April 6, 2006
GOOD, NOT GOOD FOR:
Most favored nation: In all the controversy over a recent Kennedy School paper on 'the Israel lobby,' perhaps the most interesting question has gone largely unasked: Has the closeness of the US-Israel alliance been good for Israel? (Geoffrey Wheatcroft, April 2, 2006, Boston Globe)
What makes the paper more stinging is the fact that Mearsheimer and Walt write not from the doctrinaire left or the crackpot right but from the ''realist" foreign-policy establishment, and that they are on the faculty of highly respectable institutions. That, and their suggestion that America's ''unwavering support" for Israel, notably the $3 billion a year in direct aid, has no strategic or moral rationale anymore, if it ever had, and has among other things made America more, not less, vulnerable to terrorism. The clear implication is that loosening those ties with Israel would be in the American national interest.If Mearsheimer and Walt had wanted to show that they were saying the unsayable, then they appear to have made their point-the ferocious response suggests a taboo being broken. And yet the American reaction is puzzling to Europeans: This question is yet another illustration of the great transatlantic rift. 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. As Michael Kinsley wrote in Slate in the autumn of 2002, both supporters and opponents of the coming war did not want to invoke classic anti-Semitic images of cabals, arcane conspiracies, and malign courtiers whispering into the prince's ear. Such motives are honorable, and yet there is always a danger when something is wilfully ignored. As Kinsley said, 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." Until now, at any rate.
It has been plausibly argued that no ''Israel lobby" is needed to sway the American people, who are bound to Israel by deeper ties of sentiment. That may be so, but it may also be that the really sensitive nerve that Mearsheimer and Walt have touched isn't ''the lobby" as such. They have raised a graver question: Is unconditional American support for Israel-whatever its motives or origins-actually in the truest interests of both countries?
Mr. Wheatcroft ably demonstrates why the rift exists and is widening. For Europeans the question is whether the relationship is useful in utilitarian terms. For Americans it's a moral question. If we based our foreign policy on European standards Mr. Wheatcroft would speak either German or Russian. Posted by Orrin Judd at April 6, 2006 2:29 PM
"Is unconditional American support for Israel-whatever its motives or origins-actually in the truest interests of both countries?"
You have to be really, really historically ignorant to think that there has ever been "unconditional American support for Israel."
their suggestion that America's ''unwavering support" for Israel, notably the $3 billion a year in direct aid, has no strategic or moral rationale anymore, if it ever had, and has among other things made America more, not less, vulnerable to terrorism.
Substitute "New York City" for "Israel" and this statement is probably no more and no less true than before, though the $3 billion figure may have to be adjusted. It's puzzling, the sorts of things people take for granted.
Posted by: joe shropshire at April 6, 2006 3:13 PMJust as the left is chewing its arm off on the McCain business, so they are waking up to the way our alliance with Israel commits us to empire.
I really don't think they can get out of the trap. America operates as the World Government, or Israel is gone--no "third way" here.
Now it gets interesting. The American Empire has set itself up so that Israel works for us in marshalling political support for real realism. Like a super-tanker or a Nimitz, public opinion, the way the country thinks about Israel, cannot be turned around on a dime.
And so they are going to divide and wound themselves trying to do it. As has been pointed out, they are positioning themselves against the Evangelical and with the Nazis and the Klan.
We drink to confusion to our enemies: they need little help in that regard.
Posted by: Lou Gots at April 6, 2006 3:27 PMIf you hang around the Israeli paper bulletin boards, it doesn't take too long before you come across right-wing Israelis complaining bitterly that Sharon and Olmert are Bush's puppets, selling out greater Israel for the benefit of the United States.
Posted by: David Cohen at April 6, 2006 3:57 PMThe problem here isn't that there is an Israeli lobby, but the idea it somehow controls American foreign policy. It's completely untrue. There are many Arabists in the State Department and the Arab oil lobby is also strong. Both exert influence on American policy, but ultimately is decided by American national interests. Oil is an important economic weapon, but honor dictates the US support the only democracy in the region, even if it does have flaws.
If the Israeli lobby controlled American policy, there'd have been Israeli tanks in both Cairo and Damascus, Yassir Arafat would have been a dead man in 1982, and Lebanon would be an Israeli client state.
Posted by: Chris Durnell at April 6, 2006 7:04 PMTotally agree Chris... and Pax Israeliana would be afoot in the land.
Posted by: erp at April 6, 2006 7:10 PM"Uncondiitonal support of Israel", not if Israel provides the Chinese with anti-missile defense technology.
Posted by: ic at April 6, 2006 7:12 PMunfortunately israel has few compunctions about stabbing us in the back. of course we have treated them roughly too.
Posted by: toe at April 6, 2006 7:29 PMIsrael also suffers from a proliferation of moonbats.
Posted by: erp at April 6, 2006 11:35 PMand those moonbats will cause israel to fall, soon.
Posted by: toe at April 7, 2006 11:53 AM