The Israel Lobby


By John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt 


For the past several decades, and especially since the Six-Day War in 1967,
the centrepiece of US Middle Eastern policy has been its relationship with
Israel. The combination of unwavering support for Israel and the related
effort to spread 'democracy' throughout the region has inflamed Arab and
Islamic opinion and jeopardised not only US security but that of much of the
rest of the world. This situation has no equal in American political
history. Why has the US been willing to set aside its own security and that
of many of its allies in order to advance the interests of another state?
One might assume that the bond between the two countries was based on shared
strategic interests or compelling moral imperatives, but neither explanation
can account for the remarkable level of material and diplomatic support that
the US provides.

Instead, 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.

Since the October War in 1973, Washington has provided Israel with a level
of support dwarfing that given to any other state. It has been the largest
annual recipient of direct economic and military assistance since 1976, and
is the largest recipient in total since World War Two, to the tune of well
over $140 billion (in 2004 dollars). Israel receives about $3 billion in
direct assistance each year, roughly one-fifth of the foreign aid budget,
and worth about $500 a year for every Israeli. This largesse is especially
striking since Israel is now a wealthy industrial state with a per capita
income roughly equal to that of South Korea or Spain.

Other recipients get their money in quarterly installments, but Israel
receives its entire appropriation at the beginning of each fiscal year and
can thus earn interest on it. Most recipients of aid given for military
purposes are required to spend all of it in the US, but Israel is allowed to
use roughly 25 per cent of its allocation to subsidise its own defence
industry. It is the only recipient that does not have to account for how the
aid is spent, which makes it virtually impossible to prevent the money from
being used for purposes the US opposes, such as building settlements on the
West Bank. Moreover, the US has provided Israel with nearly $3 billion to
develop weapons systems, and given it access to such top-drawer weaponry as
Blackhawk helicopters and F-16 jets. Finally, the US gives Israel access to
intelligence it denies to its Nato allies and has turned a blind eye to
Israel's acquisition of nuclear weapons.

Washington also provides Israel with consistent diplomatic support. Since
1982, the US has vetoed 32 Security Council resolutions critical of Israel,
more than the total number of vetoes cast by all the other Security Council
members. It blocks the efforts of Arab states to put Israel's nuclear
arsenal on the IAEA's agenda. The US comes to the rescue in wartime and
takes Israel's side when negotiating peace. The Nixon administration
protected it from the threat of Soviet intervention and resupplied it during
the October War. Washington was deeply involved in the negotiations that
ended that war, as well as in the lengthy 'step-by-step' process that
followed, just as it played a key role in the negotiations that preceded and
followed the 1993 Oslo Accords. In each case there was occasional friction
between US and Israeli officials, but the US consistently supported the
Israeli position. One American participant at Camp David in 2000 later said:
'Far too often, we functioned . . . as Israel's lawyer.' Finally, the Bush
administration's ambition to transform the Middle East is at least partly
aimed at improving Israel's strategic situation.

This extraordinary generosity might be understandable if Israel were a vital
strategic asset or if there were a compelling moral case for US backing. But
neither explanation is convincing. One might argue that Israel was an asset
during the Cold War. By serving as America's proxy after 1967, it helped
contain Soviet expansion in the region and inflicted humiliating defeats on
Soviet clients like Egypt and Syria. It occasionally helped protect other US
allies (like King Hussein of Jordan) and its military prowess forced Moscow
to spend more on backing its own client states. It also provided useful
intelligence about Soviet capabilities.

Backing Israel was not cheap, however, and it complicated America's
relations with the Arab world. For example, the decision to give $2.2
billion in emergency military aid during the October War triggered an Opec
oil embargo that inflicted considerable damage on Western economies. For all
that, Israel's armed forces were not in a position to protect US interests
in the region. The US could not, for example, rely on Israel when the
Iranian Revolution in 1979 raised concerns about the security of oil
supplies, and had to create its own Rapid Deployment Force instead.

The first Gulf War revealed the extent to which Israel was becoming a
strategic burden. The US could not use Israeli bases without rupturing the
anti-Iraq coalition, and had to divert resources (e.g. Patriot missile
batteries) to prevent Tel Aviv doing anything that might harm the alliance
against Saddam Hussein. History repeated itself in 2003: although Israel was
eager for the US to attack Iraq, Bush could not ask it to help without
triggering Arab opposition. So Israel stayed on the sidelines once again.

Beginning in the 1990s, and even more after 9/11, US support has been
justified by the claim that both states are threatened by terrorist groups
originating in the Arab and Muslim world, and by 'rogue states' that back
these groups and seek weapons of mass destruction. This is taken to mean not
only that Washington should give Israel a free hand in dealing with the
Palestinians and not press it to make concessions until all Palestinian
terrorists are imprisoned or dead, but that the US should go after countries
like Iran and Syria. Israel is thus seen as a crucial ally in the war on
terror, because its enemies are America's enemies. In fact, Israel is a
liability in the war on terror and the broader effort to deal with rogue
states.

'Terrorism' is not a single adversary, but a tactic employed by a wide array
of political groups. The terrorist organisations that threaten Israel do not
threaten the United States, except when it intervenes against them (as in
Lebanon in 1982). Moreover, Palestinian terrorism is not random violence
directed against Israel or 'the West'; it is largely a response to Israel's
prolonged campaign to colonise the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

More important, saying that Israel and the US are united by a shared
terrorist threat has the causal relationship backwards: the US has a
terrorism problem in good part because it is so closely allied with Israel,
not the other way around. Support for Israel is not the only source of
anti-American terrorism, but it is an important one, and it makes winning
the war on terror more difficult. There is no question that many al-Qaida
leaders, including Osama bin Laden, are motivated by Israel's presence in
Jerusalem and the plight of the Palestinians. Unconditional support for
Israel makes it easier for extremists to rally popular support and to
attract recruits.

As for so-called rogue states in the Middle East, they are not a dire threat
to vital US interests, except inasmuch as they are a threat to Israel. Even
if these states acquire nuclear weapons - which is obviously undesirable -
neither America nor Israel could be blackmailed, because the blackmailer
could not carry out the threat without suffering overwhelming retaliation.
The danger of a nuclear handover to terrorists is equally remote, because a
rogue state could not be sure the transfer would go undetected or that it
would not be blamed and punished afterwards. The relationship with Israel
actually makes it harder for the US to deal with these states. Israel's
nuclear arsenal is one reason some of its neighbours want nuclear weapons,
and threatening them with regime change merely increases that desire.

A final reason to question Israel's strategic value is that it does not
behave like a loyal ally. Israeli officials frequently ignore US requests
and renege on promises (including pledges to stop building settlements and
to refrain from 'targeted assassinations' of Palestinian leaders). Israel
has provided sensitive military technology to potential rivals like China,
in what the State Department inspector-general called 'a systematic and
growing pattern of unauthorised transfers'. According to the General
Accounting Office, Israel also 'conducts the most aggressive espionage
operations against the US of any ally'. In addition to the case of Jonathan
Pollard, who gave Israel large quantities of classified material in the
early 1980s (which it reportedly passed on to the Soviet Union in return for
more exit visas for Soviet Jews), a new controversy erupted in 2004 when it
was revealed that a key Pentagon official called Larry Franklin had passed
classified information to an Israeli diplomat. Israel is hardly the only
country that spies on the US, but its willingness to spy on its principal
patron casts further doubt on its strategic value.

Israel's strategic value isn't the only issue. Its backers also argue that
it deserves unqualified support because it is weak and surrounded by
enemies; it is a democracy; the Jewish people have suffered from past crimes
and therefore deserve special treatment; and Israel's conduct has been
morally superior to that of its adversaries. On close inspection, none of
these arguments is persuasive. There is a strong moral case for supporting
Israel's existence, but that is not in jeopardy. Viewed objectively, its
past and present conduct offers no moral basis for privileging it over the
Palestinians.

