Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, November 2007, pages 62-64

Books

The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy

By John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007, 484 pp. List: $26.00; AET: $17.75.

Reviewed by Paul Findley

ABRAHAM LINCOLN ducked when religion surfaced during his successful campaign for Congress in 1846. Asked about a controversial Mormon village nearby, he responded with a story: “This reminds me of the farmer who confronted a tree trunk in the center of a field he was plowing. It was too green to burn, too twisted to split, and too heavy to haul away. What did he do? He plowed around it.”

Lincoln knew religion was a touchy issue, so he plowed around it. In contrast, John J. Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Stephen M. Walt of Harvard, distinguished professors in distinguished universities, plow straight into the most politically sensitive religious issue of this era—the phenomenal, harmful influence of a foreign religious state, Israel, in the formulation of U.S. foreign policy.

The volume they have co-authored, The Israel Lobby, is a comprehensive study of the staggering damage to U.S. national interest by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and other pro-Israel advocacy groups. In it, they set a new standard of political bravery by proposing that further U.S. aid be conditioned on Israel withdrawing from Arab territory seized in June 1967 and on its “willingness to conform its policies to American interests.” During the past 40 years, no president or serious presidential candidate of either party has hinted—on or off the record—that even minor conditions should be put on aid to Israel. In my close experience in the thicket of Middle East politics during those years, I could count on the fingers of one hand the candidates for any office that daring. The professors are brave pioneers.

Unlike Lincoln in 1846, neither Mearsheimer nor Walt was or is a candidate for public office, but they wrote this book with their eyes wide open, fully warned by recent events that any major document presenting criticism of Israel will stir passions strong enough to threaten any career, academic or otherwise. A year earlier, their study paper on the same theme as their book, first rejected by the Atlantic Monthly magazine, was published by the London Review of Books. Widely circulated through the Internet, and reprinted by the Washington Report, it prompted both caresses and cuffs. The latter even included reckless charges of anti-Semitism from Zionists like Harvard’s Alan Dershowitz who seem to think only with their glands when Israel is criticized.

Instead of retreating to the relative obscurity of thick ivy, Mearsheimer and Walt stood their ground without flinching, answered their critics, defended their analysis and conclusions, and spent most of the next year expanding the study paper’s theme into a book that deserves the attention of every thoughtful citizen.

A few of its gems: 

“Pressure from Israel and the lobby was not the only factor behind the Bush administration’s decision to attack Iraq in March 2003, but it was a crucial element.

“…the United States has a terrorism problem in good part because it has long been so supportive of Israel.

“…bin Laden and his deputies clearly see the issue of Palestine as central to their agenda…

“Israel’s ability to defy the United States—and even to get Washington to allow its preferred approach to dealing with the Palestinians—offers a classical illustration of interest group politics at work…

“Backing Israel against the Palestinians makes winning the war on terror harder, not easier.

“...Israel’s l.36 million non-Jews are de facto treated as second-class citizens.

“Smearing critics of Israel or the lobby with the charge of anti-Semitism works to marginalize them in the public arena.”

The book details the terrible human and monetary cost to the American people of permitting Israel, through its U.S. lobby, to manipulate U.S. Middle East policy. The intrepid pair shuns ambiguity and reaches firm conclusions on almost every topic. They demolish the extensive mythology about Israel in 355 pages of easy-read text, buttressed by 106 pages of small-font reference notes. The language is plain and devoid of confrontational prose. The authors take care to assure the reader that they do not consider the lobby a part of a cabal or conspiracy, but their book is a veritable bombshell that should arouse the sleepiest citizen to political action.

Especially impressive is the book’s examination of the Israel lobby’s crucial role in the build-up for the U.S. assault on Iraq and its pressures for bombing Iran’s nuclear facilities. While the rest of the world protested strongly, lobby activity prompted Congress and the Bush administration to support and publicly endorse Israel’s bloody, destructive invasion of Lebanon in 2006. The text shows that oil interests played no significant role at any stage in the buildup for the war against Iraq. The authors lament U.S. failure to stop or even moderate Israel’s long years of brutal and humiliating treatment of Palestinians, a record that the authors find largely responsible for anti-American sentiment worldwide, especially among Muslims.

