The
Lobby Or Not The Lobby?
By Issa Khalaf
25 July, 2006
Countercurrents.org
The
politically prodigious and financially unprecedented support which Israel
has received from the United States since the early 1960s can be attributed
to two factors. On the one hand, Israeli policies serve American interests,
not only in the Middle East but all over the world. Whenever the United
States finds it inconvenient to get directly involved in something particularly
unsavory, for example in supporting a regime or an organization whose
reputation is particularly opprobrious, Israel comes in handy to do
the job on the U.S. behalf. On the other hand, however, Israel wields
tremendous influence within the United States, in my view, regardless
of whether Israeli policies match U.S. interests or not. Although to
some extent this fact can be attributed to the support Israel receives
from many strains of Christian fundamentalism, there is no doubt in
my mind that its primary reason is the role performed by the organized
Jewish community in the United States in backing Israel and its policies
unconditionally. (Israel Shahak, “Relations between Israel and
Organized American Jews,” Middle East Policy Journal, Volume II,
Number 3, 1993)
There is no question that
the American-Israeli relationship is special and unique, not for the
reasons its advocates raise, but for its anomalous nature. The now well-known
article by John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt on “The Israel
Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy” amazingly covers ground—in
clear, direct, empirical, disciplined, at times simplistic or repetitive,
style—which few dared to tread. They not only breach a taboo that
intimidates many, but also open to serious question the sacred pillars
of the lobby’s argument that Israel is an unequalled strategic
ally and asset and, because of its Jewish and democratic character and
the past suffering of the Jewish people, a morally exceptional state.
Though their article is dismissed by many on the left as misguided and
ideologically wrong-headed at best and by conservative and Jewish critics
as anti-Semitic, one cannot merely ignore the directly observable reality
and evidence that American support for Israel is unlike any other bilateral
relationship even while Israel’s behavior is far from exemplary.
How to explain this phenomenon?
CONTENDING PARADIGMS
In attempting to comprehend
the American-Israeli relationship and the limitless generosity and support
extended to Israel, leftists and progressives emphasize the paradigm
of empire in which the motivating impulse for American behavior is global
economic domination, or the control of resources and strategic geography
whose purpose is to maintain American pre-eminence in the international
division of labor between industrial and underdeveloped societies. Thus,
the master here is the United States, whose interests are strategically
served by Israel, a conclusion that is in agreement with the Israel
lobby. Focus on a lobby therefore becomes irrelevant, an illusory pursuit,
even worse, the pursuit of racists (again, a convergence of views with
those critics who’ve attacked Mearsheimer and Walt as anti-Semites),
whereas critical understanding is derived from inclusive paradigms.
For those leftists who accept the basic conclusions, though not the
methodology or ideological premises, of Mearsheimer and Walt, the lobby
does not serve a moral and general good, but the interests of (those
undefined) elites, of which the Israel lobby is a part.
American foreign policy in
the Middle East is therefore dictated by corporate interests and elites,
in this case the oil industry, a la “Syriana,” with strategic
access to and alliance with the state, for whom Israel serves as a multifaceted
strategic ally (possible base, exporter of arms to odious regimes that
America does not wish to publicize, technological cooperation, arms
development, intelligence sharing), including as a blunting instrument
against populist or nationalist movements and regimes that would challenge
corporate oil interests’ monopoly over control of their resources.
This paradigm leaves little
to critical interpretation based on nationalism and cultural identity.
Great states such as the US are motivated by impulses that go beyond
strategic economic or corporate interests or Marxist conceptions of
class conflict. Their perceptions and actions are also shaped by their
national-cultural limitations and values, their ideological Weltanschauung,
in this case a messianic liberal-democratic, capitalist worldview, and
the compulsion to apply power to get their way and remain at the top
of the international hierarchy of states, shaping the international
system and institutions to suit their perceived needs and interests.
How states behave toward each other is shaped as much by cultural and
ethnic foundations as it is by domestically and internationally located
economic interests. Also, even great states without military or economic
equal are limited in their unfettered use of power and understand that
political flexibility in regional or local conflicts necessitates resolving
these short of satisfying the full desires of their local allies, in
this case Israel. They require stability to manage their perceived interests;
the essential condition for stability in the Israel-Palestine case means
Israeli withdrawal to pre-1967 lines and the establishment of a viable
Palestinian state.
