America "No Longer Under Our Rule": Israelis Discuss Collapse of US Lobby

By Dr. Israel Shahak

For many years, Israeli politics have revolved around the US financial support for Israel which, in the opinion of both the Israeli government and serious Israeli political commentators, depends largely on the influence of the Jewish lobby upon American politics. The unforeseen crisis over the issue of $10 billion in US guarantees for Israeli borrowing, therefore, has aroused Israeli passions, and has focused media attention on the actual purposes which the Jewish lobby has served.

"The real issue is Jewish political power in the US."

US aid has implications much wider than the US media have so far noticed. Its impact is not limited to the direct flow of American money to Israel. It affects Israel's financial situation in its entirety. Chief economic correspondent Nehemya Stressler of Ha'aretz shows it by discussing the relations between Israel and "the international bankers," as he calls them.

"In their dealings with Israel, international bankers normally do not ask any questions about macro-data, and do not consult any diagrams or scenarios," he wrote on Oct. 11. "The questions they do ask are of a different sort: Will the US continue to support Israel? Or, more specifically, will it continue to disburse to Israel, year after year, economic and military grants? . . . And is the US willing to guarantee Israeli loans?"

Such treatment of Israel is unique, but it has continued for many years, Stressler writes: "An example from the rather recent past can show that the international bankers ask only such questions about Israel. Had they undertaken a dispassionate analysis of the Israeli economy at the beginning of the 1980s, they would not only have refused to lend us a single dollar any more, but they also would have demanded the immediate repayment of past Israeli debts. Israel then had a hyper-inflation rate approaching 500 percent per year, and zero GNP growth. . . Not a single rationally thinking banker would have lent us one dollar under such circumstances. Yet, precisely in those years, Israel succeeded in borrowing commercially enormous sums of money. That success was possible solely due to US political support."

Stressler's reference to the "beginning of the l980s" refers to the time of the 1982 invasion of Lebanon. The enormous cost of this invasion was not covered by any increase in Israeli taxes, nor even by US aid, which increased only slightly at that time. The cost was met mostly by commercial loans, which the "international bankers" extended because Israel was then supported by the US. The invasion of Lebanon, with all of its enormous cost in human suffering, would not have occurred, had Israel been unable to obtain the loans used to finance it. This fact has ominous significance today and for the future.

Israel's reliance on the power of the Jewish lobby in the United States is not limited to the domain of finances. As noted by one of Israel's leading political correspondents, Yoel Markus, in an article headlined "They Destroyed Our Myth, " in Ha'aretz, Oct. 11, the myth had its value to Israel both in its American and its international context.

"The most significant and the most worrisome indication of the crisis was the determination with which President Bush risked challenging the myth of Jewish power. This myth was Israel's most treasured asset in America, and Bush brusquely attempted to rob us of this asset. . . This myth of Jewish power, as if taken live from the 'Protocols of the Elders of Zion,' really reflected the power of the Jewish lobby and of our supporters in the Congress. It has helped us greatly in recent years. Not by chance have so many prime ministers and so many foreign ministers of so many states stood at our gates with outstretched hands. They really believed that we held the keys to the heart, the mind and the purse of the United States."

A Situation Replete with Irony

Markus is by no means alone among Israeli commentators in excusing the advocacy of myths that reinforce the underlying concept of the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" if they help Israel. This is a typical Israeli attitude. Nahum Barnea, a respected left-of-center commentator, in an article entitled "The War Over the 'Protocols,"' wrote in the Sept. 13 Yediot Ahronot: ''The contest between Shamir and Bush focuses on something more important than guarantees or settlements. The real issue is Jewish political power in the US. Jewish influence on American foreign policy grew enormously in the 1970s and 1980s. . . But this influence has also generated myths. These myths reverberate throughout the entire world, from China and Africa to Eastern Europe and the USSR. The entire world, which already recognizes the US as the sole remaining superpower, perceives Israel as a turnkey to the chambers of power in Washington . . . This myth brings us back to the 'Protocols of the Elders of Zion,' a book which claimed that the Jews ruled the world. The situation is replete with irony. For decades Jews sought to refute the myth of the 'Protocols,' treating it as a morbid manifestation of anti-Semitism. Now Jews turn the very same myth to their advantage. Some even believe in it."