Israel is often portrayed as David confronted by Goliath, but the converse
is closer to the truth. Contrary to popular belief, the Zionists had larger,
better equipped and better led forces during the 1947-49 War of
Independence, and the Israel Defence Forces won quick and easy victories
against Egypt in 1956 and against Egypt, Jordan and Syria in 1967 - all of
this before large-scale US aid began flowing. Today, Israel is the strongest
military power in the Middle East. Its conventional forces are far superior
to those of its neighbours and it is the only state in the region with
nuclear weapons. Egypt and Jordan have signed peace treaties with it, and
Saudi Arabia has offered to do so. Syria has lost its Soviet patron, Iraq
has been devastated by three disastrous wars and Iran is hundreds of miles
away. The Palestinians barely have an effective police force, let alone an
army that could pose a threat to Israel. According to a 2005 assessment by
Tel Aviv University's Jaffee Centre for Strategic Studies, 'the strategic
balance decidedly favours Israel, which has continued to widen the
qualitative gap between its own military capability and deterrence powers
and those of its neighbours.' If backing the underdog were a compelling
motive, the United States would be supporting Israel's opponents.

That Israel is a fellow democracy surrounded by hostile dictatorships cannot
account for the current level of aid: there are many democracies around the
world, but none receives the same lavish support. The US has overthrown
democratic governments in the past and supported dictators when this was
thought to advance its interests - it has good relations with a number of
dictatorships today.

Some aspects of Israeli democracy are at odds with core American values.
Unlike the US, where people are supposed to enjoy equal rights irrespective
of race, religion or ethnicity, Israel was explicitly founded as a Jewish
state and citizenship is based on the principle of blood kinship. Given
this, it is not surprising that its 1.3 million Arabs are treated as
second-class citizens, or that a recent Israeli government commission found
that Israel behaves in a 'neglectful and discriminatory' manner towards
them. Its democratic status is also undermined by its refusal to grant the
Palestinians a viable state of their own or full political rights.

A third justification is the history of Jewish suffering in the Christian
West, especially during the Holocaust. Because Jews were persecuted for
centuries and could feel safe only in a Jewish homeland, many people now
believe that Israel deserves special treatment from the United States. The
country's creation was undoubtedly an appropriate response to the long
record of crimes against Jews, but it also brought about fresh crimes
against a largely innocent third party: the Palestinians.

This was well understood by Israel's early leaders. David Ben-Gurion told
Nahum Goldmann, the president of the World Jewish Congress:

If I were an Arab leader I would never make terms with Israel. That is
natural: we have taken their country . . . We come from Israel, but two
thousand years ago, and what is that to them? There has been anti-semitism,
the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They only see one
thing: we have come here and stolen their country. Why should they accept
that?

Since then, Israeli leaders have repeatedly sought to deny the Palestinians'
national ambitions. When she was prime minister, Golda Meir famously
remarked that 'there is no such thing as a Palestinian.' Pressure from
extremist violence and Palestinian population growth has forced subsequent
Israeli leaders to disengage from the Gaza Strip and consider other
territorial compromises, but not even Yitzhak Rabin was willing to offer the
Palestinians a viable state. Ehud Barak's purportedly generous offer at Camp
David would have given them only a disarmed set of Bantustans under de facto
Israeli control. The tragic history of the Jewish people does not obligate
the US to help Israel today no matter what it does.

Israel's backers also portray it as a country that has sought peace at every
turn and shown great restraint even when provoked. The Arabs, by contrast,
are said to have acted with great wickedness. Yet on the ground, Israel's
record is not distinguishable from that of its opponents. Ben-Gurion
acknowledged that the early Zionists were far from benevolent towards the
Palestinian Arabs, who resisted their encroachments - which is hardly
surprising, given that the Zionists were trying to create their own state on
Arab land. In the same way, the creation of Israel in 1947-48 involved acts
of ethnic cleansing, including executions, massacres and rapes by Jews, and
Israel's subsequent conduct has often been brutal, belying any claim to
moral superiority. Between 1949 and 1956, for example, Israeli security
forces killed between 2700 and 5000 Arab infiltrators, the overwhelming
majority of them unarmed. The IDF murdered hundreds of Egyptian prisoners of
war in both the 1956 and 1967 wars, while in 1967, it expelled between
100,000 and 260,000 Palestinians from the newly conquered West Bank, and
drove 80,000 Syrians from the Golan Heights.

During the first intifada, the IDF distributed truncheons to its troops and
encouraged them to break the bones of Palestinian protesters. The Swedish
branch of Save the Children estimated that '23,600 to 29,900 children
required medical treatment for their beating injuries in the first two years
of the intifada.' Nearly a third of them were aged ten or under. The
response to the second intifada has been even more violent, leading Ha'aretz
to declare that 'the IDF . . . is turning into a killing machine whose
efficiency is awe-inspiring, yet shocking.' The IDF fired one million
bullets in the first days of the uprising. Since then, for every Israeli
lost, Israel has killed 3.4 Palestinians, the majority of whom have been
innocent bystanders; the ratio of Palestinian to Israeli children killed is
even higher (5.7:1). It is also worth bearing in mind that the Zionists
relied on terrorist bombs to drive the British from Palestine, and that
Yitzhak Shamir, once a terrorist and later prime minister, declared that
'neither Jewish ethics nor Jewish tradition can disqualify terrorism as a
means of combat.'

The Palestinian resort to terrorism is wrong but it isn't surprising. The
Palestinians believe they have no other way to force Israeli concessions. As
Ehud Barak once admitted, had he been born a Palestinian, he 'would have
joined a terrorist organisation'.

So if neither strategic nor moral arguments can account for America's
support for Israel, how are we to explain it?

The explanation is the unmatched power of the Israel Lobby. We use 'the
Lobby' as shorthand for the loose coalition of individuals and organisations
who actively work to steer US foreign policy in a pro-Israel direction. This
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. Not all Jewish Americans are part of the Lobby, because Israel is
not a salient issue for many of them. In a 2004 survey, for example, roughly
36 per cent of American Jews said they were either 'not very' or 'not at
all' emotionally attached to Israel.

Jewish Americans also differ on specific Israeli policies. Many of the key
organisations in the Lobby, such as the American-Israel Public Affairs
Committee (AIPAC) and the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish
Organisations, are run by hardliners who generally support the Likud Party's
expansionist policies, including its hostility to the Oslo peace process.
The bulk of US Jewry, meanwhile, is more inclined to make concessions to the
Palestinians, and a few groups - such as Jewish Voice for Peace - strongly
advocate such steps. Despite these differences, moderates and hardliners
both favour giving steadfast support to Israel.

Not surprisingly, American Jewish leaders often consult Israeli officials,
to make sure that their actions advance Israeli goals. As one activist from
a major Jewish organisation wrote, 'it is routine for us to say: "This is
our policy on a certain issue, but we must check what the Israelis think."
We as a community do it all the time.' There is a strong prejudice against
criticising Israeli policy, and putting pressure on Israel is considered out
of order. Edgar Bronfman Sr, the president of the World Jewish Congress, was
accused of 'perfidy' when he wrote a letter to President Bush in mid-2003
urging him to persuade Israel to curb construction of its controversial
'security fence'. His critics said that 'it would be obscene at any time for
the president of the World Jewish Congress to lobby the president of the
United States to resist policies being promoted by the government of
Israel.'

Similarly, when the president of the Israel Policy Forum, Seymour Reich,
advised Condoleezza Rice in November 2005 to ask Israel to reopen a critical
border crossing in the Gaza Strip, his action was denounced as
'irresponsible': 'There is,' his critics said, 'absolutely no room in the
Jewish mainstream for actively canvassing against the security-related
policies . . . of Israel.' Recoiling from these attacks, Reich announced
that 'the word "pressure" is not in my vocabulary when it comes to Israel.'

Jewish Americans have set up an impressive array of organisations to
influence American foreign policy, of which AIPAC is the most powerful and
best known. In 1997, Fortune magazine asked members of Congress and their
staffs to list the most powerful lobbies in Washington. AIPAC was ranked
second behind the American Association of Retired People, but ahead of the
AFL-CIO and the National Rifle Association. A National Journal study in
March 2005 reached a similar conclusion, placing AIPAC in second place (tied
with AARP) in the Washington 'muscle rankings'.

The Lobby also includes prominent Christian evangelicals like Gary Bauer,
Jerry Falwell, Ralph Reed and Pat Robertson, as well as Dick Armey and Tom
DeLay, former majority leaders in the House of Representatives, all of whom
believe Israel's rebirth is the fulfilment of biblical prophecy and support
its expansionist agenda; to do otherwise, they believe, would be contrary to
God's will. Neo-conservative gentiles such as John Bolton; Robert Bartley,
the former Wall Street Journal editor; William Bennett, the former secretary
of education; Jeane Kirkpatrick, the former UN ambassador; and the
influential columnist George Will are also steadfast supporters.

