Who and what killed the Ghalia family, and badly maimed a score of other people, has been the subject of an increasingly bitter struggle for truth all week amid accusations that a military investigation clearing the army was a cover-up, that Hamas was really responsible and even that the pictures of Huda's grief were all an act.

However, a Guardian investigation into the sequence of events raises new and so far unanswered questions about the Israeli military probe that cleared the army of responsibility. Evidence from hospital records, doctors' testimony and witness accounts challenges the military's central assertion that it had stopped shelling by the time seven members of the Ghalia family were killed.

In addition, fresh evidence from the US group Human Rights Watch, which offered the first forensic questioning of the army's account, casts doubt on another key claim - that shrapnel taken from the wounded was not from the kind of artillery used to shell Gaza.

The pictures of Huda's traumatic hunt for her father garnered instant sympathy around the world and focused unwelcome attention for Israel on its tactic of firing thousands of shells into Gaza over recent weeks, killing more than 20 civilians, to deter Palestinian rocket attacks on Israeli towns.

The Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, initially apologised for the killings but the military swiftly realised it was confronting another PR disaster to rival that of the killing of Mohammed al-Dura, the 12-year-old boy who died in his father's arms amid a barrage of gunfire six years ago and became the first iconic victim of the intifada.

Conflicting accounts

The army quickly convened a committee to investigate the deaths on the beach and almost as swiftly absolved itself of responsibility.

The committee acknowledged the army fired six shells on and around Beit Lahia beach from artillery inside Israel. But it said that by coincidence a separate explosion - probably a mine planted by Hamas or a buried old shell ó occurred in the same area at about the same time, killing the family.

The army admitted that one of the six shells was unaccounted for but said it was "impossible", based on location and timings, for the sixth shell to have done the killing. The investigation also concluded that shrapnel taken from some of the wounded was not from artillery used that day.

The military declared its version of events definitive and an end to the matter. Others went further and saw a Palestinian conspiracy. An American pro-Israel pressure group, Camera, which seeks to influence media coverage, went so far as to suggest that the film of Huda Ghalia's trauma was faked: "Were the bodies moved, was the girl asked to re-enact her discovery for the camera, was the video staged?"

But the army's account quickly came in for criticism, led by a former Pentagon battlefield analyst, Marc Garlasco, investigating the deaths for Human Rights Watch.

"You have the crater size, the shrapnel, the types of injuries, their location on the bodies. That all points to a shell dropping from the sky, not explosives under the sand," he said. "I've been to hospital and seen the injuries. The doctors say they are primarily to the head and torso. That is consistent with a shell exploding above the ground, not a mine under it."

Mr Garlasco produced shrapnel from the site apparently marked as a 155mm shell used by the army that day.

Timing a key issue

The key part of the military's defence hinged on timings. It says it fired the six shells toward the beach between 4.30pm and 4.48pm, and that the artillery barrage stopped nine minutes before the explosion that killed the Ghalia family.

The military concluded that the deadly explosion occurred between 4.57pm and 5.10pm based on surveillance of the beach by a drone that shows people relaxing until just before 5pm and the arrival of the first ambulance at 5.15pm.

Major General Meir Kalifi, who headed the army's investigation committee, said the nine-minute gap is too wide for Israel to have been responsible for the deaths. "I can without doubt say that no means used by the Israeli defence force during this time period caused the incident," he said.

But hospital admissions records, testimony from doctors and ambulance men and eyewitness accounts suggest that the military has got the timing of the explosion wrong, and that it occurred while the army was still shelling the beach.

Palestinian officials also question the timing of video showing people relaxing on the beach undisturbed just before 5pm if the army, by its own admission, was dropping shells close by in the previous half an hour.

Several of those who survived the explosion say it came shortly after two or three other blasts consistent with a pattern of shells falling on the beach.

Among the survivors was Hani Asania. When the shelling began, he grabbed his daughters - Nagham, 4, and Dima, 7 - and moved toward his car on the edge of the beach. The Ghalia family was gathered on the sand nearby awaiting a taxi.

"There was an explosion, maybe 500 metres away. Then there was a second, much closer, about two minutes later. People were running from the beach. I carried my girls and put them in the car but I forgot my mobile phone and I ran back to get it," said Mr Asania.

"Maybe two minutes later there was a third shell. I could feel the pressure of the blast on my face it was so strong. I saw pieces of people. I looked at my car and my girls were screaming."

This sequence is backed by others including Huda's brother, Eyham, 20.

Annan Ghalia, Huda's uncle, called an ambulance.

"We were sitting on the sand waiting for the taxis, the men on one side and the women on the other. The shell landed closer to the girls," he said. "I was screaming for people to help us. No one was coming. After about two minutes I called the ambulance on my mobile phone."

The first ambulance took children to the Kamal Odwan hospital. Its registration book records that five children wounded in the blast were admitted at 5.05pm. The book contains entries before and after the casualties from the beach, all of whom are named, and shows no sign of tampering.

The hospital's computer records a blood test taken from a victim at 5.12pm. Human Rights Watch said altering the records would require re-setting the computer's clock.

The distance from the beach to the hospital is 6km. Even at speed, the drive through Beit Lahia's crowded back streets and rough roads would not take less than five minutes and would be slower with badly wounded patients on board.

Dr Bassam al-Masri, who treated the first wounded at Kamal Odwan, said allowing for a round trip of at least 10 minutes and time to load them, the ambulance would have left the hospital no later than 4.50pm - just two minutes after the Israelis say they stopped shelling.

Factoring in additional time for emergency calls and the ambulances to be dispatched, the timings undermine the military's claim that the killer explosion occurred after the shelling stopped.

A second Beit Lahia hospital, the Alwada, also received a call for ambulances. Doctors say records were completed after treating the patients so they have no written account of timings.

But the first ambulance man to leave the hospital, and a doctor summoned to work, say they have a clear recollection of the time. The ambulance driver, Khaled Abu Sada, said he received a call from the emergency control room between 4.45 and 4.50pm.

"I went to look for a nurse to come with me but he couldn't because there had been a shooting in a family feud and he was treating people," he said. "I left the hospital at 4.50pm and was at the beach by 5pm."

The Alwada's anaesthetist, Dr Ahmed Mouhana, was woken by a call from a fellow doctor calling him to the hospital.

"I looked at the time. That's what you do when someone wakes you up. It was 4.55pm. Dr Nasser couldn't tell me what was going on so I called Abu Jihad [Mr Abu Sada] and asked him. He said he didn't know but I should get to the hospital quickly as it sounded bad," he said.

Mr Abu Sada remembers receiving the call while driving to the beach. Dr Mouhana left for the hospital immediately.

"It only takes 10 minutes from my house so I was there by 5.10pm or 5.15pm at the latest. I went to reception and they had already done triage on the children," he said.

If the hospital records and medical professionals are right, then the emergency call from the beach could not have come in much later than 4.45pm, still during the Israeli shelling.

From the number of shells counted beforehand by the survivors, Mr Garlasco, the former Pentagon analyst, believes the killer shell was one the army records as being fired at 4.34pm.

A military spokesman, Captain Jacob Dalal, said the army stood by its interpretation of timings.

Military investigators said shrapnel taken from wounded Palestinians treated in Israeli hospitals was not from 155mm shells fired that day.

"We know it's not artillery," said Capt Dalal. "We donít know what it is. It could be a shell of another sort or some other device."

The military has suggested that the explosion was rigged by Hamas against possible army landings but Palestinian officials say that would only be an effective strategy if there were a series of mines or Hamas knew exactly where the Israelis would land.

Mr Garlasco said the metal taken from the victims may be detritus thrown up by the explosion or shards from cars torn apart by shrapnel. He said shrapnel collected at the site of the explosion by Human Rights Watch and the Palestinian police was fresh and from artillery shells.

The former Pentagon analyst said that after examining a blood-encrusted piece of shrapnel given to him by the father of a 19-year-old man wounded in the beach explosion, he determined it was a piece of fuse from an artillery shell.

"The likelihood that the Ghalia family was killed by an explosive other than one of the shells fired by the Israeli army is remote," he said.

Capt Dalal defended the army's investigation.

"We're not trying to cover-up anything. We didn't do the investigation to exonerate ourselves. If it was our fire, we'll say it," he said.

Military account

4.30 to 4.48pm: Six shells fired at beach
4.57pm: Video drone records calm on beach
4.57 to 5.10pm: Explosion kills Ghalia family
5.15pm: Drone records arrival of first ambulance

Eyewitness account

4.30 to 4.40pm: Two shells hit the beach
4.40 to 4.45pm: Explosion kills Ghalia family
4.45 to 4.50pm: Ambulance man receives emergency call
4.50pm: Ambulance leaves hospital for beach
4.55pm: Palestinian doctor called to hospital
5.05pm; First casualties arrive at hospital
5.12pm: Hospital computer records blood test of beach casualty

Keshev wrote to Dankner after the paper failed to offer coverage on its front page of the shelling of a beach in Gaza on Friday 9 June that killed seven members of one family and caused dozens of injuries. All of the Palestinian dead were civilians. Maariv buried the details of the deaths inside the Sunday paper, the first to be published after the incident.

Dankner's main defence of his action in his letter is that he preferred to give space to the story of an American Jewish student who was abducted in Nablus. The student was released unharmed a short time later. Dankner says, however, that, if asked whether the abduction and possible danger to one Jew were more important than the known deaths of seven Palestinians in Gaza, "My answer is a resounding Yes". To paraphrase Dankner, he believes his first duty is to his own kind, or "the people of our own city" as he puts it. His duty to search out the truth, or just to provide important information, obviously come far lower in his list of priorities. ['his own kind' can only refer to heartless racist madmen--m.a.]

It is also worth noting that his argument implies he considers the deaths in Gaza less important than the two other stories on the front page: one on the World Cup, and the other on a cat that does not provoke allergies.

Dankner justifies his editorial decision in several other ways that do not accord with normal journalistic practice. He suggests that Maariv had a prior sense that the Israeli army was not responsible for the missile that killed the family on Gaza's beach. At the time of the deaths he was "unconvinced" of Israeli responsibility and now congratulates himself for forseeing that the army would subsequently deny that they fired the lethal rocket.

He believes that it is inevitable that Palestinian civilians will be hurt in the fighting, given how crowded Palestinian areas are, and that his editing of the paper "takes this into account" -- presumably meaning that he doesn't think such injuries or deaths merit much attention.

And he calls Keshev's demand that the paper inform its readers about the deaths of civilians in the occupied territories "hysterical", labelling Keshev an "extremist organisation". He argues that exposing the Israeli army to this sort of criticism "weakens" it.

Dankner's response poses more questions than it answers about the standards of Ma'ariv's journalism.

First, why is Dankner using the army's later denials to justify retroactively his decision? How could he have known that the early reports of the Israeli army shelling of the beach might be disputed when Israeli spokespeople were still apologising for the deaths? Does he possess a sixth sense, and is this the basis of his editorial decisions? And, in any case, what difference would it make if there was genuine doubt about the Israeli army having shelled the beach? Does that mean the deaths are no longer newsworthy, and that Maariv has no public duty to report prominently the debate about who is responsible?

Second, why as the editor of a national newspaper is Dankner so ready to accept without question the story now being offered by the Israeli army? Obviously the army has a strong interest, as does the Israeli government, in deflecting responsibility for the deaths to the Palestinians and trying to reverse the damage done to Israel's image. A leading expert from the Pentagon on the battlefield effects of weapons has already dismissed the Israeli version as implausible after conducting field research. Is Dankner incapable of keeping his own critical distance when examining the evidence? And does he also not believe that at the very minimum this evidence ought to be placed before readers?