For me, the book is gratifying déjà vu, bringing memories from 22 years ago when my book, They Dare to Speak Out: People and Institutions Confront Israel’s Lobby, plowed virgin territory similar to that visited by Mearsheimer and Walt. Zionist critics frequently demanded the right to share platforms with me—and usually succeeded. I was frequently called anti-Semitic and, after a campus lecture, a young man loudly identified me as “the new Adolf Hitler.” Still, my book enjoyed wide and generally favorable reviews, and its sales now top 300,000. I hope the professors’ volume will reach a much larger audience.

For 40 years, our government has pursued an Israel-centric foreign policy. The path is littered with many of thousands of needless deaths and maimed lives, not to mention the squandering of more than a trillion dollars from the U.S. Treasury. Perhaps the greatest casualty is America’s reputation. Once revered worldwide, America is now reviled.  

The authors write: “The situation, which has no equal in American history, is due primarily to the activities of the Israel lobby.” Because of the lobby’s skill in influencing public discourse, the American people, for the most part, remain unaware that these calamities could have been avoided if our government had refused to subordinate its own interests to those of Israel. 

Mearsheimer and Walt summon our citizens to action. I believe their book will go far in helping America retrace its steps to the high ground of moral leadership where it belongs.

Paul Findley, a member of Congress (R-IL) from 1961-83, has written three books on Middle East affairs, including They Dare to Speak Out, for seven weeks a Washington Post bestseller. Published by Lawrence Hill Books, an imprint of Chicago Review Press, it is available from the AET Book Club. The author resides in Jacksonville, IL.

Foreign Agents: AIPAC From the 1963 Fulbright Hearings to the 2005 Espionage Scandal

By Grant Smith, Institute for Research Middle East Policy, 200 pp. List: $14.95; AET: $11.

Reviewed by Richard H. Curtiss

Grant Smith’s book, Foreign Agents, provides excellent insights into efforts by the Israel lobby to subvert U.S. foreign policy over many, many years. He has gathered documents from news articles, testimony from closed-door hearings and dozens of clippings spanning some three decades.

Smith covers the history of the lobby from its days as the American Zionist Council. In 1959 founder Isaiah L. “Si” Kenen, who was for many years a registered foreign agent for the government of Israel, changed the council’s name to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.

“Kenen’s emphasis on low-key, uncontroversial, and even non-descriptive organization names continued after his departure,” Smith writes, “as AIPAC spawned a network of political action committees across the United States designed to sway the results of key elections. More importantly, all the lessons Kenen learned from running the American Zionist Council with funds and guidance from the Israeli government are part of AIPAC’s ‘institutional DNA.’

“By 1973 Kenen was able to claim that he had boosted U.S. aid to Israel to $1 billion…At the time of Kenen’s death in 1988, U.S. aid to Israel exceeded $3 billion a year, the highest amount of U.S. aid given to any country…It took millions of dollars of Israeli government funds and decades of effort to create the public relations, lobbying, and political juggernaut that now dominates in America.”

Delving deeper, Smith quotes the National Observer’s Lawrence Mosher, who wrote on May 19, 1970: “In 1963 the Senate Foreign Relations Committee investigated the Jewish Agency and uncovered a ‘conduit’ operation called the American Zionist Council. Over an eight-year period, this council received more than $5,000,000 from the Jewish Agency to create a favorable public opinion in this country for Israeli government policies. The Senate investigation closed down the conduit, but the extensive propaganda activities still go on.”

Foreign Agents includes a great deal of detail on the Senate investigation because, in Smith’s words, “The transcripts of [Arkansas’ Democratic Sen.] James William Fulbright’s investigation into the Israel Lobby may someday be considered among his greatest achievements in public disclosure, and America’s greatest law enforcement failure.

