics write, quoting a retired Israeli general as saying: "Israeli intelligence was a full partner to the picture presented by American and British intelligence regarding Iraq's non-conventional capabilities."

Walt says he might take a year's sabbatical - though he doesn't want to get typecast as a "lobby" critic - because he needs a rest after his recent administrative post. There will be Israeli lobbyists, no doubt, who would he happy if he made that sabbatical a permanent one. I somehow doubt he will.

[Partridge]

Israel Lobby Nutjobs on the Loose
Molly Ivins - AlterNet

The abuse heaped on two academics by America's Israel lobby only proves the point that we need an honest debate on the topic.

One of the consistent deformities in American policy debate has been challenged by a couple of professors, and the reaction proves their point so neatly it's almost funny.A working paper by John Mearsheimer, professor of political science at the University of Chicago, and Stephen Walt, professor of international affairs at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, called "The Israel Lobby" was printed in the London Review of Books earlier this month. And all hell broke loose in the more excitable reaches of journalism and academe.

For having the sheer effrontery to point out the painfully obvious -- that there is an Israel lobby in the United States -- Mearsheimer and Walt have been accused of being anti-Semitic, nutty and guilty of "kooky academic work." Alan Dershowitz, who seems to be easily upset, went totally ballistic over the mild, academic, not to suggest pretty boring article by Mearsheimer and Walt, calling them "liars" and "bigots."

Of course there is an Israeli lobby in America -- its leading working group is the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). It calls itself "America's Pro-Israel Lobby," and it attempts to influence U.S. legislation and policy.

Several national Jewish organizations lobby from time to time. Big deal -- why is anyone pretending this non-news requires falling on the floor and howling? Because of this weird deformity of debate.

In the United States, we do not have full-throated, full-throttle debate about Israel. In Israel, they have it as a matter of course, but the truth is that the accusation of anti-Semitism is far too often raised in this country against anyone who criticizes the government of Israel.

Being pro-Israel is no defense, as I long ago learned to my cost. Now I've gotten used to it. Jews who criticize Israel are charmingly labeled "self-hating Jews." As I have often pointed out, that must mean there are a lot of self-hating Israelis, because those folks raise hell over their own government's policies all the time.

I don't know that I've ever felt intimidated by the knee-jerk "you're anti-Semitic" charge leveled at anyone who criticizes Israel, but I do know I have certainly heard it often enough to become tired of it.

And I wonder if that doesn't produce the same result: giving up on the discussion.

It's the sheer disproportion and the vehemence of the denunciations of those perceived as criticizing Israel that make the attacks so odious. Mearsheimer and Walt are both widely respected political scientists -- comparing their writing to "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" is just silly.

Several critics have pointed out some flaws in the Mearsheimer-Walt paper, including a too-broad use of the term "Israel lobby" -- those of us who are pro-Israel differ widely -- and having perhaps overemphasized the clout of the Israel lobby by ignoring the energy lobby.

It seems to me the root of the difficulty has been Israel's inability first to admit the Palestinians have been treated unfairly and, second, to figure out what to do about it. Now here goes a big fat generalization, but I think many Jews are so accustomed (by reality) to thinking of themselves as victims, it is especially difficult for them to admit they have victimized others.

But the Mearsheimer-Walt paper is not about the basic conflict, but rather its effect on American foreign policy, and it appears to me the authors' arguments are unexceptional. Israel is the No. 1 recipient of American foreign aid, and it seems an easy case can be made that the United States has subjugated its own interests to those of Israel in the past.

Whether you agree or not, it is a discussion well worth having and one that should not be shut down before it can start by unfair accusations of "anti-Semitism." In a very equal sense, none of this is academic. The Israel lobby was overwhelmingly in favor of starting the war with Iraq and is now among the leading hawks on Iran.

To the extent that our interests do differ from those of Israel, the matter needs to be discussed calmly and fairly. This is not about conspiracies or plots or fantasies or anti-Semitism -- it's about rational discussion of American interests. And, in my case, being pro-Israel. I'm looking forward to hearing from all you nutjobs again.