The US form of government offers activists many ways of influencing the
policy process. Interest groups can lobby elected representatives and
members of the executive branch, make campaign contributions, vote in
elections, try to mould public opinion etc. They enjoy a disproportionate
amount of influence when they are committed to an issue to which the bulk of
the population is indifferent. Policymakers will tend to accommodate those
who care about the issue, even if their numbers are small, confident that
the rest of the population will not penalise them for doing so.

In its basic operations, the Israel Lobby is no different from the farm
lobby, steel or textile workers' unions, or other ethnic lobbies. There is
nothing improper about American Jews and their Christian allies attempting
to sway US policy: the Lobby's activities are not a conspiracy of the sort
depicted in tracts like the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. For the most
part, the individuals and groups that comprise it are only doing what other
special interest groups do, but doing it very much better. By contrast,
pro-Arab interest groups, in so far as they exist at all, are weak, which
makes the Israel Lobby's task even easier.

The Lobby pursues two broad strategies. First, it wields its significant
influence in Washington, pressuring both Congress and the executive branch.
Whatever an individual lawmaker or policymaker's own views may be, the Lobby
tries to make supporting Israel the 'smart' choice. Second, it strives to
ensure that public discourse portrays Israel in a positive light, by
repeating myths about its founding and by promoting its point of view in
policy debates. The goal is to prevent critical comments from getting a fair
hearing in the political arena. Controlling the debate is essential to
guaranteeing US support, because a candid discussion of US-Israeli relations
might lead Americans to favour a different policy.

A key pillar of the Lobby's effectiveness is its influence in Congress,
where Israel is virtually immune from criticism. This in itself is
remarkable, because Congress rarely shies away from contentious issues.
Where Israel is concerned, however, potential critics fall silent. One
reason is that some key members are Christian Zionists like Dick Armey, who
said in September 2002: 'My No. 1 priority in foreign policy is to protect
Israel.' One might think that the No. 1 priority for any congressman would
be to protect America. There are also Jewish senators and congressmen who
work to ensure that US foreign policy supports Israel's interests.

Another source of the Lobby's power is its use of pro-Israel congressional
staffers. As Morris Amitay, a former head of AIPAC, once admitted, 'there
are a lot of guys at the working level up here' - on Capitol Hill - 'who
happen to be Jewish, who are willing . . . to look at certain issues in
terms of their Jewishness . . . These are all guys who are in a position to
make the decision in these areas for those senators . . . You can get an
awful lot done just at the staff level.'

AIPAC itself, however, forms the core of the Lobby's influence in Congress.
Its success is due to its ability to reward legislators and congressional
candidates who support its agenda, and to punish those who challenge it.
Money is critical to US elections (as the scandal over the lobbyist Jack
Abramoff's shady dealings reminds us), and AIPAC makes sure that its friends
get strong financial support from the many pro-Israel political action
committees. Anyone who is seen as hostile to Israel can be sure that AIPAC
will direct campaign contributions to his or her political opponents. AIPAC
also organises letter-writing campaigns and encourages newspaper editors to
endorse pro-Israel candidates.

There is no doubt about the efficacy of these tactics. Here is one example:
in the 1984 elections, AIPAC helped defeat Senator Charles Percy from
Illinois, who, according to a prominent Lobby figure, had 'displayed
insensitivity and even hostility to our concerns'. Thomas Dine, the head of
AIPAC at the time, explained what happened: 'All the Jews in America, from
coast to coast, gathered to oust Percy. And the American politicians - those
who hold public positions now, and those who aspire - got the message.'

AIPAC's influence on Capitol Hill goes even further. According to Douglas
Bloomfield, a former AIPAC staff member, 'it is common for members of
Congress and their staffs to turn to AIPAC first when they need information,
before calling the Library of Congress, the Congressional Research Service,
committee staff or administration experts.' More important, he notes that
AIPAC is 'often called on to draft speeches, work on legislation, advise on
tactics, perform research, collect co-sponsors and marshal votes'.

The bottom line is that AIPAC, a de facto agent for a foreign government,
has a stranglehold on Congress, with the result that US policy towards
Israel is not debated there, even though that policy has important
consequences for the entire world. In other words, one of the three main
branches of the government is firmly committed to supporting Israel. As one
former Democratic senator, Ernest Hollings, noted on leaving office, 'you
can't have an Israeli policy other than what AIPAC gives you around here.'
Or as Ariel Sharon once told an American audience, 'when people ask me how
they can help Israel, I tell them: "Help AIPAC."'

Thanks in part to the influence Jewish voters have on presidential
elections, the Lobby also has significant leverage over the executive
branch. Although they make up fewer than 3 per cent of the population, they
make large campaign donations to candidates from both parties. The
Washington Post once estimated that Democratic presidential candidates
'depend on Jewish supporters to supply as much as 60 per cent of the money'.
And because Jewish voters have high turn-out rates and are concentrated in
key states like California, Florida, Illinois, New York and Pennsylvania,
presidential candidates go to great lengths not to antagonise them.

Key organisations in the Lobby make it their business to ensure that critics
of Israel do not get important foreign policy jobs. Jimmy Carter wanted to
make George Ball his first secretary of state, but knew that Ball was seen
as critical of Israel and that the Lobby would oppose the appointment. In
this way any aspiring policymaker is encouraged to become an overt supporter
of Israel, which is why public critics of Israeli policy have become an
endangered species in the foreign policy establishment.

When Howard Dean called for the United States to take a more 'even-handed
role' in the Arab-Israeli conflict, Senator Joseph Lieberman accused him of
selling Israel down the river and said his statement was 'irresponsible'.
Virtually all the top Democrats in the House signed a letter criticising
Dean's remarks, and the Chicago Jewish Star reported that 'anonymous
attackers . . . are clogging the email inboxes of Jewish leaders around the
country, warning - without much evidence - that Dean would somehow be bad
for Israel.'

This worry was absurd; Dean is in fact quite hawkish on Israel: his campaign
co-chair was a former AIPAC president, and Dean said his own views on the
Middle East more closely reflected those of AIPAC than those of the more
moderate Americans for Peace Now. He had merely suggested that to 'bring the
sides together', Washington should act as an honest broker. This is hardly a
radical idea, but the Lobby doesn't tolerate even-handedness.

During the Clinton administration, Middle Eastern policy was largely shaped
by officials with close ties to Israel or to prominent pro-Israel
organisations; among them, Martin Indyk, the former deputy director of
research at AIPAC and co-founder of the pro-Israel Washington Institute for
Near East Policy (WINEP); Dennis Ross, who joined WINEP after leaving
government in 2001; and Aaron Miller, who has lived in Israel and often
visits the country. These men were among Clinton's closest advisers at the
Camp David summit in July 2000. Although all three supported the Oslo peace
process and favoured the creation of a Palestinian state, they did so only
within the limits of what would be acceptable to Israel. The American
delegation took its cues from Ehud Barak, co-ordinated its negotiating
positions with Israel in advance, and did not offer independent proposals.
Not surprisingly, Palestinian negotiators complained that they were
'negotiating with two Israeli teams - one displaying an Israeli flag, and
one an American flag'.

The situation is even more pronounced in the Bush administration, whose
ranks have included such fervent advocates of the Israeli cause as Elliot
Abrams, John Bolton, Douglas Feith, I. Lewis ('Scooter') Libby, Richard
Perle, Paul Wolfowitz and David Wurmser. As we shall see, these officials
have consistently pushed for policies favoured by Israel and backed by
organisations in the Lobby.

The Lobby doesn't want an open debate, of course, because that might lead
Americans to question the level of support they provide. Accordingly,
pro-Israel organisations work hard to influence the institutions that do
most to shape popular opinion.

The Lobby's perspective prevails in the mainstream media: the debate among
Middle East pundits, the journalist Eric Alterman writes, is 'dominated by
people who cannot imagine criticising Israel'. He lists 61 'columnists and
commentators who can be counted on to support Israel reflexively and without
qualification'. Conversely, he found just five pundits who consistently
criticise Israeli actions or endorse Arab positions. Newspapers occasionally
publish guest op-eds challenging Israeli policy, but the balance of opinion
clearly favours the other side. It is hard to imagine any mainstream media
outlet in the United States publishing a piece like this one.

