Will the news that the US vetoed Israeli plans to strike Iran's nuclear infrastructure put to bed the myth of the "Israel lobby"? I'd like to think so, but I doubt the comfort provided to some by such a view of the world will cease its appeal.
The news that president Bush vetoed Israeli plans to attack Iranian nuclear facilities whilst visiting the country in May should, with some luck, permanently put to bed the belief shared by conservatives, liberals and leftists alike in the “Israel Lobby”, and its grip on US interests.
The myth goes something like this: US interests are manipulated by a powerful cabal of pro-Israeli forces in the United States which can effectively distort the policies of the superpower in the interests of the Jewish State. They will , for instance, point to the fact that the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee can often get 9 out of 10 Senators signing its statements, or that the Sentate regularly passes resolutions recognising Jerusalem as Israel’s eternal Capital, that Jews in the US are the ethnic group most likely to vote and are concentrated in key states, that there are many prominent Jewish financial donors, or in the particularly obnoxious case of “radical” liberal magazine Adbusters, because of the “Jewishness” of neocons. They ask “whose interests were they protecting in pushing for war in Iraq?” The answer is rhetorical: not those of the non – Jewish “American people”.
Things are slightly more complex. Noam Chomsky has argued (whilst trashing the idea of the lobby), that the most influential pro-Israel bloc after liberal intellectuals is the culturally nationalist evangelical Christian movement, whose support for Israel is based on their anti-semitism: they want Jews in Israel in order to fulfil Biblical prophecy on the rapture – they must be there after the apocalypse to become Christians or go to hell. These bigots, however, usually feature lower down the list of those “distorting” US policy.
The belief is based on a fallacy – that the US ruling class is capable of doing anything contrary to the dynamics of Imperialism. Even genuinely radical commentary on Israel often falters when it comes up against its own crude conception of Imperialism. In their book Afflicted Powers, released to much intellectual fanfare in 2005, the US based Retort group argue that the “counterproductive” nature of the US-Israel relationship is down to its “spectacular” nature. Whilst making valid and interesting arguments about the effects of spectacular society and spectacular time on politics and the great performance that is bourgeois politics, its great discovery is that US Imperialism “seeks to impose military presences in crucial regions even without knowing exactly what or how well capital will do in the particular site of intervention”, and the discussion of Israel is couched in similar terms: “Israel has been a play of motifs and appearances that for a period seemed capable of projecting a seductive image of capital onto the screen of the postwar world ... in this two-faced role – as an exemplar of a society in which total militarisation and spectacular modernity were fully compatible – Israel has mirrored and mesmorised the American state for nearly four decades.” In their view, there is a fundamental tension in the spectacular relationship between the US and Israel and Israel’s current status as “an extreme liability” to US interests. They discuss an “unqualified US support for Israel” which is in fact a “geo-political trap” – “even Tony Blair is capable of recognising this”.
But what they, Tony Blair and critics of the Israel lobby share is a lack of solid engagement with what Imperialism has meant in developed capitalism. The need for bourgeois states to encircle and combat each other regularly runs against the immediate interests of capital accumulation. If the Iraq war had been about profit, rather than strategic control of a resource-rich region (the lack of control over dense population centres is secondary), it would have served the interests of capital to cut a deal with Saddam and leave him in power. Israel is the most longstanding strategic beachhead in the Middle East, and the more geopolitical zones integrated into the military empire of the United States the better – they are denied to its rivals. We see this tension in the Caucasus, where the conflict between Imperial blocs has destroyed the regularly touted bourgeois fantasy that capitalist democracies cannot go to war with each other. In this case, there was a strategic asset – an energy route from the Caucasus basin, which provided a particularly prominent hill to play king of. But Russia stood little chance of holding it in any significant sense, and in such escalating conflicts the dangerous logic of imperialism is demonstrated.
What demolishes the Israeli lobby argument more than anything else is the fact that whenever Israel attempts to undertake actions which further its own interests, to the detriment of those of the US, it is reigned in. In the case of the proposed strike, the action would have damaged the US by extending the Iraq war across the Iranian border. Though in a total war situation the US could obliterate Iran, a massive conflict throughout the region involving Iran’s large and sophisticated military and ranging across the highlands of that country is not an option, and would involve massive losses for the US. The project of controlling Iraq’s strategic resources would be at stake. There are other examples, well catalogued by the likes of Chomsky: for instance Israel’s attempts at the sale of high technology, central to its economy, to one of the largest potential customers in the world – China. Cultivating a trade relationship would further the interests of Israel to the detriment of US ‘. For these reasons the US has blocked Israeli attempts to develop this relationship. In 2000 Israel was forced to cancel a sale of its Phalcon early warning system. In 2005 sales of technology for anti-aircraft missiles to China led to the Pentagon boycotting Israeli officials, and demanding that Israel cancel the sales and apologise to the US. Israel capitulated, not the US.
