A working paper by John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Stephen Walt of Harvard University, titled “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy,” has provoked a furious response from critics, and—in an eerie confirmation of the paper’s point—seems to have led to the demotion of one of its authors. Released on March 13, the 83-page study, published by… return to article
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Reader Comments (57)Page 1 of 1 pagesLobby or no lobby the recent Israeli elections were quite scarey! The real difference is that the elections brought the racist transfer agenda, once considered taboo and in some extreme cases a cause for censure, out of the shadows and into the open where it has gained much respectiblity. Several of the parties, including Avigdor Leiberman’s Israel beitaynu (Israel is our Home), a reactionary culturally Russian Jewish oriented party, openly advocate transfer--the total or near total expulsion of Palestinians from the area of British mandatory Palestine or Israel/Palestine. The entire Knesset is dominated by the far-right. The only Left party, Meretz has but five seats, and Labour, which has all but capitulated to the right in order to form a coalition has only twenty seats and will only bolt the coalition in the event of a real crisis. Israeli Palestinians have nine seats. The proportion of religious representation has increased as well as those advocating transfer. The fact that Kadima, a centrist party, has split the far-right only means greater stability, legitimation, and respectability for the right wing agenda free of the polarizing image of Ariel Sharon. Now the suppression of the intifada will continue along with the colonization of Palestinian lands and water, the building of the Apartheid Wall, and Israeli military repression of Palestinian political activity. As former Sharon aide Dov Weissglass once said, the peace process is “suspended in [a kind of political] phamaldehyde allowing complete freedom of unilateral action regarding the final status of Israel/Palestine borders and security arrangements in Jerusalem.
Israel will now push ahead, free of international restraint, to utterly separate Israeli and Palestinian societies while colonizing Palestinian labor for the growing free trade zones in the area.. All this will continue to render unviable any future Palestinian state while leaving only Palestinian resistance politics as the only feasible kind.
Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Apr 7, 2006 at 12:43 AM It is a sad day when In These Times embraces the latest variation on “Jewish cabel” conspiracy theory. It would have been helpful to alert your readers that Noam Chomsky has criticized the article by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt.
Posted by Lonsesome Sparrow on Apr 7, 2006 at 7:45 PM Shocking new revelations—more reasons to impeach Bush
More conspiracies, lies and crimes revealedThis ad has been placed in the NY Times,
the SF Chronicle, and the Boston GlobeClick here to help place this ad
in more newspapers.The growing nation-wide effort to impeach George W. Bush and Dick Cheney is emblematic of a larger issue: what kind of country is the United States to become.
Yesterday’s news brought out two explosive pieces of information:
Lewis Libby, the indicted chief aide to Dick Cheney, has admitted under oath before a Federal Grand Jury that it was George W. Bush himself who authorized Libby to illegally “leak” classified information to New York Times reporter Judith Miller in July, 2003 in an effort to discredit Ambassador Joseph Wilson who had publicly stated that “there is nothing to the story” that Saddam Hussein’s government was trying to buy uranium for a nuclear weapons program. Wilson is the husband of Valerie Plame, the undercover CIA operative whose identity was revealed to the media as retaliation for Wilson’s contention that Bush’s assertions about Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction were false. The “classified information” that Bush and Cheney authorized Libby to plant in the New York Times turned out to be entirely false.
Bush’s Attorney General admitted yesterday that Bush believes that he has the authority to personally authorize the secret wiretapping, without any court order, of any and all conversations and emails between Americans that occur exclusively within the borders of the United States. Earlier it was revealed that Bush set up a massive secret wiretapping operation monitoring a huge number of Americans, but he had asserted that it was only to listen in on conversations of people in the United States who were making international calls and emails.
The fact that Bush has not already had articles of impeachment filed in the House of Representatives is clear evidence that the people must act forcefully as the true guardians of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. That is exactly what the ImpeachBush.org movement is doing. When impeachment looked remote, there were still tens of thousands of individuals who tirelessly worked to collect petitions, hold rallies, wrote and called members of Congress and donated so that we could place newspaper ads all across the country.Today, impeachment is not remote at all. It reflects the majority sentiment. Recent polls show that by 52% to 43% majority the American people favor impeachment if it is proved that Bush lied about the reasons for going to war. A nearly similar majority support impeachment if the President broke Federal wiretapping laws by authorizing the secret wiretapping of Americans without a court order when there is no evidence or inquiry of criminal wrongdoing.
Yesterday’s revelations confirm again that this is a lawless administration. Impeachment is imperative. This is a challenge for every person in this country who has a commitment to the Constitution. The people must continue to act rather than wait for the politicians to lead.
Now that more than 700,000 people have voted for impeachment at http://www.impeachbush.org/ it is urgent that we do everything in our power to make the issue of Bush’s criminal conduct a major issue between now and the November Congressional elections. The newspaper ads are an excellent way to keep the issue of impeachment front and center. We have succeeded in placing more and more ads because of the donations of the people who are committed to this course.
We want to increase the visibility in the weeks ahead with even more newspaper ads. Please continue to show your support by making a generous donation on-line or by learning how you can send a check. This is a grassroots people’s movement. It is historic and it can succeed with your help. Click here to make your contribution.
-All of us at VoteToImpeach/ImpeachBush.org
Posted by brian28 on Apr 7, 2006 at 9:44 PM The Israeli elections of March 2006 were the most dangerous in its history. It is quite clear that Israeli democracy is in full retreat. Of the twelve political parties to poll the required 2% of the vote to be eligable to submit a party list to be seated in the Knesset (Parliament) only 4 were from the left and of those 3 were Parties representing primarily Israeli Palestinians. The left recieved 15 of the 120 seats, not enough to form a caucus or to swing a major vote. The one non-Palestinian-Israeli party to get to seat members in the parliament was a party called Meretz who got 5 seats.
The Labour Party has moved so far right having lost its leading light from the Oslo period, Shimon Peres, who moved over to the Kadima (Forward) Party which is really Likud-Lite. Those who remain in the Labour Party have made serious reforms pushing the party rightward ala Tony Blair. These include massive privatization of the Israeli Parastatal companies and the trimming of state employment despite over 10% unemployment rates, full support for the security fence, opposition to the removal of further settlements beyond the few already agreed to by Sharon when he broke with Likud, and full support for continuing the occupation. Despite this Labour still managed to garner enough votes for only 19 seats or about 15% of the national vote.
All the other parties were of the far-right except Kadima which is supposed to be centrist even though its platform is nearly indistinguishable from the other right-wing parties. It broke with Likud over the Gaza disengagement which as everyone knows was not a real concession as Israel still controls the area but a mere redeployment of IDF troops. This was absolutely necessary to avoid a global crisis of confidence in the state and a mutiny in the Israeli defense forces on the ground. As of now, nearly 1,700 IDF army and air force personel have refused service in Gaza and the West Bank on political grounds. Many of them are now serving stiff prison terms as conscientious objectors. This is unjprecedented in all Israeli history. Not even the highly controversial War in Lebanon saw dissent on this order of magnitude. The Kadima Party polled the most votes as a nod to its dogged political practicality and earned 29 seats.
The remaining 57 parliamentary seats went to parties of the hard right and the forces of theocracy. These are parties led by individuals who openly support the forced expulsion of Arabs on either side of the 1967 “Green Line”, continued colonization of the Lands in the Palestinian Territories, an intensification of the Occupation, and the establishment of laws making the observance of Jewish Religious Law compulsory. The retreat from democratic and progressive tendencies in both Israel and Palestine will lead ultimately to a catastrophic war causing much bloodshed and instability.
One last observation. George W. Bush is the only US president to fail to see the gravity of the situation and not propose an emergency diplomatic effort to resolve or head off the impending crisis. Any other US president would recognize the need for immediate action. At this point there are precious few Israels to talk peace with and the old “Road Map” vision is off the table insufficiently pro-Israel despite its obvious cosmetic nature. A full out war is in the offing and it bodes nothing but ill for both peoples. If Us troops are eventually called to intervene and sustain heavy casualties, G-d help the US Jewish Community who will be fully blamed for the crisis.
Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Apr 8, 2006 at 1:46 AM I guess the study by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt was a useful study when considering the climate of censorship. It is also not surprising that institutions are making radical moves to condemn those who are associated with the report. That in itself is revealing.
Yet, I agree with Muwakkil that Jewish lobby groups are not by themselves responsible for U.S. foreign policy. If anything it reveals how Jewish lobby groups are able to increase their power and influence because the U.S. government has already taken a similar position on matters of foreign policy.
Rarely can I recall any politician supporting the right of a group or nation’s self determination, particularly when it affects the way the militarily powerful want to rule the world. Policy always leans toward maintaining asymmetrical relationships, keeping the privileged powerful, and the weak impoverished. Weapons always get into the hands of mercernaries and subversive groups, or “The Allies” looking to overturn potentially democratic governments that want to resist dependency on other powerful nations and organizations. There is a long ugly history of that.
As for Noam Chomsky, anyone familiar with his work can predict what he will say before he says it. He is very selective about the sources he sites and takes the same position again and again. Chomsky is Jewish. He has admitted to having a difficult time criticizing Israel. He actually takes the extreme opposite position as Mearsheimer and Walt. It is not Jewish lobby groups who have shaped American foreign policy, it is the other way around.
Each position reveals a certain degree of bias. There are multiple groups and organizations that exist in collusion with U.S. and European global power that has led to so many shameful wars against weaker nations. If no one has gathered that from the Iraq war then I guess no one will ever know.
Posted by Epistrophy on Apr 8, 2006 at 6:38 PM Epistrophy says,
“As for Noam Chomsky, anyone familiar with his work can predict what he will say before he says it. He is very selective about the sources he sites [sic!] and takes the same position again and again. Chomsky is Jewish. He has admitted to taking the extreme opposite position as Mearsheimer and Walt.”
Perhaps, but so has the Egyptian Marxist scholar (and Muslim) Samir Amin who is among the most respected voices on the Left and who has unequivocally stated that US support for Israel “has nothing to do with public opinion or ethnic lobbys”, but with unabashed imperialism and the globalization and concentration of capital accumulation. It seems that many on the Left have a problem with the standard pluralist methodological assumptions (and interest group focus) of Walt and Mearsheimer which fails to see imperialism as historically conditioned by stages of capitalist development and instead sees it as a mere policy preference based on the interests of private civil society groups.
To say that Noam Chomsky has a hard time criticizing Israel because he is Jewish is to be utterly unfamiliar with both Chomsky and his work. Chomsky believes that Zionism is a form of Western colonialism, period. He is also one of the most unrelenting critics of Israel. To say that Jews cannot criticize Israel because they are Jews is to gloss over volumes of the most profound and revealing criticism ever made of a modern state. It also prejudicially essentializes ethnicity by assigning it certain inexorable charactoristics which prefigure limits on thought and behavior. Such a position is clearly bigoted and reactionary.
Chomsky uses many sources, among them primary documents like UN investigations, print media accounts, government documents, and statements by public officials and private individuals. His writing is always clear and engaging. He is also informative. He is, therefore, one of our most valuable public intellectuals.
Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Apr 8, 2006 at 10:56 PM The US is one of the most successful settler states in the history of the world, and Israel is only one of its more modern adherents. To claim that Israeli foreign policy determines American foreign policy is misleading. If Israel has any influence on American foreign policy, it exists largely from its resonance to the American historical experience and its ability to generate public support for American imperial objectives.
Posted by Major Major on Apr 8, 2006 at 11:29 PM Major Major,
You are beginning to see reality!
Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Apr 9, 2006 at 12:11 AM major major and cabdriver are both correct. Israel has become a miniUSA in many, tho not all, respects. I personally think that is not all bad. I’m sure those of you who are critics of American political philosophy and economics disagree with my positive evaluation. (I am by the way overgeneralizing; there is much of America, like materialism, that I do not like. But I accept basic American values as the best in the real world of today.)
I will say that for those of you who do not like the shape and content of American society, there is more bad news. Most nations as they become more prosperous adopt the American model. Even after the US loses its preeminence to China, India or others, its legacy will be embedded in its successors’ values and economic methodology. A precedent would be the continuing influence of Ancient Greece after conquest by Rome, and Rome’s continuing influence after the Renaissance up to the present time.
Posted by knocko on Apr 9, 2006 at 7:03 AM cab driver: that was quite interesting how you took fragments from diffent sentences and rearranged them in cubist-like fashion. You should become an artist. It was interesting in light of the fact that you seem to admire Chomsky’s method of citing primary documents, etc.
Chomsky is an amazing public intellectual, but he is not without his faults. As Jeffrey Blankfort put it in his very insightful, well-researched article on Chomsky:
“To expose serious errors in Chomsky’s analysis and recording of history is to court almost certain opprobrium from those who might even agree with the nature of the criticism but who have become so protective of his reputation over the years, often through personal friendships, that have they not only failed to publicly challenge substantial errors of both fact and interpretation on his part, they have dismissed attempts by others to do so as “personal” vendettas.”
Criticism of Chomsky does not come from his failure to identify the crimes of Israel, which he has done quite exhaustively. It comes from his inability to acknowledge accountablity:
“A number of statements made by Chomsky have demonstrated his determination to keep Israel and Israelis from being punished or inconvenienced for the very monumental transgressions of decent human behavior that he himself has passionately documented over the years. This is one of the glaring contradictions in Chomsky’s work. He would have us believe that Israel’s occupation and harsh actions against the Palestinians, its invasions and undeclared 40 years war on Lebanon, and its arming of murderous regimes in Central America and Africa during the Cold War, has been done as a client state in the service of US interests. In Chomsky’s world view, that absolves Israel of responsibility and has become standard Chomsky doctrine.”
Irrespective of Chomsky’s shortcomings, I still agree with him in part and with Muwakkil who writes:
“If the lobby disappeared tomorrow, there’s little chance the administration would alter its policy toward Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, or even Palestinians.”
Posted by Epistrophy on Apr 9, 2006 at 12:32 PM Epistrophy,
You are quite correct to hold states and individuals entirely responsible for their actions! I think Chomsky does too. Refering to Israel as a client doesn’t absolve it of the crimes it has committed as a modern state. Nor does it absolve the individuals who made the official decisions or the ones who actually committed the crimes themselves. What Chomsky and other have tried to do is cite a higher and more embracing political context within which this takes place. Clearly without US imperialism Israel would have little significance.
Zionism is more Christian than Jewish as it reflects the Christian view of Old Testiment prophesy. It is simultaniously reviled by religious Jews who reject the pre-messianic establishment of a secular sovereign state in the Promised Land and by progressive Jews who abhor colonialism. Jewish leaders seem to have been weaned on Zionism as other political options steadily, and brutally, closed in the run-up to the Holocaust and in the time succeeding it until 1948. The Jewish masses came to Zionism out of little choice after rejecting it until the eleventh hour. The 2000 year Jewish dream of Palestine is a Christian myth as is the long supposed history of Jewish/Muslim conflict. It is always the truely powerful by whose myths we live. Ultimately, Chomsky correctly believes that Zionism and Israel isn’t really about the Jews.
I do agree that Chomsky has shortcomings. An excellent article in Social Research by Jeffrey Isaacs contrasts him and his work with Hannah Arendt and the work she did. Chomsky is found seriously wanting. Naturally it is difficult to match the contributions of one such as Arendt whose social criticisms will be as lasting as they are essential. Chomsky’s social criticisms are meant to address questions of post-WWII imperialism while Arendt’s are a profound critique of the very undergirdings of western civilization itself. Arendt’s task was infinitely more daunting.
Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Apr 9, 2006 at 2:35 PM cabby a ‘racial transfer agenda’ is more often refered to as ethnic cleansing. And what is also scary is that we hear very very little about those extremists.