'Shamir, Sharon, Bibi - whatever those guys want is pretty much fine by me,'
Robert Bartley once remarked. Not surprisingly, his newspaper, the Wall
Street Journal, along with other prominent papers like the Chicago Sun-Times
and the Washington Times, regularly runs editorials that strongly support
Israel. Magazines like Commentary, the New Republic and the Weekly Standard
defend Israel at every turn.

Editorial bias is also found in papers like the New York Times, which
occasionally criticises Israeli policies and sometimes concedes that the
Palestinians have legitimate grievances, but is not even-handed. In his
memoirs the paper's former executive editor Max Frankel acknowledges the
impact his own attitude had on his editorial decisions: 'I was much more
deeply devoted to Israel than I dared to assert . . . Fortified by my
knowledge of Israel and my friendships there, I myself wrote most of our
Middle East commentaries. As more Arab than Jewish readers recognised, I
wrote them from a pro-Israel perspective.'

News reports are more even-handed, in part because reporters strive to be
objective, but also because it is difficult to cover events in the Occupied
Territories without acknowledging Israel's actions on the ground. To
discourage unfavourable reporting, the Lobby organises letter-writing
campaigns, demonstrations and boycotts of news outlets whose content it
considers anti-Israel. One CNN executive has said that he sometimes gets
6000 email messages in a single day complaining about a story. In May 2003,
the pro-Israel Committee for Accurate Middle East Reporting in America
(CAMERA) organised demonstrations outside National Public Radio stations in
33 cities; it also tried to persuade contributors to withhold support from
NPR until its Middle East coverage becomes more sympathetic to Israel.
Boston's NPR station, WBUR, reportedly lost more than $1 million in
contributions as a result of these efforts. Further pressure on NPR has come
from Israel's friends in Congress, who have asked for an internal audit of
its Middle East coverage as well as more oversight.

The Israeli side also dominates the think tanks which play an important role
in shaping public debate as well as actual policy. The Lobby created its own
think tank in 1985, when Martin Indyk helped to found WINEP. Although WINEP
plays down its links to Israel, claiming instead to provide a 'balanced and
realistic' perspective on Middle East issues, it is funded and run by
individuals deeply committed to advancing Israel's agenda.

The Lobby's influence extends well beyond WINEP, however. Over the past 25
years, pro-Israel forces have established a commanding presence at the
American Enterprise Institute, the Brookings Institution, the Center for
Security Policy, the Foreign Policy Research Institute, the Heritage
Foundation, the Hudson Institute, the Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis
and the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA). These think
tanks employ few, if any, critics of US support for Israel.

Take the Brookings Institution. For many years, its senior expert on the
Middle East was William Quandt, a former NSC official with a well-deserved
reputation for even-handedness. Today, Brookings's coverage is conducted
through the Saban Center for Middle East Studies, which is financed by Haim
Saban, an Israeli-American businessman and ardent Zionist. The centre's
director is the ubiquitous Martin Indyk. What was once a non-partisan policy
institute is now part of the pro-Israel chorus.

Where the Lobby has had the most difficulty is in stifling debate on
university campuses. In the 1990s, when the Oslo peace process was underway,
there was only mild criticism of Israel, but it grew stronger with Oslo's
collapse and Sharon's access to power, becoming quite vociferous when the
IDF reoccupied the West Bank in spring 2002 and employed massive force to
subdue the second intifada.

The Lobby moved immediately to 'take back the campuses'. New groups sprang
up, like the Caravan for Democracy, which brought Israeli speakers to US
colleges. Established groups like the Jewish Council for Public Affairs and
Hillel joined in, and a new group, the Israel on Campus Coalition, was
formed to co-ordinate the many bodies that now sought to put Israel's case.
Finally, AIPAC more than tripled its spending on programmes to monitor
university activities and to train young advocates, in order to 'vastly
expand the number of students involved on campus . . . in the national
pro-Israel effort'.

The Lobby also monitors what professors write and teach. In September 2002,
Martin Kramer and Daniel Pipes, two passionately pro-Israel
neo-conservatives, established a website (Campus Watch) that posted dossiers
on suspect academics and encouraged students to report remarks or behaviour
that might be considered hostile to Israel. This transparent attempt to
blacklist and intimidate scholars provoked a harsh reaction and Pipes and
Kramer later removed the dossiers, but the website still invites students to
report 'anti-Israel' activity.

Groups within the Lobby put pressure on particular academics and
universities. Columbia has been a frequent target, no doubt because of the
presence of the late Edward Said on its faculty. 'One can be sure that any
public statement in support of the Palestinian people by the pre-eminent
literary critic Edward Said will elicit hundreds of emails, letters and
journalistic accounts that call on us to denounce Said and to either
sanction or fire him,' Jonathan Cole, its former provost, reported. When
Columbia recruited the historian Rashid Khalidi from Chicago, the same thing
happened. It was a problem Princeton also faced a few years later when it
considered wooing Khalidi away from Columbia.

A classic illustration of the effort to police academia occurred towards the
end of 2004, when the David Project produced a film alleging that faculty
members of Columbia's Middle East Studies programme were anti-semitic and
were intimidating Jewish students who stood up for Israel. Columbia was
hauled over the coals, but a faculty committee which was assigned to
investigate the charges found no evidence of anti-semitism and the only
incident possibly worth noting was that one professor had 'responded
heatedly' to a student's question. The committee also discovered that the
academics in question had themselves been the target of an overt campaign of
intimidation.

Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of all this is the efforts Jewish groups
have made to push Congress into establishing mechanisms to monitor what
professors say. If they manage to get this passed, universities judged to
have an anti-Israel bias would be denied federal funding. Their efforts have
not yet succeeded, but they are an indication of the importance placed on
controlling debate.

A number of Jewish philanthropists have recently established Israel Studies
programmes (in addition to the roughly 130 Jewish Studies programmes already
in existence) so as to increase the number of Israel-friendly scholars on
campus. In May 2003, NYU announced the establishment of the Taub Center for
Israel Studies; similar programmes have been set up at Berkeley, Brandeis
and Emory. Academic administrators emphasise their pedagogical value, but
the truth is that they are intended in large part to promote Israel's image.
Fred Laffer, the head of the Taub Foundation, makes it clear that his
foundation funded the NYU centre to help counter the 'Arabic [sic] point of
view' that he thinks is prevalent in NYU's Middle East programmes.

No discussion of the Lobby would be complete without an examination of one
of its most powerful weapons: the charge of anti-semitism. Anyone who
criticises Israel's actions or argues that pro-Israel groups have
significant influence over US Middle Eastern policy - an influence AIPAC
celebrates - stands a good chance of being labelled an anti-semite. Indeed,
anyone who merely claims that there is an Israel Lobby runs the risk of
being charged with anti-semitism, even though the Israeli media refer to
America's 'Jewish Lobby'. In other words, the Lobby first boasts of its
influence and then attacks anyone who calls attention to it. It's a very
effective tactic: anti-semitism is something no one wants to be accused of.

Europeans have been more willing than Americans to criticise Israeli policy,
which some people attribute to a resurgence of anti-semitism in Europe. We
are 'getting to a point', the US ambassador to the EU said in early 2004,
'where it is as bad as it was in the 1930s'. Measuring anti-semitism is a
complicated matter, but the weight of evidence points in the opposite
direction. In the spring of 2004, when accusations of European anti-semitism
filled the air in America, separate surveys of European public opinion
conducted by the US-based Anti-Defamation League and the Pew Research Center
for the People and the Press found that it was in fact declining. In the
1930s, by contrast, anti-semitism was not only widespread among Europeans of
all classes but considered quite acceptable.

The Lobby and its friends often portray France as the most anti-semitic
country in Europe. But in 2003, the head of the French Jewish community said
that 'France is not more anti-semitic than America.' According to a recent
article in Ha'aretz, the French police have reported that anti-semitic
incidents declined by almost 50 per cent in 2005; and this even though
France has the largest Muslim population of any European country. Finally,
when a French Jew was murdered in Paris last month by a Muslim gang, tens of
thousands of demonstrators poured into the streets to condemn anti-semitism.
Jacques Chirac and Dominique de Villepin both attended the victim's memorial
service to show their solidarity.