The realist/neo-realist explanation,
as exemplified by Mearsheimer and Walt, is located in a different paradigm,
that of liberalism, as is realism’s competing explanation of international
relations, idealism/neo-idealism. In their case, their worldview is
predicated on national, ethnic, and cultural divisions and the primacy
of the nation-state, as opposed to the leftist worldview, based as it
is on economic and class systems of analysis, the state reflecting the
class privileges and power of the dominant economic elite. Though states’
behavior is constrained by the international structure, they see history
as a competition between groups and nations, religious and national
identity and the modern nation-state as the culmination and expression
of nationalism. They apply categories of national identity, balance
of power, national interest, and deterrence to apprehend and manage
reality. Thus, to these conservative international politics theorists,
the lobby becomes inimical to that amorphous yet all-inclusive national
interest.
A supporting explanation
of the American-Israeli relationship is that provided by the foreign
service officers and specialists at the State Department, whose understanding
and perception of international relations are based on an idealized
version of American culture and values, who tend to be fair and balanced
on Israel-Palestine, and who are disturbed by the partiality America
accords Israel. Their main explanation is based on the power and influence
of the Israel lobby. As was the case with the Foreign Office careerists
during the British state’s mandate over Palestine, these people
are usually and unfairly attacked as anti-Semitic “Arabists”
by elected leaders and politicians susceptible to the influences of
narrow interests and lobbies.
While the foreign-service
officers better understand the complex sources of local dispute, the
international relations “realists” pay little attention
to local movements, histories, and sources of conflict and social change.
Both, however, agree on a nationalist or patriotic understanding of
US foreign policy. The normative assumption is that the US does not
act out of intentionally malevolent purposes.
Without question, the US,
since WWII, has tirelessly acted on the side of the status quo throughout
the Third World, and has allied itself with and supported repressive
regimes to extend its political and economic presence and influence.
The same dynamics have applied to the Middle East. But Israel-Palestine
is a special case precisely because, one, of the uniqueness of Western
concern for Jewish well being in the post-Holocaust period and, two,
the organization of Jewish lobbying efforts concentrated in the United
States. This effort is necessarily characterized by US-Israeli strategic
convergence, especially antipathy toward and weakening of populist nationalism,
either secularist or religious in nature. But it is also characterized
by divergence, even episodic tension, with US strategies, that is, the
US need to settle the Palestine issue within the context of international
law and frameworks that would both secure Israel and its role and satisfy
and stabilize the Palestinians, a core cause of Middle East instability.
Even when we accept, therefore,
the US drive for political and economic hegemony as an organizing principle
to explain US foreign policy, we can also accept that the Israel lobby
is a reality that affects the content and direction of US policy in
the Middle East. The leftist or progressive thesis (ironically, just
like the pro-Israel lobby contention), is overdrawn: US foreign policy
interests are not completely, not even fundamentally synonymous with
Israeli interests, and US policy in the Middle East, specifically in
Palestine, can change seriously and dramatically if the Israel lobby
were willing to unify its considerable resources and influence, particularly
over Congress, to change this policy’s direction. (Some on the
left, domestically minded liberal intellectuals and activists in the
mold of documentary filmmaker Michael Moore, continue to think of Middle
East policy in terms of old establishment WASP elites, Christian fundamentalists,
Saudi royals, and oil corporations and tend to be fuzzy on the realities
and complexities of US-Middle East relations.)
One can either dismiss the
lobby’s political clout, and even its existence, as a right wing
or anti-Semitic fantasy or assume that it is inconsequential as a method
of apprehending reality, in contrast to higher-level causes and explanations
of US foreign policy. The latter is true but only renders focus on the
lobby immaterial if the paradigm is rooted in inflexible corporate interests
and economic analysis. Individuals and collectivities are animated by
their identities and group cohesion, despite the reality of social and
political fault lines in groups and societies, and one need not always
look for underlying material self-interest behind people’s behavior.
A motivated and well-organized lobby like this one can have a serious
effect on a liberal system that is especially open to groups with the
requisite resources. The liberal notion of a pluralist system in which
interest groups vie for power and access to public resources, thereby
resulting in a public policy reflective of the broader public good is
faulty. Groups have differential means and resources. A liberal-capitalist
system such as this one accords differential access and influence to
those with the economic wealth and means. Therefore, in terms of allocation
of resources and distribution of wealth, what the system reflects is
not the general public’s interest but those of well-organized
and powerful commercial, business, and occupational groups and elites,
particularly the corporate elites. But the system is also responsive
to well-organized and financed groups whose agendas are social and cultural
and who have a broad popular base.