Chomsky 28th march, and Muwakkill 6april, are both saying the same thing--- American foreign policy would have been the same without the Israeli Lobby--- and Muwakkill ends by saying its influence would ‘decline rapidly’ if US economic and security interests changed .
Chomsky’s article is peculiar . He ignores the fact that AIPAC and co ensure that no critical discussion of Israel is possible in Congress and very little in the Media, and then goes on to belittle its influence. Wow!
Like you and epistrophy I have a lot of repect for him, but there seems to be a blind spot there.
Posted by frog on Apr 9, 2006 at 2:49 PM The blind spot is that the Israeli historical experience mirrors its American model, and thereby confers upon Israel an ideological veneer of unexamined justification for its invasion and occupation of indigenous territories, and the gradual expulsion of its original inhabitants. Zionist settlers, many of them American expatriates steeped in the moral tradition of the Old West, travelling the Chisolm Trail to Jerusalem, beating back the hordes of hostile natives who attack them with demonic ferocity. What could be more evocative? It’s Gunsmoke, with Hebrew subtitles.
Posted by Major Major on Apr 9, 2006 at 5:52 PM cabdriver: I will look into the work by Jeffrey Isaacs. Thanks
Posted by Epistrophy on Apr 9, 2006 at 6:00 PM Major Major,
You will surely be interested in a book by Micheal Prior called The Bible and Colonialism. He critiques colonial consciousness as being historically linked to and politically legitimated by the Exodus narrative in the Old Testiment. The modern settlers are the “Chosen Ones” who expel the native Canaanite “savages” who are deemed morally “unworthy” by virtue of their lack of western cultural trappings such as belief in scientific progress, private property, the Protestant work ethic, European Enlightenment era notions of “citizenship”, and the modern nation-state. It is an intersting read and a critique of the modern expansionist colonial experience in British North America, Cromwell’s Ireland, Dutch South Africa, and Zionism in Palestine.
Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Apr 9, 2006 at 7:04 PM Frog,
Perhaps the real role of AIPAC is not the bribing of key Politicians but the control of US political discourse on the issue of Israel/Palestine. This is even more important for them in the long run!
Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Apr 9, 2006 at 7:10 PM Neat reference there to Leo Strauss, Major !
Cabby, I agree on the control of the discourse (who couldn’t ?), but the control of a large number of politicians is a vital part of that, surely ? Not all bribed, for sure, but all aware that the attitude of AIPAC often the difference between being selected then elected , and NOT.
On Kosovo, Chomsky was not trying to provide some master theory, just pointing out that the propaganda war pre the bombing of Yugoslavia was just that, propaganda. The ‘massacre’ at Racak, etc.
.
Posted by frog on Apr 9, 2006 at 7:27 PM epistrophy,
The reference is Jeffrey Isaac, in Social Research Vol. 69 #2 (summer 2002) Hannah Arendt on Human Rights and the Limits of Exposure; or Why Noam Chomsky is Wrong about Kosovo.
Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Apr 9, 2006 at 7:31 PM The idea is to make apartheid and ethnic cleansing morally defensible, not simply because of any inherent sympathetic affiliation with Israeli Zionists, but because Zionism resonates with and reinforces American imperial policy, which began almost as soon as American independence from the British was concluded. William Appleman Williams describes the American westward expansion as an imperial project which required the serial extirpation of indigenous natives from the territories which eventually were incorporated into the “united states” of North America. This project would have been impossible without the importation of European emigrants, who otherwise would have revolted against the leadership of their respective regimes. American imperialism thereby ensured the consolidation of European capitalism, just as Israeli Zionism currently ensures the consolidation of American capitalism.
Posted by Major Major on Apr 9, 2006 at 9:56 PM MajorMajor,
I agree that there is a link between European capitalism and US colonialist expansionism. As settlers came from Europe to settle the US, social pressure was relieved in European cities by reducing the reserve army of labour and thus the political pressures on nascent European capitalism. The US also provided markets for finished goods and a source of cheap raw materials like cotton for European industries. Yet I am not sure if Israeli colonialism and US capitalism have the same symbiotic relationship. US imperialism uses the Israeli client to suppress Arab nationalism by militarily applying pressure on militants and the regimes that harbour them. The US also invests heavily in Israel at a great profit. But it a patron/client relationship not a symbiotic one involving mutual and co-terminous, early capitalist development.
Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Apr 9, 2006 at 11:47 PM forest from the trees debate?
ladies and gentlemen. The israelis are there. there is a country called israel. it does have a language. nearly all nations do business with it (including some who don’t “recognize” it).
israel is composed of diverse people; not only by ethnic and religious group, but by political opinion. far more diverse than the USA. I daresay those of you on the US left would feel very comfortable in Israel compared with the US. Your opinions would actually be taken seriously.!
Now. Given that real human beings are involved, and not chess pieces to be moved about in a fantasy history board game, what are we going to do? Categorization of people in Marxist or other rigid categories is not going to save lives, make kids’ futures happier, or prevent a world war from beginning in that volatile area.
Pretend that the Middle East neighborhood adjoined your neighborhood. What would you do? What would you say?
Posted by knocko on Apr 10, 2006 at 1:31 PM sorry to take up two consecutive posts. My memory must be fading. cabdriver, you mention US investment in Israel. I could be wrong, but the Israeli biomedical, electronics and medical equipment industries are heavily invested in the USA, particularly in high tech suburbs around Boston, DC, NY, LA and other major areas. Israel also does defense work subcontracting for the Pentagon or its contractors (how much I don’t know).
None of the above concerns me a bit. In fact, it means Israel generates jobs in the US. But if you have a problem with Israel from some form of Marxist perspective, I don’t think the problem is that the US in investing in Israel in the traditional Lenin “Imperialism” format. Indeed, as teh US that model is obsolete in a world where trade is controlled not by the USA but by China, Japan and OPEC nations .
You might think of the US as the London bank that services its former colonies, but the colonies eventually will create their own bank. The US is in decline. The Marxist audience should feel optimism; another fifty years at most (I’m sure less) and US “imperialism” or world dominance will be a faded memory. Most likely Israel as well (economic decline, not military defeat). Of course be careful for what you wish for.............China is not exactly Civl Rights Central.
Posted by knocko on Apr 10, 2006 at 1:40 PM Cabby in view of the important place of organised crime both sides, maybe crime partnership rather than client/patron ! Israel arms to Latin American terrorists, drugs in return, same as CIA..
Uri Avneri has a slightly more positive take on those elections than you , but sityation still grim as capitalist world demonising Hamas.
“"Less than two thirds of the registered citizens did actually take the trouble to vote. Politicians of all stripes are detested, democracy despised among the young, whole sectors estranged. Those who decided not to vote, but at the last moment relented, voted for the Pensioners’ List, which jumped from nothing to an astonishing seven seats.
This was a real protest vote. Even young people told themselves: Instead of throwing our vote away, let’s do them a favor. Old people, sick people (including the terminally ill), handicapped people and the entire health and education systems were the victims of the Thatcherite economic policies of Netanyahu, backed by Sharon, which Shimon Peres (of all people) called “swinish”. “”
Knocko US is not Civil Rights Central either, viewed increasingly by the people of the world as a Rogue State .
Posted by frog on Apr 10, 2006 at 2:03 PM As long as Israel remains an exclusively Jewish state, exclusive of the Palestinians it expelled, it will continue to attract the animosity of the region, and thereby preclude the secular development of the Middle East, an economic evolution which otherwise would naturally align itself to European integration. US foreign policy has consistently been applied to prevent any alliance of Middle Eastern states with any of its economic rivals. What could be more symbiotic than this?
Posted by Major Major on Apr 10, 2006 at 5:42 PM Knocko.
The Israelis do in fact have a lot of investment in the US. Most of it is in the fields you mentioned like, computer software, medical supplies, and consumer electronics. Israel also has somewhere between 70 and 90 firms which list on the NASDEQ because there is more money to be made and duel listings with the TASE will only bring a heavy capital gains tax from the Israeli government on such stocks because of their foreign listing being considered a reason to tax domestic investment in those stocks as foreign capital gains. It is also important to note that in 2004, UNCTAD reported that foreign direct investment (FDI) in Israel grew from under 5% of total Israeli gross fixed capital formation to over 20% in 2003. Much of this investment was American. Many believe that companies like Intel where instrumental in the early promotion of the Israeli computer business primarily through technology transfer.