No one would deny that there is anti-semitism among European Muslims, some
of it provoked by Israel's conduct towards the Palestinians and some of it
straightforwardly racist. But this is a separate matter with little bearing
on whether or not Europe today is like Europe in the 1930s. Nor would anyone
deny that there are still some virulent autochthonous anti-semites in Europe
(as there are in the United States) but their numbers are small and their
views are rejected by the vast majority of Europeans.

Israel's advocates, when pressed to go beyond mere assertion, claim that
there is a 'new anti-semitism', which they equate with criticism of Israel.
In other words, criticise Israeli policy and you are by definition an
anti-semite. When the synod of the Church of England recently voted to
divest from Caterpillar Inc on the grounds that it manufactures the
bulldozers used by the Israelis to demolish Palestinian homes, the Chief
Rabbi complained that this would 'have the most adverse repercussions on . .
. Jewish-Christian relations in Britain', while Rabbi Tony Bayfield, the
head of the Reform movement, said: 'There is a clear problem of anti-Zionist
- verging on anti-semitic - attitudes emerging in the grass-roots, and even
in the middle ranks of the Church.' But the Church was guilty merely of
protesting against Israeli government policy.

Critics are also accused of holding Israel to an unfair standard or
questioning its right to exist. But these are bogus charges too. Western
critics of Israel hardly ever question its right to exist: they question its
behaviour towards the Palestinians, as do Israelis themselves. Nor is Israel
being judged unfairly. Israeli treatment of the Palestinians elicits
criticism because it is contrary to widely accepted notions of human rights,
to international law and to the principle of national self-determination.
And it is hardly the only state that has faced sharp criticism on these
grounds.

In the autumn of 2001, and especially in the spring of 2002, the Bush
administration tried to reduce anti-American sentiment in the Arab world and
undermine support for terrorist groups like al-Qaida by halting Israel's
expansionist policies in the Occupied Territories and advocating the
creation of a Palestinian state. Bush had very significant means of
persuasion at his disposal. He could have threatened to reduce economic and
diplomatic support for Israel, and the American people would almost
certainly have supported him. A May 2003 poll reported that more than 60 per
cent of Americans were willing to withhold aid if Israel resisted US
pressure to settle the conflict, and that number rose to 70 per cent among
the 'politically active'. Indeed, 73 per cent said that the United States
should not favour either side.

Yet the administration failed to change Israeli policy, and Washington ended
up backing it. Over time, the administration also adopted Israel's own
justifications of its position, so that US rhetoric began to mimic Israeli
rhetoric. By February 2003, a Washington Post headline summarised the
situation: 'Bush and Sharon Nearly Identical on Mideast Policy.' The main
reason for this switch was the Lobby.

The story begins in late September 2001, when Bush began urging Sharon to
show restraint in the Occupied Territories. He also pressed him to allow
Israel's foreign minister, Shimon Peres, to meet with Yasser Arafat, even
though he (Bush) was highly critical of Arafat's leadership. Bush even said
publicly that he supported the creation of a Palestinian state. Alarmed,
Sharon accused him of trying 'to appease the Arabs at our expense', warning
that Israel 'will not be Czechoslovakia'.

Bush was reportedly furious at being compared to Chamberlain, and the White
House press secretary called Sharon's remarks 'unacceptable'. Sharon offered
a pro forma apology, but quickly joined forces with the Lobby to persuade
the administration and the American people that the United States and Israel
faced a common threat from terrorism. Israeli officials and Lobby
representatives insisted that there was no real difference between Arafat
and Osama bin Laden: the United States and Israel, they said, should isolate
the Palestinians' elected leader and have nothing to do with him.

The Lobby also went to work in Congress. On 16 November, 89 senators sent
Bush a letter praising him for refusing to meet with Arafat, but also
demanding that the US not restrain Israel from retaliating against the
Palestinians; the administration, they wrote, must state publicly that it
stood behind Israel. According to the New York Times, the letter 'stemmed'
from a meeting two weeks before between 'leaders of the American Jewish
community and key senators', adding that AIPAC was 'particularly active in
providing advice on the letter'.

By late November, relations between Tel Aviv and Washington had improved
considerably. This was thanks in part to the Lobby's efforts, but also to
America's initial victory in Afghanistan, which reduced the perceived need
for Arab support in dealing with al-Qaida. Sharon visited the White House in
early December and had a friendly meeting with Bush.

In April 2002 trouble erupted again, after the IDF launched Operation
Defensive Shield and resumed control of virtually all the major Palestinian
areas on the West Bank. Bush knew that Israel's actions would damage
America's image in the Islamic world and undermine the war on terrorism, so
he demanded that Sharon 'halt the incursions and begin withdrawal'. He
underscored this message two days later, saying he wanted Israel to
'withdraw without delay'. On 7 April, Condoleezza Rice, then Bush's national
security adviser, told reporters: '"Without delay" means without delay. It
means now.' That same day Colin Powell set out for the Middle East to
persuade all sides to stop fighting and start negotiating.

Israel and the Lobby swung into action. Pro-Israel officials in the
vice-president's office and the Pentagon, as well as neo-conservative
pundits like Robert Kagan and William Kristol, put the heat on Powell. They
even accused him of having 'virtually obliterated the distinction between
terrorists and those fighting terrorists'. Bush himself was being pressed by
Jewish leaders and Christian evangelicals. Tom DeLay and Dick Armey were
especially outspoken about the need to support Israel, and DeLay and the
Senate minority leader, Trent Lott, visited the White House and warned Bush
to back off.

The first sign that Bush was caving in came on 11 April - a week after he
told Sharon to withdraw his forces - when the White House press secretary
said that the president believed Sharon was 'a man of peace'. Bush repeated
this statement publicly on Powell's return from his abortive mission, and
told reporters that Sharon had responded satisfactorily to his call for a
full and immediate withdrawal. Sharon had done no such thing, but Bush was
no longer willing to make an issue of it.

Meanwhile, Congress was also moving to back Sharon. On 2 May, it overrode
the administration's objections and passed two resolutions reaffirming
support for Israel. (The Senate vote was 94 to 2; the House of
Representatives version passed 352 to 21.) Both resolutions held that the
United States 'stands in solidarity with Israel' and that the two countries
were, to quote the House resolution, 'now engaged in a common struggle
against terrorism'. The House version also condemned 'the ongoing support
and co-ordination of terror by Yasser Arafat', who was portrayed as a
central part of the terrorism problem. Both resolutions were drawn up with
the help of the Lobby. A few days later, a bipartisan congressional
delegation on a fact-finding mission to Israel stated that Sharon should
resist US pressure to negotiate with Arafat. On 9 May, a House
appropriations subcommittee met to consider giving Israel an extra $200
million to fight terrorism. Powell opposed the package, but the Lobby backed
it and Powell lost.

In short, Sharon and the Lobby took on the president of the United States
and triumphed. Hemi Shalev, a journalist on the Israeli newspaper Ma'ariv,
reported that Sharon's aides 'could not hide their satisfaction in view of
Powell's failure. Sharon saw the whites of President Bush's eyes, they
bragged, and the president blinked first.' But it was Israel's champions in
the United States, not Sharon or Israel, that played the key role in
defeating Bush.

The situation has changed little since then. The Bush administration refused
ever again to have dealings with Arafat. After his death, it embraced the
new Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, but has done little to help him.
Sharon continued to develop his plan to impose a unilateral settlement on
the Palestinians, based on 'disengagement' from Gaza coupled with continued
expansion on the West Bank. By refusing to negotiate with Abbas and making
it impossible for him to deliver tangible benefits to the Palestinian
people, Sharon's strategy contributed directly to Hamas's electoral victory.
With Hamas in power, however, Israel has another excuse not to negotiate.
The US administration has supported Sharon's actions (and those of his
successor, Ehud Olmert). Bush has even endorsed unilateral Israeli
annexations in the Occupied Territories, reversing the stated policy of
every president since Lyndon Johnson.

US officials have offered mild criticisms of a few Israeli actions, but have
done little to help create a viable Palestinian state. Sharon has Bush
'wrapped around his little finger', the former national security adviser
Brent Scowcroft said in October 2004. If Bush tries to distance the US from
Israel, or even criticises Israeli actions in the Occupied Territories, he
is certain to face the wrath of the Lobby and its supporters in Congress.
Democratic presidential candidates understand that these are facts of life,
which is the reason John Kerry went to great lengths to display unalloyed
support for Israel in 2004, and why Hillary Clinton is doing the same thing
today.

