Mearsheimer and Walt Discuss The Israel Lobby at Princeton Book Forum

By Jane Adas


	Professors Stephen Walt (l) and John Mearsheimer, authors of The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy (Staff photo J. Adas).

FOR ITS INAUGURAL event, Princeton University’s Book Forum chose The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy for debate and discussion. Authors John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Stephen Walt of Harvard University spoke to an overflow crowd at the Woodrow Wilson School on Dec. 10 of last year.

Lobbies are not controversial, Walt began by saying: if the subject is energy, people talk about the oil lobby; if it’s gun control, the National Rifle Association is cited. Talking about the pro-Israel lobby, however, is like “grabbing the third rail with both hands,” Walt noted. Describing the media as pro-Israel or mentioning pro-Israel PAC campaign money is considered equivalent to the old canard that rich Jews control everything.

Charges of anti-Semitism such as those leveled at Mearsheimer and him, Walt continued, distract from the real issue and deter honest discussion. Because of the efforts of lobby watchdogs like the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), he asserted, there is a narrower range of views in U.S. media than in Europe or even Israel. “There is no equivalent here of Amira Hass, Gideon Levy, or Robert Fisk,” he pointed out.

The Israel lobby is not synonymous with Jewish ethnicity or religion, Walt emphasized, pointing out that while the lobby includes Christian Zionists, about 25 percent of American Jews don’t care much for Israel. He defined it instead as a decentralized coalition of groups ranging from hawkish neoconservatives to the dovish Americans for Peace Now. While these groups have obvious internal disagreements, he noted, they unite behind the political agenda of preserving the special relationship between the U.S. and Israel and maintaining Israel’s regional hegemony. According to Walt, this explains why the U.S. gives Israel $500 a year per citizen—even though Israel’s per capita income is 29th in the world—why Israeli settlement expansion continues in the face of U.S. opposition, and why no American political candidate ever criticizes Israel. (See this issue’s “Other Voices” supplement for the Mearsheimer and Walt op-ed, “Israel’s False Friends.”)

Mearsheimer argued that the Israel lobby has pushed U.S. Middle East policy in directions in neither the U.S. nor Israel’s interest. Of their book’s five case studies—Israel’s brutality toward Palestinians, the Iraq war, Syria, Iran, and the 2006 Lebanon war—he chose to discuss the most controversial: the Israel lobby’s push for the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq. Israel was the only country other than Kuwait where both the government and the people were pro-war, Mearsheimer pointed out, citing a February 2003 poll showing that 77.5 percent of Israelis wanted the U.S. to attack Iraq. He also quoted many prominent Americans—including Philip Zelikow, then a member of the president’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, Gen. Wesley Clark, Sen. Ernest Hollings and columnist Joe Klein—who said openly before the war that concern for Israel’s security was a principle motivation for attacking Iraq. Prominent Israelis preferred that the U.S. attack Iran, Mearsheimer conceded, but came on board once they realized that Iran and perhaps Syria were to follow the “cakewalk” in Iraq.

Now that it is clear that the “Iraq war was one of the greatest blunders in US history,” the Harvard professor noted, the major pro-Israel organizations insist they were never for the war. While acknowledging that U.S. Jews were less pro-war than the general public, Mearsheimer claimed there is hard evidence that the organized Jewish community lobbied for the war. The Israel lobby, and especially the neoconservatives, were necessary players, he argued, but they could not have made the war happen alone. That required Bush, Cheney and 9/11.

Mearsheimer concluded by urging Washington to end the special relationship and treat Israel as a normal country. When Israel acts in ways that harm U.S. interests, he recommended that America distance itself, use its leverage, and tell Israel that the U.S. will expose, not cover up, Israel’s colonial practices. However, he advised, the U.S. should assure Israel that it will come to its aid if the Jewish state is genuinely threatened.

New York Times Coverage of the Israel-Palestine Conflict Debated


Howard Friel (l) and Ethan Bronner (Staff photo J. Adas).

Alwan for the Arts sponsored a Dec. 11 debate in New York on “The New York Times’ Coverage of the Middle East.” Howard Friel, co-author with Richard Falk of Israel-Palestine on Record: How The New York Times Misreports Conflict in the Middle East (available from the AET Book Club), argued that the Times is not impartial in writing about the Israel-Palestine conflict. Defending his newspaper was deputy foreign editor Ethan Bronner, and soon to be the Times’ Jerusalem bureau chief. The debate was moderated by Lisa Anderson, former dean of Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. In her opening remarks Anderson acknowledged that, because it is natural to privilege one’s family, community and nation, impartiality—whether in journalism or education—is difficult to achieve. However, she added, for people who view “partiality” as virtuous, life is a war and news an extension of politics.

Friel cited several examples of what he described as evidence of the Times’ partiality towards Israel. In its internally-generated news articles and editorials, he noted, the Times mentions Israel’s right to exist 13 times more often than the Palestinian right to self-determination. In its letters to the editor, however, the ratio drops to 3.7 to 1, and in op-ed pieces to 1 to 1. This, Friel explained, indicates that the Times’ coverage is more biased toward Israel than are its readers.

Moreover, he continued, Article 49(6) of the Fourth Geneva Convention states: “The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.” Human rights organizations, the United Nations, and the International Court of Justice are in complete agreement in interpreting this to mean that all Israeli settlements—not just outposts—in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights are illegal. Friel found that in 2,350 mentions of Israeli settlements in Times news articles and editorials, only one, in July 2004, referred to the Fourth Geneva Convention. Only Israel, the American Jewish community and The New York Times, Friel lamented, think the Fourth Geneva Convention does not apply to the occupied territories.

Friel found that the Times reports on almost every incident of Palestinian violence against Israelis, but underreports Israeli violence against Palestinians. From the beginning of the second Palestinian intifada on Sept. 29, 2000 through Nov. 30 2006, Israelis killed 4,032 Palestinians, 808 of them children, and Palestinians killed 1,017 Israelis, 119 of them children. During that same period, he noted, the Times published some 50 front-page articles and another 25 front-section articles on Palestinian terrorism. Corresponding coverage of Israeli violence against Palestinians would have produced some 200 front-page and 100 front-section articles. That, of course, did not happen. In fact, Friel asserted, most Israeli violence goes unreported in the Times.

Bronner responded that while the Times’ coverage is not flawless, he remained unconvinced by Friel’s presentation. Of the many references to Israeli settlements on the editorial page, Bronner said, not one would make you think settlements are a good thing. Moreover, he added, it would be boring for readers to go on reading about the Geneva Conventions and international law.

According to Bronner, the criterion of journalism is storytelling: “We tell it from the ground what life is like for Palestinians,” he maintained, producing recent articles dealing with Palestinian suffering and the “strangulation of Gaza.” Moreover, he said, the Times has recently hired Arab reporters.

While all of the questions from the audience were critical of the Times’ coverage, Bronner said that when he speaks to Zionist groups, the questions are even more hostile.

Jane Adas is a free-lance writer based in the New York City metropolitan area.