Third, why does Dankner think it "hysterical" to want Palestinian deaths covered? Is this related to his view that such coverage will increase criticism of the army and thereby weaken it? And does this mean that Dankner's first priority as editor is to shield the army from criticism by censoring his paper's coverage?

Dankner argues that his duty of responsibility as editor means he must take "a more reserved approach" than Keshev. This apparently means preventing his readers from having the information necessary to reach their own conclusions about the nature of Israel's occupation of the Palestinians.

Letter from Keshev to Amnon Dankner

June 11, 2006=20
Mr. Amnon Dankner
Editor, Ma'ariv=20

Dear Sir,

We wish to strongly protest at the manner in which the newspaper Ma'ariv presented, in its edition of 11 June, the serious incident in which seven members of one Palestinian family were killed, and many other injured, on the beach at Beit Lahiya, Gaza, on 9 June.

The major communication media, both printed and electronic, in Israel and worldwide, devoted extensive time and space to a review of the tragedy at Gaza and its implications. The two other large Israeli newspapers, Yediot Aharonot and Haaretz, devoted their front pages to the incident and mentioned it in their headlines. They related to the event very seriously -- from the humanitarian aspect, from the incident's possible contribution to the escalation of the conflict, and from the aspect of the hard questions which need to be asked concerning the IDF's [Israeli army's] functioning with respect to the incident. We regret to say that the same cannot be said for Ma'ariv.

The newspaper's front page made no mention of the incident. Just so. Instead, room was found on the front page to report a state of readiness for attacks (for which no explanation was given), the World Cup, and even a headline on a "non-allergenic cat". The tragedy in Gaza appears on page 2 of the paper, in an indirect mention by Palestinian spokesmen on the killing of innocents, and on page 3 -- as part of some commentaries. The first factual report on the incident appears only on page 4.

It is hard to exaggerate the importance of these facts: As part of our ongoing monitoring of Israeli reports on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, editing patterns of decisive significance are repeatedly seen: giving prominence or downplaying news items in newspapers and news editions have an immense effect on the awareness of media consumers. Removing the Gaza incident from the front page of Ma'ariv sends an unequivocal message to readers: This is an event of limited importance. In order to understand the bloody cycle of this conflict, and to find ways of ending it, we must also look at ourselves. In its edition of 11 June, Ma'ariv prevented its readers from taking that necessary look.

Lastly, on page 7 of the same edition, a unique headline appeared, which we found nowhere in any other Israeli publication. The headline said: "Despite the bombing of Gaza, the firing of Kassams has not lessened." The secondary heading said: "The country's money is being wasted for nothing." (Quotation marks in the original.) There you have it, deep inside the newspaper, appears a most significant criticism, from military sources, of the operation in Gaza and its implications. It is important, but one could have expected Ma'ariv to publish such a headline on its front page. Perhaps even at the expense of the "non-allergenic cat". If Ma'ariv had done so, it would have made a great contribution to its readers' understanding of the reality of their lives.

Sincerely,
Dr Daniel Dor
Chairman
Mr Yizhar Beer
CEO

Letter from Amnon Dankner to Keshev

June 12, 2006
Dr Daniel Dor
Mr Yizhar Beer

Dear Sirs,
I really, and sincerely, approve of the existence of various entities wishing to promote various agendas in the media because I believe in the blooming of a thousand flowers, and also in the saying "I have learned from all my teachers". One does not always see everything, and it is a good thing that there are entities who place mirrors from various angles, and make critical comments from which one can often learn and even correct one's conduct accordingly. Even when such entities have agendas that are foreign to my way of thinking, and which I find irritating. I am not one of those who believe they know it all, and are always right, and it is good to stop and think, and I always thank those who encourage me to do so. Having said all that, I cannot accept the complaint in your letter to me of yesterday, neither its content not its tone.

The Ma'ariv edition you mentioned is the second edition, received by only some of the readers, and was issued hurriedly at a late hour, after we had learned of the kidnap of the Jewish student in Shechem [Nablus]. The edition received by the majority of readers contained a serious and comprehensive review, on the first page, of the incident on the Gaza beach. Was it still necessary to edit the first page of the second edition otherwise, to give the Gaza beach incident prominence? In my opinion -- No. Is certain danger to a kidnapped Jew more interesting and important than the Palestinians who were killed? My answer is -- a resounding Yes. The "poor people of your own city come first", and not only do I believe that such a topic is more interesting to our readers -- it is more interesting to me, and in my opinion the implications of this case, if it had developed in bad directions, would have been more serious and extensive than the incident on the Gaza beach. Luckily, the matter ended well, however when we were dealing with the second edition, in view of the worrying news, we could not have known that.

But I do not want to hide behind this explanation, which presents only part of the picture, and from our viewpoint at Ma'ariv, on the matter you raised in your letter. I hope that you will also not hide behind some of the wording in your letter, and I hope you will admit that when you wrote it you were convinced that the killing and injuries on the Gaza beach were the result of IDF activities. It is sad, but true, that we were not so convinced, and today we are even less certain. I recommend to you to comply with what you wrote in your letter -- "We must also look at ourselves", and really look at yourselves and your letter to me, and you will notice the attitude peeping out of it that Israel is certainly suspect and responsible for the incident.

The duty of caution and responsibility dictates a more reserved approach on our part than an organization with such an extreme agenda as yours permits itself. We, of course, will neither distort nor twist, nor shall we make concessions for the IDF where it operates inappropriately. However, on the other hand, we will not act hysterically, with unnecessary self-flagellation, casting unfounded accusations and creating the impression that our hands are covered in blood.

Ma'ariv's editing line takes into account that we are fighting a battle against enemies operating out of closely populated areas, thus sentencing the region to the danger of unnecessary injury, to both the injured and the injurers. Our editing line takes into account the situation in which being dragged into unexamined accusations and piling uncalled-for invectives on the head of the security forces weaken them and us in this bloody struggle whose end is nowhere to be seen and is unknown. On the other hand, all management personnel at Ma'ariv will be able to tell you how, in cases in which the security forces or the settlers have obviously caused injustice and willful damage to Palestinians, such as cutting down olive trees or cruel ill-treatment or murder, I was careful not to let go of the affairs and wrote about them until the matters were clarified and the guilty brought to justice. All as the case may be and as the circumstances warrant.

Sincerely,
Amnon Dankner


I'lam Media Center for Arab Palestinians in Israel is a non-profit organization based in Nazareth. It was founded in 2000, by a group of Arab journalists and academics. As the only Arab Palestinian media organization in Israel, I'lam is deeply committed to the democratization of media policies, media practices, and the media landscape in Israel.

Israel denied any responsibility after the deadly June 9 incident in which seven members of the same family were killed while picnicking on the beach in the northern Gaza Strip.

An internal military inquiry into the incident, ordered by defence minister Amir Peretz, absolved Israel of any involvement.

But Palestinians and international bodies insist the blast was caused by an Israeli shell, as the Israeli army regularly bombards northern Gaza in an effort to stop Palestinian rocket fire.

Despite the criticism, Olmert rejected calls for an international inquiry although he has previously expressed regret for the civilian deaths.

"The world isn't always ready to accept what we say and present, but no one can put in doubt our inquiries," he said.

Olmert declared his full backing for Peretz, who commissioned the military inquiry.

"The defence minister acted correctly all the way.

"There was an inquiry by a very senior source in the defence establishment which was not related to the army's decision-making process," the premier said.

Peretz told cabinet colleagues the world was wrong in its assumptions about the cause of the deaths, suggesting they might have been caused by unexploded Israeli ordnance or a Palestinian landmine left over from before Israel's withdrawal of ground troops last year.

"It may turn out that the blast was caused by old IDF (Israel Defence Forces) explosives on the beach.

"Things are still being examined. I hope that within several days we will have a complete picture," the minister said.

About 1,000 M-16 rifles and large amounts of ammunition were transferred last week from Jordan to Abbas's security forces, a move that Israel authorized to help Abbas and his Fatah party in their confrontation with Hamas.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert announced the decision last week in London, causing senior PA officials in Ramallah to express outrage with Israel for going public on the issue.

"The Israeli government should not have published this," protested one official. "This is an extremely sensitive issue and the Palestinians street will now think that Israel is arming us so that we could fight Hamas. This makes us look like collaborators."

Another official told The Jerusalem Post that there was "nothing unusual" with the transfer of weapons to the PA.

"Under the terms of the Oslo Accords and other agreements signed with Israel, the Palestinian Authority is entitled to bring light weapons for the security forces," he said. "This is not the first time that rifles and ammunition have been transferred from Jordan or Egypt."

Although the transfer of the weapons was completed on Wednesday night, Abbas and his top aides have publicly denied knowing anything about the deal. On a visit to Nablus Thursday, Abbas accused Israel of lying and insisted that no weapons had been sent to his security forces.

But Hamas officials said on Saturday that Abbas's loyalists in the West Bank and Gaza Strip had received three trucks loaded with rifles and ammunition. They said the shipment, which included 3,000 M-16 rifles and three million bullets, was delivered to Abbas's office in Ramallah and Gaza City.

"We call on the Palestinian Legislative Council to launch an immediate investigation into this matter," said a statement issued by the Hamas leadership in the Gaza Strip. "We want to know the nature and type of the weapons, why they are needed, and the party that paid for the rifles and bullets."

The statement, which is seen as an indication of growing tensions between Fatah and Hamas, noted that the decision to supply Abbas's loyalists with weapons came at a time when the Palestinians were suffering "under the yoke of financial siege and starvation."

Hinting that Israel and the US were behind the move, Hamas urged the PLC to look into the "size of American and Israeli intervention in the internal affairs of the Palestinians. We strongly condemn the exposed American-Zionist conspiracy to spark dissension among our people by arming and financing one side under the pretext of arming the presidential guard."

Hamas also accused unnamed Arab countries of being part of the alleged conspiracy, calling on the Palestinians to work toward thwarting any attempt to trigger civil war.

The latest charges came despite reports that Hamas and Fatah were close to reaching an agreement on ending their dispute.

PA Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh said on Saturday that he expected an agreement with Abbas as early as this week.

"The dialogue has achieved significant results," he said. "I expect an agreement within the next few days."

Haniyeh did not elaborate, but sources close to Hamas said they had good reason to believe that Abbas would cancel his decision to hold a referendum over a controversial document drafted by some Palestinian prisoners. In return, Hamas would agree to the establishment of a national unity government that would bring together several factions, including Fatah and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

Major issues remained unresolved, negotiators told the Associated Press, making an agreement between the ruling Hamas party and rival Fatah far from certain.

One unnamed mediator said Hamas sees such an agreement as a way of lifting an international boycott that threatens to bankrupt its government.

Under one possible scenario, Israel would be offered the olive branch in exchange for its complete withdrawal from the West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem, and resolution of the Palestinian refugee issue, the negotiators said.

But it was unclear whether such a formula would satisfy the U.S. and Europe, which have demanded a clear commitment from the Hamas-led government to renounce violence, recognize Israel and accept peace accords signed by Palestinians.

The formal and informal components tend to intersect at several points so the distinction is not always clear-cut. Together, however, they form the Israeli (or pro-Israel) lobby. This is a more accurate label than "Jewish lobby" because a large proportion of the lobby is made up of non-Jews. This term also reflects the lobby's objective. The Israeli lobby can then be defined as those formal and informal actors that directly and indirectly influence American policy to support Israel.

The Israeli lobby does not have the field to itself. On any given issue, it may be opposed by a variety of interest groups unrelated to the Middle East (e.g., conservative groups that have nothing against Israel, but oppose foreign aid on principle), but its main rival is the Arab lobby, which similarly consists of those formal and informal actors that attempt to influence U.S. foreign policy to support the interests of the Arab states in the Middle East.

