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John Lichfield
Published: 22 March 2006 Dieudonné's one-man show is all the rage in Paris but his act is virulently anti-semitic, exploiting the anger that exploded among young Arabs and blacks in the suburbs last autumn. Now he is talking about running for the Presidency.
Stand-up comedy, or "le one-man-show", is all the rage in Paris these days. (Riots are not the only show in town.) One of the most talented, and popular, French comedians of his generation, Dieudonné, is launching a new season at his cosy, scruffy little theatre, the Théatre de la Main-d'Or, near the Bastille. When the curtain rises, he is greeted with roars and whoops by a packed, multi-racial audience, which is young, trendy, intellectual and left-wing. Many of them have come straight from the latest demonstration against the government's new jobs law for the young. Much of Dieudonné's show - "Le Depot du Bilan" (The Bankruptcy) - is surreally funny. A bored bureaucrat from a government welfare agency for threatened animal species is interviewing a distraught rhinoceros. "Wouldn't you consider getting rid of that horn? Horns don't go down so well these days. You have to adapt to survive..." Eventually, the rhinoceros falls through the floor. All through the show, however, something else intrudes, something darker and more sinister. Dieudonné is obsessed with Jews. All races, even his own mixed black and white origins, get a gentle mickey-taking in his show. When Jews are mentioned - and they are mentioned over and over again - the tone becomes more aggressive, even violent. In one skit, Bernard-Henri Lévy, the Jewish-French philosopher, haggles with a street potato seller. Dieudonné/Lévy says: "How can you ask me to pay so much when six million of us died in the Holocaust?" Roars of delight from the audience. There is also a Hitler-in-his-bunker sketch which is moderately funny until the closing line: "You will see, in the future, people will come to realise that I, Adolf Hitler, was really a moderate." Until a couple of years ago, Dieudonné - his full name is Dieudonné M'bala M'bala - was a kind of French Lenny Henry. His stand-up comedy was corrosive, satirical but fundamentally good humoured. And funny. There was a social or political message in many of his skits but he bashed all ethnic groups and prejudices equally. He was an anti-racist, who believed in universal values. He was a black man who refused, as he said, "to dance the calypso with a banana stuck up my arse". He appeared in popular films, such as Asterix and Cleopatra. Since 2002, and intensively since 2004, Dieudonné has become a kind of French Louis Farrakhan, the anti-Semitic leader of the Nation of Islam in the US. His critics (including former friends) say that he is no longer a comedian interested in politics but a politician, who uses comedy to further extremist political ambitions. Sometimes directly, sometimes by coded, or scarcely coded references, he presents the Jews as the main source of black misery; or he suggests that the obsession with the suffering of the Jews soaks up too much of the fund of guilt and shame that would be better spent on black people. Earlier this month, he was found guilty of "incitement to racial hatred" by a French court for saying in a newspaper interview that his Jewish critics were "slave traders, who had converted to banking". In recent days, he has been accused by a former friend, the leading Socialist (and Jewish) politician Julien Dray, of being partly to blame for the horrific torture and murder of a young Jewish man, Ilan Halimi, by a suburban gang last month. Dieudonné, 40, of Cameroonian and Breton middle-class origins, has announced that he plans to run for the presidency next year. He says that he "sees himself" in the second round run-off, which is exceedingly unlikely. Nonetheless, he is not a figure to dismiss lightly. An utterly unscientific, phone-in opinion poll was conducted recently by Skyrock, a French radio station popular with the urban and suburban young. The two politicians who scored the most votes were the veteran far-right xenophobe, Jean-Marie Le Pen (29 per cent), and Dieudonné (26 per cent). Dieudonné brings together, and plays on, many of the most poisonous issues in French politics and society: the contempt of many young people for main-stream politics, seen again in the intensity of the mobilisation against the new labour contracts for the under-26s; the shattering of the French political consensus into tribal extremes of right and left; the racial and social exclusion and suppressed violence of the multi-racial suburbs (where he was himself born). Most of all, however, Dieudonné has come to symbolise - and some say foment - the rise of a "new anti-Semitism" among Arab and black youths and on the "white" far left. Race was not a direct issue in the suburban riots which shook France last autumn. The young, black, brown and some white kids who belong to suburban youth gangs are not racist among themselves. There is one huge exception, however. They have a gut hatred of the "feujs" (backward slang for juifs or Jews). This anti-Semitism, often based on lurid fantasies of Jewish wealth and power, was not invented by Dieudonné. It began with the sympathy of young people of Arab origin for Palestinian kids throwing stones at Israeli troops. Dieudonné stands accused, however, of making this new anti-Semitism of the French under classes - and increasingly of the French far left - more respectable and spreading it to French people of African or West Indian origin. Mr Dray is the official spokesman of France's main opposition, Socialist party and a founder of SOS-Racisme (an organisation once supported by Dieudonné, now dismissed by him as a "Zionist" front). M. Dray said: "[Ilan Halimi's] murder must be seen against the background of the social climate in France. Dieudonné is not responsible for his death but he shares the blame for the rise in anti-Semitism [in the suburbs]." Youssouf Fofana, the alleged leader of the kidnap gang which abducted, tortured and murdered M. Halimi (a mobile phone salesman from a modest background), explained his choice of victim to his fellow gang-members in starkly racial terms. According to statements to police, he said: "The Jews are kings, because they eat up all the state's money, but I'm black and treated by the state like a slave." This is a garbled version of the "Jews rule-black suffer" message popularised in the suburbs by Dieudonné in the past two or three years. Off-stage, or off his political soap-box, Dieudonné is a gentle, soft-spoken man. He was so loved by showbusiness friends - including his original double-act partner, the Jewish comedian, Elie Semoun - that they defended his initial lurches towards anti-Semitism. A comedian had the right to satirise even the most sacred of taboos, they said. As Dieudonné plunged further into politics, and outright Jew-baiting, his entertainment friends dropped him one by one. In an interview with The Independent, the comedian-politician rejected suggestions that he was anti-Semitic. "I am anti-Zionist and I oppose the power of the Zionist lobby in France," he said. "France is meant to be a secular Republic which treats all races equally but the power of Zionism has perverted that. "I remain as profoundly anti-racist as I ever was. It is the Jews, or Zionists, who have created racism by forming such an effective lobby for one ethnic group and for the state of Israel, which illegally occupies the land of another people. "The Holocaust was a terrible, appalling thing but there has been other suffering in history and there is other suffering today in a world cursed by the power of money. The Zionists have perverted the values of the Republic so that only the suffering of the Jews is recognised officially, not, for instance, the suffering of blacks through the slave trade." Dieudonné proceeds by the kind of nudge-nudge, coded provocation that has long been the stock in trade of the anti-Semitic far right in France. He had been prosecuted 17 times for inciting racial hatred, or denying the Holocaust, but had won every case before his recent condemnation. If you put a few of his comments together, however, the Dieudonné message becomes pretty clear. On Beur FM, a radio station directed at young people of North African origin, he said in March last year: "In my children's school books, I ripped out the pages on the Shoah. I will continue to do so as long as our pain is not recognised." In December 2003, he appeared on a French chat and comedy show dressed as an Israeli West Bank colonist and ended his skit with a Nazi salute and shouted: "Israel-heil". In his statement announcing his intention to run for the presidency, he launched an attack on the French Jewish association CRIF (Conseil Représentatif des Institutions Juives de France). It was, he said, a "Zionist organisation of the extreme right that gathers all our leaders at the beginning of the year to share with them a roadmap or an agenda for the year ahead". Even the anti-Semitic paranoia of Jean-Marie Le Pen does not go that far - in public, at least. But why? Why insist that it was Jews that ran the slave trade, when they did not? Leaving aside distaste for Israeli policy (which is shared by many people), why the obsession that Jews secretly run the world and that Jews deliberately soak up all the world's natural resources of pity? Eric Marty, a professor of contemporary literature at Paris-VII university, links the Dieudonné phenomenon to the similar savage hatred of Jews among some American black radicals, which began in the 1960s. He says it is a question of transfer of anger from real causes of black suffering - white slave masters, white prejudice - to a rival victim "someone who is identified ... as more of a victim than yourself". Politically, also, it is easier to goad young blacks or Arabs into hating Jews than into hating a white society whose symbols of success they crave. Anne-Sophie Mercier, a TV journalist who published a book on Dieudonnné last year (La verité sur Dieudonné), which he tried to block, believes that the comedian's lurch into outright anti-Semitism in the past two years is part of a deliberate strategy. If you really want to address the problems of young blacks, she suggests, there are plenty of topics to choose: the prejudice of employers; poor schools; broken families; drugs; the many self-defeating jealousies between different black communities in France. Jews, objectively, would not figure high on the list. If, however, you want to leap-frog into a position of influence as a potential leader of all black people in France, especially young black people, you need a short cut. Stoking up anti-Semitism and presenting yourself as a victim, someone with the courage to speak out, offers a potential route. "Dieudonné is no longer a comic," says Mme Mercier. "He is a politician. He is trying the unite the different black communities ... and to build something it always helps if you can persuade people to be against someone else." A question remains open: "Is Dieudonné still a one-man show?" Or is he being used by others? Mme Mercier, in her book, tracks Dieudonné's connections and supporters to an eclectic range of extremist movements, from Islamists, to black radical separatists, to the French representative of Louis Farrakhan, to the shadowy figures on the French ultra-Left who promote the theory that the US attacked itself on 11 September, 2001. However, she finds no conclusive evidence that Dieudonné is controlled or funded by any of these people. Dieudonné himself rejected suggestions that he has become a politician or a tool for political forces. "First and foremost I am a performer, a comic," he said. "But I travel around France and around Africa and I see the great suffering caused by the power of money and ultra-capitalism, the wiping away of human values. As a human being, I cannot remain indifferent to that." His former showbusiness friends suggest that, at some time in past three years, Dieudonné underwent a dramatic change. Some believe that he is just a naïve tool for others. Others says that Dieudonné is driven by himself alone and by a belief that he can become a kind of black political Messiah. Either way, they suggest, Dieudonné is "not funny any more". The real danger may be, however, that Dieudonné is funny and very talented.  |
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Jeffrey Blankfort
When Malaysian Prime Minister Mathahir Mohammed declared at an international Islamic Conference in Kuala Lumpur in mid-October, 2003 that "today the Jews rule the world by proxy [and] They get others to fight and die for them,[1] the reactions in the U.S. and the West were predictable.
