To provide a little context for the authors' arguments, in their own words, the working paper starts off by saying:
"Beginning in the 1990s, and even more after 9/11, US support has been justified by the claim that both states are threatened by terrorist groups originating in the Arab and Muslim world, and by ‘rogue states’ that back these groups and seek weapons of mass destruction. This is taken to mean not only that Washington should give Israel a free hand in dealing with the Palestinians and not press it to make concessions until all Palestinian terrorists are imprisoned or dead, but that the US should go after countries like Iran and Syria. Israel is thus seen as a crucial ally in the war on terror, because its enemies are America’s enemies. In fact, Israel is a liability in the war on terror and the broader effort to deal with rogue states."
(snip)
"[S]aying that Israel and the US are united by a shared terrorist threat has the causal relationship backwards: the US has a terrorism problem in good part because it is so closely allied with Israel, not the other way around. Support for Israel is not the only source of anti-American terrorism, but it is an important one, and it makes winning the war on terror more difficult. There is no question that many al-Qaida leaders, including Osama bin Laden, are motivated by Israel’s presence in Jerusalem and the plight of the Palestinians. Unconditional support for Israel makes it easier for extremists to rally popular support and to attract recruits."
(snip)
"Israel is often portrayed as David confronted by Goliath, but the converse is closer to the truth. Contrary to popular belief, the Zionists had larger, better equipped and better led forces during the 1947-49 War of Independence, and the Israel Defence Forces won quick and easy victories against Egypt in 1956 and against Egypt, Jordan and Syria in 1967 – all of this before large-scale US aid began flowing. Today, Israel is the strongest military power in the Middle East. Its conventional forces are far superior to those of its neighbours and it is the only state in the region with nuclear weapons. Egypt and Jordan have signed peace treaties with it, and Saudi Arabia has offered to do so. Syria has lost its Soviet patron, Iraq has been devastated by three disastrous wars and Iran is hundreds of miles away. The Palestinians barely have an effective police force, let alone an army that could pose a threat to Israel. According to a 2005 assessment by Tel Aviv University’s Jaffee Centre for Strategic Studies, ‘the strategic balance decidedly favours Israel, which has continued to widen the qualitative gap between its own military capability and deterrence powers and those of its neighbours.’ If backing the underdog were a compelling motive, the United States would be supporting Israel’s opponents."
This sets up the basic thesis: Israel is not the underdog and doesn't need US backing. Then the authors shift rhetorical gears.
"Some aspects of Israeli democracy are at odds with core American values. Unlike the US, where people are supposed to enjoy equal rights irrespective of race, religion or ethnicity, Israel was explicitly founded as a Jewish state and citizenship is based on the principle of blood kinship. Given this, it is not surprising that its 1.3 million Arabs are treated as second-class citizens, or that a recent Israeli government commission found that Israel behaves in a ‘neglectful and discriminatory’ manner towards them. Its democratic status is also undermined by its refusal to grant the Palestinians a viable state of their own or full political rights."
Interesting, So by "refusing" to give the Palestinians their own viable state, Israel is not a democracy? I guess the US's decision not to grant Native Americans with their own viable state would qualify us as something less than a democracy. The fact that arabs living in Israel have more political rights and greater freedom than arabs in any other country in the Middle East apparantly doesn't factor into the equation.
Next comes an even more preposterous claim:
"A third justification is the history of Jewish suffering in the Christian West, especially during the Holocaust. Because Jews were persecuted for centuries and could feel safe only in a Jewish homeland, many people now believe that Israel deserves special treatment from the United States. The country’s creation was undoubtedly an appropriate response to the long record of crimes against Jews, but it also brought about fresh crimes against a largely innocent third party: the Palestinians."
There is no question the State of Israel has in the past, and continues to this day, to commit human rights violations against the Palestinian people, as the latest reports from Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch make clear. But to say the Palestinian people are "largely innocent third parties" is a whitewash of history and fact. Both sides deserve a great deal of blame for their conduct and crimes, and to portray Palestinians as being only innocent victims demonstrates a clear bias against the State of Israel.
After multiple paragraphs cataloguing the crimes of the Israelis against the Palestinians, the authors have a short two-sentance dismissal of any Palestinian wrongdoing. "The Palestinian resort to terrorism is wrong but it isn’t surprising. The Palestinians believe they have no other way to force Israeli concessions" One must presume the authors would likewise give al Qaeda with a pass for their terrorist attacks on September 11 because it was the "only way" it could force concessions from the US on its demands for US troop withdrawl from Saudi Arabia, etc.