The Informal Israeli Lobby

American Jews recognize the importance of support for Israel because of the dire consequences that could follow from the alternative. Despite the fact that Israel is often referred to now as the fourth most powerful country in the world, the perceived threat to Israel is not military defeat, it is annihilation. At the same time, American Jews are frightened of what might happen in the United States if they do not have political power.

As a result, Jews have devoted themselves to politics with almost religious fervor. This is reflected by the fact that Jews have the highest percentage voter turnout of any ethnic group. Though the Jewish population in the United States is roughly six million (about 2.3% of the total U.S. population), roughly 89 percent live in twelve key electoral college states. These states alone are worth enough electoral votes to elect the president. If you add the non-Jews shown by opinion polls to be as pro-Israel as Jews, it is clear Israel has the support of one of the largest veto groups in the country.

The political activism of Jews forces congressmen with presidential ambitions to consider what a mixed voting record on Israel-related issues may mean in the political future. There are no benefits to candidates taking an openly anti-Israel stance and considerable costs in both loss of campaign contributions and votes from Jews and non-Jews alike. Potential candidates therefore have an incentive to be pro-Israel; this reinforces support for Israel in Congress. Actual candidates must be particularly sensitive to the concerns of Jewish voters; it follows that the successful candidate's foreign policy will be influenced, although not bound, by the promises that had to be made during the campaign.

One way that lobbyists attempt to educate politicians is by taking them to Israel on study missions. Once officials have direct exposure to the country, its leaders, geography, and security dilemmas, they typically return more sympathetic to Israel. Politicians also sometimes travel to Israel specifically to demonstrate to the lobby their interest in Israel. Thus, for example, George W. Bush made his one and only trip to Israel before deciding to run for President in what was widely viewed as an effort to win pro-Israel voters' support. While there, he also was educated and was particularly influenced by a helicopter tour given to him by a man he would later work with as a fellow head of state - Ariel Sharon. In 2005 alone, more than 100 members of Congress visited Israel, some multiple times.¹

Jewish congressmen are naturally expected to be supportive of Israel and, with the exception of occasional odd votes, this is true. Historically, however, few Jews have held elective office or primary positions of power, even though they have always been politically active. In the past decade, however, this has gradually begun to change. Today, Jews occupy more positions of influence than ever before. For example, in the 109th Congress, 11 Senators are Jewish (11 percent) while Jewish members comprise almost 6 percent of the House. Bill Clinton nominated two Supreme Court Justices, both Jewish. He had several Jewish Cabinet members, including National Security Adviser Sandy Berger and Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman, and dozens of Jews held other key Administration posts. Bastions of bureaucratic opposition, and sometimes outright anti-Semitism, such as the CIA and State Department now employ Jews at the highest levels. For almost a decade, a Jew (Dennis Ross) was America's principal Mideast negotiator and Clinton appointed the first Jewish Ambassador to Israel (Martin Indyk). The George W. Bush Administration also has included many Jews in high-profile subcabinet positions

The Informal Arab Lobby

The disproportionate influence of the American Jewish population is in direct contrast with the electoral involvement of Arab-Americans. There are approximately 1.2 million Arabs in the United States, and roughly 38 percent of them are Lebanese, primarily Christians, who tend to be unsympathetic to the Arab lobby's goals. This reflects another major problem for the Arab lobby -- inter-Arab disunity. This disunity is reinforced by the general discord of the Arab world, which has twenty-one states with competing interests. The Arab lobby is thus precluded from representing "the Arabs."

Only about 70,000 Palestinians (6 percent of all Arab-Americans) live in the United States, but their views have received disproportionate attention because of their political activism. Similarly, a great deal of attention has focused on the allegedly growing political strength of Muslims in the United States, but fewer than one-fourth of all Arab-Americans are Muslims according to the Arab-American Institute.² About half of the Arab population is concentrated in five states - California, Florida, Michigan, New Jersey, and New York - that are all key to the electoral college. Still, the Arab population is dwarfed by that of the Jews in every one of these states except Michigan.

Jewish and Arab Populations in Key States

State	Arab Population	Arabs as % of Total State Population	Jewish Population	Jews as % of Total State Population
CA	142,805	.48	999,000	2.9
FL	49,206	.38	628,000	3.9
MI	76,504	.82	110,000	1.1
NJ	46,381	.60	485,000	5.7
NY	94,319	.52	1,657,000	8.7

Campaign Donations

Political campaign contributions are also considered an important means of influence; typically, Jews have been major benefactors. It is difficult to assess the impact of campaign giving on legislative outcomes, particularly with regard to Israel-related issues, where support or opposition may be a consequence of non-monetary factors. In addition, one does not know if a candidate is pro-Israel because of receiving a contribution, or receives a donation as a result of taking a position in support of Israel. In the past, Jewish contributions were less structured and targeted than other interest groups, but this has changed dramatically as Israel-related political action committees (PACs) have proliferated.

Initially, the Jewish community feared that post-Watergate election campaign financing reforms would reduce their influence, but the evidence so far suggests the opposite. If anything, the changes have stimulated greater political activism in the Jewish community.

The first pro-Israel PAC was formed in 1978, but there was little activity until 1982 when thirty-three pro-Israel PACs contributed $1.87 million to congressional candidates. Like other PACs, most of this money was given to incumbents and, because of the long association of Jews with the Democratic party, nearly 80 percent went to Democrats. The number of PACs more than doubled in 1984 as did their contributions. It was estimated that more than seventy pro-Israel PACs spent a little more than $4 million in 1984. By 1988, the figure was nearly $5 million. In 2004, pro-Israel PACs gave a little more than $3 million to candidate, and individuals contributed nearly $3 million more. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, pro-Israel interests have contributed $55 million in individual, PAC, and soft money contributions to national-level candidates and national party committees, but even these contributions are dwarfed by those of labor unions, lawyers, doctors, and trade associations. In fact, out of 80 "industries," the pro-Israel contributors rank only 52nd.

The PACs' contributions became increasingly focused in 1984 and, apparently, they had a high degree of success in choosing winning candidates. In the two most expensive and publicized Senate campaigns, Percy-Simon in Illinois and Helms-Hunt in North Carolina, however, the Israeli lobby had to settle for a split decision with its preferred candidate winning only in Illinois

On the Arab lobby side, only three PACs spent a trivial sum through 1988. Since 1988, Arab and Muslim communities combined contributed only $297,000.

The lobby took a more active and visible role than ever before in the 1984 election. The most obvious manifestation of this came in the congressional race involving seventy-six-year-old Maryland Democrat Clarence Long. Long, chairman of the House Appropriations subcommittee on Foreign Operations and a driving force behind increasing aid to Israel, was targeted by the Arab lobby: "to serve notice to members of Congress that the Arab lobby is ready and able to make life uncomfortable for Israel's friends on Capitol Hill."

Like the visible campaign undertaken in 1982 by the Israeli lobby to defeat pro-Arab Congressman Paul Findley of Illinois, the Arab lobby claimed victory when Long was defeated. As was the case in the Findley campaign, where the Congressman's district suffered from a high unemployment rate, and had been gerrymandered to his disadvantage, the reasons for Long's defeat were rooted in politics unrelated to the Middle East. In Long's case, redistricting took away a large percentage of his constituency and, after a narrow victory in 1982, he became a high priority target of the Republican National Committee.

In Jesse Jackson the Arab lobby found, for the first time, a presidential candidate receptive to their interests. Jackson had a long record of support for the Arab cause and was particularly outspoken in support of Palestinian rights, having met with Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) chairman Yasir Arafat when it was considered politically taboo. As a result of his stands, Jackson received substantial financial support from members of the Arab lobby. The divisions of the lobby were again apparent, however, when the president of the American Lebanese League said Jackson turns his constituents off: "He seems interested in the welfare of Arab countries but not Lebanon or the United States."

Overall, the comparative impact of the two lobbies on elections was probably best summed up by Harry Truman in his frequently repeated statement to Paul Porter, a Washington attorney appointed as the ambassador to the Arab-Israeli peace talks in Geneva in 1948: "I won't tell you what to do or how to vote, but I will only say this. In all of my political experience I don't ever recall the Arab vote swinging a close election."


Public Opinion

The absence of a large voting bloc requires the Arab lobby to develop sympathies among the general public if it is to use public opinion or the electoral process as a means of influencing U.S. policy. The lobby has tried to support sympathetic American groups, such as Third World organizations, and cultivate friendships in the academic and business realms, but, as opinion polls have consistently shown, there is relatively little popular support for the Arab cause.

Since 1967, polls have found that sympathy for Israel varied between 32 and 64 percent, averaging 46 percent, while sympathy for the Arabs has oscillated between 1 and 30 percent and averaged only 12 percent. In the last several years, support for the Arabs has increased slightly, but this has not affected sympathies toward Israel.

Not only has the Arab lobby been unable to increase its standing significantly with the public, it has also failed to convince the American people that the Israeli lobby controls U.S. Middle East policy. In fact, polls indicate the public sees the Arab lobby as more of a threat than the Israeli lobby. For example, in a poll conducted several weeks after the Senate vote on the sale of AWACS to Saudi Arabia, 53 percent of the public agreed Israel has "too much influence" on American foreign policy, but only 11 percent felt the same way about American Jews. By contrast, 64 percent said Saudi Arabia had too much influence, and 70 percent believed oil companies were too influential. A March 1983 poll asking which groups have "too much" political influence found that only 10 percent of those asked said "Jews." Business corporations and unions were considered too powerful by more than 40 percent of the respondents, with Arab interests next at 24 percent.

Thus, the Arab lobby's problem is twofold; it suffers from a very negative image and Israel enjoys a very positive image. This has gradually begun to change. To combat negative Arab stereotypes, former Senator James Abourezk founded the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) in 1980. The ADC is modeled after the Anti-Defamation League, but is considerably smaller and weaker.


The Formal Israeli Lobby

The organization that directly lobbies the U.S. government on behalf of the Israeli lobby is AIPAC. The lobby, originally called the American Zionist Committee for Public Affairs, was founded in 1951 by I.L. (Sy) Kenen to appeal directly to Congress for legislation to provide aid to Israel to circumvent State Department opposition. As recently as the late 1960s, the organization now considered the most powerful foreign policy lobby in Washington was essentially a one-man operation run by Kenen. In the late 1970s, AIPAC still had only a handful of staff based in Washington. Today, it has more than 100 employees with seven regional offices and a budget of more than $40 million and lobbies the Executive Branch as well as the Legislative. Because of its name, AIPAC is sometimes mistakenly thought to be a political action committee (PAC), but the organization does not rate, endorse or finance candidates.

AIPAC was not the first domestic lobby to concern itself with foreign affairs, but it is regarded as the most powerful. In 1998 and 1999, for example, Fortune Magazine named AIPAC the second most powerful lobby in Washington after the American Association for Retired Persons (AARP). The lobby strives to remain nonpartisan and thereby keeps friends in both parties. By framing the issues in terms of the national interest, AIPAC can attract broader support than would ever be possible if it was perceived to represent only the interests of Israel. This does not mean AIPAC does not have a close relationship with Israeli officials, it does, albeit unofficially. Even so, the lobby some times comes into conflict with the Israeli government. One of the most blatant examples occurred when AIPAC's Executive Director Thomas Dine was quoted on the front page of the New York Times as saying the 1982 Reagan peace plan had some good points (and many bad ones) after the Israeli government had rejected the plan in toto. Despite such disagreements, the Israeli lobby tends to reflect Israeli government policy fairly closely. Though its influence is limited primarily to issues where Congress has a say, in particular, economic matters, the organization also serves as a watchdog to deter anti-Israel policies from being adopted. Lobbyists usually roam the halls of Congress trying to get the attention of legislators so they can explain their positions. AIPAC has the luxury of being able to call its allies in Congress to pass along information, and then leaves much of the work of writing bills and gathering cosponsors to the legislative staffs. The lobbyists themselves are mostly Capitol Hill veterans who know how to operate the levers of power.

