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The Israel Lobby Lobby
By Michael Weiss / September 24, 2007
I've had an ongoing fascination with John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt's thesis and its very public discontents. By now everyone knows the story: A year and a half ago a pair of academics out of the realist school of foreign policy published an essay in the London Review of Books. Titled "The Israel Lobby," it argued that a group of high-octane American Jews were more or less controlling which countries the U.S. warred against and that they were doing so out of heated concern for Israel's interests. As with all good polemic/propaganda, countervailing evidence was ignored. You had to seek elsewhere for Eisenhower's response to the 1956 Suez crisis; our continued alliance with Saudi Arabia; Bush Sr.'s coercion of Israel's non-retaliation policy during the first Gulf War; Israel's early about-face in support of the second Gulf War; its uncharacteristic hesitance to bomb a neighboring state's nuclear facilities; its attempted rapprochement with Syria, which, up until two weeks ago anyway, was accompanied by much nail-biting at the U.S. State Department. Etc.
The scandal this essay engendered was as predictable as it was inevitable. A few all-star questions included: Were Mearsheimer and Walt anti-Semitic? Had they drafted a new Protocols for the 21st century? Was it slightly uncomfortable to see this stuff published in a British periodical ("How odd / Of God / To choose / The Jews")? Noam Chomsky called the authors "brave" but unenlightening. Tony Judt rushed to their defense saying that they had got it right and oh, by the way, a binational state of Jews and Muslims living together side by side was the only way forward in the holy land, demographic parity be damned. Most recently, in Slate, Ron Rosenbaum discussed his own personal involvement in the "Lobby," and how the newly expanded book edition of Mearsheimer and Walt's case has misquoted him on the touchy question of a potential second Holocaust. (The one-word designation "Lobby," incidentally, has became the noisiest tocsin of creepiness in the whole affair; like Freemason, Illuminati, or Madonna, a single utterance hints at worlds of epistemology, opinion and cant.)
I've been meaning to write more about the Lobby. Problem is, I haven't read the book yet. It's not for lack of trying, I assure you. Jewcy ordered it way back when I spotted it in the Farrar, Straus and Giroux Fall catalogue, and I've every day been checking our snail mail to see if Amazon's packaging for this eagerly awaited volume is nearly as cool as the Muggle-themed box that carried the final Harry Potter installment. (Are we talking a banal Magen David-studded U.S. flag? I want my money back.)
This unusual delay of service has got me thinking. Jewcy's taken some calculated risks in the past — talking to Joanna Angel's mom, soliciting work from Justin Raimondo, doing Jeiger shots with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at Mercer Kitchen. However, we've never asked for a book whose publisher might have been suspicious of dispatching a copy to an address with such an avowedly Semitic tendency. (Joey gets all his Kevin Macdonald sent straight to home.)
Consider where other advance copies must have gone. The Forward could be the name of any lefty rag; Tikkun sounds like Kanye West's girlfriend; Nextbook defies opacity of intent; The Jewish Week is what Mearsheimer and Walt would be writing if they wrote filler for VH1.
So I ask you: Is there now an Israel Lobby Lobby being run by good, Scowcroftian isolationists and anti-Zionists who keep saucy texts about the tribe from falling into Jewish hands? If there is, how on earth do they do it? And has Abe Foxman, whose own The Deadliest Lies: The Israel Lobby and the Myth of Jewish Control, taken a number out of their playbook by also keeping his review copy away from Jewcy's in-box? We're right there in DUMBO. Easy to get to. The Poland Spring guy finds us just fine every week. Honest.
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here are a few questions for those who have read the book, but still want to defend it. bush was origianly against opperation defensive shield. why did he change his mind about the opperation? the obvious answer is that after his initial remarks againt the israeli incursion there was a whole slew of suicide bombings including the the infamous passover bombing that took place. in fact it was the deadliest month for israel durring the 2nd intifada. additionaly arafat lied to bush about weapons imports and the IDF found a whole ship full of weapons that arafat had paid for and then told bush he had nothign to do with. But somehow none of this makes it into the book. in the book none of these suicide bombings or the arms ship are mentioned. Bush only changed his mid because of the Lobby. if this isnt a serious error of omision i dont know what is. in case you think this is an isolated episode here is another example. in 1991 the first bush was against loan garuntees for israel beacaus of the policies of the shamir government in the w. bank and gaza. in the book bush backs down because of the Lobby, but the book fails to mention that durring the period in question rabin was elected and his new government had a very different policy on the settlements. the book again fails to mention this and instead shows that bush was unable to stand up to the lobby. in fact it was the israeli poicy that changed not bush’s. if anyone (ismael that means you) thinks this is an acceptable methodology i would like to here a defence of it. to me it seems that it isnt fitting for a highschool student. i doubt tony judt would accept it from one of his students n european history. the book is full of blatent falicies such as these and the example of the rosenbaum quote mentioned above. the only reason it is being accepted by anyone is because it attacks israel and the jews if someone dissagrees please explain the examples given here.
you'd know this stuff if you'd read the book before pronouncing upon its shortcomings.
I wasn't. You'd know that if you absorbed the preceding bit where I clearly establish that my comments are based the London Review iteration of their argument.
I'm glad the book deals with the stuff I said the essay did not, though.
“…it argued that a group of high-octane American Jews were more or less controlling which countries the U.S. warred against…”
M&W take pains throughout the book to clarify that the Lobby consists of both Jews and Gentiles.
“You had to seek elsewhere for Eisenhower’s response to the 1956 Suez crisis….”
M&W begin with the assertion that US policy was not reflexively pro-Israel during DDE’s administration and describe what led to the shift in policy in the course of their argument.
“(M&W can’t explain) Bush Sr.’s coercion of Israel’s non-retaliation policy during the first Gulf War; Israel’s early about-face in support of the second Gulf War”…et al
Despite your attempts to cast their arguments in a Manichean light, M&W don’t claim that the US always and in every way slavishly follows Tel Aviv’s lead. They explicitly discuss the aspects of US policy you mention above, which represent fatal anomalies only to the fantasies of Idaho survivalists and similar crackpots who really do believe there’s a guy with a beaver hat and tzitzit with his hand up the ass of each member of the cabinet. To claim M&W’s argument is decisively countered by turning up instances like this is to compare them to paranoids who lunge at loaves of rye bread lest a crafty Jew be hiding therein. You don’t mean to do that, right? You’re agreeable to notions like, “in general”, or “in most cases”, right?
Of course,
“Problem is, I haven’t read the book yet”
you’d know this stuff if you’d read the book before pronouncing upon its shortcomings.
I don’t know which son of a monkey and/or pig spilled the fava beans about the Lobby Lobby to you, but I assure you he will be dealt with. In the meantime, in a gesture of the benevolence for which my people are legendary, I will speak to Omar in shipping and make sure he releases the Jewcy copy forthwith.
Can’t help with the Foxman screed, though. That thing simply imploded beneath the weight of its own whoppers and self-immolated. Prayers of thanks may be forwarded to the Almighty of your choosing.
Ismail
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