Jewish Americans obviously
differ in many aspects, including their attitudes towards Israel and
peace, as suggested below. However, their leaders and elites are ideologically
and emotionally mobilized for what is essentially a nationalist cause,
the cause of Israel. The intense singularity with which this cause is
pursued, in the context of a system in which this ethnic group has remarkably
succeeded in all segments of American life and enterprise, including
broader cultural and ideological factors and alliances, has made the
lobby the most formidable “interest group” in contemporary
America.
American Jewish groups do
not “control” American foreign policy in the Middle East,
but have succeeded in determining that those policies heavily favor
Israel and, with their neo-conservative allies in the current administration,
integrating US and Israeli policy and strategic goals.
WHOSE INTERESTS?
Political Zionism in today’s
Israel is unhappy with the growing “Arab” demographic “threat”
within historic Palestine (which may now contain slightly more Arabs
than Jews), yet is unwilling to give up the occupied territories. Its
choices to the Palestinians: apartheid or departure, both of which can
only be enforced and sustained with brutality and violence. The two-state
solution is no longer a viable alternative, certainly not in its present
reality, nor is a unified democratic state. A secular democratic state
in whatever form is unlikely in the foreseeable future without war and
widespread regional destruction. Either that, however, or a radical
dismantling of the occupation “matrix.” In the context of
current realities, and moral judgment aside, legitimate and constructive
Israeli interests in the Middle East include:
a) maintaining a majoritarian Jewish state with real equality and rights
for non-Jewish citizens,
b) relinquishing the occupation,
negotiating withdrawal and the establishment of a politically and economically
viable Palestinian state in pre-1967 lines,
c) obtaining US and international
security guarantees, participating in regional security arrangements,
nuclear non-proliferation, and eventual elimination of nuclear arsenals,
d) mutually, with the Palestinians
but also involving Arab states in which exist Palestinian refugees,
resolving—based on creative conceptual and practical reworking
of compensation, restitution, and repatriation, including permanent
resettlement—the Palestinian refugee question based on the legally
recognized right of return without undermining Israeli sovereignty or
viability,
e) agreeing, through regional
discussions, on the equitable, fair and legal use of water resources,
and
f) gradually achieving full
diplomatic and economic relations with the Arab world.
However, the historical record,
supported by a growing body of research, suggests a bleak picture. Israel
has been strategically driven by territorial expansion in all of historic
Palestine; military supremacy and nuclear-chemical-biological monopoly;
obstruction of international law and UN frameworks and principles; construction
of obstacles in the way of normalization of relations between the Middle
East (or Islam) and the US; prevention of a deterrent challenge to Israel’s
military hegemony in the area by radical, moderate, or conservative
states, Arab or non-Arab; fragmentation of Arab states and societies
into competing sectarian and ethno-linguistic groups; and, since the
end of the Cold War, active exasperation of the threat of radical Islamists
and terrorists, who have now replaced Communism as the mortal, everlasting
enemy of Israel and therefore America. The underlying ideological momentum
for these policies is Zionism’s vision of an exclusivist ethno-nationalist
Jewish state in all of historic Palestine.
These are at odds with American
interests. One can argue over what constitutes legitimate American interests,
given the reality of unrelenting US hostility to genuinely independent
and representative movements, parties, and governments and its support
of autocratic states in the area. However, these differences and tensions
between the US and countries like, say, Syria and Iran, are exaggerated,
distorted, and remain unresolved largely because of Israeli behavior
and the effective work of the Israel lobby that has ensured complete
US accommodation of virtually everything Israel does and wants.
