In the first part of this article which appeared yesterday we said the main charge against the United States in the Middle East is that it is pro-Israel, because it lets itself be "manipulated by the Jews". So, if Washington switched sides, there would be no more basis for hostility. Thus the notion of Israel as "strategic ally" makes no sense.
This leads us to the "Israel lobby" answer, which is closer to the truth, but not the whole truth. To get a complete picture, one has to understand why the lobby works as effectively as it does, and that depends on factors lying outside the actions of the lobby itself. After all, the militant Zionists constituting the lobby are a minority among Jews, who themselves form a small minority of the American population. The Israel lobby does not work like other lobbies, for example, the arms and the oil industry lobbies (which is one of the reasons why it is easy to dismiss it as irrelevant, as long as one does not understand how it really exerts its influence).
Of course, like the latter, the Israel lobby does fund electoral campaigns and its power derives in part from its ability to target people in Congress who deviate from its "line". But if that was all, it could easily be defeated - indeed, there are other sources of electoral funding, the big industrial lobbies for example, and if the pro-Israel candidates could be shown to be paid to serve the interests of another state, their opponents could denounce the people who receive money from the lobby as some sort of agents of a foreign power. Just imagine a pro-French, pro-Chinese or pro-Japanese lobby that would try to significantly influence the US Congress. Certainly, money alone cannot suffice.
What protects the Israel lobby is the fact that anyone who would denounce an opponent funded by the lobby as a quasi-agent of a foreign power would immediately be accused of anti-Semitism. In fact, imagine that Big Business is unhappy with the current US policies (as it well may be) and wants to change them - how could they do it? Any criticism of lobby influence on US policy would immediately trigger the anti-Zionism-is-anti-Semitism accusation.
So the strength of the Israel lobby resides in part in this second line of defense, which itself is linked to its influence on the media. But even that could easily be defeated - not all the media is under the lobby's influence, and, more importantly, the media is not all powerful: In Venezuela, it is anti-Chavez, but Chavez regularly wins elections. In France, the media was overwhelmingly in favor of the "yes" vote to the referendum on the European Constitution, yet the "no" won. The problem, and that is why the Israel lobby is so effective, is that it expresses a world view that is accepted too easily by too many Americans. After all, nothing could be more ridiculous than accusing someone of anti-Semitism because he wants or claims to put America's interests above those of Israel. Yet, the accusation is likely to be effective, but only because years of ideological brainwashing have predisposed people to consider US and Israeli interests as identical - although instead of "interests" one speaks of "values".
Associated with this identification comes a systematically hostile view of the Arab and Muslim world, which both increases the lobby's effectiveness and is in part the result of its propaganda. Despite all the talk about anti-racism and "political correctness", there is an almost total lack of understanding of the Arab viewpoint on Palestine, and, in particular, of the racist nature of the problem. It is this triple layer of control (selective funding, the anti-Semitism card, or rather canard, and the interiorization) that gives the lobby its peculiar strength. (And that is also why it is easy to dismiss its strength by saying, for instance, that, obviously, Jews don't control America. Sure, but direct control is not the way it works.)
People who think that it is the arms or the oil industry that are running the show in Washington as far as foreign policy is concerned, should at least answer the following question: How does it work? There is no evidence whatsoever that the oil industry, for example, pushed for the Iraq war, the threats against Iran or the attack on Lebanon. (There is a lot of evidence that the Israel lobby pushed for the Iraq war; see Jeff Blankfort, A War for Israel. They are supposed to act secretly, of course, but where is the evidence that they do? And if there is no evidence, even no indirect evidence, how does one know? Profits from the war, at least for major corporations, haven't materialized yet, and there are many indications that the US economy will suffer a lot from war-related expenses and the associated deficits. On the other hand, it is enough to open any mainstream US newspaper or TV and read or hear opinions expressed by Zionists calling for more war. War needs war propaganda and a supporting ideology, and the Zionists provide it, while none of this is offered by Big Business in general or the oil industry in particular.
One may also think of historical precedents, like the China lobby (made of post-1949 Chinese exiles and ex-missionaries, supported by their domestic churches) in the 1950s and 1960s. That lobby led the United States to maintain the ridiculous claim that a billion people were represented by a government (Taiwan) that had no control over them whatsoever. It was also very influential in bringing on the Vietnam War. Whose interests were they serving? The ones of the American capitalists? But the latter make huge profits in post-Nixon recognized China. And the same is true in Vietnam.