The point is that the opening up of the Israeli economy to FDI both ways and its continued globalization through the development of high tech markets and the eclipse of old consumer goods markets and military industries has lead to high GDP growth rates without comensurate growth in jobs, income, and, thus, domestic demand. Though the consequences of neo-liberalization for the Israeli economy were similar to those for the US economy-widening disparities in local income distribution and higher unemployment due to capital flight and/or outsourcing-the political consequences were the Labour Party’s drive for the Oslo Accords with the Palestinians as well as the Jordanian Peace Accords because of the globalization opportunities afforded and promoted by peace or at least a renewed stabilization of the conflict. The pacification of the Palestinians, even as they are proletarianized by the Apartheid wall and the occupation into a labour pool for new foreign established industries in the Occupied Territories, was also an integral part of the Oslo Accords.
The Marxist angle is globalization’s effect on the concentration and centralization of capital world-wide and its indiscriminant effects on the skewing of income distribution in all the nations involved. Oslo was a plan for globalizing the Palestinian economy and integrating it with the Israeli one through trade and investment. Egyptian and Jordanian labor also are integrated through existing free trade zones. In US clothing markets one can already see clothing labels printed with “QIZ (Qualified Industrial Zone)Jordan” indicating clothing that is made in Jordanian Free Trade Zones that used to be made in poor Israeli industrial towns in the Galilee like Beit Shean. This is one reason that the working class Sephardic Jews stick with the far right--the Labour Party is seen as the party that promoted the outsourcing of their jobs. Naturally, the right is also for globalization, though they opportunistically use nationalism to fight the Labour Party. The same is true in other countries where nationalism is used as a distraction for the rich’s class war on the poor.
The point is that all this is about globalization and the restructuring of the global division of labor through the hyper-mobility of capital. The consequences for the poor are dire while the rich get richer. Political conflict is a way of pacifying economic struggles. Everywhere poverty grows as old local economies crumble amidst new wealth generated by new markets and the globalization of old ones.
Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Apr 11, 2006 at 7:41 AM But the alternative to globalization is, in fact, nationalism. It’s not as if the neocons are simply paying lip service to nationalist principles in order to mystify the masses with appeals to religious and cultural parochialism, as they continue to globalize the world economy. Or, in any case, it doesn’t much matter if they are. The net result remains the same: a steady increase in nationalist sentiment throughout the world, cultural xenophobia, religious hysteria and proto-fascist populism. One might just as easilly argue that the neocons achieved political dominance from the reaction to a neoliberal faith in economic globalization. Countries, including the US, no longer toe the internationalist line; they assert the right to act unilaterally in defense of their individual interests, from the reregulation of foreign financial investment to the enrichment of uranium to the summary resolution of Palestinian displacement to the invasion and occupation of a sovereign state. How much of it is calculated and premeditated to promote globalization is debatable. In fact, one might argue that it’s calculated to inhibit globalization when the results threaten to destabilize the status quo.
Posted by Major Major on Apr 12, 2006 at 10:40 PM cabdriver in chicago’s discussion of israeli investment in US and how global capital affects employment is an excellecnt example of how a discussion site can inform. I do not feel qualified to offer any specific criticisms I do know that we need more contributions from informed readers of ITT like this so as to expand the range of our questions. The world, unfortunately for an old timer like me, becomes more complex. We need agile minds to clarify matters yet with an analytical intellegence that the post I refer to has.
Posted by knocko on Apr 14, 2006 at 8:39 AM Knocko,
You are truely to kind in your praise!!! I am very grateful!!! Major, Major has some interesting and important points about the prevention of Middle Eastern/European Union economic integration. The US has always tried to marginalize any but its own influence in the region. This seems to have been the consistent policy since the 1971 rejection of the Rogers Peace Plan and Rogers’ replacement as US Secretary of State by Henry Kissenger. If chaos in the region has entrenched theocracy and deepened religiously oriented forms of political resistence to outside intrusion then this cause has been even more profoundly served by such decisions as the 2003 invasion of Iraq. US troop presence in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Afghanistan, and other places has also strengthened the hand of the Clerics So has US saber rattling against Iran over the nuclear issue. US support for Israel and the “special relationship” aggravates this situation even more so as does the continuing state of war in Iraq and the failure of reconstruction in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
The Petro-dollar/Petro-Euro War is only a great, and highly current, symbol of the three and one half decades long US struggle to keep exclusive influence in the Middle East and to marginalize European influence and prevent multi-lateral solutions to the Israel/Palestine conflict and other conflicts. To do so would spread political influence and power in the region to various concerned states thus increasing the chances for peace and democracy while reducing US economic control over the energy resources in the Persian Gulf and Caspean Sea. In a world where neo-conservatives have full control of the US Presidency in their unchecked drive for US imperial domination, multilateralism works decisively against their purposes. An agenda of peace, democracy, security, and stability would be better served by the multilateralism long eschewed by US imperialism. Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians is only one facet of this complex political configuration that aggravates the overall problem. Israel behaves as, and is in fact, a loyal US client state. Thus, the vortex of US strategy and Israeli complicity is partly, but not ultimately, Israel’s responsibility. Predictably, most of Israel’s people-Jewish, Arab, or otherwise-are being harmed by the current policies, patterns of political alliances, and military conflict in the entire region from the Levant to the Indian Ocean.
Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Apr 15, 2006 at 1:02 PM It doesn’t take a brilliant scholar like Chomsky to distill the facts here. “Our” Congress and Senate are partially owned ("lobby"=bribery)by “Israel”, which is a US-supported invader and occupier, which continues to disposess and systematically exterminate the rightful owners of what is Palestine, under siege. Does anyone remember Nazi Germany???
I’m so tired of hearing the ridiculous accusation of “anti-semitism” against any and all who criticizes the despicable “Our GOD told us to do it” excuse.
I, for one, am NOT intimidated by right-wing religious fanatics and their opportunistic facilitators, whether they be Jewish or otherwise. Invasion, property destruction / theft and genocide of a previously peaceful people are justifiable under no terms whatever. Israel is successful at fooling most, but not all the world.
Steven Wanzell,
artist/activist/ex-American
www.wanzellarts.com.ar
Posted by wanzellarts on Apr 17, 2006 at 12:41 PM wanzellarts: israel causes headaches. so does the us. there are real people however in both countries, the overwhelming majority of whom are decent people who would like fairly boring lives: family, an occasional holiday, hearing a good joke, a job that provides basic living decency. palestinians desire the same. I read your post, and to be honest the image I see is hate. your hate. that is my impression. if you state that you do not hate jews, i will take your word for it. but that is the tone you exude.
rightwing fanatics are not the majority of israelis. there is a lot of baggage both palestinians and israelis bear from the past. It would be easy for me to say that they should dump most of it and just treat each other as neighbors. (if they would, problem solved). but people bring their traditions with them. both peoples have postive traditions as well as acts best left in the past. let’s see if we can encourage the postive impulses and ethics that milliions of Jews and Arabs have. We know what the alternative is. To date, Palestinians have born the brunt of the tactics their leaders adopted. Israelis too suffer from their leaderships’ stubborness. Each also sufffers from bias and prejudice widespread in both communities. A solution cannot be premised on tagging one side with the “evil” label while the other side represents “good”.
Let’s deal wtth real people as people, not stereotypes.
Posted by knocko on Apr 17, 2006 at 3:33 PM Denying (or even debating) the reality of the “Lobby” is like denying the reality of algebra. You can do it, but it is a really stupid thing to do.
The results of course have been utterly predictable, with Meirsheimer and Walt’s piece getting almost no MSM coverage (except for rebuttals from rabid Zionists), literally proving their point and showing yet again that Israel is a forbidden subject. Thank god they didn’t write about the Holocaust. They’d be in prison.