Broadly, my list of legitimate
US interests, in no particular order, include the following:
a) comprehensive Israeli-Palestinian
(and Israeli-Syrian and Israeli-Lebanese), peace based on internationally
accepted principles and frameworks, including complete withdrawal to
the 1967 lines,
b) regional security in the
Persian Gulf in cooperation with Iran in the context of Iran’s
regional and global reintegration in exchange for its support of a Palestine
settlement and internationally verified guarantees not to pursue a nuclear
program,
b) consistent promotion of
human rights, civil society and democratic processes, including respect
of genuine elections that may bring Islamist parties to power,
c) promoting arms control
and limiting the flow of arms into the region through regional conferences,
d) pursuing and sponsoring
talks toward regional nuclear non-proliferation and other WMDs,
e) cooperation with and affirmation
of the UN’s potentially multifaceted role in the region, especially
peacekeeping,
f) fighting terrorism in
all its facets, including al-Qaeda’s strategic goal of driving
the US from the Middle East, through genuine, multifaceted bilateral
cooperation with regional states of all ideological hues,
g) promoting regional trade,
economic cooperation, and development
h) withdrawal from Iraq in
the context of international (multilateral and UN) cooperation to stabilize
and transition the country, and
i) cooperation and aid in
solving regional social and economic sources of instability and discontent,
including issues of economic inequality and regional distribution of
wealth.
Since 1948, Israel has been
unable to prevent or alleviate threats to the US since it is a cause
of conflict with and antagonist to Arab states; it has contributed to
radicalization of the Middle East and, during the Cold War, constituted
a decisive factor in driving Arab states to seek aid and security from
the Soviet Union; it has perpetuated regional instability and destabilization
of moderate, allied regimes of the US; it has impeded the US’s
ability to maintain good working relations with Arab states as a prelude
to advance the US’s interests in the area; it has been a huge,
and endless financial burden on the US through tens, reaching hundreds,
of billions of dollars of non-repayable aid; it has destructively invaded
and threatened surrounding states, such as Lebanon, at will; it has
essentially rejected and sabotaged every American peace plan for the
occupied Palestinian territories; and its lobby and their neo-conservative
allies have led the US into a costly, destructive invasion of Iraq whose
full consequences are yet to unfold.
Israel and its neo-conservative
allies in Washington are a detriment to oil companies, who require stability
in Israel-Palestine and good relations with all Arab and Muslim states
that have oil. The politically and ideologically inspired goal of establishing
bases in Iraq and sitting astride Persian Gulf oil fields and pipeline
and shipping lanes for Central Asian oil does little to protect American
national interest or oil companies; it merely overextends and economically
weakens the US. Pro-Israel interests, not transnational oil companies,
benefit from the invasion and occupation of Iraq and destabilization
and radicalization of the region. Just as the Israel lobby and its allies
in and outside of government pushed mightily for the US invasion and
destruction of Iraq, they are now employing their considerable resources
to instigate a military attack on Iran, even though the transnational
oil companies, American and foreign, do not benefit from war and instability.
A stable, territorially and nationally unified Iraq is in the US national
interest and in the interest of oil companies.
These assertions are counterintuitive
to the argument that the US master plan is to control Middle East oil,
Iran now being the remaining holdout, and to the fact that the oil corporations,
whose interests are amply represented in the Bush administration, reap
billions from rapidly rising oil and gas prices. Even the oil companies
understand, however, that war and destruction in Iran may drive up prices
so prohibitively that they drive down demand and accelerate the search
for alternative energy sources; that an American and Western or global
recession is not good for business; that the US cannot really “control”
Middle East oil, certainly not in the old ways of direct national corporation
ownership of oil fields, because, for example, imposed client regimes
in Iraq and Iran will not endure; that such regimes will continually
face the rebellious opposition of their nationalist and Islamo-nationalist
populations, thus creating perpetual instability and conflict and requiring
permanent American military presence if not occupation; and that the
region will be radicalized further, including the destabilization of
Saudi Arabia and the Arab Gulf sheikhdoms. It’s easy to blame
the oil corporations, who to be sure represent powerful interests, to
confirm one’s ideological viewpoint.
Viewed from this perspective,
American interests in the Middle East, certainly in the long term, have
been far from successful, contrary to what leftists would argue, and
will worsen considerably if Iran is attacked. Again, pro-Israel lobby
forces, reflecting Israeli strategy, are eager for sanctions, confrontation,
and attack on Iran.
The litmus test of the symbiotic
relationship between the dog and its tail is Palestine’s current
reality. US interests require a viable two-state solution that would
satisfy (or, cynically, pacify) the Palestinians, dramatically reduce
tensions through the normalization of Arab-Israeli relations, and generally
work as a stabilizing factor in the Middle East. (Iraq will continue
to be a major point of instability until the US withdraws, and even
then there will be deleterious, unanticipated consequences for the region.)