Since it does not use stereotypical lobbying tactics, the Israeli lobby depends on the network it has developed to galvanize the Jewish community to take some form of political action. The network consists of at least seventy-five different organizations, which in one way or another support Israel. Most cannot legally engage in lobbing, but are represented on the Board of Directors of AIPAC, so they are able to provide input into the lobby's decision-making process. Equally important is the bureaucratic machinery of these organizations, which enables them to disseminate information to their members and facilitate a rapid response to legislative activity. A second coordinating body is the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. It is composed of leaders of 55 different organizations and is responsible for formulating and articulating the "Jewish position" on most foreign policy matters. The conference allows the lobby to speak with one voice in a way its opponents cannot. The conference is the main contact between the Jewish community and the executive branch, while AIPAC tends to be the conduit with the legislative branch. Even with the Jewish population concentrated in key states, there is still only a total of about six million Jews; therefore, the Israeli lobby is dependent on the support of non-Jewish groups and actively works to form coalitions with broad segments of American society. The lobby has successfully built coalitions consisting of unions, entertainers, clergymen, scholars, and black leaders. The coalitions allow the lobby to demonstrate a broad public consensus for a pro-Israel policy.


The Arab Lobby

The Arab lobby in the United States is at least as old, perhaps older than the Israeli lobby. It is composed of what I.L. Kenen called the petro-diplomatic complex consisting of the oil industry, missionaries, and diplomats. According to Kenen, there was no need for a formal Arab lobby because the petro-diplomatic complex did the Arabs' work for them.

One of the earliest activities of the petro-diplomatic complex began in 1951 when King Saud of Saudi Arabia asked U.S. diplomats to finance a pro-Arab lobby to counter the American Zionist Committee for Public Affairs (later the American Israel Public Affairs Committee -AIPAC). The Arab lobby became an official, active, and visible spokesman for the Arab cause in the wake of the oil embargo. "The day of the Arab-American is here," boasted National Association of Arab-Americans (NAAA) founder Richard Shadyac, "the reason is oil."

From the beginning, the Arab lobby has faced not only a disadvantage in electoral politics but also in organization. There are several politically oriented groups, but many of these are one man operations with little financial or popular support. Americans for Justice in the Middle East was formed by a group of Americans at the American University in Beirut after the 1967 war to combat "Zionism's virulent thirty-year campaign of hate and vindictiveness." Two anti-Zionist Jews are also active supporters of the Arab lobby. Elmer Berger runs American Jewish Alternatives to Zionism and Alfred Lilienthal publishes his own newsletter Middle East Perspectives.

There are a number of larger and more representative groups, including the aforementioned NAAA and ADC, the Middle East Research and Information Project; the Middle East Affairs Council, Americans for Near East Refugee Aid, the Arab American Institute and the American Palestine Committee. Typically, these organizations have boards of directors composed of prominent retired government officials. Board members have included former Ambassador to Jordan, L. Dean Brown, Herman Eilts, former Ambassador to Syria and Egypt; Parker T. Hart, former Ambassador to Saudi Arabia and several others.

The formal Arab lobby is the National Association of Arab-Americans (NAAA), a registered domestic lobby founded in 1972 by Richard Shadyac. The NAAA was consciously patterned after its counterpart, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Shadyac believed the power and wealth of the Arab countries stemming from their oil reserves, would allow the Arab lobby to take advantage of the political process in the same way the Jews have been thought to. Like AIPAC, the NAAA makes its case on the basis of U.S. national interests, arguing a pro-Israel policy harms those interests. Aid to Israel is criticized as a waste of taxpayers' money, and the potential benefits of a closer relationship with the Arab states is emphasized. The highlight of the NAAA's early efforts was a meeting between President Ford and twelve NAAA officials in 1975. Since then, the NAAA has participated in meetings with each president and obtained access to top government officials. In 1977, for example, after Sadat's historic visit to Jerusalem, the Arab lobby made its displeasure over United States support for the initiative known to President Carter, who wrote in his diary: "They [Arab-Americans] have given all the staff, Brzezinski, Warren Christopher, and others, a hard time. Although the lobby's concerns began to reach the highest levels of government, there were no perceptible changes in United States policy."

It is not only Arab-Americans who have made the lobby's case; the Arab lobby, like the Israeli lobby, has successfully built coalitions with other interest groups. As noted earlier, the pedro-diplomatic complex was the lobby until 1972, when the NAAA was formed. Even today, arguably, it is the most influential component of the lobby. Nevertheless, most of the nation's major corporations have not supported the Arab lobby. In fact, prior to the AWACS sale, oil companies were about the only corporations willing to openly identify with Arab interests. The reason is that most corporations prefer to stay out of foreign policy debates; moreover, corporations may feel constrained by the implicit threat of some form of retaliation by the Israeli lobby.

The major oil companies feel no such constraints. Exxon, Standard Oil of California (SoCal), Mobil, and Texaco have long sought to manipulate public opinion and foreign policy on the Middle East. These companies as a group comprise the Arabian American Oil Company (ARAMCO). Participation in the public relations campaign amounted to the price of doing business in the oil-producing nations. The campaign began after the 1967 War when ARAMCO established a fund to help present the Arab side of the conflict. In May 1970, ARAMCO representatives met with Assistant Secretary of State Joseph Sisco and warned him American military sales to Israel would hurt U.S.-Arab relations and jeopardize U.S. oil supplies. The former chairman of ARAMCO testified before Congress that the United States' pro-Israel policies were harming U.S. business interests. In 1972, at Kuwait's urging, Gulf Oil joined the campaign, providing $50,000 to create a public relations firm to promote the Arab side.

The campaign took on greater urgency in 1973 after Frank Jungers, then Chairman of the Board of ARAMCO, met with Saudi King Faisal, and was pressured to take a more active role in creating a sympathetic attitude toward the Arab nations. In June, a month after the Jungers meeting, Mobil published its first advertisement/editorial in the New York Times. In July, SoCal's chairman sent out a letter to the company's 40,000 employees and 262,000 stockholders asking them to pressure Washington to support "the aspirations of the Arab people." The chairman of Texaco called for a reassessment of U.S. Middle East policy. When the October 1973 War broke out, the chairmen of the ARAMCO partners sent a memorandum to the White House warning against increasing military aid to Israel. Since 1973, ARAMCO has maintained its public relations campaign and become involved in occasional legislative fights, such as the AWACS sale, but, on the whole, the campaign has had no observable impact on U.S. policy.

Other companies outside the oil industry are involved in the Arab lobby, the most well-known being the international engineering firm Bechtel, but the Arab and Israeli lobbies have had virtually no confrontations since the AWACS fight in 1981, in part because the Israeli lobby hasn't opposed any major arms sales or other economic investments in the region that threatened U.S. corporate interests.

A relatively ignored component of the "Arab lobby" is found among the Christian community, most notably, the National Council of Churches (NCC). The NCC is composed of thirty-two Protestant denominations, including virtually all major church bodies. The Council has taken consistently anti-Israel stands, and its 1980 policy statement on the Middle East called for the creation of a PLO state. Besides passing anti-Israel resolutions, the NCC puts on seminars, radio shows, and conferences. From 1972 to 1977, it published the ARAMCO financed SWASIA (Southwest Asia) newsletter. When SWASIA ceased publication, the NCC established an Islamic desk to "enable American Christians to understand Arab Christian and Muslim attitudes." The relationship between the NCC and other Arab lobby organizations is primarily informal, with NCC leaders serving on many of their boards.

Contrasts

At least two major differences distinguish the Arab and Israeli lobbies. First, the Arab lobby almost always lobbies negatively; i.e., against pro-Israel legislation rather than for pro-Arab legislation. In 2004, for example, members of Congress were graded on a number of issues, including: opposition to the war with Iraq; opposition to resolutions that condemned terrorism inflicted on Israel, that supported President Bush's letter supporting Israel, that called for a halt to Saudi support for terrorism and Syrian accountability, and that supported Israel's construction of a security fence; opposition to a letter calling for the Palestinians to meet certain obligations; and a resolution expressing sympathy for an American woman who was accidentally killed protesting Israeli house demolitions.⁴

The other major difference between the two lobbies is the use of paid foreign agents by the Arab lobby. Pro-Arab U.S. government officials can look forward to lucrative positions as lobbyists, spokesmen, and consultants for the Arab cause. For example, the outspoken critic of the Israeli lobby, former Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman J. William Fulbright, was hired by the Saudis and the United Arab Emirates. It was the Saudis' agent, Fred Dutton, a former Assistant Secretary for Legislative Affairs and special assistant to President Kennedy, who spearheaded the AWACS campaign and reputedly conceived the "Reagan vs. Begin" angle. Other top officials who have provided their services to the Arab lobby include: Clark Clifford, President Johnson's Defense Secretary; Richard Kleindienst, President Nixon's Attorney General; and William Rogers, Nixon's Secretary of State.

Overall, the Israeli lobby is effective because it enjoys advantages in every area considered relevant to interest group influence. It has (a) a large and vocal membership; (b) members who enjoy high status and legitimacy; (c) a high degree of electoral participation (voting and financing); (d) effective leadership; (e) a high degree of access to decision-makers; and (f) public support. Moreover, for reasons at least partly attributable to the lobby's efforts, the lobby's primary objective - a U.S. commitment to Israel - has been accepted as a national interest.

Measuring Influence

Most articles and research on the Middle East interest groups are based on anecdotes, case studies or casual observation. They either vaguely conclude the Israeli lobby has some influence some of the time or (usually in the case of works by authors hostile to Israel) assert the Israeli lobby is a powerful and dangerous influence that controls U.S. policy.

In a more rigorous study of 782 policy decisions made from 1945 to 1984, I found the Israeli lobby won; that is, achieved its policy objective, 60 percent of the time. The most important variable was the president's position. When the president supported the lobby, it won 95 percent of the time. At first glance it appears the lobby was only successful because its objectives coincided with those of the president, but the lobby's influence was demonstrated by the fact that it still won 27 percent of the cases when the president opposed its position.

One of the most surprising results, particularly in light of conventional wisdom and evidence presented in case studies, was that the president's position was not significantly affected by the electoral cycle. Although candidates may appear to pander to Jewish voters, the data indicate the electoral cycle does not affect influence success.

Lobby success also varied depending on the policy at issue. The lobby was very successful in overcoming presidential opposition on economic issues, but rarely able to defeat the president on security and political issues. The lobby was more successful on economic issues because most of those were decided in Congress where pro-Israel congressman frequently fought for increased aid levels for Israel, earmarked funds for Israel and adopted amendments to aid bills that were endorsed by the Israeli lobby.

The lobby's lack of success on political issues was most likely a result of the fact that most of these cases were decided in the executive branch where lobby influence is relatively weak. The outcome might also be explained by the tradition of congressional deference to the president on matters of security and diplomacy.

Notes

¹JTA, January 13, 2006).

²Alex Ionides, "Getting
Their House Together," Egypt
Today, (November 2003).

³U.S.
Census Bureau (2000).

⁴Shirl McArthur, "Five
Senators, 29 Representatives Included in 108th Congress' 'Hall of Shame,'"
Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, (November 2004), pp.
36-37.

CounterPunch Editors' Note: Ten, even five years ago, a fierce public debate over the nature and activities of the Israeli lobby would have been impossible. It was as verboten as the use of the word Empire, to describe the global reach of the United States. Through its disdain for the usual proprieties decorously observed by Republican and Democratic administrations in the past , the Bush administration has hauled many realities of our political economy center stage. Open up the New York Times or the Washington Post over the recent past and there, like as not, is another opinion column about the Lobby.