Turning next to the "Israel Lobby", which the authors believe is the main reason why the US supports Israel (since they conclude there is no moral justification for doing so), they state:
"The Lobby pursues two broad strategies. First, it wields its significant influence in Washington, pressuring both Congress and the executive branch. Whatever an individual lawmaker or policymaker’s own views may be, the Lobby tries to make supporting Israel the ‘smart’ choice. Second, it strives to ensure that public discourse portrays Israel in a positive light, by repeating myths about its founding and by promoting its point of view in policy debates. The goal is to prevent critical comments from getting a fair hearing in the political arena. Controlling the debate is essential to guaranteeing US support, because a candid discussion of US-Israeli relations might lead Americans to favour a different policy." What "myths" are being propogated? Why is a candid discussion made impossible due to a lobbying group? The authors don't deign to answer these logical questions.
Then comes the most disingenuous line of argument of all: The Iraq war was done at the bidding of the Israeli puppet-masters and therefore all their fault:
"Maintaining US support for Israel’s policies against the Palestinians is essential as far as the Lobby is concerned, but its ambitions do not stop there. It also wants America to help Israel remain the dominant regional power. The Israeli government and pro-Israel groups in the United States have worked together to shape the administration’s policy towards Iraq, Syria and Iran, as well as its grand scheme for reordering the Middle East.
Pressure from Israel and the Lobby was not the only factor behind the decision to attack Iraq in March 2003, but it was critical. Some Americans believe that this was a war for oil, but there is hardly any direct evidence to support this claim. Instead, the war was motivated in good part by a desire to make Israel more secure. According to Philip Zelikow, a former member of the president’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, the executive director of the 9/11 Commission, and now a counsellor to Condoleezza Rice, the ‘real threat’ from Iraq was not a threat to the United States. The ‘unstated threat’ was the ‘threat against Israel’, Zelikow told an audience at the University of Virginia in September 2002. ‘The American government,’ he added, ‘doesn’t want to lean too hard on it rhetorically, because it is not a popular sell.’"
Putting aside the fact that Israel was attacked by Iraq during the Gulf war, is it really any surprise that Israel would consider it in their strategic interest to overthrow Saddam Hussein, who had openly bragged about being set on destroying the State of Israel, financed suicide bombings in Israel and was building a nuclear reactor in the 1980s that Israel destroyed?
Stephen Zunes from Foreign Policy in Focus has many more reasons for why it is wrong to blame Israel for the Iraq war here. He argues:
While AIPAC undeniably has influenced Congressional votes regarding Israeli-Palestinian concerns and related issues, they did not play a major role lobbying members of Congress to vote in favor of the resolution authorizing a U.S. invasion of Iraq, in large part because they knew there was such overwhelming bipartisan support for invading that oil-rich country they did not need to. More fundamentally, there are far more powerful interests that have a stake in what happens in the Persian Gulf region than does AIPAC, such as the oil companies, the arms industry, and other special interests whose lobbying influence and campaign contributions far surpass that of the much-vaunted “Zionist lobby” and its allied donors to Congressional races.
The American Jewish community, like most Americans, is turning against the war. Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, along with its chairman of the board, Robert Heller, recently sent a letter to President Bush stating that “We call not only for a clear exit strategy but also for specific goals for troop withdrawal to commence after the completion of parliamentary elections.”
I recommend reading the Dershowitz piece. I don't agree that anyone who criticizes Israel or the Israel lobby is an anti-Semite, but I think as the authors' own words demonstrate, there is a clear bias against Israel: the Israelis are an all-powerful cabal who control the US Congress, Executive Brance and the media while the Palestinians are basically a victimless, blameless party with no sway over the debate. I think this characterization is extremely facile at best, and misleading at worst, and Dershowitz goes a long way to disproving the inaccuracy of many of these claims.
I have no doubt that many of my colleagues on the Left will disagree with my position on this, but I think both the Israeli and Palestinian people have commited many crimes and played a role in perpetuating the crisis in the Middle East and both deserve blame. I also don't think enough evidence has been presented that AIPAC controls the US government or media, except for some cherry-picked quotes and anecdotal evidence.
Update: Seems Chomsky disagrees with the M-W paper's thesis as well, for some of the same reasons he discounts 9/11 consipracy theories...because it ignore the role the people in power play in making decisions and thus the need to hold them accountable as opposed to blaming ancillary players.
He concludes:
"The thesis M-W propose does however have plenty of appeal. The reason, I think, is that it leaves the US government untouched on its high pinnacle of nobility, "Wilsonian idealism," etc., merely in the grip of an all-powerful force that it cannot escape. It's rather like attributing the crimes of the past 60 years to "exaggerated Cold War illusions," etc. Convenient, but not too convincing. In either case."
Of course I disagree of different grounds, but nevertheless, there you have it.
0 comments:
Post a Comment