While President Bush was the first president to pronounce American support
for a viable, independent Palestinian state, in the past several years
there’s been a dramatic reversal of that position as Israel is
constructing an apartheid state and unilaterally annexing occupied territory
and setting final borders. The US, through its silence, has effectively
supported the wall’s construction even as the International Court
of Justice declared it illegal, and has abandoned the Road Map and the
Oslo Accords before it. Furthermore, President Bush publicly declared
his support of Israel’s annexation of the large settlement “blocs”
in and around Jerusalem and of the latter’s position that the
Palestinian refugees have no right of return, and, in line with Israel’s
demands and actions towards Hamas, vigorously pursues the democratically
elected Hamas government’s economic and political strangulation,
even as this threatens the physical well being and survival of the occupied
Palestinians.
Following Israel’s
effective abrogation of agreements signed under US auspices, the US
has effectively abandoned international law, international principles
for peace, and frameworks for a settlement that the US and the international
community worked to construct. The longstanding search for a peace in
the Middle East has been demolished. All these positions happen to be
what the lobby has advocated in its ceaseless protection and support
of Israeli policies. Disagreements and criticisms, while open and self-interested
in relation to any other state, are muted and conceded with Israel.
This, the constant US retreat on Palestine, has consistently been the
litmus test of the lobby’s power.
THE LOBBY, AMERICAN
JEWS AND CULTURAL CONTEXTS
The lobby cannot be wholly
understood only in reference to organization, access, political alliances,
and influence. Its effectiveness has also to be located in broader cultural
foundations.
There is no Jewish agenda
in America and the West that advances amorphous “Jewish collective
interests.” Jews worldwide are not a monolith, neither in culture,
ethnicity, language, or national affiliation, not in world outlook nor
in their attitudes toward Israel and the Palestinians, not in their
secularism or religiosity. (Jewish intellectuals, theologians, academics,
activists, human rights workers, lawyers, and journalists, in America,
Israel and elsewhere, have been indispensable in defending and positively
affecting world public opinion on Palestinian historical, national,
and human rights under Israeli occupation.) The lobby’s effectiveness
derives from the ardently devoted work of a small elite, backed by limitless
financial resources.
Lobbying on behalf of Israel
includes the Jewish organizations and allied non-Jewish, pro-Israel
organizations. Christian fundamentalists, about twenty-five million
of whom are voters, are part of the Israel lobby, not in a formal membership
or organizational sense but in ideological affinity, political alliance,
and coordination for specific policy battles regarding Israel. They
are strong supporters of Israel and its right wing, hard line parties,
including maintaining settlements, because of their literalist interpretation
of the bible and, much like their Jewish rank and file counterparts,
their reliance on cues from their leaders and local churches. These
leaders, Christian Zionists, are the contemporary version of the Gentile
Zionists of long ago who featured heavily in the British government
and its colonial policies in Palestine.
The Israel or Jewish lobby’s
purpose is to exert influence on American foreign policy in the Middle
East in support of Israel. The lobby comprises Jewish organizations
such as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and its numerous
fronts, or Political Action Committees (to circumvent legal limitations
on contributions from a single special interest PAC), and organizations
such as the Anti-Defamation League and the Conference of Presidents
of Major American Jewish Organizations (comprising over fifty Jewish
organizations), whose real roles are to influence American policy and
public opinion, unify and mobilize American Jews in the cause of Israel,
and attack and silence legitimate critics of Israel and Zionism. (There
are progressive, but marginal, Jewish lobbying groups that have tried
to form an alternative voice to the mainstream organizations.) Its power
is especially noticeable in the areas of grassroots lobbying and financial
contributions for legislative campaigns at the several levels of American
government.
The lobby, then, is not a
reference to a particular “interest group” but to Jewish
organizations whose lobbying is allied with Christian Zionists and neo-conservatives.
It is obviously supported by the wealth, education, social and moral
influence of the Jewish community stemming largely from the pervasiveness
of the Jewish, Zionist-Israel, and Holocaust narratives in America.
Because of the Jewish-evangelical
Christian alliance or convergence of goals over Israel (which in some
cases is beginning to unravel), some, apparently including Mearsheimer
and Walt, assert that the Israel lobby is both Christian and Jewish.