Maintaining US support for Israel's policies against the Palestinians is
essential as far as the Lobby is concerned, but its ambitions do not stop
there. It also wants America to help Israel remain the dominant regional
power. The Israeli government and pro-Israel groups in the United States
have worked together to shape the administration's policy towards Iraq,
Syria and Iran, as well as its grand scheme for reordering the Middle East.

Pressure from Israel and the Lobby was not the only factor behind the
decision to attack Iraq in March 2003, but it was critical. Some Americans
believe that this was a war for oil, but there is hardly any direct evidence
to support this claim. Instead, the war was motivated in good part by a
desire to make Israel more secure. According to Philip Zelikow, a former
member of the president's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, the executive
director of the 9/11 Commission, and now a counsellor to Condoleezza Rice,
the 'real threat' from Iraq was not a threat to the United States. The
'unstated threat' was the 'threat against Israel', Zelikow told an audience
at the University of Virginia in September 2002. 'The American government,'
he added, 'doesn't want to lean too hard on it rhetorically, because it is
not a popular sell.'

On 16 August 2002, 11 days before Dick Cheney kicked off the campaign for
war with a hardline speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars, the Washington
Post reported that 'Israel is urging US officials not to delay a military
strike against Iraq's Saddam Hussein.' By this point, according to Sharon,
strategic co-ordination between Israel and the US had reached 'unprecedented
dimensions', and Israeli intelligence officials had given Washington a
variety of alarming reports about Iraq's WMD programmes. As one retired
Israeli general later put it, 'Israeli intelligence was a full partner to
the picture presented by American and British intelligence regarding Iraq's
non-conventional capabilities.'

Israeli leaders were deeply distressed when Bush decided to seek Security
Council authorisation for war, and even more worried when Saddam agreed to
let UN inspectors back in. 'The campaign against Saddam Hussein is a must,'
Shimon Peres told reporters in September 2002. 'Inspections and inspectors
are good for decent people, but dishonest people can overcome easily
inspections and inspectors.'

At the same time, Ehud Barak wrote a New York Times op-ed warning that 'the
greatest risk now lies in inaction.' His predecessor as prime minister,
Binyamin Netanyahu, published a similar piece in the Wall Street Journal,
entitled: 'The Case for Toppling Saddam'. 'Today nothing less than
dismantling his regime will do,' he declared. 'I believe I speak for the
overwhelming majority of Israelis in supporting a pre-emptive strike against
Saddam's regime.' Or as Ha'aretz reported in February 2003, 'the military
and political leadership yearns for war in Iraq.'

As Netanyahu suggested, however, the desire for war was not confined to
Israel's leaders. Apart from Kuwait, which Saddam invaded in 1990, Israel
was the only country in the world where both politicians and public favoured
war. As the journalist Gideon Levy observed at the time, 'Israel is the only
country in the West whose leaders support the war unreservedly and where no
alternative opinion is voiced.' In fact, Israelis were so gung-ho that their
allies in America told them to damp down their rhetoric, or it would look as
if the war would be fought on Israel's behalf.

Within the US, the main driving force behind the war was a small band of
neo-conservatives, many with ties to Likud. But leaders of the Lobby's major
organisations lent their voices to the campaign. 'As President Bush
attempted to sell the . . . war in Iraq,' the Forward reported, 'America's
most important Jewish organisations rallied as one to his defence. In
statement after statement community leaders stressed the need to rid the
world of Saddam Hussein and his weapons of mass destruction.' The editorial
goes on to say that 'concern for Israel's safety rightfully factored into
the deliberations of the main Jewish groups.'

Although neo-conservatives and other Lobby leaders were eager to invade
Iraq, the broader American Jewish community was not. Just after the war
started, Samuel Freedman reported that 'a compilation of nationwide opinion
polls by the Pew Research Center shows that Jews are less supportive of the
Iraq war than the population at large, 52 per cent to 62 per cent.' Clearly,
it would be wrong to blame the war in Iraq on 'Jewish influence'. Rather, it
was due in large part to the Lobby's influence, especially that of the
neo-conservatives within it.

The neo-conservatives had been determined to topple Saddam even before Bush
became president. They caused a stir early in 1998 by publishing two open
letters to Clinton, calling for Saddam's removal from power. The
signatories, many of whom had close ties to pro-Israel groups like JINSA or
WINEP, and who included Elliot Abrams, John Bolton, Douglas Feith, William
Kristol, Bernard Lewis, Donald Rumsfeld, Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz,
had little trouble persuading the Clinton administration to adopt the
general goal of ousting Saddam. But they were unable to sell a war to
achieve that objective. They were no more able to generate enthusiasm for
invading Iraq in the early months of the Bush administration. They needed
help to achieve their aim. That help arrived with 9/11. Specifically, the
events of that day led Bush and Cheney to reverse course and become strong
proponents of a preventive war.

At a key meeting with Bush at Camp David on 15 September, Wolfowitz
advocated attacking Iraq before Afghanistan, even though there was no
evidence that Saddam was involved in the attacks on the US and bin Laden was
known to be in Afghanistan. Bush rejected his advice and chose to go after
Afghanistan instead, but war with Iraq was now regarded as a serious
possibility and on 21 November the president charged military planners with
developing concrete plans for an invasion.

Other neo-conservatives were meanwhile at work in the corridors of power. We
don't have the full story yet, but scholars like Bernard Lewis of Princeton
and Fouad Ajami of Johns Hopkins reportedly played important roles in
persuading Cheney that war was the best option, though neo-conservatives on
his staff - Eric Edelman, John Hannah and Scooter Libby, Cheney's chief of
staff and one of the most powerful individuals in the administration - also
played their part. By early 2002 Cheney had persuaded Bush; and with Bush
and Cheney on board, war was inevitable.

Outside the administration, neo-conservative pundits lost no time in making
the case that invading Iraq was essential to winning the war on terrorism.
Their efforts were designed partly to keep up the pressure on Bush, and
partly to overcome opposition to the war inside and outside the government.
On 20 September, a group of prominent neo-conservatives and their allies
published another open letter: 'Even if evidence does not link Iraq directly
to the attack,' it read, 'any strategy aiming at the eradication of
terrorism and its sponsors must include a determined effort to remove Saddam
Hussein from power in Iraq.' The letter also reminded Bush that 'Israel has
been and remains America's staunchest ally against international terrorism.'
In the 1 October issue of the Weekly Standard, Robert Kagan and William
Kristol called for regime change in Iraq as soon as the Taliban was
defeated. That same day, Charles Krauthammer argued in the Washington Post
that after the US was done with Afghanistan, Syria should be next, followed
by Iran and Iraq: 'The war on terrorism will conclude in Baghdad,' when we
finish off 'the most dangerous terrorist regime in the world'.

This was the beginning of an unrelenting public relations campaign to win
support for an invasion of Iraq, a crucial part of which was the
manipulation of intelligence in such a way as to make it seem as if Saddam
posed an imminent threat. For example, Libby pressured CIA analysts to find
evidence supporting the case for war and helped prepare Colin Powell's now
discredited briefing to the UN Security Council. Within the Pentagon, the
Policy Counterterrorism Evaluation Group was charged with finding links
between al-Qaida and Iraq that the intelligence community had supposedly
missed. Its two key members were David Wurmser, a hard-core
neo-conservative, and Michael Maloof, a Lebanese-American with close ties to
Perle. Another Pentagon group, the so-called Office of Special Plans, was
given the task of uncovering evidence that could be used to sell the war. It
was headed by Abram Shulsky, a neo-conservative with long-standing ties to
Wolfowitz, and its ranks included recruits from pro-Israel think tanks. Both
these organisations were created after 9/11 and reported directly to Douglas
Feith.

Like virtually all the neo-conservatives, Feith is deeply committed to
Israel; he also has long-term ties to Likud. He wrote articles in the 1990s
supporting the settlements and arguing that Israel should retain the
Occupied Territories. More important, along with Perle and Wurmser, he wrote
the famous 'Clean Break' report in June 1996 for Netanyahu, who had just
become prime minister. Among other things, it recommended that Netanyahu
'focus on removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq - an important Israeli
strategic objective in its own right'. It also called for Israel to take
steps to reorder the entire Middle East. Netanyahu did not follow their
advice, but Feith, Perle and Wurmser were soon urging the Bush
administration to pursue those same goals. The Ha'aretz columnist Akiva
Eldar warned that Feith and Perle 'are walking a fine line between their
loyalty to American governments . . . and Israeli interests'.