Molly Ivins writes about politics, Texas and other bizarre happenings.

[Partridge]

Who's The Dog? Who's The Tail?
Uri Avnery - Gush Shalom

I don't usually tell these stories, because they might give rise to the suspicion that I am paranoid.For example: 27 years ago, I was invited to give a lecture-tour in 30 American universities, including all the most prestigious ones - Harvard, Yale, Princeton, MIT, Berkeley and so on. My host was the Fellowship of Reconciliation, a respected non-Jewish organization, but the lectures themselves were to be held under the auspices of the Jewish Bet-Hillel chaplains.

On arrival at the airport in New York I was met by one of the organizers. "There is a slight hitch," he told me, "29 of the Rabbis have cancelled your lecture."

In the end, all the lectures did take place, under the auspices of Christian chaplains. When we came to the lone Rabbi who had not cancelled my lecture, he told me the secret: the lectures had been forbidden in a confidential letter from the Anti-Defamation League, the thought-police of the Jewish establishment. The salient phrase has stuck to my memory: "While it cannot be said that Member of the Knesset Avnery is a traitor, yet…"

And another story from real life: a year later I went to Washington DC in order to "sell" the Two-State solution, which at the time was considered an outlandish, not to say crazy, idea. In the course of the visit, the Quakers were so kind as to arrange a press conference for me.

When I arrived, I was amazed. The hall was crammed full, practically all the important American media were represented. Many had come straight from a press conference held by Golda Meir, who was also in town. The event was to last an hour, as is usual, but the journalists did not let go. They bombarded me with questions for another two hours. Clearly, what I had to say was quite new to them and they were interested.

I was curious how this would be reported in the media. And indeed, the reaction was stunning: not a word appeared in any of the newspapers, on radio or TV. Not one single word.

By the way, three years ago I again held a press conference, this time on Capitol Hill in Washington. It was an exact replica of the last time: the crowd of reporters, their obvious interest, the continuation of the conference well beyond the appointed time - and not a single word in the media.

I could tell some more stories like these, but the point is made. I recount them only in connection with the scandal recently caused by two American professors, Stephen Walt of Harvard and John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago. They published a research paper on the influence of the Israel lobby in the United States.

In 80 pages, 40 of them footnotes and sources, the two show how the pro-Israel lobby exercises unbridled power in the US capital, how it terrorizes the members of the Senate and the House of Representatives, how the White House dances to its tune (if indeed a house can dance), how the important media obey its orders and how the universities, too, live in fear of it.

The paper caused a storm. And I don't mean the predictable wild attacks by the "friends of Israel" - which means almost all politicians, journalists and professors. These pelted the authors with all the usual accusations: that they were anti-Semites, that they were resurrecting the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and so forth. There was something paradoxical in these attacks, since they only illustrated the authors' case.

But the debate that fascinates me is of a different nature. It broke out between senior intellectuals, from the legendary Noam Chomsky, the guru of the Left throughout the world (including Israel), to progressive websites everywhere. The bone of contention: the conclusion of the paper that the Jewish-Israeli lobby dominates US foreign policy and subjugates it to Israeli interests - in glaring contradiction to the national interest of the US itself. A case in point: the American assault on Iraq.

Chomsky and others rose up against this assertion. They do not deny the factual findings of the two professors, but object to their conclusions. In their view, it is not the Israel lobby that directs American policy, but the interests of the big corporations that dominate the American empire and exploit Israel for their own selfish aims.

Simply put: does the dog wag its tail, or does the tail wag its dog?

I am nervous about sticking my head into a debate between such illustrious intellectuals, but I feel obliged to express my view nevertheless.

I'll start with the Jew, who went to the Rabbi and complained about his neighbor. "You are right'" the Rabbi declared. Then came the neighbor and denounced the complainant. "You are right'" the Rabbi announced. "But how can that be," exclaimed the Rabbi's wife, "Only one of the two can be right!" "You are right, too," the Rabbi said.

I find myself in a similar situation. I think that both sides are right (and hope to be right, myself, too).