It was "a speech that was taken right out of the Protocols of Zion," according to one Israeli commentator[2], and Mathahir would be accused of imitating Hitler and insuring that "Muslims around the world are similarly being fed a regular diet of classic big lies about Jewish power.[3]
Big lies? Given Israel's unchecked dominion over the Palestinians and its Arab neighbors over the past half century, supported in every way possible by the United States, one can assume that Muslims, not to mention intelligent non-Muslims, have no need for additional instruction as to the extent of Jewish power. As further proof of its existence, if such were needed, there would be no attempt to measure the Malaysian prime minister's words against the reality of the times to determine if there was anything accurate in his assessment. If Mathahir could be accused of anything, it would be of being sloppy historically and using too broad a brush. The Jews, as such, control nothing. A segment of American Jewry, however, has been able, with few exceptions, to shape U.S. Middle East policy since the mid-Sixties. Given America's position as a major world power, and now its only superpower, that is not a small achievement. Over the years, that segment, the organized American Jewish community - in short, the Israel lobby - has amassed unparalleled political power through skillfully combining the wealth of its members[4] with its extraordinary organizational skills to achieve what amounts to a corporate takeover of the U.S. Congress and virtual veto power over the presidency. There is virtually no sector of the American body politic that has been immune to the lobby's penetration. That its primary goal has not been to improve the security and well-being of the United States or the American people, but to advance the interests of a foreign country, namely Israel, may be debated, but it was acknowledged, in part, more than a dozen years ago by Sen. Howard Metzenbaum (D-Ohio), who complained to an annual conference of the National Jewish Community Relations Advisory Council that "There's only one issue members [of Congress] think is important to American Jews - Israel."[5] It was no secret that Israel had long been interested in eliminating the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq and redrawing the map of the Middle East to enhance its power in the region.[6] Initiating that undertaking became a task for key individuals in and around the White House with deep roots in right-wing Israeli politics. The attack on the World Trade Center supplied the opportunity. That Iraq had nothing to do with it was immaterial. The lobby's propaganda apparatus would make the American people believe otherwise. The first step has been completed. Saddam Hussein has been removed, not by Israel, but by the U.S. and its "coalition of the willing." From the perspective of the Israelis and, one must assume, the lobby, it is better that American and foreign soldiers do the shedding of blood, Iraqi and their own, rather than those of Israel, the world's fourth ranked military power. Such an accusation will most assuredly draw cries of "blood libel" from the likes of the Anti-Defamation League, but it is a conclusion that one can readily draw from the facts. The degree to which the present Iraq situation, as well as the first Gulf War, can be attributed to efforts of key individuals and the major Jewish organizations that constitute the lobby is what this article will examine.* *The lobby¹s existence and power well predate its alliance with what may be called its Christian fundamentalist auxiliary, which has given it unprecedented influence over both Congress and the White House. On March 13th, 2003, during a House appro-priations subcommittee hearing on foreign aid, of which Israel has long been the dominant recipient [7], Secretary of State Colin Powell took the extraordinary step of assuring members of Congress that a "small cabal" of pro-Israeli American Jews was not orchestrating President George W. Bush's drive toward war. "The strategy with respect to Iraq has derived from our interest in the region and our support of U.N. resolutions over time," Powell said, in response to a question from the subcommittee's Republican chairman, Arizona Rep. Jim Kolbe. "It is not driven by any small cabal that is buried away somewhere, that is telling President Bush or me or Vice President Cheney or [National Security Adviser Condoleeza] Rice or other members of the administration what our policies should be."[8] In fact, there is a cabal that has been driving U.S. foreign policy under the Bush administration, and some of its members; notably, Elliot Abrams and Michael Ledeeen, were part of the last cabal that operated in Washington under the Reagan administration, the one that brought us the Iran-Contra scandal. This one, however, is not nearly as secretive. Ironically, Powell has been and remains one of its favorite targets, and his frequent public humiliations at the cabal's hands have led seasoned observers to wonder why he hasn't resigned. On this occasion, as he had on others, Powell played the loyal soldier, joining in what Ha'aretz's Nathan Guttman described as the Bush Administration's "Every effort to play down Israel's role in the future military conflict... to remove any suspicion that the decision to go to war with Iraq is a pro-Israeli... step. But, as hard as the administration tries," he wrote, "the voices linking Israel to the war are getting louder and louder. It is claimed the desire to help Israel is the major reason for President George Bush sending American soldiers to a superfluous war in the Gulf." [9] The loudest among them may have been the free-swinging, old-line "conservative," Pat Buchanan, who charged, "That a cabal of polemicists and public officials seek, to ensnare our country in a series of wars that are not in America's interests... What these neo-conservatives seek is to conscript American blood to make the world safe for Israel," Buchanan wrote in the March 24 issue of the magazine he edits, the American Conservative. Because of his history of advocating right-wing causes, his comments were largely ignored by the forces mobilizing against the war. Another of those voices was syndicated columnist's Robert Novak, who several months earlier had written that "In private conversation with... members of Congress, the former general [Sharon] leaves no doubt that the greatest U.S. assistance to Israel would be to overthrow Saddam Hussein's Iraqi regime. That view is widely shared inside the Bush administration, and is a major reason why U.S. forces today are assembling for war."10 Support for a U.S. attack on Iraq was not limited to Sharon or his Likud Party: in a September 12 dialogue with Rabbi William Berkowitz at the Center for Jewish History, former Israeli Labor prime minister and then foreign minister Shimon Peres was asked what he thought of the administration's response to Iraq. Peres, likening the situation to the next world war, replied:
One may speculate whether Powell would have raised the issue had he not been asked, but apparently he felt the need to clear the air following an uproar that occurred ten days earlier when Virginia Democratic Congressman Jim Moran claimed that: "If it were not for the strong support of the Jewish community for this war with Iraq, we wouldn't be doing this."[12] As could be expected, his comment was condemned by the White House and congressional Democratic leaders, including Senate Minority leader Tom Daschle and Democratic House Whip Nancy Pelosi, two long-time loyal devotees of the Israeli cause. Six local rabbis and Washington Post columnist Marc Fisher called on him to resign, with the latter comparing the congressman's remarks to a speech Adolf Hitler delivered to the German parliament in 1939, accusing "Jewish financiers" of plunging Europe into a world war.[13] "Moran is symptomatic of a problem that we have been watching for several weeks and months," lamented Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), "and that is that the charge that the Jews are instigators and advocators of military action has moved from the extreme into the mainstream," This shift, he added, is emboldening people such as Moran to "have the chutzpah to say such things." "It's out there and therefore we are concerned," Foxman said. "If, God forbid, the war is not successful and the body bags come back, who's to blame?"[14] Fueling such anxieties, the Jewish weekly Forward noted, was "the increasing media focus on the White House's concern with protecting Israel and the views of Jewish hawks within the administration."[15] While the mainstream press condemned Moran's remarks, columnist Michael Kinsley[16] pointed out that "The thunderous rush of politicians of all stripes to denounce Moran's remarks as complete nonsense might suggest to the suspicious mind that they are not complete nonsense," and that Jewish organizations were being hypocritical since they were posting comments on their own web sites lauding the Israel lobby's ability to get things done. Wrote Kinsley:
The site he was referring to is that of AIPAC, the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee, Israel's official Washington lobbying arm, which, in testament to its power, is generally referred to in the halls of Congress simply as "the lobby." From a one-man office when it was founded 50 years ago, AIPAC has grown into an organization of 85,000 members, with activists in every Jewish community in the United States. Each Spring it holds a national three-day conference in Washington. "It's climatic Congressional Dinner attracts hundreds of congress members and dozens of foreign ambassadors," writes Forward editor J.J. Goldberg, "all of them eager to curry good will with AIPAC and the Jewish community. Lest the point be lost, the dinner chairperson always reads a ëroll call' naming every senator, every representative, and ambassador present in the hall... followed by private receptions by lawmakers courting Jewish campaign support."[18] The organization does not contribute money to candidates directly but advises numerous Jewish PACs and wealthy Jewish donors as to the campaigns where their money might be the most useful to Israel. AIPAC holds similar conferences, but on a smaller scale, around the country in the winter, with local officials from the respective regions being honored as invited guests. It so happened that AIPAC's annual conference last year followed the Iraq invasion by a week. Since "AIPAC is wont to support whatever is good for Israel, and so long as Israel supports the war," wrote Ha'aretz's Guttmann, "so too do the thousands of the AIPAC lobbyists who convened in the American capital."[19] The Washington Post's Dana Milbank did not go quite that far, but noted that the meeting put a spotlight on the Bush administration's "delicate dance with Israel and the Jewish state's friends over the attack on Iraq." While, "officially," he wrote, AIPAC had no position on the merits of a war against Iraq before it started, as delegates were heading to town the group put a headline on its web site proclaiming: "Israeli Weapons Utilized By Coalition Forces Against Iraq." The item featured a photograph of a drone with the caption saying the "Israeli-made Hunter Unmanned Aerial Vehicle" is being used "by U.S. soldiers in Iraq."[20] A parade of Israeli as well as top Bush administration officials - Powell, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, political director Kenneth Mehlman, Undersecretary of State John R. Bolton, one of the rare non-Jewish neo-cons, and Assistant Secretary of State William Burns - appeared before the AIPAC audience. The meeting - attended by about 5,000 people, according to Milbank, including half the Senate and a third of the House - was reportedly planned long before it became clear it would coincide with hostilities in Iraq. "This is not about Iraq," AIPAC spokesman Josh Block insisted. "This is about going to Congress and lobbying for the Israeli aid package."[21] House Whip Pelosi, who had reversed her early tepid opposition to the war and was now on the bandwagon, made a point of condemning anyone who sought "to place responsibility for this conflict on the American-Jewish community." In her speech to AIPAC, she expressed America's "unshakable bond" with Israel in a variety of ways at least a dozen times. Echoing the neocon agenda, she condemned "Syria's and Iran's bankrolling of terror and the development of weapons of mass destruction," which she declared to be "a clear and present danger."[22] There was déja vu atmosphere about the AIPAC gathering. A dozen years earlier, following Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, AIPAC leaders acknowledged that the lobby "had worked in tandem with the [first] Bush administration to win passage of a resolution authorizing the president to commit U.S. troops to combat." A Wall Street Journal article at the time noted that the "behind-the-scenes campaign avoided AIPAC's customary high profile in the Capitol and relied on activists - calling sometimes from Israel itself - to contact lawmakers and build on public endorsements by major Jewish organizations." "Yes, we were active," AIPAC's director Tom Dine, told the paper. "These are the great issues of our time. If you sit on the sidelines you have no voice."[23] And, to be sure, money had its role with Democrats who had benefited from large contributions from pro-Israel PACs being among the swing votes. Having "pro-Israel liberals behind the resolution made it easier to hold moderate Republicans as well."[24] While the U.S. Congress was divided over going to war in 1990, "there is one place in the world which is longing for war," said retired Major General Matti Peled, a former Knesset Member and, before his death, a leader of the Israeli peace camp, "and that is Israel... Every commentator finds it his duty to join the party of the war-mongers. Arrogant statements about the slowness of the Americans are heard every day."[25] Anti-war activists paid no attention to such statements or to the activities of the Israel lobby then, nor have they since.[26] While they chanted, "No Blood for Oil!," in national protests on October 25th, Kinsley, a mainstream liberal, described the situation as "the proverbial elephant in the room... Everybody sees it, no one mentions it."[27] A month before the war, the Forward's Ami Eden, commenting on Kinsley's piece, noted that what was "once only whispered in back rooms... [was] lately splashed in bold characters across the mainstream media, over Jewish and Israeli influence in shaping American foreign policy." "In recent weeks," he wrote, "the Israeli-Jewish elephant has been on a rampage, trampling across the airwaves and front pages of respected media outlets, including the Washington Post, The New York Times, the American Prospect, the Washington Times, the Economist, the New York Review of Books, CNN and MSNBC. "For its encore," he added, "the proverbial pachyderm plopped itself... smack in the middle of "Meet the Press," NBC's top-rated Sunday morning news program."[28]
Clearly Perle was not prepared. Squirming slightly he replied: "Well, first of all, the answer is absolutely yes. Those of us who believe that we should take this action if Saddam doesn't disarm - and I doubt that he's going to - believe it's in the best interests of the United States. I don't see what would be wrong with surrounding Israel with democracies; indeed, if the whole world were democratic, we'd live in a much safer international security system because democracies do not wage aggressive wars." I'll leave that contradiction for another time and note, as did the Forward's Eden, that:
In a lengthy front page story, the Washington Post's Robert Kaiser described what appeared to be an unprecedented political partnership between Ariel Sharon and George W. Bush, headlined, "Bush and Sharon Nearly Identical On Mideast Policy." "Over the past dozen years or more," Kaiser wrote, "supporters of Sharon's Likud Party have moved into leadership roles in most of the American-Jewish organizations that provide financial and political support for Israel."[30] The leadership does not necessarily reflect overall Jewish opinion. A poll to gauge Jewish opinions on the war - conducted a month before it broke out - found that 56 percent of Jews were supportive of the war which corresponded to that of the general public. The rate was said to be even higher immediately afterward, corresponding to increased support for the war among the American populace in general.[31] Concern about appearances, however, had earlier led members of the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish-American Organizations, a Jewish umbrella group with 52 member organizations, to refrain from taking a bellicose stand. "Just as we have not issued a public statement, we do not think it's the right time for the Presidents Conference to issue a public statement either," American Jewish Committee executive director David Harris told the Forward in October of 2002. "Our interest here is to not be out ahead of the administration." (Emphasis added) In contrast, the liberal American Jewish Congress had no such reservations. "The final statement ought to be crystal clear in backing the president, having to take unilateral action if necessary against Iraq to eliminate weapons of mass destruction," Jack Rosen, president of the American Jewish Congress, told the paper. The AJCongress had already issued its own position supporting the "U.S. administration in its stated position to intervene in Iraq to ensure that Iraq is no longer a threat."[32] But already, in March of 2002, Mortimer Zuckerman, the chair of the Jewish President's conference and editor-publisher of U.S. News and World Report and the N.Y. Daily News, had made his position clear, He was supporting the administration's budding plan to remove Saddam:
By late October, he was eager to get it on:
Zuckerman would write six more editorials in the weeks leading up to the war, each more emphatic than the one before in calling for Saddam's head. If Zuckerman's opinions carried unusual weight, it was because the Conference of Presidents is the Jewish body whose task it is to lobby the White House and the Executive branch while AIPAC focuses on Congress. As could be expected, accusations that Israel and its supporters within the government were orchestrating U.S. policy towards Iraq led to accusations of anti-semitism and raised questions as to what extent criticism of Israel, American Jews and Jewish officials working in the White House would be tolerated. Lawrence Kaplan, senior editor of the New Republic, declared that references to Jewish and Israeli pro-war pressure were reminiscent of Buchanan's claims in 1990 that only soldiers with non-Jewish names would be killed in a war being pushed solely by Israel and its American "amen corner."[35] The ADL's Foxman told the Forward that while it was legitimate to raise questions concerning the pro-Israel leanings of certain administration officials, it was obligatory to note that not all the hawks were Jewish and it was most definitely not kosher to portray these individuals and Jewish organizations as composing "a shadowy Jewish conspiracy that controls American foreign policy." "It is an old canard that Jews control America and American foreign policy," Foxman said. "During both world wars, anti-semites said that Jews manipulated America into war. So when you begin to hear it again, there is good reason for us to be aware of it and sensitive to it."[36] Foxman was correct regarding the world wars but this time there seems to be more than enough proof that a significant number of Jewish aficionados of Israel played a decisive part in getting the U.S. to invade and occupy Iraq. Retired General Anthony Zinni, former head of the military's Central Command, which includes the Middle East, appeared to be on the same page as Mathahir. Zinni first raised questions about attacking Iraq in 1998, suggesting that a "fragmented, chaotic Iraq... could happen if this isn't done carefully [which] is more dangerous in the long run than a contained Saddam is now," a warning that caused Wolfowitz, then a dean at Johns Hopkins but active behind the scenes, to attack him in print. Zinni was simply reiterating what had been the policy of the first Bush administration and that, prior to the attack on Saddam, had been repeated not only by former members of the elder Bush's cabinet such as Secretary of State James Baker, and National Security Advisor Brent Snowcroft, but by the elder Bush himself. (This is worth noting because the first Bush and members of his administration had strong ties to the oil-producing countries as well as the industry, and had this truly been "a war for oil" they could have been expected to support it. As it happened, those who insisted that it was about oil ignored this apparent flaw in their argument.) As the Washington Post reported, "The more he listened to Wolfowitz and other administration officials talk about Iraq, the more Zinni became convinced that interventionist "neo-conservative" ideologues were plunging the nation into a war in a part of the world they didn't understand.
Zinni is a harder target for the U.S. media than Mathahir, so most of the pro-war shills in the mainstream media chose to ignore him. Not, however, Joel Mowbray, a right-wing ideologue from the National Review, whose attack on Zinni appeared on line:
Despite Mowbray's assertion that to criticize the neo-cons is thinly disguised anti-semitism, he is correct in noting that the term has become synonymous with a certain group of Jews. The miniscule handful that are not, such as former CIA chief James Woolsey, long-time Washington insider Frank Gaffney, former Congressman Newt Gingrich and Undersecretary of State John Bolton, are unabashed Israeliophiles. Russian-born Max Boot, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a contributing editor to the Weekly Standard, a veritable neo-con house organ, did not wait for Zinni's comments to realize that the inevitable criticism of the neo-cons' role in producing the Iraq quagmire had to be stopped. It is a "malicious myth" that the "Bush administration is pursuing a neo-conservative foreign policy." Boot wrote in Foreign Affairs, "If only it were true!" Showing contempt for the intelligence of his readers, he trotted out one of the weaker argument the neo-cons have used in their defense, that while their numbers in the Bush administration, "seems impressive, it also reveals that the neo-cons have no representatives in the administration's top tier."[39] (Bush advisor Karl Rove is technically not there either, but no one would argue that he carries no clout with the president). "The contention that the neo-con faction gained the upper hand in the White House has a superficial plausibility," wrote Boot, "because the Bush administration toppled Saddam Hussein and embraced democracy promotion [sic] in the Middle East," but these policies, he would have us believe, are not the result of neo-con cajoling, but rather an outgrowth of the September 11 attacks and the decision by Bush that the U.S. "no longer could afford a ëhumble' foreign policy." That's their spin. Let's see how well it holds up in the light of the facts. The neo-con movement arose during the early 1970s among a small group of disgruntled liberals and former Trotskyists, some of whom had studied under Professor Leo Strauss at the University of Chicago. The group was almost exclusively Jewish, and was defined by "their attachment to Israel [and to] the Reaganite right's hard-line anti-communism, commitment to American military strength, and willingness to intervene politically and militarily in the affairs of other nations to promote democratic [sic] values (and American interests)," all of which "would guarantee Israel's security."[40] They were opposed as well to the Nixon administration's policy of dÈtente and the easing of tensions with the Soviet Union which meant U.S. acquiescence to its influence over the East Bloc states. The neo-cons wanted to challenge the Soviets through a massive build-up of this country's military strength and a willingness to use American power to further America's hegemonic interests, not dissimilar, as we shall see, to the agenda of the Project for a New American Century.
Quite a different appraisal than that offered by Boot. There is probably no more appropriate place to begin our probe of the neo-cons than with Perle who came to be known as "The Prince of Darkness" while serving as Deputy Secretary of Defense in the Reagan administration, and who has been described by Joshua Micah Marshall as the neo-cons' eminence grise," whose "acolytes... are also Jewish, passionately pro-Israel, and pro-Likud. And all are united by a shared idea: that America should be unafraid to use its military power early and often to advance its interest and values."[42] Since the invasion of Iraq, Perle has been involved in several scandals, including a conflict of interest situation which caused him to resign as chair of the Defense Policy Board, but remain as a member. I will, however, limit this article to examining his role in fomenting the present war in Iraq. To do so, we need to go back to 1975 and the administration of Gerald Ford. In that year, Ford, like Richard Nixon before him, tried his hand at achieving a Middle East peace settlement and was confronted with an intransigent Israeli Prime Minister Yitzak Rabin, then in his first tour of office. In March of that year, exasperated with Israel's behavior, Ford had made a speech calling for a "reassessment" of U.S. policy towards Israel On the advice of his secretary of state, none other than Henry Kissinger, Ford "conspicuously delayed delivery of weapons to Israel, including the F-15 fighter plane [and] suspended negotiations for pending financial and military aid to Israel"[43] Within White House circles, a consensus for a peace plan was emerging which "looked very much like UN Resolution 242 and the Rogers Plan" that would have required Israel to return to its pre-1967 borders, with provisions that its security would be guaranteed. The idea was for President Ford to make a major speech, spelling out America's basic interests in the Middle East, and those interests required Israel's withdrawal.[44] It was not to be. As J.J. Goldberg noted in his book, Jewish Power, "Rabin and his aides entered the Kissinger negotiations as hard bargainers with a clear sense of the bottom line... And one of the most potent weapons at their disposal was the American Jewish community... "[45] Two years before, after the end of what the Israelis describe as the Yom Kippur War, with an Arab oil embargo causing gasoline shortages and widespread resentment around the country, the General Assembly of the Council of Jewish Federations voted to launch an emergency public-relations campaign in behalf of Israel. It would be endowed with a $3 million emergency public-relations fund and administered by a special task force on Israel. The campaign would combine the "national clout and know-how of the major [Jewish] agencies with the local resources of the federations and community-relations councils" [46] As Goldberg describes it, "President Ford was the first to taste its power, when he spoke about his ëreassessment' of U.S.-Israel relations. Within six weeks, Ford gave up the idea after 76 senators signed a letter, drafted by AIPAC, demanding that he "back off."47 The letter's key paragraph put the president on notice that:
Senator Charles Mathias, (R-MD) acknowledged that, due to lobbying pressure, "Seventy-six of us promptly affixed our signatures although no hearings had been held, no debate conducted, nor had the administration been invited to present its views. Mathias added that "as a result of the activities of the [Israel[ lobby, congressional conviction has been measurably reinforced by the knowledge that political sanctions will be applied by any who fail to deliver."[49] Despite their victory in this situation, certain Jewish supporters of Israel in Washington were determined that such a potential crisis in U.S.-Israel relations would not to be allowed to happen again. Enter Perle and JINSA, the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs. As a staffer for Democratic Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson in 1972, Perle had been working with others in Washington to draft a law linking U.S.-Soviet trade relations to the right of Jews to emigrate from the Soviet Union.[50] Much to the displeasure of President Nixon and Secretary of State Kissinger[51], who saw the resulting Jackson-Vanik amendment as interference in the president's ability to determine foreign policy, their effort would ultimately prove successful. Now, in 1976, it appears that Perle had a larger goal: to insure that the maintenance of the military power and security of Israel would become an integral part of U.S. foreign policy. JINSA's actual origins are as murky as the activities it carries out, but the organization that Perle established together with Max Kampelman, "an arms control negotiator whose old law firm is a U.S. agent for Israeli government military interests,"[52] was the precursor of the more well-known Project for a New American Century and the well from which has emerged the collection of Jewish neo-cons and their fellow travelers, whose signatures and thumb prints are all over America's current adventure in Iraq, as well as its threats against Syria and Iran. According to its web site, JINSA has a two-fold mandate:
Its activities in behalf of the first mandate it has done out of the public's view. Other than the Wall Street Journal article in 1992, JINSA's existence was virtually unknown even to the political left until an article by Jason Vest appeared in the Nation in September, 2002.[53] It is JINSA's second mandate that demands our attention. "Under a program called ëSend a General to Israel,' hundreds of thousands of dollars of tax-deductible contributions bankroll an annual tour of Israel by retired U.S. generals and admirals."[54] Judging from a look at JINSA's board of advisers, at least 25 of these ex-generals and retired admirals have subsequently been recruited into the organization, as have executives from a number of the major arms manufacturers. Consequently, it was no surprise when a JINSA protÈgÈ, former General Jay Garner, was named the first U.S. pro-consul in Iraq following the fall of the regime. As Vest noted:
In other words, what JINSA represents can best be described as the Military-Industrial-Israeli complex. Sitting on its board, in addition, are such public figures as former UN ambassador Jean Kirkpatrick, former CIA chief James Woolsey , former Congressman Jack Kemp, Michael Ledeen, an un-indicted co-conspirator in the Iran-Contra affair, and former Congressman Stephen Solarz, a very important player whom we will look at later in the article, and, of course, Perle. Of all those recruited into the ranks of JINSA, none would be prove to be more important than Dick Cheney, the former congressman who served as Secretary of Defense in the first Bush administration. Looking towards the future, JINSA makes sure it is not just generals and admirals who get the grand tour. It also provides a study program in Israel for cadets and midshipmen from the Naval Academy, West Point and the Air Force Academy, from whose ranks will come the next generation of generals and admirals. It should be noted that both of these programs are in keeping with the practice of Jewish organizations and federations across the country that routinely send public officials, such as mayors, supervisors, city councilors, police chiefs, etc. - the pool from which future members of Congress are likely to arise - on all-expense paid trips to Israel, thereby virtually assuring their support for the Jewish state in the future. No base is left uncovered. JINSA has been "industrious and persistent," writes Vest, and has "managed to weave a number of issues - support for national missile defense, opposition to arms control treaties, championing of wasteful weapons systems, arms aid to Turkey and American unilateralism in general - into a hard line, with support for the Israeli right at its core." On no issue, he points out, is the organization's "hard line more evident than in its relentless campaign for war - not just with Iraq, but ëtotal war,' as Ledeen, one of the most influential JINSAns in Washington, put it [in 2001]. For this crew, ëregime change' by any means necessary, in Iraq, Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia and the Palestinian Authority, is an urgent imperative."[56] Interviewed for David Horowitz's Front Page web site at the year's end Ledeen's message had not changed. When asked about the Israel-Palestine conflict, Ledeen disingenuously replied:
Those in government who dissent and who insist that differences may exist between the security interests of the United States and those of Israel can expect to be publicly trashed and called on the carpet by an Israeli-friendly Congressional committee - whether it is Powell or someone from the State Department, from the CIA or the military, or ex-military as in the case of General Zinni. If there was a single "smoking gun" that led to accusations against the neo-cons that the attack on Iraq was a war for Israel, it was the revelation that, in 1996, Perle directed a task force that included two other high ranking American-Jewish neo-cons, current Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith, and David Wurmser, senior adviser to John Bolton, Under-Secretary for Arms Control and International Security, that produced a white paper for then Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. It was entitled, "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm," and the name referred to putting an end to Israel's negotiating with the Palestinians, and the concept of trading land for peace. The paper, which might have been lifted from JINSA's web site, advocated the overthrow by Israel of Saddam Hussein as the beginning of an Israeli policy to redraw the map of the Middle East in Israel's favor, a task that is now, apparently, being carried out by U.S. soldiers in Israel's behalf. This effort, it said, "can focus on removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq... Iraq's future could affect the strategic balance in the Middle East profoundly." "Whoever inherits Iraq dominates the entire Levant strategically," said the paper, which was commissioned by the Jerusalem-based Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies (IASPS), where Wurmser was working at the time. Presumably Israel was to have a say as to who would do the dominating. Well before 9-11 and before the junior Bush could even formulate the thought, the paper called for "re-establishing the principle of preemption." It didn't stop there. "Israel can shape its strategic environment... by weakening, containing and even rolling back Syria by sponsoring proxy attacks in Lebanon and striking at selected targets in Syria. "Given the nature of the regime in Damascus," the paper argued, "it is both natural and moral that Israel abandon the slogan ëcomprehensive peace' and move to contain Syria, drawing attention to its weapons of mass destruction program, and rejecting ëland for peace' deals on the Golan Heights." But what surely must raise the question of "dual loyalties," a charge which quickly subjects the questioner to accusations of "anti-semitism" from Jewish organizations, are statements such as this that appear in the text:
In 1999, Wurmser would publish a book (with a foreword by Perle) called Tyranny's Ally: America's Failure to Defeat Saddam Hussein. It provides a detailed description of a dramatically improved Middle East, from the hawk point of view, after regime change in Iraq. With the invasion of Iraq, it became apparent to some in Israel, that the U.S. had adopted the Clean Break crew's agenda. Within a week of the invasion, former Israeli Chief of Staff Shaul Mofaz, now his country's Defense Minister, was calling for the U.S. to neutralize all those countries in the region with whom Israel had not signed a peace treaty.[59] Two weeks later, Mofaz was still singing that tune, as Ha'aretz's Brad Burston wrote:
Mofaz was referring to a soccer referee's warning card for players who have broken the rules of the game, and, if infractions continue, may be expelled. According to Burston, Mofaz "set out a long list of demands he said the [U.S.] administration would be asked to press on Syria." Mofaz's statements attracted the attention of the Financial Times of London, which reported that even: "Before the war against Iraq was launched, members of Israel's rightwing government had been open in expressing their hope that the U.S. would next turn its attention to Syria, saying it harbors anti-Israeli militant groups, and also to Iran, for providing weapons and military support to such groups."[61] The article quoted from an interview that Mofaz had given to the Israeli daily Maariv in which he said, "We have a long list of issues that we are thinking of demanding of the Syrians and it is proper that it should be done through the Americans." [... ] "It starts from removing the Hezbollah threat from southern Lebanon," and for "an end to Iranian aid to Hezbollah through Syrian ports." The headlines in the Israeli press made no effort to hide the government's agenda, nor the Sharon government's arrogance in expressing it. Mofaz was not just speaking for himself. Less than a month into the invasion of Iraq, beneath the headline, "Israel to U.S.: Now deal with Syria and Iran," Ha'aretz's Aluf Benn, wrote:
They must have been buoyed when, in the week following the invasion, Secretary of State Powell announced to delegates at AIPAC's annual conference that Syria and Iran are "supporting terror groups" and will have to "face the consequences." Was it any wonder then that Israel's first air raid on Syria in 30 years was greeted sympathetically by both the president and members of Congress? While "ostensibly, it was retaliation for an atrocious Palestinian suicide bombing," in journalist David Hirst's view, "it was also a blatant attempt by Israel to recast itself as an operational ally of the U.S. in ëreshaping' the region, and in punishing an autocratic regime in Damascus that, in the neo-cons' view, was next for treatment."[63] So it is hardly a surprise that 2004 dawned with Syria in Washington's cross-hairs. In what can only be described as a Pavlovian response to Israel's wish list, both houses of Congress last year approved the Orwellian Syrian Accountability and Lebanese Sovereignty Restoration Act. While technically calling for the Bush administration to apply sanctions against Syria if it does not cease support for what Israel and Washington consider to be terrorist organizations, eliminate what they allege to be its weapons of mass destruction, and end its occupation of part of Lebanon, the act essentially gives both Israel and the administration the go-ahead to do whatever either government wants to a country that has never attacked or ever posed a threat to the U.S. The votes, 389-4 in the House, and 89-4 in the Senate, should be an embarrassment to any country that pretends to be a democracy. And yet in the climate of an American election season, the significance of those votes has been almost completely ignored. Not only did passage of this act represent another major victory for the neo-cons, it also served notice that their agenda had been adopted by the leading American Jewish organizations. Those that had any questions about it were content to keep them within the community. Without the presence of Cheney in the White House, the neo-cons' road to power would have been far more difficult, and this is where his recruitment into JINSA paid off. In 1991, the organization had given him its "Distinguished Service Award" and he was declared to be "excellent" on issues of U.S.-Israeli security cooperation, according to JINSA's director of special projects Shoshana Bryen.[64] If he was a neo-con at the time, he failed to show it, telling the Senate Budget Committee in February of 1990, "America should continue to anchor its strategy to the still-valid doctrines of flexible response, forward defense [and] security alliances... Even the extraordinary events of 1989 do not mean that America should abandon this strategic foundation," certainly a statement more Powell than Perle.[65] By the time he became the VP, however, he was firmly on board and feeling impregnable. News of Wurmser's participation in the Clean Break project, and questions raised in the press, didn't stop Cheney from adding him to his security staff last September, joining a team led by another Jewish neo-con, national security adviser, Lewis "Scooter" Libby. Wurmser, described in the Forward[66] as "a neo-conservative scholar known for his close ties to the Israeli right... boasts a complex network of relationships to a variety of pro-Likud think tanks and activist groups [and] has frequently written articles arguing for a joint American-Israeli effort to undermine the Syrian regime." "The vice president undoubtedly chooses staff whose views are compatible with the policies of the administration," wrote Judith Kipper, a Middle East scholar with the Council on Foreign Relations, in an e-mail to the Forward. "The question is, how does the vice president's [national security staff] function in relation to the president's national security staff, and how important policy decisions are made in the White House. While the vice president has a critical role to play, the secrecy surrounding his unusually large foreign-policy staff raises many questions which the American public needs answered."[67] To this date, they haven't been. Not only did Cheney bring Wurmser as well as Feith into the administration, "It was Cheney's choices [as opposed to Powell's] that prevailed in the appointment of both cabinet and sub-cabinet national-security officials," as Jim Lobe has pointed out, including securing the Deputy Defense Secretary position for "his own protÈgÈ, Paul Wolfowitz."[68] Libby, "a Wolfowitz protÈgÈ, is considered a far more skilled and experienced bureaucratic and political operator than [Condaleeza]Rice," writes Lobe. "With several of his political allies on Rice's own staff - including deputy national security adviser Stephen Hadley and Middle East director Elliott Abrams - Libby "is able to run circles around Condi," according to a former NSC official cited by Lobe. As former CIA agents Bill and Kathy Christison summed it up:
As noted earlier, Israel loyalists, outfitted as lobbyists, worked behind the scenes to drum up public and Congressional support for the first Gulf War and were happy when the U.S. started bombing Iraq in 1991. They weren't pleased with the results. Like their friends in Jerusalem, they had wanted Saddam taken out completely, and the sanctions did not meet their standard of what was required. They did not spend their time writing letters to the editor. He has been called "Wolfowitz of Arabia" in jest by the New York Times' Maureen Dowd,[70] and, with respect, "the intellectual godfather of the war... its heart and soul," by Time's Mark Thompson.[71] If the war on Iraq is anybody's war it is Paul Wolfowitz's. Wolfowitz is also no stranger to Israel or to Israelis. As a teenager he lived briefly in Israel, his sister is married to an Israeli, and "he is friendly with Israel's generals and diplomats."[72] He is also "something of a hero to the heavily Jewish neo-conservative movement" and a close friend of Perle's.[73] In 1992, as Under Secretary of Defense for policy in the Clinton administration, he supervised the drafting of the Defense Policy Guidance document. Having objected to what he considered the premature ending of the war, his new document, contained plans for further intervention in Iraq as an action necessary to assure "access to vital raw material, primarily Persian Gulf oil," and to prevent the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and threats from terrorism. It called for pre-emptive attacks and, since "collective action cannot be orchestrated," the U.S. should be ready to act alone. The primary goal of U.S. policy would be to prevent the rise of any nation that could challenge U.S. supremacy. The document was leaked to the New York Times, which condemned it as extreme, and it was supposed to have been rewritten. As we will see, the original concepts are now part of the current National Security Strategy.[74] In 1996, as noted above, the scene shifted to Israel and we had Perle, Feith and Wurmser preparing the Clean Break paper for Netanyahu, when Bush Junior was four years from arriving in office. Then in September of 2002, during the buildup to the invasion, the Glasgow Sunday Herald reported that it had discovered "A secret blueprint for U.S. global domination [which] reveals that President Bush and his cabinet were planning a premeditated attack on Iraq to secure regime change even before he took power in January 2001."[75] What it was describing was the Project for a New American Century (PNAC), and it even had a web site which spelled out its plans until they were subsequently removed. That it was discovered by a Scottish newspaper was another telling commentary on the state of American journalism. Founded in June of 1997, following the Clean Break by a year, part of PNAC's plan was for the U.S. to take control of the Gulf region with overwhelming and deadly military force. "While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification," the PNAC document explains, "the need for a substantial American force-presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein." (My emphasis) [76] As information about PNAC made its way slowly into the mainstream media, ABC Nightline's Ted Koppel could no longer avoid it. On March 5th, he told his audience, that "Back in 1997, a group of Washington heavyweights, almost all of them neo-conservatives, formed an organization called the Project for the New American Century.
There was something different about this operation, however. Politicians out of power may plot how to return to power, but this group was more than that. It had been organized and was largely being run by the Jewish neo-cons whose activities we have been following, plus neo-con journalists and neo-con think-tank members with a long history of connections to the Israeli right wing and whose faces and opinions dominate the TV screens when issues of U.S foreign policy are under discussion. And as indicated above, it had the support of the leading American-Jewish lobbying organizations. Heading up PNAC was William Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard, the leading journal of the neo-cons, and Robert Kagan, a columnist for the magazine as well as for the Washington Post, whose columns in the Post and whose joint columns with Kristol in the Weekly Standard have maintained a steady drumbeat for Washington to send more U.S. troops to Iraq and keep to its original unilateralist position. Asked by Koppel if "part of the larger vision that you and your colleagues had, or have to this day, is the removal, either by force or otherwise, of the current power structure in Iran?," Kristol replied
In February of 1998, PNAC wanted to let President Clinton and the American public know its position on Iraq, but since, despite Koppel's statement to the contrary, the group and its plans had not yet come to the public's attention, it used the letterhead of the Committee for Peace and Security in the Gulf, a largely paper organization that had been put together in 1990 "to support President Bush's policy of expelling Saddam Hussein from Kuwait." It read, in part:
The letter called on the president to "recognize a provisional government of Iraq based on the principles and leaders of the Iraqi National Congress (INC) that is representative of all the peoples of Iraq" (presumably incorporated in the person of their favorite, Ahmed Chalabi)... and providing it with the "logistical support to succeed." The signatories acknowledged that:
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By Geoffrey Wheatcroft | April 2, 2006
In all the controversy over a recent Kennedy School paper on 'the Israel lobby,' perhaps the most interesting question has gone largely unasked: Has the closeness of the US-Israel alliance been good for Israel?