I welcome the day when our foreign policy is not formulated to placate the arrogant and narcissistic 2% of our population who could give a fuck about the rest of us but use our blood and treasure to prop up their supremacism in a crumby litte Valhalla none of them want to live in.
Posted by opeluboy on Apr 17, 2006 at 4:54 PM Opeluboy,
How is it that you post this trash then turn around and expect people not to consider you a bigot. You just don’t understand. Israel is not about the Jews. Its about the US keeping everybody elses influence out of an oil rich area called the Middle East. The frontline Arab states like Jordan, Syria, and Egypt also wanted to prevent the emergence of an independant Palestinian state. Read Avi Shlaim’s Collusion Across the Jordan and you’ll see how each of the Frontline Arab states fought each other for pieces of Arab Palestine in order to enhance their respective realms while diminishing the Palestinian’s chance for freedom! Shlaim is one of Israel’s greatest historians of the Left. He hates Israel and lives and teaches in Great Britain.
Christians are taught to hate the Jews, treat them all the same and think of them as an undifferentiated, closed caste with one mind and pocketbook. The Churches are largely to blame because they won’t talk about the Jews in any but biblical terms. Most Jews don’t support the occupation but there are a few powerful neo-conservtives who don’t represent the majority of Jews. The neo-conservative agenda dovetails well with the right-wing Fundamentalist Christians and the US Department of Defense and its corporate contractors. The Jewish peace movement is now, unfortunately, powerless. By the way US Jews are quite loyal to the US and don’t really fit the false stereotype of arrogant people who don’t give a rat’s ass about anyone else.
Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Apr 17, 2006 at 9:36 PM Knocko: When it comes to tyranny - yes, I hate it.
Posted by wanzellarts on Apr 18, 2006 at 11:00 AM cabby
I was brought up as Christian, never heard anything about hating Jews.Methinks you protest too much about Israel not being about the Jews, (or at least, someJews ) when it is as plain as day that AIPAC and the rest are just about the most influential lobbies in the US, and their equivalents elsewhere.
Nobody here ever said that all jewish americans are rabid Zionists, but most of the neo-cons are. I’m sure that many Israelis wish for less support from their american co-religionists, some of whom are dumbly well-intentioned and others are just neo-cons, as you say.
A very difficult subject, this one, and difficult not to put my foot in it, but I think you can be unfair in your reactions. It didn’t seem to me that opelboy was being any more antisemitic than I, which is not at all.
Posted by frog on Apr 19, 2006 at 5:28 PM Thanks, frog. I am not an anti-Jewish person ( I will not use anti-Semite as I think it is a wrongly used term; most Jews are not Semites).
My problem is with supremacism. I detest it in any of its forms. I believe in justice and equal rights for all people, even those the Zionists (both Christianist and Jewish) feel are in the way. A vast number of Israelis agree with my viewpoints (indeed many of my beliefs have been shaped over the years by Israelis working for peace) and they are not all “self-hating Jews.” I am in daily communication with Israeli/Jewish and Palestinian peace groups. Unlike most Americans, I know what is going on. Unlike a vast majority of Jewish Americans, I do not pretend none of this is happening or try to rationalize it or excuse it. That is why I am hard on those responsible for it.
And here is something most Zionists cannot say. Were the situation reversed, with Jews being the victims of this slow-motion genocide and the Palestinians being the brutal occupiers, I would be on the side of the Jews.
That is because I believe in justice, equality and human rights and that the blood of every person on this planet is equally precious.
No Zionist can claim this, because no Zionist believes it.
Posted by opeluboy on Apr 19, 2006 at 7:12 PM Opeluboy,
You referred to all Jews when you called the US Jewish community “that arrogant and narcissistic 2% of the population who could give a fuck about the rest of us and use our blood and treasure to prop up their supremicism in a crumby little Valhalla none of them want to live in.”
If this isn’t anti-semitism than what is!? The vast majority of Jews have little or nothing to do with Israel. Most just want to live normal lives in the US. Most of the concern for Israel, when it does manifest itself, comes from the fact that almost all Jews have relatives living in Israel whom the US Jewish community prefers to be living here. This is also proof that most of the Jews in Israel descend from people that wanted to come to the English speaking west during WWII but were denied entrance. This is something most Americans don’t know. The Israelis don’t have much control over the government of Israel any more than most Americans control what Washington does. To blame all Jews and call them foul names and accuse them of disloyalty is stupid and bigoted.
Frog,
You know damn well that Christianity is anti-Jewish, especially European Roman Catholicism. You come from France for shit’s sake! Have you been asleep all your life!? The only people the French hate more than Americans is Jews!!!!!! There have been numerous assaults and terrorist acts against Jews in France as your must know with very little response from the President or general population. Most French people think all Jews deserve this treatment because they hold all of them equally responsible for the IDF occupation of Palestine. Most French people have a deep hatred of Jews as taught by the Church. If the Church isn’t anti-Jewish where does all the hate come from!? Europe is nothing if not a cauldron of anti-semitism like the American deep south was racist in the days before Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights Movement. In fact, it is very hard historically to separate European identity from hatred of Jews like it is hard to separate the American South and the KKK from racism against Blacks. Interestingly, most of the Jews in Europe are newly arrived Sephardim from Israel and the Arab world. The Europeans killed all the others long ago (except for the ones who successfully fled behind Soviet lines during the Second World War).
Of Course, you’ll say this is a Zionist rant. It is not! I hate Israel. I am very disaffected with it and believe that it is obviously not the answer to the “Jewish Question” in any way at all. I also think it is an inherently a colonialist movement that has oppressed the Palestinians as pointed out very early on by the great French/Jewish Anthropologist, Maxim Rodenson. I just know that the Church still teaches hatred of Jews and that many Christians believe it. It is also obvious that Europeans still believe that the Jew is the one who controls everything as he “whispers into the ears of kings” and secretly conspires for world domination. An increasing number of Americans also believe this even as many of them continue their support for Israel. Tell me, would you like to be thought of in this way? It doesn’t even make any common sense! For many Europeans the Jew is a metaphor for secret plotting and a phantom like creature that haunts them. I know many Poles in Chicago who tell me that Warsaw is one third Jewish, the Prime Minister is half Jewish and rich, and that the Jews own most of Warsaw. Obviously, there are hardly more than five or ten thousand Jews in the whole country and they have almost nothing. This is how hate creates incredible paranoid images. Even when there are no Jews to speak of, those who hate them dream them up as a kind of psychological means to avoid confronting old canards and worn out beliefs!
Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Apr 20, 2006 at 7:25 AM cabby
For the record, first 30yrs UK WASP, last 29 Europe, mostly here.Maybe I wasn’t listening to the indoctrination , I find I’m also surprisingly immune to the commercials on the TV !
Or maybe there wasn’t any ?
Which does not mean that there was not some around, but not near me.For illustration—in 1974 an anglophobe frog asked me what the english thought about the french. I had to think a bit, and then give the honest but cruel answer-- “the english don’t think about the french. POINT. FULL STOP ! “
Less true today.Some assaults on jews here, including one horrible murder, true.
The public response from president down was very strong. If I remember correctly he and sarkozy marched with thousands to demonstrate opposition to antisemitism.
The contemporaneous racist murder of an arab received no such loud public condemnation.........................AS was strong among certain classes in UK and france in the Thirties, and back through history . In france I agree particularly among the rightwing provincial bourgeoisie, the ones we still call “tres catho”. A snobbish miserable narrow-minded hypocritical bunch.
It’s already not easy being a human being, and it increases if you are jewish and hyper-sensitive as well. It also increases if you are of arab origin living in france, get discriminated against for work and housing, often stopped by the cops, and see the French Establishment mourning one guy , and ignoring another ?
Posted by frog on Apr 20, 2006 at 3:11 PM A Lobby, Not a Conspiracy
By TONY JUDT0919/06 “New York Times”—-- IN its March 23rd issue the London Review of Books, a respected British journal, published an essay titled “The Israel Lobby.” The authors are two distinguished American academics (Stephen Walt of Harvard and John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago) who posted a longer (83-page) version of their text on the Web site of Harvard’s Kennedy School.