CounterPunch has hosted some of the most vigorous polemics on the Lobby. In May we asked two of our most valued contributors, Kathy and Bill Christison, to offer their evaluation of the debate on the Lobby's role and power. As our readers know, Bill and Kathy both had significant careers as CIA analysts. Bill was a National Intelligence Officer. In the aftermath of the September, 2001, attacks we published here his trenchant and influential essay on "the war on terror". Kathy has written powerfully on our website on the topic of Palestine. Specifically on the Lobby they contributed an unsparing essay on the topic of "dual loyalty" which can bed found in our CounterPunch collection, The Politics of Anti-Semitism.

In mid May they sent us the detailed, measured commentary, rich in historical detail, that we are delighted to print below in its entirety. Which is the tail? Which is the dog? asked Uri Avnery in our newsletter, a few issues back, apropos the respective roles of the Israel Lobby and the US in the exercise of US policy in the Middle East. Here's an answer that will be tough to challenge.

-- A.C./J.S.C.

John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, the University of Chicago and Harvard political scientists who published in March of this years a lengthy, well documented study on the pro-Israel lobby and its influence on U.S. Middle East policy in March , have already accomplished what they intended. They have successfully called attention to the often pernicious influence of the lobby on policymaking. But, unfortunately, the study has aroused more criticism than debate ­ not only the kind of criticism one would anticipate from the usual suspects among the very lobby groups Mearsheimer and Walt described, but also from a group on the left that might have been expected to support the study's conclusions.

The criticism has been partly silly, often malicious, and almost entirely off-point. The silly, insubstantial criticisms ­ such as former presidential adviser David Gergen's earnest comment that through four administrations he never observed an Oval Office decision that tilted policy in favor of Israel at the expense of U.S. interests ­ can easily be dismissed as nonsensical . Most of the extensive malicious criticism, coming largely from the hard core of Israeli supporters who make up the very lobby under discussion and led by a hysterical Alan Dershowitz, has been so specious and sophomoric, that it too could be dismissed were it not for precisely the pervasive atmosphere of reflexive support for Israel and silenced debate that Mearsheimer and Walt describe.

Most disturbing and harder to dismiss is the criticism of the study from the left, coming chiefly from Noam Chomsky and Norman Finkelstein, and abetted less cogently by Stephen Zunes of Foreign Policy in Focus and Joseph Massad of Columbia University. These critics on the left argue from a assumption that U.S. foreign policy has been monolithic since World War II, a coherent progression of decision-making directed unerringly at the advancement of U.S. imperial interests. All U.S. actions, these critics contend, are part of a clearly laid-out strategy that has rarely deviated no matter what the party in power. They believe that Israel has served throughout as a loyal agent of the U.S., carrying out the U.S. design faithfully and serving as a base from which the U.S. projects its power around the Middle East. Zunes says it most clearly, affirming that Israel "still is very much the junior partner in the relationship." These critics do not dispute the existence of a lobby, but they minimize its importance, claiming that rather than leading the U.S. into policies and foreign adventures that stand against true U.S. national interests, as Mearsheimer and Walt assert, the U.S. is actually the controlling power in the relationship with Israel and carries out a consistent policy, using Israel as its agent where possible.

Finkelstein summarized the critics' position in a recent CounterPunch article ("The Israel Lobby," May 1, http://www.counterpunch.org/finkelstein05012006.html), emphasizing that the issue is not whether U.S. interests or those of the lobby take precedence but rather that there has been such coincidence of U.S. and Israeli interests over the decades that for the most part basic U.S. Middle East policy has not been affected by the lobby. Chomsky maintains that Israel does the U.S. bidding in the Middle East in pursuit of imperial goals that Washington would pursue even without Israel and that it has always pursued in areas outside the Middle East without benefit of any lobby. Those goals have always included advancement of U.S. corporate-military interests and political domination through the suppression of radical nationalisms and the maintenance of stability in resource-rich countries, particularly oil producers, everywhere. In the Middle East, this was accomplished primarily through Israel's 1967 defeat of Egypt's Gamal Abdul Nasser and his radical Arab nationalism, which had threatened U.S. access to the region's oil resources. Both Chomsky and Finkelstein trace the strong U.S.-Israeli tie to the June 1967 war, which they believe established the close alliance and marked the point at which the U.S. began to regard Israel as a strategic asset and a stable base from which U.S. power could be projected throughout the Middle East.

Joseph Massad ("Blaming the Israel Lobby," CounterPunch, March 25/26, http://www.counterpunch.org/massad03252006.html) argues along similar lines, describing developments in the Middle East and around the world that he believes the U.S. engineered for its own benefit and would have carried out even without Israel's assistance. His point, like Chomsky's, is that the U.S. has a long history of overthrowing regimes in Central America, in Chile, in Indonesia, in Africa, where the Israel lobby was not involved and where Israel at most assisted the U.S. but did not benefit directly itself. He goes farther than Chomsky by claiming that with respect to the Middle East Israel has been such an essential tool that its very usefulness is what accounts for the strength of the lobby. "It is in fact the very centrality of Israel to U.S. strategy in the Middle East," Massad contends with a kind of backward logic, "that accounts, in part, for the strength of the pro-Israel lobby and not the other way around." (One wonders why, if this were the case, there would be any need for a lobby at all. What would be a lobby's function if the U.S. already regarded Israel as central to its strategy?)

The principal problem with these arguments from the left is that they assume a continuity in U.S. strategy and policymaking over the decades that has never in fact existed. The notion that there is any defined strategy that links Eisenhower's policy to Johnson's to Reagan's to Clinton's gives far more credit than is deserved to the extremely ad hoc, hit-or-miss nature of all U.S. foreign policy. Obviously, some level of imperial interest has dictated policy in every administration since World War II and, obviously, the need to guarantee access to vital natural resources around the world, such as oil in the Middle East and elsewhere, has played a critical role in determining policy. But beyond these evident, and not particularly significant, truths, it can accurately be said, at least with regard to the Middle East, that it has been a rare administration that has itself ever had a coherent, clearly defined, and consistent foreign policy and that, except for a broadly defined anti-communism during the Cold War, no administration's strategy has ever carried over in detail to succeeding administrations.

The ad hoc nature of virtually every administration's policy planning process cannot be overemphasized. Aside from the strong but amorphous political need felt in both major U.S. parties and nurtured by the Israel lobby that "supporting Israel" was vital to each party's own future, the inconsistent, even short-term randomness in the detailed Middle East policymaking of successive administrations has been remarkable. This lack of clear strategic thinking at the very top levels of several new administrations before they entered office enhanced the power of individuals and groups that did have clear goals and plans already in hand ­ such as, for instance, the pro-Israeli Dennis Ross in both the first Bush and the Clinton administrations, and the strongly pro-Israeli neo-cons in the current Bush administration.

The critics on the left argue that because the U.S. has a history of opposing and frequently undermining or actually overthrowing radical nationalist governments throughout the world without any involvement by Israel, any instance in which Israel acts against radical nationalism in the Arab world is, therefore, proof that Israel is doing the United States' work for it . The critics generally believe, for instance, that Israel's political destruction of Egypt's Nasser in 1967 was done for the U.S. Most if not all believe that Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon was undertaken at U.S.behest, to destroy the PLO.

This kind of argumentation assumes too much on a presumption of policy coherence. Lyndon Johnson most certainly did abhor Nasser and was not sorry to see him and his pan-Arab ambitions defeated, but there is absolutely no evidence that the Johnson administration ever seriously planned to unseat Nasser, formulated any other action plan against Egypt, or pushed Israel in any way to attack. Johnson did apparently give a green light to Israel's attack plans after they had been formulated, but this is quite different from initiating the plans. Already mired in Vietnam, Johnson was very much concerned not to be drawn into a war initiated by Israel and was criticized by some Israeli supporters for not acting forcefully enough on Israel's behalf. In any case, Israel needed no prompting for its pre-emptive attack, which had long been in the works.

Indeed, far from Israel functioning as the junior partner carrying out a U.S. plan, it is clear that the weight of pressure in 1967 was on the U.S. to go along with Israel's designs and that this pressure came from Israel and its agents in the U.S. The lobby in this instance ­ as broadly defined by Mearsheimer and Walt: "the loose coalition of individuals and organizations who actively work to shape U.S. foreign policy in a pro-Israel direction" ­ was in fact a part of Johnson's intimate circle of friends and advisers.

These included the number-two man at the Israeli embassy, a close personal friend; the strongly pro-Israeli Rostow brothers, Walt and Eugene, who were part of the national security bureaucracy in the administration; Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas; U.N. Ambassador Arthur Goldberg; and numerous others who all spent time with Johnson at the LBJ Ranch in Texas and had the personal access and the leisure time in an informal setting to talk with Johnson about their concern for Israel and to influence him heavily in favor of Israel. This circle had already begun to work on Johnson long before Israel's pre-emptive attack in 1967, so they were nicely placed to persuade Johnson to go along with it despite Johnson's fears of provoking the Soviet Union and becoming involved in a military conflict the U.S. was not prepared for.

In other words, Israel was beyond question the senior partner in this particular policy initiative; Israel made the decision to go to war, would have gone to war with or without the U.S. green light, and used its lobbyists in the U.S. to steer Johnson administration policy in a pro-Israeli direction. Israel's attack on the U.S. naval vessel, the USS Liberty, in the midst of the war ­ an attack conducted in broad daylight that killed 34 American sailors ­ was not the act of a junior partner. Nor was the U.S. cover-up of this atrocity the act of a government that dictated the moves in this relationship.

The evidence is equally clear that Israel was the prime mover in the 1982 invasion of Lebanon and led the U.S. into that morass, rather than the other way around. Although Massad refers to the U.S. as Israel's master, in this instance as in many others including 1967, Israel has clearly been its own master. Chomsky argues in support of his case that Reagan ordered Israel to call off the invasion in August, two months after it was launched. This is true, but in fact Israel did not pay any attention; the invasion continued, and the U.S. got farther and farther embroiled.

When, as occurred in Lebanon, the U.S. has blundered into misguided adventures to support Israel or to rescue Israel or to further Israel's interests, it is a clear denial of reality to say that Israel and its lobby have no significant influence on U.S. Middle East policy. Even were there not an abundance of other examples, Lebanon alone, with its long-term implications, proves the truth of the Mearsheimer-Walt conclusion that the U.S. "has set aside its own security in order to advance the interests of another state" and that "the overall thrust of U.S. policy in the region is due almost entirely to U.S. domestic politics, and especially to the activities of the 'Israel Lobby.'"

As a general proposition, the left critics' argumentation is much too limiting. While there is no question that modern history is replete, as they argue, with examples of the U.S. acting in corporate interests ­ overthrowing nationalist governments perceived to be threatening U.S. business and economic interests, as in Iran in 1953, Guatemala in 1954, Chile in 1973, and elsewhere ­ this frequent convergence of corporate with government interests does not mean that the U.S. never acts in other than corporate interests. The fact of a strong government-corporate alliance does not in any way preclude situations ­ even in the Middle East, where oil is obviously a vital corporate resource ­ in which the U.S. acts primarily to benefit Israel rather than serve any corporate or economic purpose. Because it has a deep emotional aspect and involves political, economic, and military ties unlike those with any other nation, the U.S. relationship with Israel is unique, and there is nothing in the history of U.S. foreign policy, nothing in the government's entanglement with the military-industrial complex, to prevent the lobby from exerting heavy influence on policy. Israel and its lobbyists make their own "corporation" that, like the oil industry (or Chiquita Banana or Anaconda Copper in other areas), is clearly a major factor driving U.S. foreign policy.