Where liberal commentators will celebrate the US supposedly turning away from its agenda of confrontation, and "hawks" that the US is selling out its partner in the face of Iranian aggression, events are simply following their established pattern. One would hope that such a powerful demonstration of this would have an effect on the worldview of the proponents of the "lobby" argument, but I'm making no bets.
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Good post Django. Another example that support your argument goes back to the Madrid conference when Bush Sr. forced Israel to attend. Bush Sr. even withheld economic aid until the Rabin (?) govt. agreed to go. Another academic that's been very critical of the Israel lobby is the Angry Arab (Asad Abu Khalil). His blog is well worth checking out.
Great post.
Yeah I'm glad we gave you a blog!
Khawaga - thanks for the resources.
An even earlier counter-example to the Israel Lobby fallacy is the pressure brought on by the Eisenhower administration against the Israeli occupation of Gaza and the Sinai Peninsula in 1956 (see pertinent wikipedia article). They basically strong-armed the Israeli regime to withdraw against the Zionist interest. Who was wagging whom then?
I don't know if this is a valid example viz the Israel Lobby. Quite a few folks (sorry can't remember now) have argued that strong US support for Israel only started post-67 and that the lobby as a force to be reckoned with started after that. And the 56 stuff and American pressure can be argued was directed more towards UK and France than Israel.
Could someone point me to articles by Noam Chomsky or others that explain why US foreign policy so strongly supports the government of Israel? I have read that Israel destroyed secular nationalist currents in the Middle East that were more interested in local welfare than multinational profit. Was this intentional or just a byproduct of seeing Jews killing,... Muslims?
Chomsky's Fateful Triangle is where he discusses US, Israel and the Middle East. He's got too many articles on the subject to wade through so I reckon the book is the best.
Where did you read this? I would like to check it out so if you have a link or something please post it.
However, I do not think that Israel destroyed secular nationalist currents that had welfare rather than profit in mind. I guess this is a reference to Nasser's Egypt and his pan-Arabism. While Israel did completely shatter pan-Arabism, Nasser's social welfare programs were rolled back mostly due to the global economic crisis that started in the late 60s. Iraq had pretty good social welfare up until their war with Iran (so Israel had nothing to do with that).
Maybe the myth will die when leftists drop their strawmen about it?
What a horrible summary of what the Israel lobby is. You can tell that the reader did not even bother reading Walt & Mearsheimer's Israel Lobby & US Foreign Policy and either went straight to StormFront or a variety of Zionist rags to hear the same anti-Semitic trash.
At no point in the actual scholarship about the Israel lobby is it described as some sort of all-powerful organization, nor do the authors suggest that the Israel Lobby wins all of its fights against others in the U.S. administration. The authors -- who are both IR foreign policy realists who have very strict definitions of what is included in American "national interest" -- were arguing that the Israel lobby is a domestic political force which considers its alliance to a foreign state of higher significance than traditionally defined national interest:
"[The Israel Lobby] is not a single, unified movement with a central leadership, and it is certainly not a cabal or conspiracy that "controls" U.S. foreign policy. It is simply a powerful interest group, made up of both Jews and gentiles, whose acknowledged purpose is to press Israel's case within the united States and influence American foreign policy in ways that its members believe will benefit the Jewish state" (WM pg 5).
Ergo the fact that it is so powerful is a threat to this traditional conception of national interests. Never do they foolishly suggest that the Israel Lobby controls U.S. foreign policy. If it was just a matter of finding contradictions between actual U.S. policy and the Israel Lobby's demands you wouldn't have had to wait for the rejection of the Iran war. You could have simply pointed to the refusal to release Jonathan Pollard, the refusal to acknowledge the legitimacy of Israeli settlements (although in practice that is what is done), the Clinton Administration's blame of Israel for pulling out of peace talks with Syria, Reagan's freezing of military aid after the Osirak bombing, etc.