As they must have anticipated, the essay has run into a firestorm of vituperation and refutation. Critics have charged that their scholarship is shoddy and that their claims are, in the words of the columnist Christopher Hitchens, “slightly but unmistakably smelly.” The smell in question, of course, is that of anti-Semitism.
This somewhat hysterical response is regrettable. In spite of its provocative title, the essay draws on a wide variety of standard sources and is mostly uncontentious. But it makes two distinct and important claims. The first is that uncritical support for Israel across the decades has not served America’s best interests. This is an assertion that can be debated on its merits. The authors’ second claim is more controversial: American foreign policy choices, they write, have for years been distorted by one domestic pressure group, the “Israel Lobby.”
Some would prefer, when explaining American actions overseas, to point a finger at the domestic “energy lobby.” Others might blame the influence of Wilsonian idealism, or imperial practices left over from the cold war. But that a powerful Israel lobby exists could hardly be denied by anyone who knows how Washington works. Its core is the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, its penumbra a variety of national Jewish organizations.
Does the Israel Lobby affect our foreign policy choices? Of course — that is one of its goals. And it has been rather successful: Israel is the largest recipient of American foreign aid and American responses to Israeli behavior have been overwhelmingly uncritical or supportive.
But does pressure to support Israel distort American decisions? That’s a matter of judgment. Prominent Israeli leaders and their American supporters pressed very hard for the invasion of Iraq; but the United States would probably be in Iraq today even if there had been no Israel lobby. Is Israel, in Mearsheimer/Walt’s words, “a liability in the war on terror and the broader effort to deal with rogue states?” I think it is; but that too is an issue for legitimate debate.
The essay and the issues it raises for American foreign policy have been prominently dissected and discussed overseas. In America, however, it’s been another story: virtual silence in the mainstream media. Why? There are several plausible explanations. One is that a relatively obscure academic paper is of little concern to general-interest readers. Another is that claims about disproportionate Jewish public influence are hardly original — and debate over them inevitably attracts interest from the political extremes. And then there is the view that Washington is anyway awash in “lobbies” of this sort, pressuring policymakers and distorting their choices.
Posted by frog on Apr 21, 2006 at 1:00 AM QUOTE CONT...Each of these considerations might reasonably account for the mainstream press’s initial indifference to the Mearsheimer-Walt essay. But they don’t convincingly explain the continued silence even after the article aroused stormy debate in the academy, within the Jewish community, among the opinion magazines and Web sites, and in the rest of the world. I think there is another element in play: fear. Fear of being thought to legitimize talk of a “Jewish conspiracy”; fear of being thought anti-Israel; and thus, in the end, fear of licensing the expression of anti-Semitism.
The end result — a failure to consider a major issue in public policy — is a great pity. So what, you may ask, if Europeans debate this subject with such enthusiasm? Isn’t Europe a hotbed of anti-Zionists (read anti-Semites) who will always relish the chance to attack Israel and her American friend? But it was David Aaronovitch, a Times of London columnist who, in the course of criticizing Mearsheimer and Walt, nonetheless conceded that “I sympathize with their desire for redress, since there has been a cock-eyed failure in the U.S. to understand the plight of the Palestinians.”
And it was the German writer Christoph Bertram, a longstanding friend of America in a country where every public figure takes extraordinary care to tread carefully in such matters, who wrote in Die Zeit that “it is rare to find scholars with the desire and the courage to break taboos.”
How are we to explain the fact that it is in Israel itself that the uncomfortable issues raised by Professors Mearsheimer and Walt have been most thoroughly aired? It was an Israeli columnist in the liberal daily Haaretz who described the American foreign policy advisers Richard Perle and Douglas Feith as “walking a fine line between their loyalty to American governments ...and Israeli interests.” It was Israel’s impeccably conservative Jerusalem Post that described Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of defense, as “devoutly pro-Israel.” Are we to accuse Israelis, too, of “anti-Zionism”?
Posted by frog on Apr 21, 2006 at 1:03 AM QUOTE contnued....The damage that is done by America’s fear of anti-Semitism when discussing Israel is threefold. It is bad for Jews: anti-Semitism is real enough (I know something about it, growing up Jewish in 1950’s Britain), but for just that reason it should not be confused with political criticisms of Israel or its American supporters. It is bad for Israel: by guaranteeing it unconditional support, Americans encourage Israel to act heedless of consequences. The Israeli journalist Tom Segev described the Mearsheimer-Walt essay as “arrogant” but also acknowledged ruefully: “They are right. Had the United States saved Israel from itself, life today would be better ...the Israel Lobby in the United States harms Israel’s true interests.”
BUT above all, self-censorship is bad for the United States itself. Americans are denying themselves participation in a fast-moving international conversation. Daniel Levy (a former Israeli peace negotiator) wrote in Haaretz that the Mearsheimer-Walt essay should be a wake-up call, a reminder of the damage the Israel lobby is doing to both nations. But I would go further. I think this essay, by two “realist” political scientists with no interest whatsoever in the Palestinians, is a straw in the wind.
Looking back, we shall see the Iraq war and its catastrophic consequences as not the beginning of a new democratic age in the Middle East but rather as the end of an era that began in the wake of the 1967 war, a period during which American alignment with Israel was shaped by two imperatives: cold-war strategic calculations and a new-found domestic sensitivity to the memory of the Holocaust and the debt owed to its victims and survivors.
For the terms of strategic debate are shifting. East Asia grows daily in importance. Meanwhile our clumsy failure to re-cast the Middle East — and its enduring implications for our standing there — has come into sharp focus. American influence in that part of the world now rests almost exclusively on our power to make war: which means in the end that it is no influence at all. Above all, perhaps, the Holocaust is passing beyond living memory. In the eyes of a watching world, the fact that an Israeli soldier’s great-grandmother died in Treblinka will not excuse his own misbehavior.
Thus it will not be self-evident to future generations of Americans why the imperial might and international reputation of the United States are so closely aligned with one small, controversial Mediterranean client state. It is already not at all self-evident to Europeans, Latin Americans, Africans or Asians. Why, they ask, has America chosen to lose touch with the rest of the international community on this issue? Americans may not like the implications of this question. But it is pressing. It bears directly on our international standing and influence; and it has nothing to do with anti-Semitism. We cannot ignore it.
Posted by frog on Apr 21, 2006 at 1:06 AM First of all NOBODY is accusing critics of Israel of anti-semitism. Old shitty neo-cons don’t count! Most of the people on this thread, particularly Opeluboy, are setting up a straw man to knock down. If you call whole groups of millions of people you don’t know wretched names expect to be considered bigoted by reasonable people! Even many Zionists, much less Jews, oppose the continued occupation of the Palestinian Territories. The Jews and the “Israel Lobby” are not an obsticle to change in US foreign policy in the Middle East much less an obsticle to open discussion anywhere. Tom Segev, the Israeli Journalist that you quote, is among the first “revisionist” or “new wave” historians of early Israeli history. His research, as well as that of others in this new historical school, have proven claims and unearthed facts that are seriously damaging to Zionism’s legitimating arguments about “Arab aggression” and other myths of the 1948 War of Independance. This is only one small example of what I mean. Many people also assume unjustified things about the US Jewish community that they shouldn’t when it comes to politics in general. Many polls have shown that most US Jews would trade land for peace. There are only a small handful of religious fanatics supporting current policies. Of course if you start by calling people names they will give a negative response--perhaps one which confirms the myths by which many so called people on the left live by. If you want to change US policy toward Israel start instead with the Pentagon, the large corporate defense contractors, the rightist fundamentalist Christians and their conservative Republicans allies who are really the ones making the argument for “Jewish exceptionalism” ("they’ve been killing each other for thousands of years” “ all this is prophesied in the good book"), and, finally, the majority of lazy ass politicians in general who find it is just as easy to conduct business as usual and get away with it. The US seems to get what they want out of the Arab States regardless of our attitude towards the Israel/Palestine conflict (who cares less about the Palestinians than other Arabs?). This is tragic but certainly not the fault of the Jews! There is no conspiricy! That’s all were saying. We’re all good folks. Really!
Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Apr 21, 2006 at 8:07 AM I have tried to step delicately around this subject, for the same reason that the US MSM have largely avoided it, being gutless under pressure, for the simple reason that it is very damned near to TABOO.
You bet the Lobby exists , one of the most powerful and not only in the US, either.
You misrepresented Opeluboy—his point of view was the same as mine. We all three do agree on many very important facts.
How on Earth can you write---------
The Jews and the “Israel Lobby” are not an obsticle to change in US foreign policy in the Middle East much less an obsticle to open discussion anywhere.
From Chomsky on, forgetting the outright neo-cons, writers have saluted the difficulty for these two in breaking the TABOO. Of course “the jews” is an irrelevance, lumping all jews as Zionists. That is rubbish.
The Israel Lobby is very real, highly organised, very well-funded, extraordinarily powerful, and definitely is an obstacle to open discussion.
If most US jews would trade land for peace, I’m very happy to hear it.
BUT until they get off their arses and tell their congresspeople that AIPAC does not represent them, as jewish American voters , AIPAC and satellites will continue to have extraordinary influence.
Posted by frog on Apr 21, 2006 at 3:18 PM No way I, if american !, would start with the defence contractors or the Pentagon. or the rightist fundamentalist christians, Congress and the White House . are where AIPAC has extraordinary influence.
Posted by frog on Apr 21, 2006 at 3:34 PM Frog,
That is because you are still fixated on AIPAC and not other sources of support for the status quo. This thing about “the Lobby” is a canard. Other sources of support are far more important. The Lobby only spends about a million bucks annually and then only on local US Congressional races (not the Senate or the White House) where the opposing candidate is weak. Undying support for Israel never SAVED any candidate who was weak and unpopular or who was in a crisis over some other issue! Just get it through your heads! US policy is firm on this issue with or without the Jews or the Lobby (two different things). Israel is seen as a security asset! Can you tell me what the US would gain by throwing in its lot with the Palestinians that it could not achieve in any case? I know that I’m tilting at windmills.
Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Apr 22, 2006 at 1:19 PM cabby
I recently read a report of a 2003 meeting of 50,000 people here in france, Amitie-france-israel or somesuch, where govt ministers, ex-ministers of left and right , and national level pols of all parties except the “extreme left” and “very extreme right” were represented.
Supposedly there are about 500,000 jewish people in france, so not a bad turn-out.Let us look at the Holocaust Museums in the US. These are springing up like mushrooms, and cost a lot of dollars. Seems to me you misunderestimate the amount of money those guys have to play with.
I have never suggested that AIPAC & Co has completely dictated US foreign policy, though a re-reading of Mearsheimer&Walt;, and the art by Tony Judt I posted just above, DO indicate that the influence is immeasurably more than a paltry million a year of lobbying would buy.
I completely agree with you that there are other geostrategic reasons, other lobbies, that might otherwise potentially have put the US in the same position as it is today;---now largely feared and even detested by the rest of the world.
My understanding of this goes along with W&M;, Tony Judt. US foreign policy might have , probably would, have been rather different without the Zionist Lobby.
The fact that it is powerful enough to inhibit open discussion must be obvious even to you, and it surprises me that you allow yourself to play along with it. Your attacks on people like me are similar to the tactics of the ADL / JDL, a nasty bunch.
I can absorb personal attacks when I can empathise with the assailant.
Posted by frog on Apr 23, 2006 at 12:54 PM Frog,
I don’t recall ever making any personal attacks on YOU per se. I just want people to understand the complex nature of US foreign policy and that it is not reduceable to public opinion, lobbies, or conspiracy. Imperialism, as Lenin reminds us, is a stage of history--not a policy or an elite whim. Anyhow, the latest figure for AIPAC annual spending I could find is $1.28 million for 2003. This would not buy as much influence as many other lobbies but considering the US is predisposed toward the current policies anyhow the point is not so crucial! I often find counter-factual questions interesting. Would the US gain more in the Middle East by changing its policies toward Israel and if so what more would it possibly gain? It seems to have all the Arab states under its thumb anyhow and all the oil it wants to buy at the price it wants. Don’t forget Exxon-Mobil is #1 in the Fortune 500 this year with a record $36 billion or so in profit. Other US oil majors did similarly well! The Saudis are obeying the Bush Regime’s requests for oil production increases and in a year or so OPEC could be broken. The high prices are the US oil company’s greed at work. Production and supplies are up high! So tell me what could the US gain more by throwing over Israel for Palestine? With or without the Jews, the US has absolutely no rational incentive to do so and therein lies the real secret to US policy in the Middle East!
Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Apr 23, 2006 at 6:53 PM Frog,
Perhaps the real role of AIPAC is not the bribing of key Politicians but the control of US political discourse on the issue of Israel/Palestine. This is even more important for them in the long run!
Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Apr 9, 2006 at 8:10 PM
Frog,
You know damn well that Christianity is anti-Jewish, especially European Roman Catholicism. You come from France for shit’s sake! Have you been asleep all your life!?
Maybe, maybe, maybe if the US had not had such a subservient ME policy towards Israel for the last many years, their economic hegemony would still be in place, but the area might be more liveable for the inhabitants ?
For these many years US policy has had an Israel bias as you agree in the first blockquote above.
Posted by frog on Apr 23, 2006 at 7:51 PM Frog,
I really don’t understand your remarks. Are you saying that global US economic hegemony would have been saved by an even handed ME policy? The decline of US economic hegemony began with the collapse of the US Dollar and the Post WWII Bretton-Woods Agreement in 1971. This began the long decline with the end of the Gold standard, energy price hikes, inflation, recession, and deindustrialization. The US became a net capital importer in the immediate wake of the Reagan Regime’s induced recession and high interest rates in the early 1980s. The high interest rates drew in foreign capital as the dollar revived as a key reserve currency. The price of major capital imports was the beginning of an unprecedented US balance of payments and trade deficit. With tax cuts and recession in 1981, Reagan’s first year in office saw for the first time in history the US national debt exceed $1 trillion. How ironic? Anyhow, capital imports and the growth of foreign direct investment in the US began a long pattern of economic decline, foreign debt financed growth, and loss of global hegemony. The pattern seems to have carried over in to today. The loss of Vietnam figures in here somewhere. What does this have to do with the ME.Certainly the relatively small amounts of aid sent to Israel could not have effected the large US economy. The War in Lebanon destroyed one of the US’s most formidable foes, the PLO. Israel’s job is to do things like that. That’s what they’re paid for with US dollars and weapons. They are supposed to destroy the enemies of the US and its allies. What has this got to do with the loss of US economic hegemony?
Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Apr 23, 2006 at 11:41 PM Agreed that US econ on a knife-edge, again, and maybe my use of hegemony inaccurate . Fine.
Your reading of others’ posts is very often partial, monsieur cab, and your ranting has so often bordered on the hysterical that I have even wondered at times if you were not a deep-cover shill for the ADL !
Consciously or not, your shotgun accusations of antsemitism have put you in strange company.
You posit that the state of Israel is purely a tool of US foreign policy, and that an alternative view even partially inverting this power relationship is plain wrong, and very dangerous.
Seems to me that the ‘mercenary’ tail has also wagged the dog, a more complex story than you choose to believe.
The worldwide underclass has come into being, and the march of folly goes on.