The Israel lobby is first and foremost exclusively Jewish (as the late
Israel Shahak emphasized in the article quoted above), closed to broadening
perspectives, including from progressive Jews, which explains its singularity
of purpose over Israel and Zionism, its Jewish-nationalist fervor, its
growing support of extremist Israeli governments, and its myopia or
apparent inability to see the consequences of Israel’s destructive
path.
Contrary to the damaging
Zionist mythology and its apparent monopoly on a narrative of Jewish
specialness, suffering, innocence, and irredeemable anti-Semitism, Jews
are not unified in their “Jewishness,” ideology, or attitudes
towards Israel, Zionism, and Jewish identity. Nor, objectively and practically,
are Jewish interests synonymous with Zionist interests. However, Jewish
organizations in the West and in America in particular who are Zionists
and ardent supporters of Israel and who reflect the different ideological
tendencies within Zionism have, by virtue of their superior financial
resources, organization, commitment to Israel, and political alliances
been able to create the prevailing illusion that American and Israeli
national interests are identical, and have succeeded in preventing open,
public debate and discourse on the issue.
The success of the lobby
in America has been its perfunctory mobilization of most American Jews
for the cause of Israel. Israel has become for these American Jews,
and many Jews worldwide, the golden calf it is for Zionism, The Cause
of their lives, the vindication and privilege of an increasingly sacralized
Holocaust and the cultural or identity glue that tenuously holds together
a rapidly assimilating and diluting Diaspora. The affective emotion
of “caring for Israel” as part of being Jewish attracts
the allegiance of the vast majority of American Jews.
Many Jewish Americans are
uninformed about the real and complex issues in Israel-Palestine and
swallow whole the delusions and myths about Israel imparted by Zionism.
Conveyed to them by the Jewish organizations through synagogues and
community centers throughout America, they are the recipients of the
received wisdom and talking points, of mobilizing for campaigns and
fundraising and pressure for or against political candidates and perceived
anti-Zionists or critics of Israel such as university professors. Even
so, there is a slight disconnect between Jewish American rank and file,
the majority of whom favor a sort of Oslo-like compromise, and their
organizations and leaders, who usually support the more extreme tendencies
in Israel.
American Jews who are Zionists
in the sense of their singular support of Israel and who are in prominent
or dominant positions in the media and entertainment industry are eagerly
generating images and ideas about Israel and Zionism that shape public
opinion and perceptions and reinforce the dominant myths about the American-Israeli
relationship to a largely indifferent, disinterested, and uninformed
American public. It is not an issue of “Jewish conspiracy”
or “Jewish power” but of individuals and organizations acting
on their deep-seated biases, motivated by their “love of Israel.”
Steven Spielberg, a liberal example, declared in interviews over his
film “Munich” his love for Israel and his willingness to
die for it, and thus constructed essentially mythical images of Israelis,
always morally questioning, even though, in his mind, he created a film
fair to the Palestinians and even received heat from Jewish organizations
for “humanizing the terrorists.”
Furthermore, it is clear
that the two dominant political parties and the Congress have become
institutionally and psychologically habituated in their support for
everything Israel wants, that presidents have consistently backed down
over conflicts with the lobby, and that perception of an all-powerful
“Jewish lobby” has now permeated the minds of American politicians,
leaders, businessmen, academics, and journalists. This perception of
power cannot be underestimated in causing fear, intimidation, and self-censorship.
Too, it is clear that huge
amounts of pandering to the lobby goes on during presidential or congressional
campaigns, that both the president, with his close advisers, and members
of Congress, with their staff members, are surrounded by pro-Israel
individuals, more so in this neo-conservative dominated administration
than in previous ones. The lobby and its friends have come to completely
dominate Middle East decisions and policymaking throughout the executive
branch, superseding the traditional role of the Department of State.
One-sided support for Israel
is not uni-dimensional, a result of an all-powerful lobby. One cannot
underestimate the Western cultural foundations of support for Israel.
This relates not only to common Judeo-Christian (particularly Protestant)
roots, but also to the historical tension (along with the cultural diffusion,
trade, and peaceful relations) between Islam and Christianity in the
eastern Mediterranean littoral, though this is often overdrawn for political
reasons. Western culture, rooted in rationalism, scientific inquiry,
democracy, and liberalism is, both at the elite and public levels, reflexively
uneasy at Middle Eastern or Islamic political and social organization,
institutions and values. Israel is a modern, industrial, urban Western
society whose developed landscape and customs are easily recognizable
in the typical westerner’s cultural psyche, unlike the architectural
landscape, underdevelopment, urban overcrowding, peasant destitution,
and strange customs, dress, sites and smells of Arab or Muslim societies.
