Israel lobby sez: "There's no such thing as an Israel lobby."

Posted by Joshua Holland at 6:00 AM on January 17, 2007.

This Op-ed in the Jerusalem Post by David Makowsky seeks to debunk some of the "myths" surrounding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Prominent among those myths is this: "The whole problem of the Arab-Israel conflict is that Israel enjoys too much support in Washington."

Of course, few would suggest that's the whole problem*, rather than a part of the whole, but let's see what he has to say …

The Walt/Mearsheimer/Carter thesis is a familiar echo of what famed American historian Richard Hofstadter described in his essay, "The Paranoid Strain in American Politics," about the American right's scapegoating of liberals as communists during the McCarthy period.

Perhaps it is not surprising that scapegoating occurs during periods of turmoil like the Iraq War, but it is also unfair. American Jews did not stop Bill Clinton from proposing the partitioning of Jerusalem in 2000, for example.

The punch line, though, comes at the very end:

The writer … is director of the Project on the Middle East Peace Process at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy …

WINEP, according to Sourcewatch:

The establishment of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy' (WINEP) in 1985 greatly expanded the pro-Israel lobby's influence over policy as well. WINEP's founding director, Martin Indyk, had previously been research director of AIPAC which, then as now, focuses much of its efforts on Congress. Indyk developed WINEP into a highly effective think tank devoted to maintaining and strengthening the US-Israel alliance through advocacy in the media and lobbying the executive branch…

Shorter David Makowsky: These aren't the droids you're looking for.

*For the record, I certainly agree that there are those who fetishize the Israel lobby, exaggerate its influence wildly and can rightly be described as being "paranoid" about it. My point is there's no small irony in a senior wonk at a key institution of the Israel lobby denying it plays a role in steering the discourse around the issue -- that's just silly, and to dismiss those who say as much as being "paranoid" is a rhetorical tactic, not a legitimate analysis.

Evan adds...

Few regular readers of PEEK will be shocked to learn that Joshua and I disagree.

This is a minor point. I agree that Makowsky's claims suffer from a certain conflict of interest, something you can't seriously be shocked to find at the Jerusalem Post, but it seems as though you do ultimately agree with him: that the Israel Lobby (comprised of Christian Zionists as well as Jewish Zionists) and its relationship to DC is not the single underlying cause of the proliferation of the conflict in Israel/Palestine.

But I think you're getting at the strawman aspect of it? That nobody seriously makes that claim, therefore the paranoia rhetoric is a way of defusing legit analysis of the Israel lobby?

If so, I agree. But I do think the Mearshimer/Walt analysis was a real boner of a move. All it did was strengthen support for those who contend as Makowsky does: that those who represent one side of this conflict have an essentialist view of "The Lobby." That phrase can probably be considered a gift to the right wing.

Joshua, looking at his feet in embarrassment ...

Ev, I honestly don't know what you mean by "an essentialist view of 'The Lobby.'" And I always thought I was so damned smart.

If you're saying that Walt and Mearsheimer say that Jewish support for the policies advocated by the lobby is some immutable trait inherent in the group (which would fit my understanding of the word "essentialist"), then I can say for sure that they never suggest anything of the sort. In fact, they cite polling data to demonstrate that the lobby doesn't reflect any kind of consensus within the Jewish community.

I'm also unclear about on what, specifically, we disagree -- I do so try to keep track of these things.

Evan clarifies...

No no, not that it's some trait inherent to the "Israel lobby," but that the Israel lobby is a single monolithic entity, when in fact it's not. That the Israel lobby is somehow able to derail US interests left and right, which it can't. Here's a key passage from Mearshimer and Walt:

…the thrust of US policy in the region derives almost entirely from domestic politics, and especially the activities of the ‘Israel Lobby’. Other special-interest groups have managed to skew foreign policy, but no lobby has managed to divert it as far from what the national interest would suggest, while simultaneously convincing Americans that US interests and those of the other country – in this case, Israel – are essentially identical.

Whether the duo teases out the strands of the lobby (they capitalize, much to my eye rolling disdain) or not, you know as well as I do that simply covering your ass is not enough. I understand that they essentially speak to, and attempt to refute, allegations within the original paper. Problem is, the core of the paper is the passage above, and the core of the problem is in speaking of a thing: "The Lobby."

The form of the paper undermined much of the content, in other words.

That clear it up a bit?

As for what we disagree on? I don't know, say potato and we'll see....

Joshua comes back with the excerpt …

Here's the very first graph of their description of the Israel lobby, which contradicts your claim:

We use "the Lobby" as a convenient short-hand term for the loose coalition of individuals and organizations who actively work to shape U.S. foreign policy in a pro-Israel direction. Our use of this term is not meant to suggest that "the Lobby" is a unified movement with a central leadership, or that individuals within it do not disagree on certain issues.

They go on for several pages about how un-monolithic it is, how Jewish groups are joined by right-wing Christian Zionists, etc. -- everything you criticize them for omitting is in fact right there in their monograph.

You can say that they're just covering their asses but that's speculation on your part -- who's to say if what they really believe is different from what they write? And words matter; what they actually chose to include counts (or it should).

Evan reiterates...

I'm well aware of this explanation and it's what I was referring to in my last addition. The fact is, the whole reason and purpose of the paper is to assign qualities to a thing, which they call the Lobby. When you assign a thing behavioral characteristics, a name, and a result, you are necessarily making it into something. Something fairly singular.

Otherwise, why do it?

Yes, i know this is oversimplifying the matter a touch, but it's an important thing to keep in mind. Words do matter, of course, but to give a ridiculous example: what if I were to publish a paper on "single crack moms," carefully pointing out that I wasn't talking about poor black women. I then said that "single crack moms" were the cause of A, B and C.

I would rightly be called to task for having chosen a moniker that had ominous overtones and a history to it that is unavoidable, whatever the disclaimers.

The thing is, I have no home on this. A case in point was the London Review of Books' roundtable in Manhattan last month (The LRB published a version of the M/W paper, for those who don't know). First off, they made the mistake of having noone like Stephen Zunes, Phyllis Bennis, Benny Morris, or Noam Chomsky on the panel. Leaving only an Israeli hawk with broken English and a cursory understanding of American politics and two WINEP members on one side, with Mearsheimer, Tony Judt and Rashid Khalidi on the other.

Khalidi was the only one to trust in the whole debate as everyone else was either glib (Judt), defensive (Mearsheimer) or some combination of them.

Point is, I think the issue of the power of those who want to steer the US toward what they perceive as Israeli interests is a valid and necessary one. It's obscured and hard to talk about. But, as with so many issues that suffer from this fate, the first stabs are self-righteous, inflammatory and often tendentious, for fear of being too subtle to make the point or have an impact.

That's my reading of the paper, long on desire, short on care.

But that's what you get when you ask two right-leaning professors, and recent converts from deep in the weeds of Israeli propaganda to boot, to write this paper....

Tagged as: israel lobby, winep

Joshua Holland is a staff writer at Alternet and a regular contributor to The Gadflyer.