Posted by frog on Apr 24, 2006 at 4:44 AM Frog,
As far as I’m concerned I defamed nobody and never resorted to hysteria. I simply presented some facts and asked some hard counter-factual questions to which no one seems to have a good answer. I never said or meant to imply that the Israeli state is simply an outright tool of the US. I do think that the US sees Israeli military might as a way to ensure US hegemony and block multilateral influence in the region. US military buildups are historically designed to give the US uncontested control in the area it seeks to dominate. This is true in the ME and the Indian Ocean. The war in Iraq is a similar gambit. US support for repressive regimes like Israel is consistent with US diplomatic history. It is hardly an aberation. The US would gain nothing from throwing over Israel for Palestine except justice and global moral support and approval--things which it obviously never valued in its modern statecraft. This is the real reason for US policy--it is getting what it wants through current means rather than through making a policy shift.
In addition, I’m not an ADL shill (the ADL by the way is not a rightist organization and monitors and opposes all racist and hate groups) and have impecable anti-Zionist credentials. I just don’t believe in Jewish world conspiracies.
Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Apr 24, 2006 at 8:49 PM <<A working paper by John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Stephen Walt of Harvard University, titled “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy,” has provoked a furious response from critics...<<
bashing of any minority group always (rightly) used to provoke a ‘furious response’’.
Yes, KKK and hundred other neonazi websites use the same propaganda about ‘powerful israel lobby’ .
Lie down with dogs and you wake up with fleas. .(proverb)
Your website is the best evidence that israel lobby is very powerless and poor.If you should write ‘’The Afro-american Lobby and U.S. politic ‘ (Condolez Rice etc) ‘ it would be yet more furious respons.
Even Chomsky said The pro-Israel Lobby is just like any other lobby; it has no special influence or place in US politics.
http://www.zmag.org/content/print_article.cfm?itemID=9999§ionID=11
Posted by asja on May 7, 2006 at 8:53 AM The United States is so completely identified with the policies of the Israeli government in the eyes of the world that we may as well move to the next logical step and advocate a formal security treaty between the United States and Israel, simular to NATO or SEATO.
The proposal is simple--the US would guarantee the safety and security of Israel--which is touted by American and Israeli politicians as thier primary concern, and in exchange Israel would agree to return to approximatly its 1967 boarders.
Some exception would of course have to be made for Israeli sovereignty over West Jerusalem, but a substantial number of the “Greater Jerusalem” settlements would have to be returned to the Palestinians, including East Jerusalem and some sort of access corridor would have to be negotiated so that Gaza could function as part of the Paletinian state.
In exchange, Israel would be guaranteed the diplomatic and military support necessary to insure its safety and boarder security, including the deployment of US forces if necessary along an internationaly recognized boarder.
The US has achieved extraordinary levels of boarder security over the last 60 years along the East-West German boarder, including during the Berlin Crisis and along the armistance line between North and South Korea, historically one of the the most dangerous and volitile regions in the world. There is no reason why similar success could not be acheived with israel and the Palestinians.
Under these condistions the Paletinians would have a viable state and the Israeli’s would have an opportunity to live in peace with its neighbors.
On the right to return, a major sticking point, the most viable US position is to state our support for the right of Palestinians driven from thier homes in 1947-48 to return, or receive just compensation. Diplomatically this “right” can be negotiated as one that will only be exercised for the later option--monitary compensation, not actual movement into Israeli proper. The Palestians save face, international law doesn’t have to carve out an israeli exception and the Israelis don’t have to worry about a larger influxe of non-Jews into the Jewish state.
Some may pose the false argument that a US-Iraeli peace treaty would incure opposition form Muslim states around the world. While that may have been true 40 years ago, it is clear that no one views the US as an even handed broker, and most states beleive that we have not taken clear public positions on the issues between the Palestinians and Israelis but instead hide behind vague terms of “peace process” or “road map” that ahve no meaning on the key issues on the ground that impeed settlement, which is land distribution in the aftermath of the 1967 war. The Isreali postion on the question of land is clear. What is not clear is what is the US position.
If our real interest is peace then the US has to put forward a real peace proposal. i stand behind the one outlined above and hope that my government officials would do the same.
Posted by drspock on May 31, 2006 at 7:59 AM Kudos to those on this list who dismiss the idea of a Jewish conspiracy of any kind. The idea of Jewish conspiracies has been used now for hundreds of years to distract the general population from the theft of resources and rights that is going on under their noses. The same is true now, though one wouldn’t know it from Mearshimer’s study. In researching the alleged ‘power’ of the Israeli lobby, he might have asked himself whether Jews are more powerful than arms and oil companies like Haliburton, Exxon, etc. Those companies run politics in this country through their proxies in the Bush family, and run politics in other countries as well. Mearshimer might have been suspicious if he had bothered to look at the donors list for AIPAC and other organizations which purport to represent the interest of Jewish people. Of the $4 billion in ‘aid’ that goes from American taxes to Israel, almost all of it comes right back in the forms of arms purchase from those same companies. And let’s not forget that within Israel itself, free American weapons allow the right wing to make a convincing argument that ongoing occupation will not cost Israel much in terms of lives or dollars. Add in the $7 billion that goes to ‘aid’ to Egypt and Jordan, and billions more in arms sales to the Saudis in exchange for the cash we give over for gas at $3/gallon, and what you have is a powerful incentive to keep things turbulent in the Middle East.
Posted by ethanmichaeli on May 31, 2006 at 3:49 PM Yes...a very basic analysis of a problem that has been a plague to fair-minded people everywhere...My basic view of Isreal is that as much as I believe in religious freedom for all ; the Jewish / Christian arguments for a Jewish state is scripturally unfounded...all historical interpretations of bible / torah writings are misinterpretation of mythological data and should be interpretated as such....the literature on this matter of discussion is extremely volumed...IS AN UNDERSTATEMENT !Secondly ; Isreal as a Zionist state was create as a buffer or staging area for the western imperialists , to control that region ; mainly South Afrika....with the fall of apartied , Isreal has become less relevant...so Zionist lobby groups have had to grope for legitimacy ,what products do they produce....In my personal view amerikan zionist need to step off and allow the two main parties of conflict to resolve this problem...but that solution sounds too much like the reasonablely correct ; morally based approach...I suppose there’s not enough money to be made by garnering real peaceable solutions...GREED...GREEN...and POWER...seem to be the buzz words for U.S. policy at home and in the diaspora........
Posted by Redhorse on Jun 1, 2006 at 6:05 AM While I understand the urge of some more ideologically oriented commentors to search for some first principle or ultimate truth about the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, that I suggest is a fruitless effort that will lead nowhere except to the pages of some obscure political journal.
Practical problems require practical solutions--the one I outlined above simply asks my government to take a position publically on the issue rather than secretly endorsing the original Lukud settlement program without any open debate in Congress or in public forums as to whether that policy is in the interest of the American people or reflects what is loosely refered to as our “national interests.”
I believe that if such a debate were to take place the inescapable conclussion is that they do not. So why then do we continue to support them?
The position I refere to above takes into account the “reality” of Isreals right to exist regardless of what some fundamentalist hardliners might think, while supporting in a real and tangible way that exact same right for the Palestinians.
We don’t need to decide who fired the first shot or whether or not they were justified. We only need to be honest and practicle and follow basic principles of international law ( a task that this administration seems to find increasingly difficult)
Once the Palestinians have a viable state they can legitimately be asked to conform to the norms of state to state conduct as with the Isrealis and we can begin the process of rehabilitating our deservedly tarnished imagine in the world and the middle east.
Posted by drspock on Jun 1, 2006 at 7:43 AM There are those who would say that the Palestinians already have their state and have thus far failed to conform to international norms. Yet nothing which consists of the Palestinian’s current political conditions scarcly approaches a viable sovereign state. Gaza is a besieged and impoverished Bantustan which is suffering from occupation and an internal power struggle. The West Bank is even worse since it is more thoroughly dominated by the IDF and is cut off from independant supplies of water, drainage and sewage disposal, ports, and arable land for food self-sufficiency. No one who is familiar with the situation can judge the Palestinians purely on the violence taking place in the occupied territories. Judgement should be suspended until Israel has fully complied with all the international laws and conventions relevant to the conflict since 1949. Then the true test of Palestinian sovereignty and it viability can take place.
Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Jun 1, 2006 at 9:36 AM Page 1 of 1 pages -
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