BEFORE LONG, A NEW coalition government will be formed in Israel, after the wrangling that always follows an election there. In Tel Aviv a few years ago, Shimon Peres said to me with great vehemence that the elaborately proportional electoral system ''is the worst thing that ever happened to our country," and that he would much prefer the Westminster or Capitol Hill model. But that's another story. In America over the past week, a different story again has very nearly overshadowed that election, though it is related, as it concerns the question of Israeli political influence in Washington. ''The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy," a working paper by professors John J. Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Stephen M. Walt of Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government, first posted on the Kennedy School's website and then published in abbreviated form in The London Review of Books, has detonated an explosion all its own. In The New York Sun, where it was a front-page story over several days, and elsewhere, numerous commentators have joined in attacking the authors with a vociferousness that reminded me of Peres's phrase: They seemed to regard this academic paper as the worst thing that ever happened to Israel. Faulted for defective methodology and inaccuracy, Mearsheimer and Walt have been criticized more-in-sorrow by David Gergen in US News and World Report, and more-in-anger by Jeff Jacoby in the Globe (twice over). In Slate, Christopher Hitchens says the paper is ''smelly," Max Boot in The Los Angeles Times calls it McCarthyite, and Alan Dershowitz-never one to be outdone in lurid language-compares it with ''The Protocols of the Elders of Zion." In The New Republic, Martin Peretz calls the paper ''the labor of obsessives with dark and conspiratorial minds." One of Mearsheimer and Walt's claims is that a pro-Israel lobby-with the formidable AIPAC (America Israel Public Affairs Committee) to the forefront-has powerfully influenced American policy in the Mideast. But that in itself is not really controversial: After all, AIPAC likes to boast of its own influence. What makes the paper more stinging is the fact that Mearsheimer and Walt write not from the doctrinaire left or the crackpot right but from the ''realist" foreign-policy establishment, and that they are on the faculty of highly respectable institutions. That, and their suggestion that America's ''unwavering support" for Israel, notably the $3 billion a year in direct aid, has no strategic or moral rationale anymore, if it ever had, and has among other things made America more, not less, vulnerable to terrorism. The clear implication is that loosening those ties with Israel would be in the American national interest. 'The lobby': Post and ripostes... Message Board YOUR VIEW: The nature of US support for Israel? If Mearsheimer and Walt had wanted to show that they were saying the unsayable, then they appear to have made their point-the ferocious response suggests a taboo being broken. And yet the American reaction is puzzling to Europeans: This question is yet another illustration of the great transatlantic rift. On the eastern side of the Atlantic, it has long been recognized that there is an intimate connection between the United States and Israel, in which AIPAC clearly plays a major role. The degree to which this has affected American policy, up to and including the war in Iraq, has been discussed calmly by sane British commentators-though also, to be sure, played up maliciously by bigots. In America, by contrast, there has been an unmistakable tendency to shy away from this subject. As Michael Kinsley wrote in Slate in the autumn of 2002, both supporters and opponents of the coming war did not want to invoke classic anti-Semitic images of cabals, arcane conspiracies, and malign courtiers whispering into the prince's ear. Such motives are honorable, and yet there is always a danger when something is wilfully ignored. As Kinsley said, the connection between the invasion of Iraq and Israeli interests had become ''the proverbial elephant in the room. Everybody sees it, no one mentions it." Until now, at any rate. It has been plausibly argued that no ''Israel lobby" is needed to sway the American people, who are bound to Israel by deeper ties of sentiment. That may be so, but it may also be that the really sensitive nerve that Mearsheimer and Walt have touched isn't ''the lobby" as such. They have raised a graver question: Is unconditional American support for Israel-whatever its motives or origins-actually in the truest interests of both countries? Maybe the first lobbyist on behalf of the land of Israel was Theodor Herzl. He published his book ''The Jewish State" in 1896, and organized the first Zionist Congress in Basel the following year, but he believed, as was characteristic of his age, that a political cause could best be advanced through the influence of the mighty. He duly lobbied in person the kaiser, the pope, British Cabinet ministers, and just about anyone else who would see him. A generation later, Chaim Weizmann, who his friend Sir Isaiah Berlin called ''an irresistible political seducer," exercised his considerable charm on a number of important men in London. In 1917 he persuaded the British government to issue what became the Balfour Declaration, which favored ''the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people." Not all of those people approved of either these methods or their ends. One reason Mearsheimer and Walt have caused such anger is surely because to discuss the ''Israel lobby" is to raise the age-old question of ''dual loyalty": Does an intense attachment to the cause of Israel compromise an American citizen's first national allegiance? And although Mearsheimer and Walt do not claim that many American Jews have a higher loyalty to Israel, undisguised anti-Semites like David Duke-who has praised the paper-do just that. In Herzl's time, although dual loyalty was a very live issue, it was one raised by Jews, not their enemies. For thorough-going anti-Semites, the problem didn't exist, since they believed no Jew could have any true allegiance to France, England, or Austria in the first place. When the French army officer Alfred Dreyfus was accused of treason, the proto-fascist Charles Maurras said derisively that ''in order to betray one's country it is first necessary to have one." The same thing was said, only more sardonically, by a fictional character. Dreyfus ''would have committed a crime if he had betrayed Judaea, but what has that to do with France?" asks Proust's monstrous Charlus. ''Dreyfus might rather be convicted of a breach of the laws of hospitality." That sneer was just what appalled so many Jews, who felt their national allegiance impugned. When Herzl first tried to float his Zionist idea to an elite Jewish dining club in London, its members strongly objected, as he recorded, on the ground of ''English patriotism." Their loyalty was owed to the country of which they were citizens; they were ''Englishmen of Hebrew faith," in the phrase of the age. It should not be forgotten (though it often is) that most Jews in Herzl's day were either indifferent to Zionism or bitterly hostile to it, on religious or political grounds or because they saw it as a threat to their own position. That was true not least in the United States, where very many would have agreed with the rabbi who said that ''America is our Zion." When Weizmann secured his goal in 1917, some of the eminences of British Jewry were horrified. David Alexander and Claude Montefiore, presidents respectively of the Board of Deputies of British Jews and of the Anglo-Jewish Association, thought the Balfour Declaration ''a veritable calamity for the whole Jewish people," which must ''have the effect throughout the world of stamping the Jews as strangers in their native lands, and of undermining their hard-won position as citizens and nationals of those lands." No one needed Mearsheimer and Walt to expose the work of lobbyists on behalf of Israel today. So far from hiding itself away in dark corners, AIPAC glories in its power and influence. Its own website proudly quotes Bill Clinton's description of AIPAC as ''stunningly effective" and John McCain's praise of its ''instrumental and absolutely vital role" in protecting the interest of Israel. Perhaps Mearsheimer and Walt would have done better to confine themselves to that website as their source. Just as Herzl and Weizmann angered many of their Jewish contemporaries, so there are doubtless a good many Jewish Americans who (even if they resent the charges made by Mearsheimer and Walt) are at the least uneasy about the work of AIPAC and its associates. Thomas L. Friedman of The New York Times is understandably dismayed when an apparently civilized and educated Arab tells him ''that the Jews control the US government." But then elsewhere, Friedman admits that only the White House could ever have restrained Israel from what he calls its ''insane" settlement policies, but that President Bush will never do so since that ''would inevitably force a clash with US Jews, whose votes and donations he needs to protect his GOP majority in the House." When is a distinction a difference? For that matter, the respected foreign policy analyst Anatol Lieven of the New America Foundation in Washington has been writing about this for some time (and without igniting a media firestorm). In his view, the alliance with Israel, so far from being a source of strength, is a grave source of weakness for the United States, in dealing with the Muslim world and in combatting terrorism. Mearsheimer and Walt are far from alone in looking at the relationship between America and Israel, even if some of what they say about the lobby is clumsy. But their paper, and the angry response to it, have generated more heat than light. AIPAC and those ''votes and donations" have without doubt influenced American policy in the Middle East, and supposedly done so in Israel's interests. A much more interesting question is what the ultimate objective effect has been. Whether the American-Israeli alliance stems from sentiment, political realism, or the machinations of the lobby, has it been a success-in its own terms? When Mearsheimer and Walt ask if there are really strategic imperatives on the American side for ''unwavering support" of Israel, that is at least worth discussing as a hypothesis. But it's scarcely more fascinating than the question of whether such support has been to the long-term benefit of Israel. Bolstered by American aid, successive Israeli governments tried to strengthen their settlements on the West Bank and in Gaza, the policy Friedman calls insane. Ariel Sharon at last gave up the dream of a Greater Israel, including his promise to remain in Gaza ''for Zionist reasons." And now Ehud Olmert, when he has formed his new government, will withdraw from most of the West Bank. Might not much blood and treasure have been saved if Israel had been obliged to make those choices years ago? In one of their most contentious passages, Mearsheimer and Walt suggest that ''Israel was becoming a strategic burden" by the time of the first Gulf War. Then in 2003, history repeated itself, they say, as ''Israel was eager for the US to attack Iraq. ...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." Whatever view is taken of that analysis, it is no secret that prominent members of the Bush administration who were ardent supporters of Israel were also strong advocates of invading Iraq to destroy Saddam Hussein. Supposing, then, for the purest sake of argument, that the war was fought in some manner to help Israel, did it do so? Ask an Israeli. Not long ago, Yuval Diskin, head of the Shin Bet security service, spoke to a group of army draftees. The meeting was in private, but he was recorded and his words broadcast on television. (As is often said, Israel is a free an open society!) It could be that they would come to regret the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, Diskin said. Horrible as his rule was, it might have been less dangerous for Israel than the chaos which had succeeded him. Said Diskin: ''I'm not sure we won't miss Saddam." Geoffrey Wheatcroft is an English journalist and author. His books include ''The Controversy of Zion," which won a National Jewish Book Award, and, most recently, ''The Strange Death of Tory England." |
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by Charley Reese
April 1, 2006 The first weapon of choice for the Israeli lobby when someone with prestige publishes a soundly researched paper or book critical of Israel or its powerful lobby is silence. If it's a book, it rarely gets reviewed; its author doesn't get interviewed. If it's a paper, there are no news stories in the big corporate press, no interviews with the authors, no television appearances.