Nevertheless, the current
conflict between the West and Islam, or more accurately, the differences
in needs and interests and values, are really political in nature, largely
reflecting issues of global inequality, economic interests, invasions,
occupation, and oppression, of the clash between imperial interests
and their support for local right wing or conservative regimes and authentic
nationalist or Islamist parties and movements. These international differences
and tensions can and must be managed rationally, though the obstacles
to their management are not only economic imperialism and cultural differences—nor
just the displacement of Western guilt for the Holocaust onto the Palestinians
and Muslims—that lead to wrongful assumptions and distorted perceptions.
They are due, also, to the
practical political activities of Israel and the Zionist lobby that,
aligned with neo-conservatives, have an interest in elevating the Islamic
“threat” to mystical, abstract levels of clash of cultures
and civilizations. In the context of such assumptions, based on cultural
reductionism, there is thus little that can be done to manage the relationship
except through military strength and force and an enduring reliance
on a militarily dominant, democratic, Western Israel.
American conservatism is
particularly attracted to this cultural worldview. Its nationalist orientation
and deep suspicion of broad cultures such as Islam, its emphasis on
national security and military power, its impulses of superiority, enlightenment,
pioneering spirit, manifest destiny, and exceptionalism coincide with
a Zionist Israel animated by similar ideological and cultural foundations
and historical claims and at odds with anti-Israeli and anti-American
Muslims.
CONCLUSION
The two, apparently conflictive
assertions, that Israel serves American imperial interests and that
the Israel lobby “controls” US foreign policy are both partially
correct, and therefore not mutually exclusive. There has been an increasing
convergence of interest between a more militarized and aggressive US
foreign policy navigated by neo-conservatives and supported by Christian
fundamentalists and a lobby that has increasingly become more aggressive,
uncompromising, and demanding in its support of Israel. US and Israeli
policies and strategies have also become blurred and integrated, partially
because of the fact that many of the neo-conservatives in government
and its ideologues outside it are Jewish Americans who are also exceptionally
committed and loyal to Israel as much as they are to America. Jeff Halper
of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, in an ICAHD website
article titled “Israel as an Extension of American Empire,”
puts it this way:
Many of the founders of neo-conservatism
in the 1970s and most of its prominent advocates today are Jewish. This
is not an irrelevant fact, nor is it “anti-Semitic” to say
so….
Just a glance at some of
the most prominent neo-cons…points up a Jewish connection that
is hard to understate.
Israel, of course, has long
been of prime concern to these pillars of the American Jewish community,
who now enjoy the political clout to integrate that issue seamlessly
into the neo-con doctrine – and thereby into the very fabric of
American foreign policy and military strategy. It is a measure of how
Jews have assimilated into American life, how they identify completely
with the United States – of which they see Israel as an extension,
the “only democracy in the Middle East…”
The two states’ fundamental
and long term interests, however, do not coincide, nor is the convergence
always neat either in relation to Israel-Palestine or in the larger
Middle East, as I have argued. But even with this, and decades before
the neo-conservatives ascended to important positions of power, Israel
has been able to determine the direction and content of US policy toward
Palestine and undermine a constructive, normal (or normalized), relationship
with Arab states, including its conservative allies, who are forced
into a steady state of tension and fear over loss of their power within
a socio-political context of virtually non-existent political legitimacy.
This is the constant variable that has managed to distort and complicate
the United States’ rational and more intelligent management of
its presence in the Middle East and that has, in addition to endogenous
socio-economic, political and cultural causes, contributed mightily
to radicalization and frustration in the region. Even for an imperial
power, it makes no sense to accommodate every need and whim of one state,
whose own self-destructive actions in Palestine are often unjust, brutally
oppressive, and militaristic, over its larger and far more important
regional interests, thereby inducing widespread political anger and
frustration at the United States and discontent with the prevailing
status quo. Israel and its lobbying friends have managed to subvert
and avoid a balanced, rational system of American relations with and
support for Israel, the Palestinians, and the Arab states, thereby generating
a persistent environment for potential conflict, terrorism, and political
upheaval. These chronic, ever worsening conditions are good for no one.
(c) Issa Khalaf (This essay was written on 4/16/06)