The Marginalization of U.S. Mideast Experts

By Donald Neff

It was in October two years ago that Robert D. Kaplan's book The Arabists was published, yet another of a series of assaults launched by Zionists over the past century against the professionals on the Middle East in the State Department.¹ The big difference this time was that there were barely any "Arabists" left in government service. As Prof. Augustus Richard Norton, an expert on the State Department and the region, noted with gentle irony in his review of Kaplan's book, these days "to be labeled an Arabist is hardly career-enhancing." ²

According to Kaplan, one definition of an Arabist is "someone who loves Arabs, often because he hated Jews."³ Although Kaplan then distances himself from this racist slur because the "truth about them is far more subtle" and finds much to admire in the Arabists, he nonetheless leaves no doubt that Arabists in general suffered a common flaw in his view: They did not support Israel with the kind of unquestioning zeal he does.

A definition similar to Kaplan's was offered two decades ago in another highly publicized assault on Arabists, this one by the late columnist Joseph Kraft in The New York Times Magazine titled: "Those Arabists in the State Department."⁴ Kraft's central contention was that the Arabists harbored a "basic bias" against Israel.

The unspoken but clear message from both authors was that Arabists are an elitist class who are basically anti-Semites. The willingness of some Zionists to besmirch reputations with this malicious charge has taken its predictable toll, especially in the State Department. Ambassador Richard B. Parker, an Arabist who worked in the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs during Nixon's presidency, later admitted: "If ever there was a body that was frozen out of the serious policy decisions it was the Arabists, who were regarded with suspicion by their American colleagues as well as by American Jews and other supporters of Israel, whose predominant influence in Congress and the White House on the Palestine issue has been well documented. Not only were the Arabists a fringe group within a Department of State that was itself largely powerless on this issue, but they were afraid to speak out for fear of being accused of anti-Semitism."⁵

Today, in their stead, has come what could fairly be called the New Israelites, or perhaps more fashionably, the neo-Israelites, after their political front, neo-Conservatism. They have had no compunction in speaking out in support of Israel. By definition, inclination and commitment they are intellectually and emotionally dedicated to Israel. They flourish today as never before in the environs of Bill Clinton's White House and Foggy Bottom, completely dominating the administration's Middle East policy.

Such Zionist dominance is an astonishing turn-about. Even in the Truman administration, which nurtured Israel to existence, supporters of the Jewish state were so few that they kept a low profile lest they be labeled Zionists, by general understanding to mean they were partisans committed to one side of the conflict.

Every major U.S. foreign affairs or defense institution opposed Truman's pro-Israel policies.

In the 1940s, Arabists dominated—at least officially. They were highly professional diplomats who, for the most part, had worked in Arab lands, spoke the language and, when they returned to Washington, brought with them experience and insight into an exotic civilization unknown to most Americans but inhabited in the wider Islamic world by more than 900 million Muslims, by today's count. Thus the term Arabist was once a proud title denoting diplomatic and intellectual achievement. Today few young foreign service officers with ambition aspire to become Arabists. In 1990, the Foreign Service field school in Tunis graduated only a half-dozen Arabic speakers.⁶

It is not, of course, that the predominance of the neo-Israelites is new in guiding U.S. policy. Their policies largely have prevailed over the past half-century against the advice of the Arabists. The difference is that they accomplished this, as in the Truman administration, by exerting extraordinary political influence directly through the White House and Congress, thereby circumventing recommendations from the professional Arabists.

It is sobering to recall that every major U.S foreign affairs or defense institution—the State Department, the Defense Department, and the Central Intelligence Agency—and all of the top foreign affairs advisers, including such a towering figure as Secretary of State George C. Marshall—opposed Truman's pro-Israel policies. Their opposition was not against the idea of Israel per se but rather what they recognized as the realities in the region. As they predicted, and history since has proven, these realities led to massive bloodshed, decades of turmoil and a skewing of U.S. interests after Truman's pro-Israel policies prevailed.

Meticulous Professionalism

Whatever the complaints about the Arabists, lack of professionalism or failure to see clearly where U.S. national interests lie are not charges that can be made credibly. The Arabists were a highly trained and sophisticated elite, dedicated and loyal, who prided themselves on their language skills and meticulous professionalism. Any balanced review of their various reports and studies over the past half-century shows how stunningly prescient they often were. One has only to read Assistant Secretary of State Loy W. Henderson's perspicacious warnings in the turbulent 1947-48 period about the expectable troubles that would attend Israel's birth to realize how enormously talented and foresighted the Arabists were.⁷

These days, however, the neo-Israelites not only occupy the political high ground but the tentacles of the bureaucracy stretching deep into these same institutions as well. Throw a stone down any hallway of the White House or State Department and it would not hit an Arabist or, for that matter, anyone admitting the least bit of skepticism concerning the wisdom of the current close embrace of Israel.⁸ The highest level any of the few remaining Arabists has reached in the Clinton administration is assistant secretary.