For the average American who depends on the press to tell him what's going on, it's as if the criticism never existed. The second weapon is, of course, to launch vicious personal attacks. Both methods are being used against an astounding paper titled "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy." It was written by two renowned academics, John J. Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Stephen M. Walt of the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. So far as I've been able to determine with the help of Google, while the paper and talk about it are all over the Internet, they are missing from the big corporate press as of this writing. It was published in the London Review of Books, and you can read it or download an edited version at www.lrb.co.uk. There was one news story about it in the Christian Science Monitor and an attack on it by David Gergen in U.S. News & World Report. Gergen is editor at large of the magazine, which is owned by an ardent Zionist, Mortimer Zuckerman. Gergen is a professional spinmeister who has always served the people who have the butter for his bread. The essence of the paper, which is thoroughly footnoted, is that Israel's lobby has so skewed American foreign policy in the Middle East that the U.S. places the security of Israel ahead of security for the United States. "This situation has no equal in American history," the authors state. The Anti-Defamation League was quoted in a Jewish publication as saying that if the paper gained the attention of the mainstream media, then a "more vigorous attack" would be launched. So far, it has not, though in the Christian Science Monitor story one of the attack dogs of the Israel lobby branded these two esteemed academics from prestigious universities as "incompetents." This paper isn't the first to criticize the Israeli lobby. There have been lots of papers and books written by distinguished individuals, none of which you've probably ever heard of. They Dare to Speak Out, by former Rep. Paul Findley, and The Passionate Attachment, by George W. Ball, one of America's most distinguished diplomats, are two that come to mind. It was the late Sen. William J. Fulbright who first called Congress "Israeli-occupied territory." What the authors of the current paper hope to do is start a sensible public debate about the Israeli lobby and America's policy in the Middle East. Of course, avoiding an honest debate is one of the primary objectives of the lobby. That's why it uses silence and, if that doesn't work, vicious personal attacks. It has certainly buffaloed Congress and most of America's news media. Another author given the silent treatment as well as vicious personal attacks is Norman Finkelstein, a professor at DePaul University. He's written three outstanding books you've probably not heard of: The Holocaust Industry, Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict, and his latest, which got not a line of review, Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History. Finkelstein, by the way, is Jewish and the son of Holocaust survivors. This is a most serious issue and deserves an honest public debate. Whether you agree with any of the above authors and academics, you should read what they have to say and not be deterred by cheap ad hominem attacks. You've heard the same message from me, of course, but I'm only a country boy turned journalist with no fancy degrees. If you're impressed with credentials, Finkelstein, Findley, Walt, Mearsheimer and Ball have them up to their armpits. |
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By PARAS D. BHAYANI
Crimson Staff Writer Academic dean to step down in June, but will remain a tenured professor
Kennedy School of Government Academic Dean Stephen M. Walt-who is facing criticism from some colleagues after co-authoring a paper assailing the United States' pro-Israel policies-will step down from his administrative post this June, but school officials say that his move was long-planned and is not related to the controversy sparked by Walt's paper.
Walt will remain a tenured professor at the Kennedy School, but the announcement that he will leave the position of academic dean means that Walt will no longer be in charge of the school's teaching and research at a time when his own scholarship is under attack. Kennedy School Dean David T. Ellwood '75 said in a statement that Walt "had been due to depart last June after the normal three-year cycle, but had agreed, at my request, to stay on for one more year." "His departure is completely unrelated to the current discussion surrounding the article he co-authored with John Mearsheimer," Ellwood said in the statement. Ellwood said that he sent an e-mail to Kennedy School faculty members on Feb. 21-before the uproar over the article-informing them that Walt would end his term as academic dean in June. Ellwood said he also asked professors for recommendations regarding the search for the next academic dean. When asked to provide the Feb. 21 e-mail to The Crimson, Kennedy School spokeswoman Melodie Jackson declined to do so. Walt and Mearsheimer, a professor of political science at the University of Chicago, argue in their paper that "unquestioned support" for Israel does not serve U.S. strategic objectives and fosters anti-American sentiment in the Arab world and beyond. The paper was posted on the Kennedy School's website last month, and an abridged version of it was published in the London Review of Books. They professors argue that the "Israel Lobby"-a "loose coalition of individuals and organizations" including national Jewish leaders, Christian evangelicals like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, Republican congressmen, and columnists for the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post-has pushed the U.S. to adopt excessively pro-Israel stances. Rep. Jerold Nadler, D-N.Y., blasted the paper as a "dishonest piece of crap" in an interview with The New York Sun, and Rep. Eliot Engel, D-N.Y., called the paper "anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist drivel." Harvard's Frankfurter professor of law, Alan M. Dershowitz, told The Crimson that Walt and Mearsheimer are "liars" and "bigots." Dershowitz, who publicly challenged Walt and Mearsheimer to a debate last week, said that Mearsheimer had been scheduled to debate him on the BBC at 10:30 p.m Eastern time Thursday. But Dershowitz said that he received a call at 10:35 p.m. saying that Mearsheimer had cancelled the debate. In a statement to The Crimson, Dershowitz said that Mearsheimer and Walt "make outrageous and unsupportable claims; they invoke academic freedom in the marketplace of ideas, but then they refuse to participate in the marketplace of ideas by declining reasonable debate about their position." "I renew my challenge to debate either or both of them at the Kennedy School," Dershowitz added. Mearsheimer and Walt did not return phone calls to their offices seeking comment this past week. Dershowitz is preparing a rebuttal to the Mearsheimer and Walt article that will be posted on the Kennedy School's website. The Boston Globe first reported Friday that Ellwood would amend the rules of the school's "working paper" series to allow for rebuttals by other full-time Harvard faculty members. Walt's term as academic dean will be one year shorter than that of his predecessor, Frederick Schauer, who held the post from 1997 to 2002. Though Ellwood's statement made reference to a "normal three-year cycle" of academic deans, three-year terms have not been the norm for administrators who have held that post in recent years. Ellwood himself held the post for a year before joining the Clinton administration in 1993, and he returned to the school in 1995 to serve a two-year term as academic dean. Alan A. Altshuler held the post for two years during Ellwood's absence. And before that, Albert Carnesale was the school's academic dean for a decade. |
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