There is no denying the intricate interweaving of the U.S. military-industrial complex with Israeli military-industrial interests. Chomsky acknowledges that there is "plenty of conformity" between the lobby's position and the U.S. government-corporate linkage and that the two are very difficult to disentangle. But, although he tends to emphasize that the U.S. is always the senior partner and suggests that the Israeli side does little more than support whatever the U.S. arms, energy, and financial industries define as U.S. national interests, in actual fact the entanglement is much more one between equals than the raw strengths of the two parties would suggest. "Conformity" hardly captures the magnitude of the relationship. Particularly in the defense arena, Israel and its lobby and the U.S. arms industry work hand in glove to advance their combined, very compatible interests. The relatively few very powerful and wealthy families that dominate the Israeli arms industry are just as interested in pressing for aggressively militaristic U.S. and Israeli foreign policies as are the CEOs of U.S. arms corporations and, as globalization has progressed, so have the ties of joint ownership and close financial and technological cooperation among the arms corporations of the two nations grown ever closer. In every way, the two nations' military industries work together very easily and very quietly, to a common end. The relationship is symbiotic, and the lobby cooperates intimately to keep it alive; lobbyists can go to many in the U.S. Congress and tell them quite credibly that if aid to Israel is cut off, thousands of arms-industry jobs in their own districts will be lost. That's power. The lobby is not simply passively supporting whatever the U.S. military-industrial complex wants. It is actively twisting arms ­ very successfully ­ in both Congress and the administration to perpetuate acceptance of a definition of U.S. "national interests" that many Americans believe is wrong, as does Chomsky himself.

Clearly, the advantages in the relationship go in both directions: Israel serves U.S. corporate interests by using, and often helping develop, the arms that U.S. manufacturers produce, and the U.S. serves Israeli interests by providing a constant stream of high-tech equipment that maintains Israel's vast military superiority in the region. But simply because the U.S. benefits from this relationship, it cannot be said that the U.S. is Israel's master, or that Israel always does the U.S. bidding, or that the lobby, which helps keep this arms alliance alive, has no significant power. It's in the nature of a symbiosis that both sides benefit, and the lobby has clearly played a huge role in maintaining the interdependence.

The left's arguments also tend to be much too conspiratorial. Finkelstein, for instance, describes a supposed strategy in which the U.S. perpetually undermines Israeli-Arab reconciliation because it does not want an Israel at peace with its neighbors, since Israel would then loosen its dependence on the U.S. and become a less reliable proxy. "What use," he asks, "would a Paul Wolfowitz have of an Israel living peacefully with its Arab neighbors and less willing to do the U.S.'s bidding?" Not only does this give the U.S. far more credit than it has ever deserved for long-term strategic scheming and the ability to carry out such a conspiracy, but it begs a very important question that neither Finkelstein nor the other left critics, in their dogged effort to mold all developments to their thesis, never examine: just what U.S.'s bidding is Israel doing nowadays?

Although the leftist critics speak of Israel as a base from which U.S. power is projected throughout the Middle East, they do not clearly explain how this works. Any strategic value Israel had for the U.S. diminished drastically with the collapse of the Soviet Union. They may believe that Israel keeps Saudi Arabia's oil resources safe from Arab nationalists or Muslim fundamentalists or Russia, but this is highly questionable. Israel clearly did us no good in Lebanon, but rather the U.S. did Israel's bidding and fumbled badly, so this cannot be how the U.S. uses Israeli to project its power. In Palestine, Finkelstein himself acknowledges that the U.S. gains nothing from the occupation and Israeli settlements, so this can't be where Israel is doing the U.S.'s bidding. (With this acknowledgement, Finkelstein, perhaps unconsciously, seriously undermines his case against the importance of the lobby, unless he somehow believes the occupation is only of incidental significance, in which case he undermines the thesis of much of his own body of writing.)

Owning the Policymakers

In the clamor over the Mearsheimer-Walt study, critics on both the left and the right have tended to ignore the slow evolutionary history of U.S. Middle East policymaking and of the U.S. relationship with Israel. The ties to Israel and earlier to Zionism go back more than a century, predating the formation of a lobby, and they have remained firm even at periods when the lobby has waned. But it is also true that the lobby has sustained and formalized a relationship that otherwise rests on emotions and moral commitment. Because the bond with Israel has been a steadily evolving continuum, dating back to well before Israel's formal establishment, it is important to emphasize that there is no single point at which it is possible to say, this is when Israel won the affections of America, or this is when Israel came to be regarded as a strategic asset, or this is when the lobby became an integral part of U.S. policymaking.

The left critics of the lobby study mark the Johnson administration as the beginning of the U.S.-Israeli alliance, but almost every administration before Johnson's, going back to Woodrow Wilson, ratcheted up the relationship in some significant way and could justifiably claim to have been the progenitor of the bond. Significantly, in almost all cases, policymakers acted as they did because of the influence of pro-Zionist or pro-Israeli lobbyists: Wilson would not have supported the Zionist enterprise to the extent he did had it not been for the influence of Zionist colleagues like Louis Brandeis; nor would Roosevelt; Truman would probably not have been as supportive of establishing a Jewish state without the heavy influence of his very pro-Zionist advisers.

After the Johnson administration as well, the relationship has continued to grow in remarkable leaps. The Nixon-Kissinger regime could claim that they were the administration that cemented the alliance by exponentially increasing military aid ­ from an annual average of under $50 million in military credits to Israel in the late 1960s to an average of almost $400 million and, in the year following the 1973 war, to $2.2 billion. It is not for nothing that Israelis have informally dubbed almost every president since Johnson ­ with the notable exceptions of Jimmy Carter and the senior George Bush ­ as "the most pro-Israeli president ever"; each one has achieved some landmark in the effort to please Israel.

The U.S.-Israeli bond has always had its grounding more in soft emotions than in the hard realities of geopolitical strategy. Scholars have always described the tie in almost spiritual terms never applied to ties with other nations. A Palestinian-French scholar has described the United States' pro-Israeli tilt as a "predisposition," a natural inclination that precedes any consideration of interest or of cost. Israel, he said, takes part in the very "being" of American society and therefore participates in its integrity and its defense. This is not simply the biased perspective of a Palestinian. Other scholars of varying political inclinations have described a similar spiritual and cultural identity: the U.S. identifies with Israel's "national style"; Israel is essential to the "ideological prospering" of the U.S.; each country has "grafted" the heritage of the other onto itself. This applies even to the worst aspects of each nation's heritage. Consciously or unconsciously, many Israelis even today see the U.S. conquest of the American Indians as something "good," something to emulate and, which is worse, many Americans even today are happy to accept the "compliment" inherent in Israel's effort to copy us.

This is no ordinary state-to-state relationship, and the lobby does not function like any ordinary lobby. It is not a great exaggeration to say that the lobby could not thrive without a very willing host ­ that is, a series of U.S. policymaking establishments that have always been locked in to a mindset singularly focused on Israel and its interests ­ and, at the same time, that U.S. policy in the Middle East would not possibly have remained so singularly focused on and so tilted toward Israel were it not for the lobby. One thing is certain: with the possible exceptions of the Carter and the first Bush administrations, the relationship has grown noticeably closer and more solid with each administration, in almost exact correlation with the growth in size and budget and political clout of the pro-Israel lobby.

All critics of the lobby study have failed to note a critical point during the Reagan administration, surrounding the debacle in Lebanon, when it can reasonably be said that policymaking tipped over from a situation in which the U.S. was more often the controlling agent in the relationship to one in which Israel and its advocates in the U.S. have increasingly determined the course and the pace of developments. The organized lobby, meaning AIPAC and the several formal Jewish American organizations, truly came into its own during the Reagan years with a massive expansion of memberships, budgets, propaganda activities, and contacts within Congress and government, and it has been consolidating power and influence for the last quarter century, so that today the broadly defined lobby, including all those who work for Israel, has become an integral part of U.S. society and U.S. policymaking.

The situation during the Reagan administration demonstrates very clearly the closeness of the bond. The events of these years illustrate how an already very Israel-centered mindset in the U.S., which had been developing for decades, was transformed into a concrete, institutionalized relationship with Israel via the offices of Israeli supporters and agents in the U.S.

The seminal event in the growth of AIPAC and the organized lobby was the battle over the administration's proposed sale of AWACS aircraft to Saudi Arabia in 1981, Reagan's first year in office. Paradoxically, although AIPAC lost this battle in a head-on struggle with Reagan and the administration, and the sale to the Saudis went forward, AIPAC and the lobby ultimately won the war for influence. Reagan was determined that the sale go through; he regarded the deal as an important part of an ill-conceived attempt to build an Arab-Israeli consensus in the Middle East to oppose the Soviet Union and, perhaps even more important, saw the battle in Congress as a test of his own prestige. By winning the battle, he demonstrated that any administration, at least up to that point, could exert enough pressure to push an issue opposed by Israel through Congress, but the struggle also demonstrated just how exhausting and politically costly such a battle can be, and no one around Reagan was willing to go to the mat in this way again. In a real sense, despite AIPAC's loss, the fight showed just how much the lobby limited policymaker freedom, even more than 20 years ago, in any transaction that concerned Israel.

The AWACS imbroglio galvanized AIPAC into action, at precisely the time the administration was subsiding in exhaustion, and under an aggressive and energetic leader, former congressional aide Thomas Dine, AIPAC quadrupled its budget, increased its grassroots support immensely, and vastly expanded its propaganda effort. This last and perhaps most significant accomplishment was achieved when Dine established an analytical unit inside AIPAC that published in-depth analyses and position papers for congressmen and policymakers. Dine believed that anyone who could provide policymakers with books and papers focusing on Israel's strategic value to the U.S. would effectively "own" the policymakers.

With the rising power and influence of the lobby, and following the U.S. debacle in Lebanon ­ which began with Israel's 1982 invasion and ended for the U.S. with the withdrawal of its Marine contingent in early 1984, after the Marines had become involved in fighting to protect Israel's invasion force and 241 U.S. military had been killed in a truck bombing ­ the Reagan administration effectively handed over the policy initiative in the Middle East to Israel and its American advocates.

Israel and its agents began, with amazing effrontery, to complain that the U.S. failure to clean up in Lebanon was interfering with Israel's own designs there ­ from which arrogance Reagan and company concluded, in an astounding twist of logic, that the only way to restore stability was through closer alliance with Israel. As a result, in the fall of 1983 Reagan sent a delegation to ask the Israelis for closer strategic ties, and shortly thereafter forged a formal strategic alliance with Israel with the signing of a "memorandum of understanding on strategic cooperation." In 1987, the U.S. designated Israel a "major non-NATO ally," thus giving it access to military technology not available otherwise. The notion of demanding concessions from Israel in return for this favored status ­ such as, for instance, some restraint in its settlement-construction in the West Bank ­ was specifically rejected. The U.S. simply very deliberately and abjectly retreated into policy inaction, leaving Israel with a free hand to proceed as it wished wherever it wished in the Middle East and particularly in the occupied Palestinian territories.

Even Israel, by all accounts, was surprised by this demonstration of the United States' inability to see beyond Israel's interests. Prime Minister Menachem Begin had attempted from early in the Carter administration to push the notion that Israel was a strategic Cold War asset to the U.S. but, because Israel did not in fact perform a significant strategic role for the U.S. and was in many ways more a liability than an asset, Carter never paid serious attention to the Israeli overtures. Begin feared that the United States' moral and emotional commitment to Israel might ultimately not be enough to sustain the relationship through possible hard times, and so he attempted to put Israel forward as a strategically indispensable ally and a good investment for U.S. security, a move that would essentially reverse the two nations' roles, altering the relationship from one of Israeli indebtedness to the U.S. to one in which the United States was in Israel's debt for its vital strategic role.

