The Israel Lobby Debate and the Sad State of the US under Bush

A public debate, sponsored by The London Review of Books (LRB), which published the Walt and Mearsheimer paper on the Israel Lobby, took place on September 28th 2006 in NYC on the Israel lobby and its place in domestic and foreign US policy.

Elizabeth, who was at the debate, reported on it in one of her September posts.

I found a link to a video of the debate in 11 parts on the website of the LRB and managed to watch it entirely on the weekend.

The panelists were:
John Mearsheimer, one of the authors of the paper on the Israel lobby; Dennis Ross who is at the Washingtom Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), a pro-zionist think tank. Ross was, among his many affiliations and assignations, executive director for the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the main pro-Israel lobby in washington and signatory of many of the neoconish Project for the New American Century (PNAC) statements;
Martin Indyk, former US ambassador to Israel and former research director for AIPAC;
Shlomo Ben Ami, previous minister of public security and foreign minister of Israel in 1999-2000 in the Barak government and peace negotiator during the Madrid and Oslo processes;
Tony Judt, historian, professor and author;
Rashid Khalidi, the Edward Said professor and director of the Middle east Insitute at Columbia University;
The moderator of the debate was Anne-Marie Slaughter, dean of the Woodrow Wilson school of public and international affairs at Princeton university.

Almost everybody agreed on the eixstence of the lobby but disagreed on the extent of its influence on domestic and foreign policy. John Mearsheimer and Tony Judt insisted on the importance of a debate on Israel and the Israel lobby in the US and its disconnection from Anti-Semisitsm or incitement to Anti-Semitism. John Mearsheimer repeated with clear arguments his main hypothesis that the Israel lobby is driving US policy in ways that are detrimental to both the US and Israel. Shlomo Ben Ami, while refusing to admit that the lobby has influence on US foreign policy blamed this influence on the weakness of some US presidents like George Bush to face the lobby. I thought that Ben Ami's position was conciliatory and contradictory at the same time. He didn't want to defend the Lobby hypothesis but at the same time he was strongly against present US policy in the ME and ended up contradicting himself on the influence of the lobby because to say that there is a lobby only to the extent US presidents cave in to the lobby is to say that the lobby exists and has influence. Dennis Ross and Martin Indyk, both insiders to the lobby, denied that such influence on US foreign policy exists actually but Indyk contradicted himself when Judt reminded him of his op-ed in the WSJ asking AIPAC to lobby the US congress to reroute some funding destined to Israel to compensate Lebanon after the July war. Asked if he thought if the congress would comply to such a demand he didn't give a clear answer but clearly asking the Israel lobby to ask the US congress to cede some of Israel's money to Lebanon is in my opinion a proof that Indyk believes in fact in the power of the Israel lobby to influence decision making in washington, even if he states the contrary. Finally, Rachid Khalidi made an interesting point by stating that the inlfuence of the lobby was exaggerated by Mearsheimer in matters of foreign policy while understated in matter of domestic US policy. Khalidi's statement is interesting because it says that the real influence of the lobby is to silence internal debate on Israel in the US and to ensure maximum financial aid. But this aspect is not disconnected, in my opinion, from the influence of the lobby on US foreign policy in the ME because when the Israel lobby can silence any debate on Israel in the US, Israel can use its force on Arab countries and Palestinians without restraint since it knows very well that the absence of debate in the US will ensure that US public opinion will always side with Israel, and since US public opinion will side with Israel, no matter what, US politicians will not feel pressured to curb Israel's policy in the Middle East toward peace and dialogue or to try to impose any sanctions on Israel in exchange for concessions toward a final solution for the Arab-Israeli conflict. The proof was given by Mearsheimer with the fact that despite all US administrations being against the settlements, seen as an obstacle for peace, there was hardly anything the US could do to extract concessions on this matter from Israel.

The role of Israel in the Iraq war was also discussed and almost everybody agreed that Israel would have preferred going first against Iran but went along as the Bush administration priority was to start with Iraq (understand Cheney's priority), on the condition that Iran and Syria would be next on the list.In this regard, one can consider Israel's war on Lebanon last summer and all what was going on in Lebanon since 2005 as part of a scheme in which the US, embroiled in an unpredictably long war in Iraq, might have given its green light for a war on Lebanon and the Hezbollah as a proxy war against Iran. That makes two failed attempts for the US to reign in on 'axis of Evil countries' while its ally, Israel, has enjoyed, up to now, the mayhem created by the Iraq war to refuse any peace talks with the palestinians and conduct a harsh policy of destruction,targeted killings and elimination of the Palestinians and the Palestine question. Will the US recognize its defeat in Iraq ? Will Israel recognise its defeat in providing the US with a valuable victory over Hezbollah in Lebanon and therefore a proxy defeat of the Iranians? Will they both stop at these defeats or will they pursue another war in the region ?

The time of the Israel Lobby in washington is now counted in my opinion, thanks to the debate that Walt and Mearsheimer started with their paper and there is no doubt that, given the quasi consensus existing in Israel actually about not talking to the Palestinians, the Israel lobby will continue to pursue lobbying for wars in the ME during the Bush administration in order to consolidate Israel's status as the only superpower in the ME. It will be done this way because, as Ben Ami rightly said, it is up to the president of the US to determine what is good for his country and to stand up to the lobby, and Bush is certainly not a man to stand up to the Israel lobby, to any lobby actually, and that is the main feature of his presidency which became a decision center open to all sorts of lobbying, Israel, oil, Christian evangelism, Christian zionism, global economy, etc...This center of power is non existent as a national entity, and, most of all, not preoccupied by a vision that integrates the interests of the US and its citizens... Bush, despite his claims to the contrary, is really the most global non national unpatriotic president, managing his country as one manages a multinational corporation, outsourcing malaise and wars, stiffling critics of his policies, and following the interests of a decentralised globalised entity which has many subsidiaries located everywhere and separated from the interests of the US and its people. The US is an orphan country with a tyrannical stepfather (yes he is a fake father because he was not elected, he was chosen by the supreme court) who sends the children of the country as slaves to wage wars for his subsidiary corporations while collecting his share of the operations...When one thinks of Halliburton, this becomes more than a metaphor, it becomes reality, the sad reality of the US today...And the worst tyranny is the tyranny perpetrated by someone against his own people.

Here is the link for the video of the debate.

An excellent post by Richard at 'How this Old Brit' on how Zionists try to silence Jews like Tony Judt who work against the Israel lobby and want a public debate on the lobby.