Wolfowitz is equally committed to Israel. The Forward once described him as
'the most hawkishly pro-Israel voice in the administration', and selected
him in 2002 as first among 50 notables who 'have consciously pursued Jewish
activism'. At about the same time, JINSA gave Wolfowitz its Henry M. Jackson
Distinguished Service Award for promoting a strong partnership between
Israel and the United States; and the Jerusalem Post, describing him as
'devoutly pro-Israel', named him 'Man of the Year' in 2003.

Finally, a brief word is in order about the neo-conservatives' prewar
support of Ahmed Chalabi, the unscrupulous Iraqi exile who headed the Iraqi
National Congress. They backed Chalabi because he had established close ties
with Jewish-American groups and had pledged to foster good relations with
Israel once he gained power. This was precisely what pro-Israel proponents
of regime change wanted to hear. Matthew Berger laid out the essence of the
bargain in the Jewish Journal: 'The INC saw improved relations as a way to
tap Jewish influence in Washington and Jerusalem and to drum up increased
support for its cause. For their part, the Jewish groups saw an opportunity
to pave the way for better relations between Israel and Iraq, if and when
the INC is involved in replacing Saddam Hussein's regime.'

Given the neo-conservatives' devotion to Israel, their obsession with Iraq,
and their influence in the Bush administration, it isn't surprising that
many Americans suspected that the war was designed to further Israeli
interests. Last March, Barry Jacobs of the American Jewish Committee
acknowledged that the belief that Israel and the neo-conservatives had
conspired to get the US into a war in Iraq was 'pervasive' in the
intelligence community. Yet few people would say so publicly, and most of
those who did - including Senator Ernest Hollings and Representative James
Moran - were condemned for raising the issue. Michael Kinsley wrote in late
2002 that 'the lack of public discussion about the role of Israel . . . is
the proverbial elephant in the room.' The reason for the reluctance to talk
about it, he observed, was fear of being labelled an anti-semite. There is
little doubt that Israel and the Lobby were key factors in the decision to
go to war. It's a decision the US would have been far less likely to take
without their efforts. And the war itself was intended to be only the first
step. A front-page headline in the Wall Street Journal shortly after the war
began says it all: 'President's Dream: Changing Not Just Regime but a
Region: A Pro-US, Democratic Area Is a Goal that Has Israeli and
Neo-Conservative Roots.'

Pro-Israel forces have long been interested in getting the US military more
directly involved in the Middle East. But they had limited success during
the Cold War, because America acted as an 'off-shore balancer' in the
region. Most forces designated for the Middle East, like the Rapid
Deployment Force, were kept 'over the horizon' and out of harm's way. The
idea was to play local powers off against each other - which is why the
Reagan administration supported Saddam against revolutionary Iran during the
Iran-Iraq War - in order to maintain a balance favourable to the US.

This policy changed after the first Gulf War, when the Clinton
administration adopted a strategy of 'dual containment'. Substantial US
forces would be stationed in the region in order to contain both Iran and
Iraq, instead of one being used to check the other. The father of dual
containment was none other than Martin Indyk, who first outlined the
strategy in May 1993 at WINEP and then implemented it as director for Near
East and South Asian Affairs at the National Security Council.

By the mid-1990s there was considerable dissatisfaction with dual
containment, because it made the United States the mortal enemy of two
countries that hated each other, and forced Washington to bear the burden of
containing both. But it was a strategy the Lobby favoured and worked
actively in Congress to preserve. Pressed by AIPAC and other pro-Israel
forces, Clinton toughened up the policy in the spring of 1995 by imposing an
economic embargo on Iran. But AIPAC and the others wanted more. The result
was the 1996 Iran and Libya Sanctions Act, which imposed sanctions on any
foreign companies investing more than $40 million to develop petroleum
resources in Iran or Libya. As Ze'ev Schiff, the military correspondent of
Ha'aretz, noted at the time, 'Israel is but a tiny element in the big
scheme, but one should not conclude that it cannot influence those within
the Beltway.'

By the late 1990s, however, the neo-conservatives were arguing that dual
containment was not enough and that regime change in Iraq was essential. By
toppling Saddam and turning Iraq into a vibrant democracy, they argued, the
US would trigger a far-reaching process of change throughout the Middle
East. The same line of thinking was evident in the 'Clean Break' study the
neo-conservatives wrote for Netanyahu. By 2002, when an invasion of Iraq was
on the front-burner, regional transformation was an article of faith in
neo-conservative circles.

Charles Krauthammer describes this grand scheme as the brainchild of Natan
Sharansky, but Israelis across the political spectrum believed that toppling
Saddam would alter the Middle East to Israel's advantage. Aluf Benn reported
in Ha'aretz (17 February 2003):

Senior IDF officers and those close to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, such as
National Security Adviser Ephraim Halevy, paint a rosy picture of the
wonderful future Israel can expect after the war. They envision a domino
effect, with the fall of Saddam Hussein followed by that of Israel's other
enemies . . . Along with these leaders will disappear terror and weapons of
mass destruction.

Once Baghdad fell in mid-April 2003, Sharon and his lieutenants began urging
Washington to target Damascus. On 16 April, Sharon, interviewed in Yedioth
Ahronoth, called for the United States to put 'very heavy' pressure on
Syria, while Shaul Mofaz, his defence minister, interviewed in Ma'ariv,
said: 'We have a long list of issues that we are thinking of demanding of
the Syrians and it is appropriate that it should be done through the
Americans.' Ephraim Halevy told a WINEP audience that it was now important
for the US to get rough with Syria, and the Washington Post reported that
Israel was 'fuelling the campaign' against Syria by feeding the US
intelligence reports about the actions of Bashar Assad, the Syrian
president.

Prominent members of the Lobby made the same arguments. Wolfowitz declared
that 'there has got to be regime change in Syria,' and Richard Perle told a
journalist that 'a short message, a two-worded message' could be delivered
to other hostile regimes in the Middle East: 'You're next.' In early April,
WINEP released a bipartisan report stating that Syria 'should not miss the
message that countries that pursue Saddam's reckless, irresponsible and
defiant behaviour could end up sharing his fate'. On 15 April, Yossi Klein
Halevi wrote a piece in the Los Angeles Times entitled 'Next, Turn the
Screws on Syria', while the following day Zev Chafets wrote an article for
the New York Daily News entitled 'Terror-Friendly Syria Needs a Change,
Too'. Not to be outdone, Lawrence Kaplan wrote in the New Republic on 21
April that Assad was a serious threat to America.

Back on Capitol Hill, Congressman Eliot Engel had reintroduced the Syria
Accountability and Lebanese Sovereignty Restoration Act. It threatened
sanctions against Syria if it did not withdraw from Lebanon, give up its WMD
and stop supporting terrorism, and it also called for Syria and Lebanon to
take concrete steps to make peace with Israel. This legislation was strongly
endorsed by the Lobby - by AIPAC especially - and 'framed', according to the
Jewish Telegraph Agency, 'by some of Israel's best friends in Congress'. The
Bush administration had little enthusiasm for it, but the anti-Syrian act
passed overwhelmingly (398 to 4 in the House; 89 to 4 in the Senate), and
Bush signed it into law on 12 December 2003.

The administration itself was still divided about the wisdom of targeting
Syria. Although the neo-conservatives were eager to pick a fight with
Damascus, the CIA and the State Department were opposed to the idea. And
even after Bush signed the new law, he emphasised that he would go slowly in
implementing it. His ambivalence is understandable. First, the Syrian
government had not only been providing important intelligence about al-Qaida
since 9/11: it had also warned Washington about a planned terrorist attack
in the Gulf and given CIA interrogators access to Mohammed Zammar, the
alleged recruiter of some of the 9/11 hijackers. Targeting the Assad regime
would jeopardise these valuable connections, and thereby undermine the
larger war on terrorism.

