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

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

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…

*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.