The actual argument is that if the U.S. were to ALWAYS follow the American national interest, these events would not be exceptions, but the rule. Instead on too many occasions (though obviously not all) the Israel Lobby HAS gotten its way despite considerable dissent within America's political and military leadership -- i.e. continuing to designate Hezbollah a terrorist organization despite resistance amongst the CIA and the intelligence community, greenlighting multiple (failed) Israeli invasions into Lebanon, contradicting the State Department's stated policy of settlement condemnation at the UN, the entire invasion of Iraq which was spearheaded by the neoconservative break from the traditional US policy and included consulting and planning with/alongside/by AIPAC to re-shape the Middle East, multiple rounds of sanctions against Syria despite Syrian intelligence assistance against Al Qaeda, multiple declarations of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, looking the other way when Israeli commandos kill Americans -- in some cases, execution-style with the flotilla, not to mention pushing for an end to the Israeli occupation which in the words of Petraeus was "costing American lives".
On every one of these instances, significant parts of the U.S. government -- especially the most nationalistic parts, i.e. the military and the CIA -- by and large contradicted the Israel lobby and its political benefactors. In the case of the Iraq war, obviously other interests were at play as well, but it was the Israel lobby's political organizing and planning that put the invasion into action.
Which leads to the next point that communists seem to always miss. As usual, with most communist analyses of imperialism, the left lives in an either-or world in which imperialism is either a matter of structural forces OR the work of political agents. Like failing to see the forest for the trees. Obviously political affairs involve BOTH agents (like lobbies) and structural dynamics (like capitalism and imperialism itself).
It's also important to note that Evangelicals provide the base of the Israel lobby, something that is again mentioned quite openly in the book. The Christians, like elite right-wing Jews, are not just a cultural or a social or a superstructural force, they provide agency and direction to the system they're sitting on.
Hence military planners shutting down the Israel Lobby on Iran doesn't prove anything. The fact that the Israel Lobby can get Obama (and virtually every other candidate running except for Ron Paul) to show up at the AIPAC convention on Super Tuesday threatening to bomb Iran over non-existent intelligence over Iran's perpetually imminent nuclear weapons shows immense political power. If the Israel Lobby were insignificant then it would not be a political crisis for Obama or any of the others in the USG to stand up to this political force. But it IS. Hence, the Israel Lobby is still a major factor in US foreign policy. And it doesn't seem to be losing quietly.
And finally, the invasion of Iran is not off the table. US planners simply note that it would be a disastrous invasion (like the invasion of Iraq, which was also driven by AIPAC and its bedfellows). Saying it's a stupid move doesn't mean the U.S. won't do it when powerful political forces push it to do so.
So I'll end on a question:
If the Iraq invasion was down to a desire to control oil resources, why was the U.S.' previous policy one of sanctions, and then support for Saddam before that? Did either of those policies assist in direct control of oil resources? And if they did, why didn't the USG keep using them, and opt for a disastrous direct intervention instead?
Pairofducks. Did you even bother reading the blog post by Django. Most likely not considering your response. Cries of the Israel lobby find very little traction on this site. Indeed, even Walt and Mearsheimer's thesis quite a few folks would find borderline anti-semitic (actually I would say it is anti-semitic, too close to the protocols for comfort). Are you a confused zionist or a confused "anti-German" (i.e. from PD)?
I think that the first Gulf War, 1993, was an attempt by US imperialism to demonstrate its power to friend and foe alike in the wake of the collapse of the two-bloc system after the implosion of the Warsaw Pact. That it only made things worse is not surprising given the irrationality of imperialist war overall.
Today there are severe strains on the US-Israel relationship over the question of Iran. Not only does the CIA and the US military caution against any Israeli attack on Iran, but there are powerful voices - its internal and external security forces - within Israel that have expressed the view that such an attack would be madness. That doesn't however preclude such an attack and this remains a very dangerous possibility not only from the immediate devastation it would cause but also from the wider implications of drawing in other powers and generalising further.
Obviously there are strongly pro-Israel elements amongst the US political classes, but not in the sense of supporting Israel against US national interests, that would be political suicide. But casting them as the instigators of the Iraq war is really stretching it IMO, and seems like it flies in the face of traditional analyses of the politics behind the conflict which locate it in the context of a broader US geopolitical strategy (in which relations with Israel certainly play a role, but not a controlling one).
The fact that different sections of the US ruling class disagreed about the invasion doesn't change this, as politicians (and generals, and intelligence chiefs) are human like the rest of us and don't automatically know whether x, y or z is in the long term interests of their nation or not. That doesn't mean they don't sincerely want the best for their country (by and large, obviously sectional interests and intragovernmental politics play a role too), it certainly doesn't mean that they are motivated by loyalty to another nation.
IMO, a better analysis of the conflict between the executive and the pentagon/CIA chiefs over the invasion is provided by Aufheben in Oil Wars and World Orders.
~J.