Carter was having none of this, but the notion of strategic cooperation germinated in Israel and among its U.S. supporters until the moment became ripe during the Reagan administration. By the end of the Lebanon mess, the notion that the U.S. needed Israel's friendship had so taken hold among the Reaganites that, as one former national security aide observed in a stunning upending of logic, they began to view closer strategic ties as a necessary means of "restor[ing] Israeli confidence in American reliability." Secretary of State George Shultz wrote in his memoirs years later of the U.S. need "to lift the albatross of Lebanon from Israel's neck." Recall, as Shultz must not have been able to do, that the debt here was rightly Israel's: Israel put the albatross around its own neck, and the U.S. stumbled into Lebanon after Israel, not the other way around.

AIPAC and the neo-conservatives who rose to prominence during the Reagan years played a major role in building the strategic alliance. AIPAC in particular became in every sense of the word a partner of the U.S. in forging Middle East policy from the mid-1980s on. Thomas Dine's vision of "owning" policymakers by providing them with position papers geared to Israel's interests went into full swing. In 1984, AIPAC spun off a think tank, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, that remains one of the pre-eminent think tanks in Washington and that has sent its analysts into policymaking jobs in several administrations. Dennis Ross, the senior Middle East policymaker in the administrations of George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, came from the Washington Institute and returned there after leaving government service. Martin Indyk, the Institute's first director, entered a senior policymaking position in the Clinton administration from there.

Today, John Hannah, who has served on Vice President Cheney's national security staff since 2001 and succeeded Lewis Libby last year as Cheney's leading national security adviser, comes from the Institute. AIPAC also continues to do its own analyses in addition to the Washington Institute's. A recent Washington Post profile of Steven Rosen, the former senior AIPAC foreign policy analyst who is about to stand trial with a colleague for receiving and passing on classified information to Israel, noted that two decades ago Rosen began a practice of lobbying the executive branch, rather than simply concentrating on Congress, as a way, in the words of the Post article, "to alter American foreign policy" by "influencing government from the inside." Over the years, he "had a hand in writing several policies favored by Israel."

In the Reagan years, AIPAC's position papers were particularly welcomed by an administration already more or less convinced of Israel's strategic value and obsessed with impeding Soviet advances. Policymakers began negotiating with AIPAC before presenting legislation in order to help assure passage, and Congress consulted the lobby on pending legislation. Congress eagerly embraced almost every legislative initiative proposed by the lobby and came to rely on AIPAC for information on all issues related to the Middle East. The close cooperation between the administration and AIPAC soon began to stifle discourse inside the bureaucracy. Middle East experts in the State Department and other agencies were almost completely cut out of decision-making, and officials throughout government became increasingly unwilling to propose policies or put forth analysis likely to arouse opposition from AIPAC or Congress. One unnamed official complained that "a lot of real analysis is not even getting off people's desks for fear of what the lobby will do"; he was speaking to a New York Times correspondent, but otherwise his complaints fell on deaf ears.

This kind of pervasive influence, a chill on discourse inside as well as outside policymaking councils, does not require the sort of clear-cut, concrete pro-Israeli decisions in the Oval Office that David Gergen naively thought he should have witnessed if the lobby had any real influence. This kind of influence, which uses friendly persuasion, along with just enough direct pressure, on a broad range of policymakers, legislators, media commentators, and grassroots activists to make an impression across the spectrum, cannot be defined in terms of narrow, concrete policy commands, but becomes an unchanging, unchallengeable mindset, a sentimental environment that restricts debate, restricts thinking, and determines actions and policies as surely as any command from on high. When Israel's advocates, its lobbyists, in the U.S. become an integral part of the policymaking apparatus, as they have particularly since the Reagan years ­ and as they clearly have been during the current Bush administration ­ there is no way to separate the lobby's interests from U.S. policies. Moreover, because Israel's strategic goals in the region are more clearly defined and more urgent than those of the United States, Israel's interests most often dominate.

Chomsky himself acknowledges that the lobby plays a significant part in shaping the political environment in which support for Israel becomes automatic and unquestioned. Even Chomsky believes that what he calls the intellectual political class is a critical, and perhaps the most influential, component of the lobby because these elites determine the shaping of news and information in the media and academia. On the other hand, he contends that, because the lobby already includes most of this intellectual political class, the thesis of lobby power "loses much of its content". But, on the contrary, this very fact would seem to prove the point, not undermine it. The fact of the lobby's pervasiveness, far from rendering it less powerful, magnifies its importance tremendously.

Indeed, this is the crux of the entire debate. It is the very power of the lobby to continue shaping the public mindset, to mold thinking and, perhaps most important, to instill fear of deviation that brings this intellectual political class together in an unswerving determination to work for Israel. Is there not a heavy impact on Middle East policymaking when, for instance, a lobby has the power to force the electoral defeat of long-serving congressmen, as occurred to Representative Paul Findley in 1982 and Senator Charles Percy in 1984 after both had deviated from political correctness by speaking out in favor of negotiating with the PLO? AIPAC openly crowed about the defeat of both men ­ both Republicans serving during the Republican Reagan administration, who had been in Congress for 22 and 18 years respectively. Similarly, does not the media's silence on Israel's oppressive measures in the occupied territories, as well as the concerted, and openly acknowledged, efforts of virtually every pro-Israeli organization in the U.S. to suppress information and quash debate on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, have an immense impact on policy? Today, even the most outspoken of leftist radio hosts and other commentators, such as Randi Rhodes, Mike Malloy, and now Cindy Sheehan, almost always avoid talking and writing about this issue.

Does not the massive effort by AIPAC, the Washington Institute, and myriad other similar organizations to spoon-feed policymakers and congressmen selective information and analysis written only from Israel's perspective have a huge impact on policy? In the end, even Chomsky and Finkelstein acknowledge the power of the lobby in suppressing discussion and debate about Middle East policy. The mobilization of public opinion, Finkelstein writes, "can have a real impact on policy-making ­ which is why the Lobby invests so much energy in suppressing discussion." It is difficult to read statement except as a ringing acknowledgement of the massive and very central power of the lobby to control discourse and to control policymaking on the most critical Middle East policy issue.

Interchangeable Interests

The principal problem with the left critics' analysis is that it is too rigid. There is no question that Israel has served the interests of the U.S. government and the military-industrial complex in many areas of the world by, for instance, aiding some of the rightist regimes of Central America, by skirting arms and trade embargoes against apartheid South Africa and China (until the neo-conservatives turned off the tap to China and, in a rare disagreement with Israel, forced it to halt), and during the Cold War by helping, at least indirectly, to hold down Arab radicalism. There is also no question that, no matter which party has been in power, the U.S. has over the decades advanced an essentially conservative global political and pro-business agenda in areas far afield of the Middle East, without reference to Israel or the lobby. The U.S. unseated Mossadegh in Iran and Arbenz in Guatemala and Allende in Chile, along with many others, for its own corporate and political purposes, as the left critics note, and did not use Israel.

But these facts do not minimize the power the lobby has exerted in countless instances over the course of decades, and particularly in recent years, to lead the U.S. into situations that Israel initiated, that the U.S. did not plan, and that have done harm, both singly and cumulatively, to U.S. interests. One need only ask whether particular policies would have been adopted in the absence of pressure from some influential persons and organizations working on Israel's behalf in order to see just how often Israel or its advocates in the U.S., rather than the United States or even U.S. corporations, have been the policy initiators. The answers give clear evidence that a lobby, as broadly defined by Mearsheimer and Walt, has played a critical and, as the decades have gone on, increasingly influential role in policymaking.

For instance, would Harry Truman have been as supportive of establishing Israel as a Jewish state if it had not been for heavy pressure from what was then a very loose grouping of strong Zionists with considerable influence in policymaking circles? It can reasonably be argued that he might not in fact have supported Jewish statehood at all, and it is even more likely that his own White House advisers ­ all strong Zionist proponents themselves ­ would not have twisted arms at the United Nations to secure the 1947 vote in favor of partitioning Palestine if these lobbyists had not been a part of Truman's policymaking circle. Truman himself did not initially support the notion of founding a state based on religion, and every national security agency of government, civilian and military , strongly opposed the partition of Palestine out of fear that this would lead to warfare in which the U.S. might have to intervene, would enhance the Soviet position in the Middle East, and would endanger U.S. oil interests in the area. But even in the face of this united opposition from within his own government, Truman found the pressures of the Zionists among his close advisers and among influential friends of the administration and of the Democratic Party too overwhelmingly strong to resist.

Questions like this arise for virtually every presidential administration. Would Jimmy Carter, for instance, have dropped his pursuit of a resolution of the Palestinian problem if the Israel lobby had not exerted intense pressure on him? Carter was the first president to recognize the Palestinian need for some kind of "homeland," as he termed it, and he made numerous efforts to bring Palestinians into a negotiating process and to stop Israeli settlement-building, but opposition from Israel and pressures from the lobby were so heavy that he was ultimately worn down and defeated.

It is also all but impossible to imagine the U.S. supporting Israel's actions in the occupied Palestinian territories without pressure from the lobby. No conceivable U.S. national interest served ­ even in the United States' own myopic view ­ by its support for Israel's harshly oppressive policy in the West Bank and Gaza, and furthermore this support is a dangerous liability. As Mearsheimer and Walt note, most foreign elites view the U.S. tolerance of Israeli repression as "morally obtuse and a handicap in the war on terrorism," and this tolerance is a major cause of terrorism against the U.S. and the West. The impetus for oppressing the Palestinians clearly comes and has always come from Israel, not the United States, and the impetus for supporting Israel and facilitating this oppression has come, very clearly and directly, from the lobby, which goes to great lengths to justify the occupation and to advocate on behalf of Israeli policies.

It is tempting, and not at all out of the realm of possibility, to imagine Bill Clinton having forged a final Palestinian-Israeli peace agreement were it not for the influence of his notably pro-Israeli advisers. By the time Clinton came to office, the lobby had become a part of the policymaking apparatus, in the persons of Israeli advocates Dennis Ross and Martin Indyk, both of whom entered government service from lobby organizations. Both also returned at the end of the Clinton administration to organizations that advocate for Israel: Ross to the Washington Institute and Indyk to the Brookings Institution's Saban Center for Middle East Policy, which is financed by and named for a notably pro-Israeli benefactor. The scope of the lobby's infiltration of government policymaking councils has been unprecedented during the current Bush administration. Some of the left critics dismiss the neo-cons as not having any allegiance to Israel; Finkelstein thinks it is naïve to credit them with any ideological conviction, and Zunes claims they are uninterested in benefiting Israel because they are not religious Jews (as if only religious Jews care about Israel). But it simply ignores reality to deny the neo-cons' very close ties, both ideological and pragmatic, to Israel's right wing.

Both Finkelstein and Zunes glaringly fail to mention the strategy paper that several neo-cons wrote in the mid-1990s for an Israeli prime minister, laying out a plan for attacking Iraq these same neo-cons later carried out upon entering the Bush administration. The strategy was designed both to assure Israel's regional dominance in the Middle East and to enhance U.S. global hegemony. One of these authors, David Wurmser, remains in government as Cheney's Middle East adviser ­ one of several lobbyists inside the henhouse. The openly trumpeted plan, crafted by the neo-cons, is to "transform" the Middle East by unseating Saddam Hussein, and the notion, also openly touted, that the path to peace in Palestine-Israel ran through Baghdad grew out of the neo-cons' overriding concern for Israel. Both Finkelstein and Zunes also fail to take note of the long record of advocacy on behalf of Israel that almost all the neo-cons (Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, David Wurmser, Elliott Abrams, John Bolton, and their cheerleaders on the sidelines such as William Kristol, Robert Kagan, Norman Podhoretz, Jeane Kirkpatrick, and numerous right-wing, pro-Israeli think tanks in Washington) have compiled over the years. The fact that these individuals and organizations are all also advocates of U.S. global hegemony does not diminish their allegiance to Israel or their desire to assure Israel's regional hegemony in alliance with the U.S.