The findings of the two professors are right to the last detail. Every Senator and Congressman knows that criticizing the Israeli government is political suicide. Two of them, a Senator and a Congressman, tried - and were politically executed. The Jewish lobby was fully mobilized against them and hounded them out of office. This was done openly, to set a public example. If the Israeli government wanted a law tomorrow annulling the Ten Commandments, 95 Senators (at least) would sign the bill forthwith.

President Bush, for example, has withdrawn from all the established American positions regarding our conflict. He accepts automatically the positions of our government, be they as they may. Almost all the American media are closed to Palestinians and Israeli peace activists. As to professors - almost all of them know which side of their bread is peanut-buttered. If, in spite of that, somebody dares to open their mouth against the Israeli policy - as happens once every few years - they are smothered under a volley of denunciations: anti-Semite, Holocaust denier, neo-Nazi.

By the way, American guests in Israel, who know that at home it is forbidden to mention the influence of the Jewish-Israeli lobby, are dumbfounded to see that here the lobby does not hide its power in Washington but openly boasts of it.

The question, therefore, is not whether the two professors are right in their findings. The question is what conclusions can be drawn from them.

Let's take the Iraq affair. Who is the dog? Who the tail?

The Israeli government prayed for this attack, which has eliminated the strategic threat posed by Iraq. America was pushed into the war by a group of Neo-Conservatives, almost all of them Jews, who had a huge influence on the White House. In the past, some of them had acted as advisers to Binyamin Netanyahu.

On the face of it, a clear case. The pro-Israeli lobby pushed for the war, Israel is its main beneficiary. If the war ends in a disaster for America, Israel will undoubtedly be blamed.

Really? What about the American aim of getting their hands on the main oil reserves of the world, in order to dominate the world economy? What about the aim of placing an American garrison in the center of the main oil-producing area, on top of the Iraqi oil, between the oil of Saudi Arabia, Iran and the Caspian Sea? What about the immense influence of the big oil companies on the Bush family? What about the big multinational corporations, whose outstanding representative is Dick Cheney, that hoped to make hundreds of billions from the "reconstruction of Iraq"?

The lesson of the Iraq affair is that the American-Israeli connection is strongest when it seems that American interests and Israeli Interests are one (irrespective of whether that is really the case in the long run). The US uses Israel to dominate the Middle East, Israel uses the US to dominate Palestine.

But if something exceptional happens, such as the Jonathan Pollard espionage affair or the sale of an Israeli spy plane to China, and a gap opens between the interests of the two sides, America is quite capable of slapping Israel in the face.

American-Israeli relations are indeed unique. It seems that they have no precedent in history. It is as if King Herod had given orders to Augustus Caesar and appointed the members of the Roman senate.

I don't think that this phenomenon can be wholly explained by economic interests. Even the most orthodox Marxist must recognize that it also has a spiritual dimension. It is no accident that American (as well as British) fundamentalist Christians invented the Zionist idea well before Theodor Herzl hit upon it. The evangelical lobby is no less important in today's Washington than the Zionist one. According to its ideology, the Jews must take possession of all the Holy Land in order to make the Second Coming of Christ possible (and then - the part they don't shout about - some Jews will become Christians and the rest will be annihilated at Armaggedon, today's Meggido in Northern Israel).

At the basis of the phenomenon lies the uncanny similarity between the two national-religious stories, the American myth and the Israeli. In both, pioneers persecuted for their religion reached the shores of the Promised Land. They were forced to defend themselves against the "savage" natives, who were out to destroy them. They redeemed the land, made the desert bloom, created, with God's help, a flourishing, democratic and moral society.

Both societies live in a state of denial and unconscious guilt feelings - over there because of the genocide committed against the Native Americans and the horrifying slavery of the blacks, here because of the uprooting of half the Palestinian people and the oppression of the other half. Both here and there, people believe in an eternal war between the Sons of Light and the Sons of Darkness.

Anyhow, the American-Israeli symbiosis is unique and far too complex a phenomenon to be described as a simple conspiracy. I am sure that the two professors did not mean to do so.

The dog wags the tail and the tail wags the dog. They wag each other.