In fact both countries, as well as most of Asia, were anti-colonialist and anti-imperialist, as well as anti-feudal (partly because the feudal structures did not allow them to resist foreign invasions). But they were anti-capitalist (in the rhetoric, since capitalism barely existed there) mostly because their aggressors - the West - were capitalist. So that the main lesson to be drawn from the tragic history of the China lobby is that it held, during decades, the US policies hostage to revanchist feudal and clerical forces that were alien to mainstream America, and actually harmful to capitalist America. But they worked to the extent that their ideology - mixing fear with racist contempt for the "Asian mind" - was in sync with Western prejudices. Replace the China lobby by the Israel one and the Asian mind by the Arab one and you get a fair picture of what is going on right now in the US-Middle East relation.
What should the left do? Well, simple: Treat Israel as it did South Africa and attack the lobby. The reason Israel acts as it does is that it feels strong and that, in turn, is for two reasons: One is its "all-powerful army" (currently being tested in Lebanon, not conclusively yet); the other is the almost complete control over Washington policy-making, specially the Congress. Peace in the Middle East can only come when this feeling of Israeli superiority is shattered, and Americans have a great responsibility is doing half of the job, the one concerning kneejerk US support.
Now, there are, in principle, two ways to do that: One is to appeal to American generosity, the other is to appeal to their self-interest. Both ways should be pursued, but the latter is not enough emphasized by the left . (See Michael Neumann, What is to be said?, for a discussion of the ethical aspects of that choice.) That's probably because self-interest does not appear to be "noble" and because the pursuit of the "US national interest" has all too often been interpreted as overthrowing progressive governments, buying elections etc. But, if the alternative to self-interest is a form of religious fanaticism, then self-interest is far preferable: If the Germans had followed self-interested policies in the 1930s, even imperialist policies, but rational ones, World War II could have been avoided. Also, if the United States were to distance itself from Israel, it would pursue policies opposed to the traditional ones, and far more humane. The other problem is that a large part of the right (from Buchanan to Brzezinski) correctly sees American interests as being opposed of those of Israel, and the left (understandably) does not like to make common cause with such people. But if a cause is just (and, in this case, urgent) it does not become less just because unsavory people endorse it (the same argument applies to genuine anti-Semitic hostility to Israel). The worst thing that the left can do is to leave the monopoly of a just cause to the right.
The left cannot expect the American people to change radically overnight, abandon religious fundamentalism, give up oil addiction or embrace socialism. But a change of perspective in the Middle East is possible: the strength of the lobby is also its weakness, namely the naked king effect - everybody fears it, but the only reason to fear it is that everybody around us fears it. Left alone, it is powerless. To change that, one should systematically defend every politician, every columnist, every teacher, who is targeted by the lobby for his or her views or statements, irrespective of their general political outlook (to take an analogy, act as civil libertarians do with respect to free speech).
When people in the anti-war movement divert attention from Israel by blaming Big Oil or Big Business for the wars (specially the one in Lebanon, or the threats against Iran) one should demand that they provide some evidence for their claims. Challenge all the apologists or excuse makers for Israel or its lobby within progressive circles. When politicians and journalists claim that Israel and the United States have common interests, ask what services exactly has Israel rendered to the United States recently. Of course one can always point to some (minor) services; but, then, ask them what a cold-blooded cost-benefit analysis would reveal and why such an analysis is impossible to undertake publicly. If they speak of common values (the fallback position), provide a list of discriminatory Israeli laws for non-Jews.
Rolling back the lobby would necessitate a change of the American mentality with respect to the people of the Middle East, and to Islam, like ending the Vietnam war required a change in the way Asians were looked at. But that alone would have a greatly humanizing effect on American culture.
It is true that a change in the US policy with respect to the Israel-Palestine conflict would change nothing about traditional imperialism - the United States would still support traditional elites everywhere, and press countries to provide a "favorable investment climate". But the conflict in the Middle East, involving Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, has all the aspects of a religious war - with Islam on one side and Zionism as a secular Western religion on the other. And wars of religion tend to be the most brutal and uncontrollable of all wars. What is at stake in the de-Zionization of the American mind is not only the fate of the unfortunate inhabitants of Palestine but also unspeakable miseries for the people of that region and maybe of the rest of the world. The ultimate irony in all this is that the fate of much of the world depends on the American people exercising their right to self-determination, which, of course, they should. (Concluded)
- Jean Bricmont teaches physics in Belgium. He is a member of the Brussels Tribunal. This article first appeared in CounterPunch. Bricmont can be reached at: [email protected]