The claimed interchangeability of U.S. and Israeli interests ­ and the fact that certain individuals for whom a primary objective is to advance Israel's interests now reside inside the councils of government ­ proves the truth of the Mearsheimer-Walt's principal conclusion that the lobby has been able to convince most Americans, contrary to reality, that there is an essential identity of U.S. and Israeli interests and that the lobby has succeeded for this reason in forging a relationship of unmatched intimacy. The "overall thrust of policy" in the Middle East, they observe quite accurately, is "almost entirely" attributable to the lobby's activities. The fact that the U.S. occasionally acts without reference to Israel in areas outside the Middle East, and that Israel does occasionally serve U.S. interests rather than the other way around, takes nothing away from the significance of this conclusion.

The tragedy of the present situation is that it has become impossible to separate Israeli from alleged U.S. interests ­ that is, not what should be real U.S. national interests, but the selfish and self-defined "national interests" of the political-corporate-military complex that dominates the Bush administration, Congress, and both major political parties. The specific groups that now dominate the U.S. government are the globalized arms, energy, and financial industries, and the entire military establishments, of the U.S. and of Israel ­ groups that have quite literally hijacked the government and stripped it of most vestiges of democracy.

This convergence of manipulated "interests" has a profound effect on U.S. policy choices in the Middle East. When a government is unable to distinguish its own real needs from those of another state, it can no longer be said that it always acts in its own interests or that it does not frequently do grave damage to those interests. Until the system of sovereign nation-states no longer exists ­ and that day may never come ­ no nation's choices should ever be defined according to the demands of another nation. Accepting a convergence of U.S. and Israeli interests means that the U.S. can never act entirely as its own agent, will never examine its policies and actions entirely from the vantage point of its own long-term self interest, and can, therefore, never know why it is devising and implementing a particular policy. The failure to recognize this reality is where the left critics' belittling of the lobby's power and their acceptance of U.S. Middle East policy as simply an unchangeable part of a longstanding strategy is particularly dangerous.

Kathleen Christison is a former CIA political analyst and has worked on Middle East issues for 30 years. She is the author of Perceptions of Palestine and The Wound of Dispossession.

Bill Christison was a senior official of the CIA. He served as a National Intelligence Officer and as Director of the CIA's Office of Regional and Political Analysis. He is a contributor to Imperial Crusades, CounterPunch's history of the wars on Iraq and Afghanistan.

They can be reached at kathy.bill@christison-santafe.com.

Academics dispute this. They say that Yale was drawn to Cole by top-rank scholarly achievement. He is president of the Middle East Studies Association, speaks Arabic and Persian, and has published several books on Egyptian and Shiite history. "We were impressed with Cole's scholarly work, and a wide set of letters showed that he is also highly regarded by other scholars in the field," says political science professor Frances Rosenbluth, a member of the Yale search committee that chose Cole. Zachary Lockman, an NYU Middle Eastern studies professor, says, "It's fair to say he is probably among the leading historians of the modern Middle East in this country." Joshua Landis, a professor at University of Oklahoma, describes Cole as "top notch."

"He was the wunderkind of Middle East Studies in the 1980s and 1990s," Landis says. "He can be strident on his blog, which is one reason it is the premier Middle East blog.... [But] Juan Cole has done something that no other Middle East academic has done since Bernard Lewis, who is 90 years old: He has become a household word. He has educated a nation. For the last thirty years every academic search for a professor of Middle East history at an Ivy League university has elicited the same complaint: 'There are no longer any Bernard Lewises. Where do you find someone really big with expertise on many subjects who is at home in both the ivory tower and inside the Beltway?' Today, Juan Cole is that academic."


Of course, Cole is on the left, while Lewis is a neoconservative. And it is hard to separate Cole's scholarly reputation from his Internet fame. Cole started his blog, Informed Comment, a few months after September 11. He quickly became the leading left blogger on terrorism and the Middle East, delivering every day, often by translating from Arabic newspapers. He could discuss the pros and cons of, say, an invasion of Iraq with complete authority. Here, for instance, are some of his writings in the lead-up to war: "The Persian Gulf is the site of two-thirds of the proven petroleum reserves in the world. Yet the countries along its littoral have no means of providing security to themselves.... The two exceptions here are Iran and Iraq.... Iraq did so badly in the Iran-Iraq war, however, that it left itself without credibility as security provider in the region. It also was left deeply in debt." A US invasion "will inevitably be seen in the Arab world as a neo-colonial war.... The final defeat of the Baath Party will be seen as a defeat of its ideals, which include secularism, improved rights for women and high modernism. Arabs in despair of these projects are likely to turn to radical Islam as an alternative outlet for their frustrations."

At times, his voice rose.

"The idea that terrorists willing to commit suicide will be afraid of the US after it invades Iraq is just a misreading of human nature," he wrote in 2003. "If the US really wanted to stop terrorism, it would invade the West Bank and Gaza and liberate the Palestinians to have their own state and self-respect."

Israel's treatment of Palestinians has always been important in Cole's reading of the Middle East. Naturally, Israel is central to neocons, too. Michael Rubin accused Cole of missing the good news from Iraq and of being anti-Semitic. That charge was soon taken up in the Wall Street Journal and in the New York Sun. "Why would Yale ever want to hire a professor best known for disparaging the participation of prominent American Jews in government?" wrote two Sun authors. One of them, according to Scott Johnson, was a student of Alan Dershowitz's at Harvard. The other is Johnson's daughter, Eliana, then a Yale senior. After that article, Johnson, a Minneapolis lawyer and Dartmouth grad, wrote up the case on his blog, which describes itself as a friend of Israel, and attacked Cole as a "moonbat."

Alex Joffe denies that a network went after Cole. "There wasn't any organized opposition. It was a question of people becoming aware of it somehow and each getting in his two cents." Asked about pot-stirrers, Johnson says, "I think if you look anywhere but Yale, you'd be making a mistake."

Well, if this isn't a network, neither are the professionals who exchange cards at New York parties. Joel Mowbray, a Washington Times columnist who has assailed the consideration of Cole, sent a letter to a dozen Yale donors, many of them Jewish, warning of Cole's possible appointment. According to the Jewish Week, "Several faculty members said they had heard that at least four major Jewish donors...have contacted officials at the university urging that Cole's appointment be denied." Still, Johnson's point is well taken. It must have been Yale insiders who got the news out to Cole's enemies, as Cole's appointment passed one after another of several institutional hurdles. The vote in the history department was said to be 13 to 7 with three abstentions (which count as no). This signaled unusual opposition to an appointment recommended by an interdisciplinary search committee. Yale's history department includes prominent supporters of the Bush international agenda like John Gaddis and Donald Kagan.

After Cole's defeat, Rubin suggested that Yale now had an opportunity to hire a real talent, someone at the level of, say, Aaron Friedberg, a professor of politics and international affairs at Princeton. Who is Friedberg? A former national security aide to Vice President Cheney through the first two years of the war that the-network-that-is-not-a-network wanted to get us into. Having a role in the greatest foreign-policy disaster of our generation is evidently a worthy credential in academia. Douglas Feith, after all, is about to join the Georgetown faculty.

As Scott Johnson notes, the left didn't care about Cole's appointment as much as the right. (Maybe because the left values his blog, which an Ivy League job might have cut in on.) In retrospect, though, it is appalling to consider what was done to Cole's reputation over this blue-chip appointment.

Cole chose not to discuss the process publicly while it was happening. "I think that a hiring process in academia is a professional matter," he told me. But he also said that Yale sought him out, and that the vilification process was orchestrated. "There were clearly phone calls amongst the persons doing it." The Yale Herald quoted two Michigan students one of whom had visited him at his office in Ann Arbor and questioned his openness to Jews. "I am frankly suspicious," Cole says. "How did [the Herald] track down these students?"

Lockman, Cole's fellow Middle Eastern scholar at NYU (speaking for himself only), finds the process fearful. "Since September 11 there has been a concerted effort by a small but well-funded group of people outside academia to monitor very carefully what all of us are saying, ready to jump on any sign of deviation from what they see as acceptable opinion. It's an attack on academic freedom, and it's not very healthy for our society."

Cole declined to talk about his feelings on losing the job. Still, the pain came through in his comments. Modern Middle Eastern studies has always been politicized, he says. He jumped into the blogosphere for a simple reason, to counter the common assertion that the Israeli occupation had nothing at all to do with the 9/11 attacks. "I'm from a military family. I had two cousins working in the Pentagon that was attacked. So this was personal to me. My country had been attacked. The mistreatment of the Palestinians and the high-handed policies of the Israeli right were deeply implicated in the attacks. I was angry.

"I knew when I began to speak out that I wasn't going to be hired. I knew my academic career was over. I knew that I can be in this place, be a professor of Middle Eastern studies at the University of Michigan for the rest of my life. But I would never be a dean. I would never be a provost. I would never be in the Ivy League. I'm not surprised. I'm not upset. Actually, the bizarre thing is that Juan Cole was considered by Yale in the first place."

"Mindful of the needs of the Palestinian people, the Quartet endorsed a European Union proposal for a temporary international mechanism, limited in scope and duration, which operates with full transparency and accountability," the statement said.

"The mechanism facilitates needs-based assistance directly to the Palestinian people, including essential equipment, supplies, and support for health services, support for the uninterrupted supply of fuel and utilities, and basic needs allowances to poor Palestinians," it said.

The statement said it hoped other donors, international organizations and Israel would consider channeling aid through the mechanism.

It urged the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority government to renounce violence, recognize Israel's right to exist and accept international obligations including the quartet's "roadmap" blueprint for Middle East peace.

Nearly all international aid to the Palestinian territories has been suspended since the Hamas government took power in March. The Islamist movement is deemed a terrorist organisation by both the EU and the United States.

The EU -- historically by far the biggest aid donor to the Palestinians -- sought to design a mechanism that would funnel much-needed funds to Palestinians without the money going to the Hamas-led government.

The Palestinian Authority has struggled to pay the salaries of its 160,000 civil servants, threatening the livelihoods of one million Palestinians -- a quarter of the population in Gaza and the West Bank.

The moderate Palestinian leadership hailed the EU aid package, but Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas on Saturday called the funding mechanism proposal "not adequate" because it channels funds away from the Palestinian government.

"The mechanism is, I believe, not adequate because the funds must go through the government," Abbas told reporters after meeting with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in Cairo.

"Though we consider this a step forward, it is not enough at all because it cancels the role of the government and cancels the role of the Palestinian Authority," he said.

Hamas gave a cautious welcome to the package but expressed reservations about how the money would be distributed.

"It's hard to judge matters until things become clear," said spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri. "We welcome any support for our people as long as it does not come with conditions and as long as it goes to through the proper government channels."

The aid package agreed by European leaders in Brussels Friday is divided into three parts.

One part extends a programme operated through the
World Bank which provides essential supplies to the health sector, including money for those who work in hospitals and clinics.

The second reinforces an emergency relief scheme launched by the EU's executive European Commission earlier this year, and which ensures the supply of essential utilities like fuel.

The third -- which is more contentious and likely to take effect later -- would see funds paid directly into the bank accounts of as-yet unidentified people based on their needs.

The Holy Land is a treasure trove for antiquities collectors -- and plunderers.

"There are 30,000 antiquities sites. Every hilltop has antiquities, and, of course, you can't put guards on each hilltop," said Amir Ganor, head of the robbery prevention unit at the Israel Antiquities Authority.

Various books and news reports have related how Dayan, aided by children, robbers, soldiers and military equipment, poached excavations.

Dayan's extensive collection included pottery, stone heads, ossuaries, Byzantine gravestones and Roman sarcophagi, antiquities experts said.

After Dayan's death, his wife, Rachel, sold his collection to the Israel Museum for $1 million, Dahari said.