“During the Fulbright hearings it was discovered through subpoenaed documents that the Jewish Agency owned a news service, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. Many Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA) wire service subscribers, typically Jewish community newspapers across the United States and their readers, were not aware of the takeover. Fulbright revealed that the Jewish Agency hid payments and filed deceptive Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) reports. The JTA-American Section owns all the shares of the JTA.

“Fulbright retired from the Senate in 1974, after finally being defeated by Governor Dale Bumpers in the Democratic primary. During that election year, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), an offshoot of B’nai B’rith linked to the Jewish Agency through the World Zionist Organization, attacked Senator Fulbright, labeling him ‘consistently unkind to Israel and our supporters in this country.’ Bumpers received significant campaign financial support from the Israel lobby.

“Fulbright died in Washington, DC of a heart attack at 89 in 1995. That year was an important milestone in the rise of the hard-line Israel-centric neoconservative power bloc in Washington, including the Project for a New American Century, a powerful group of ideologues and operatives fundamentally opposed to the power and role of international organizations, multilateralism, and respect for international law nurtured by Fulbright.

“In his seminal 1967 book The Arrogance of Power, Fulbright eloquently emphasized his core difference with the emerging neoconservative doctrine bent on redefining conservatism and a proposed radical new role for the U.S. in the world, including the military reforming of the Middle East to the benefit of Israel and the U.S.”

One of Smith’s many references to information gleaned from the WashingtonReport on Middle East Affairs is a February 1998 article which noted, “One survey of the Congress alleges that 80 percent of the members of Congress now have former AIPAC interns on their staffs.”

Nor does AIPAC confine its activities to Capitol Hill. “Congressional trips to Israel sponsored by the American Israel Education Foundation are often defined as ‘junkets’ designed to secure the undivided attention of legislators while isolating them from broader regional realities,” Smith writes. “They are promoted as educational events, but former Sen. James Abourezk found the trips to be largely propaganda junkets designed to push or fortify the Israeli government line with legislators.” [See box p. 17.]

Smith also discusses the case against the Federal Election Commission: “On January 12, 1989 a group of former U.S. government officials initiated a complaint with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) over illegal coordination of election contributions. The seven complainants were George Ball, former undersecretary of state; James Akins, former ambassador to Saudi Arabia; Andrew Killgore, former ambassador to Qatar; Richard Curtiss, former chief inspector on the U.S. Information Agency; former Rep. Paul Findley; Admiral Robert Hanks and Orin Parker, president of America-Middle East Educational and Training Service (AMIDEAST).

“At the press conference where the suit was announced, the complainants stated that of the 91 pro-Israel PACs active in the last six years, no more than three or four make reference to Israel, Zionism, Judaism or the Middle East in their titles.…Subsequently, unsatisfied and angered, the original seven complainants filed a suit in the Washington, DC Federal District Court against the FEC. The case remains in limbo almost 20 years later.”

Turning to more recent history, Grant discusses Martin Indyk, an Australian who became an American citizen during the Clinton administration, when his naturalization was speeded up so he could become U.S. ambassador to Israel. Clinton later reappointed him to the same position.

Following his ambassadorship, “Indyk would try…to escape the appearance of being tied to the Israel lobby,” Smith writes, “by carving out a new Middle East policy division at the near-century-old Brookings Institution with the help of $13 million in funding from Israeli-American media mogul Haim Saban.”

Foreign Agents provides a wealth of information about Israel’s lobby that most Americans have totally forgotten—if they ever knew. Although Israel’s friends in the U.S. continue to try to discredit pro-American researchers like Grant Smith, more and more people finally are discovering the truth.

Richard Curtiss is executive editor of the Washington Report and author of Stealth PACs: How Israel’s American Lobby Seeks to Control U.S. Middle East Policy, available from the AET Book Club.