The neo-Israelites who have replaced the Arabists include the very top levels of the administration, meaning President Clinton himself and his vice president, Al Gore. Although neither Clinton nor Gore ever has been accused of having a serious understanding of any aspect of the contemporary Middle East, both are nonetheless blindly committed to Israeli viewpoints over those of the Arabs. Clinton repeatedly has shown himself sensitive to a fault to only the Israeli version of the conflict. He seldom seems to miss a chance to retell an anecdote about an old preacher who, on his death bed, warned the future president, as Clinton describes it, that "if I ever let Israel down, God would never forgive me." He concludes this tale with the vow that "I'll never let Israel down."⁹

Gore has described Israel as America's "strongest ally and best friend, not only in the Middle East, but anywhere else in the world."¹⁰ He takes pride in the fact that on matters of the Middle East he is the protégé of Martin Peretz, the man who, after his wife bought the once respectable New Republic, became its editor and turned the magazine into an embarrassing apologist for Israel.¹¹

The man the administration has chosen to be its chief Middle East negotiator is Dennis B. Ross. He has mainly kept a low profile as a behind-the-scenes player and so has less a public image as a neo-Israelite than two other early members of Clinton's Middle East team, former Ambassador to Israel Samuel W. Lewis, who headed the State Department's Policy Planning division during 1993, and Martin Indyk, a former paid lobbyist for Israel who was the National Security Council's Middle East expert for two years before becoming the first Jewish U.S. ambassador to Israel. Ross' sympathies are no secret, however, and his credentials include what the Washington Post has called his "strong pro-Israel convictions."¹² Or as author Robert Kaplan reported, Ross "traveled in pro-Israel, neo-Conservative circles."¹³ In fact, Ross has been active for years in promoting pro-Israel positions in various studies and forums, in which he has had no kind words for what he called back in 1985 "traditional Arabists and their media supporters," a pathetically quaint sounding phrase these days. ¹⁴

Secretary of State Warren Christopher, whatever his private thoughts, has bought totally into the Zionist agenda. He is, of course, an ambitious man boxed in between a chief executive and politically appointed bureaucrats who share the same biases favoring Israel. He could not retain his post without following their lead—nor has he displayed any public reluctance to do so.

Given the influence of the neo-Israelites, it is no surprise that the Clinton administration has become the most pro-Israel ever. It has demonstrated this by taking a number of actions that have abandoned U.S. ideals and reversed diplomatic positions that had formed America's basic policies since the 1967 war.

Under President Clinton, for the first time, the United States is (1) publicly allowing U.S. funds to be used to finance growth of Jewish settlements in Arab East Jerusalem and the other occupied territories; (2) calling settlements neither illegal nor obstacles to peace but merely a "complicating factor"; (3) endorsing Israel's right to deport Palestinians; and (4) no longer referring to the Arab territories captured by Israel in 1967 as "occupied" but rather as in "dispute." Last May 17, it went so far as to cast the first U.S. veto in five years in the U.N. Security Council against a resolution endorsed by all 14 other members urging Israel to halt its confiscation of Palestinian land in Jerusalem, an action the U.S. had declared many times before to be a violation of the Geneva Accords.

These are fundamental changes reaching to the very core of U.S. policy, turning it into an ever more dangerously narrow pro-Israel stance. Zionists finally have achieved this objective in large measure because of the essential disappearance of the once-proud breed of American diplomats known as Arabists.

RECOMMENDED READING:

*Ball, George W. and Douglas B. Ball, The Passionate Attachment: America's Involvement with Israel, 1947 to the Present, New York, W.W. Norton & Company, 1992.

Robert D. Kaplan, The Arabists: The Romance of an American Elite, New York, Free Press, 1993.

Richard B. Parker, "The Arabists," Journal of Palestine Studies, Washington, DC, Institute for Palestine Studies, Autumn 1994.

Rubenberg, Cheryl A, Israel and the American National Interest: A Critical Examination, Chicago, University of Illinois Press, 1986.

U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States 1947 (vol. V), The Near East and Africa, Washington, DC, U.S. Printing Office, 1971.

———————, Foreign Relations of the United States 1948 (vol. VI), The Near East, South Asia, and Africa, Washington, DC, U.S. Printing Office, 1975.

NOTES:

¹Kaplan, The Arabists.

²Washington Post, 10/24/93.

³ Kaplan, p. 98.

⁴Joseph Kraft, "Those Arabists in the State Department," New York Times Magazine, 11/7/71.

⁵Richard B. Parker, "The Arabists," Journal of Palestine Studies , Autumn 1994, p. 72.

⁶Kaplan, p. 308.

⁷See his numerous memoranda reprinted in the official Foreign Relations of the United States series. Even author Kaplan is awed by Henderson's talents and gives him grudging high marks: "Henderson's judgments—the Middle East aside—were incredibly prescient. And even in regard to the Middle East, Henderson's opinions, though in some cases incorrect, are not impossible to defend"; see Kaplan, p. 89.

⁸For a detailed discussion of the entanglements of the U.S.-Israeli relationship, see Ball and Ball, The Passionate Attachment.

⁹From his speech to the Jewish Leadership Council in Washington, DC, 6/30/93.

¹⁰Near East Report, 7/20/92.

¹¹Lloyd Grove, Washington Post, 1/20/93.

¹²David Hoffman, Washington Post, 10/28/91.

¹³Kaplan, p. 287.

¹⁴See, for instance, his study "Acting with Caution: Middle East Policy Planning for the Second Reagan Administration," Washington Institute for Near East Policy , Washington, DC, 1985.

* Available from the AET Book Club.

Donald Neff is author of the recently published Fallen Pillars: U.S. Policy Toward Palestine and Israel Since 1945. Volumes of his Warriors trilogy on U.S.-Mideast relations are available through the AET Book Club.