Second, Syria had not been on bad terms with Washington before the Iraq war
(it had even voted for UN Resolution 1441), and was itself no threat to the
United States. Playing hardball with it would make the US look like a bully
with an insatiable appetite for beating up Arab states. Third, putting Syria
on the hit list would give Damascus a powerful incentive to cause trouble in
Iraq. Even if one wanted to bring pressure to bear, it made good sense to
finish the job in Iraq first. Yet Congress insisted on putting the screws on
Damascus, largely in response to pressure from Israeli officials and groups
like AIPAC. If there were no Lobby, there would have been no Syria
Accountability Act, and US policy towards Damascus would have been more in
line with the national interest.

Israelis tend to describe every threat in the starkest terms, but Iran is
widely seen as their most dangerous enemy because it is the most likely to
acquire nuclear weapons. Virtually all Israelis regard an Islamic country in
the Middle East with nuclear weapons as a threat to their existence. 'Iraq
is a problem . . . But you should understand, if you ask me, today Iran is
more dangerous than Iraq,' the defence minister, Binyamin Ben-Eliezer,
remarked a month before the Iraq war.

Sharon began pushing the US to confront Iran in November 2002, in an
interview in the Times. Describing Iran as the 'centre of world terror', and
bent on acquiring nuclear weapons, he declared that the Bush administration
should put the strong arm on Iran 'the day after' it conquered Iraq. In late
April 2003, Ha'aretz reported that the Israeli ambassador in Washington was
calling for regime change in Iran. The overthrow of Saddam, he noted, was
'not enough'. In his words, America 'has to follow through. We still have
great threats of that magnitude coming from Syria, coming from Iran.'

The neo-conservatives, too, lost no time in making the case for regime
change in Tehran. On 6 May, the AEI co-sponsored an all-day conference on
Iran with the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies and the Hudson
Institute, both champions of Israel. The speakers were all strongly
pro-Israel, and many called for the US to replace the Iranian regime with a
democracy. As usual, a bevy of articles by prominent neo-conservatives made
the case for going after Iran. 'The liberation of Iraq was the first great
battle for the future of the Middle East . . . But the next great battle -
not, we hope, a military battle - will be for Iran,' William Kristol wrote
in the Weekly Standard on 12 May.

The administration has responded to the Lobby's pressure by working overtime
to shut down Iran's nuclear programme. But Washington has had little
success, and Iran seems determined to create a nuclear arsenal. As a result,
the Lobby has intensified its pressure. Op-eds and other articles now warn
of imminent dangers from a nuclear Iran, caution against any appeasement of
a 'terrorist' regime, and hint darkly of preventive action should diplomacy
fail. The Lobby is pushing Congress to approve the Iran Freedom Support Act,
which would expand existing sanctions. Israeli officials also warn they may
take pre-emptive action should Iran continue down the nuclear road, threats
partly intended to keep Washington's attention on the issue.

One might argue that Israel and the Lobby have not had much influence on
policy towards Iran, because the US has its own reasons for keeping Iran
from going nuclear. There is some truth in this, but Iran's nuclear
ambitions do not pose a direct threat to the US. If Washington could live
with a nuclear Soviet Union, a nuclear China or even a nuclear North Korea,
it can live with a nuclear Iran. And that is why the Lobby must keep up
constant pressure on politicians to confront Tehran. Iran and the US would
hardly be allies if the Lobby did not exist, but US policy would be more
temperate and preventive war would not be a serious option.

It is not surprising that Israel and its American supporters want the US to
deal with any and all threats to Israel's security. If their efforts to
shape US policy succeed, Israel's enemies will be weakened or overthrown,
Israel will get a free hand with the Palestinians, and the US will do most
of the fighting, dying, rebuilding and paying. But even if the US fails to
transform the Middle East and finds itself in conflict with an increasingly
radicalised Arab and Islamic world, Israel will end up protected by the
world's only superpower. This is not a perfect outcome from the Lobby's
point of view, but it is obviously preferable to Washington distancing
itself, or using its leverage to force Israel to make peace with the
Palestinians.

Can the Lobby's power be curtailed? One would like to think so, given the
Iraq debacle, the obvious need to rebuild America's image in the Arab and
Islamic world, and the recent revelations about AIPAC officials passing US
government secrets to Israel. One might also think that Arafat's death and
the election of the more moderate Mahmoud Abbas would cause Washington to
press vigorously and even-handedly for a peace agreement. In short, there
are ample grounds for leaders to distance themselves from the Lobby and
adopt a Middle East policy more consistent with broader US interests. In
particular, using American power to achieve a just peace between Israel and
the Palestinians would help advance the cause of democracy in the region.

But that is not going to happen - not soon anyway. AIPAC and its allies
(including Christian Zionists) have no serious opponents in the lobbying
world. They know it has become more difficult to make Israel's case today,
and they are responding by taking on staff and expanding their activities.
Besides, American politicians remain acutely sensitive to campaign
contributions and other forms of political pressure, and major media outlets
are likely to remain sympathetic to Israel no matter what it does.

The Lobby's influence causes trouble on several fronts. It increases the
terrorist danger that all states face - including America's European allies.
It has made it impossible to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a
situation that gives extremists a powerful recruiting tool, increases the
pool of potential terrorists and sympathisers, and contributes to Islamic
radicalism in Europe and Asia.

Equally worrying, the Lobby's campaign for regime change in Iran and Syria
could lead the US to attack those countries, with potentially disastrous
effects. We don't need another Iraq. At a minimum, the Lobby's hostility
towards Syria and Iran makes it almost impossible for Washington to enlist
them in the struggle against al-Qaida and the Iraqi insurgency, where their
help is badly needed.

There is a moral dimension here as well. Thanks to the Lobby, the United
States has become the de facto enabler of Israeli expansion in the Occupied
Territories, making it complicit in the crimes perpetrated against the
Palestinians. This situation undercuts Washington's efforts to promote
democracy abroad and makes it look hypocritical when it presses other states
to respect human rights. US efforts to limit nuclear proliferation appear
equally hypocritical given its willingness to accept Israel's nuclear
arsenal, which only encourages Iran and others to seek a similar capability.

Besides, the Lobby's campaign to quash debate about Israel is unhealthy for
democracy. Silencing sceptics by organising blacklists and boycotts - or by
suggesting that critics are anti-semites - violates the principle of open
debate on which democracy depends. The inability of Congress to conduct a
genuine debate on these important issues paralyses the entire process of
democratic deliberation. Israel's backers should be free to make their case
and to challenge those who disagree with them, but efforts to stifle debate
by intimidation must be roundly condemned.

Finally, the Lobby's influence has been bad for Israel. Its ability to
persuade Washington to support an expansionist agenda has discouraged Israel
from seizing opportunities - including a peace treaty with Syria and a
prompt and full implementation of the Oslo Accords - that would have saved
Israeli lives and shrunk the ranks of Palestinian extremists. Denying the
Palestinians their legitimate political rights certainly has not made Israel
more secure, and the long campaign to kill or marginalise a generation of
Palestinian leaders has empowered extremist groups like Hamas, and reduced
the number of Palestinian leaders who would be willing to accept a fair
settlement and able to make it work. Israel itself would probably be better
off if the Lobby were less powerful and US policy more even-handed.

There is a ray of hope, however. Although the Lobby remains a powerful
force, the adverse effects of its influence are increasingly difficult to
hide. Powerful states can maintain flawed policies for quite some time, but
reality cannot be ignored for ever. What is needed is a candid discussion of
the Lobby's influence and a more open debate about US interests in this
vital region. Israel's well-being is one of those interests, but its
continued occupation of the West Bank and its broader regional agenda are
not. Open debate will expose the limits of the strategic and moral case for
one-sided US support and could move the US to a position more consistent
with its own national interest, with the interests of the other states in
the region, and with Israel's long-term interests as well.

10 March

Footnotes

An unedited version of this article is available at
http://ksgnotes1.harvard.edu/Research/wpaper.nsf/rwp/RWP06-011, or at
http://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=891198.

 <http://www.lrb.co.uk/contribhome.php?get=mear01> John Mearsheimer is the
Wendell Harrison Professor of Political Science at Chicago, and the author
of The Tragedy of Great Power Politics.

 <http://www.lrb.co.uk/contribhome.php?get=walt01> Stephen Walt is the
Robert and Renee Belfer Professor of International Affairs at the Kennedy
School of Government at Harvard. His most recent book is Taming American
Power: The Global Response to US Primacy.

 


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