Barnea sees that myth as a factor working to the advantage of the Jewish lobby's power in American politics. As for proof, he points to US government attitudes toward the Soviet Jews, who, he says, "are now better off than any other ethnic group in that country, including the Russians. . . "

Americans discriminate in favor of the Soviet Jews as compared to other populations of the USSR, Barnea writes, even though "If famine spreads in the USSR this coming winter, the Jews will tee the last to tee affected."

Similar examples can be provided from other countries. Under the murderous Mengistu regime in Ethiopia the Jews, who amounted to about two-tenths of one percent of that country's population, certainly suffered no greater hardship than the remaining 99.8 percent. But most US politicians were much more keenly concerned about the fate of the 0.2 percent of Ethiopians who were Jewish than all of the other Ethiopians.

The myth was extremely useful to Israel's representatives in Washington, Markus observes: "The myth of Jewish power frightened many American politicians, from presidents to congressmen. They all believed, not without some reason, that, unless backed by Jewish power, they stood no chance to get elected. This is why the myth was so serviceable to the state of Israel for so long."

The Myth At Work

An article by Yoav Karni in the March 22 Ha'aretz illustrates the myth at work at the annual convention in Washington, DC of Israel's principal US lobby, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. "Once a year, usually in early spring, members of Congress stand up to be counted in the shadow of the flag of the state of Israel. . . [In March 1991] 48 senators and about 100 members of the House of Representatives responded to the call. It is difficult to imagine any other political event in Washington which would entice a comparable number of congress members to attend."

Explaining that "senators who seek to raise funds for their coming re-election campaigns" are the most assiduous in courting AIPAC, Karni quotes AIPAC Executive Director Tom Dine as having divulged that "the collective power of Israel's friends in the US stems not from 'the Jewish vote,' but from Jewish money. If that money flows, in the right amount and at the right time, it can determine the outcome of not a few races for the Senate," Karni writes.

The Israeli journalist recounts the story of "Charles Percy, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Percy had angered the friends of Israel by meeting Arafat and by talking about 'legitimate rights of the Palestinians.' Consequently, all the pro-Israeli money was lavished on his opponent, Paul Simon. According to a near-unanimous assessment, his sensational victory over Percy was due to this factor.''

Empowered by such stories, the Jewish lobby has determined many aspects of US policy in line with the desires of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir. The situation changed in September as a result of the direct appeal by President Bush to the public. Bush sought to neutralize, at least to some extent, the Jewish lobby's power to influence targeted campaign financing. Acknowledging that "nothing like that has ever happened before,'' Markus nevertheless opines that "Jewish power in the US has not yet been demolished, although the myth has suffered greatly.''

"A myth retains its power only as long as it continues to be believed in."

To recoup its losses, Markus believes ''Jewish power now needs a case which can be presented as very just in order to prove that it is a power indeed.'' He points out, however, that "as long as the settlements proliferate, the myth of Jewish power cannot be restored. " Together with other Israeli commentators, however, Markus perceives Shamir as " failing to comprehend the full extent and depth of the crisis," and failing to realize that "America is no longer under our rule."

Explanations for the collapse of the myth which was essential to Israel preoccupy Israeli commentators. Markus and some others attribute the collapse to the fact that Shamir overused it.

"A myth retains its power only as long as it continues to be believed in. This is why the previous Israeli governments were always careful to invoke it only sporadically," Markus writes. "They were very careful to never, absolutely never, put the myth of [Jewish] power to the test of reality. In this, they followed the proven rule: don't shoot if you can achieve the same effect by threatening to shoot. That was true until Shamir's government, through its mindlessness, came to the assistance of Bush."

"Political Necrophilia"

In an article provocatively entitled "Jewish perversion is still perversion," in Yediot Ahronot of Sept. 19, Yaron London cuts closest to the unpleasant truth. He castigates Shamir for encouraging "the US Jews to oppose vehemently their own government on the ground that this was what the memory of the behavior of American Jews during the Holocaust commanded." London decries constant invocations of the Holocaust, on which the propaganda of the Jewish lobby has always relied, as an "act of political Necrophilia." He argues:

"First, hardly anyone believes that Russian Jews are now under threat of extermination. If this were so, what should we say about the relentless efforts of all Israeli governments, whether led by Labor or Likud, to shut the gates of the US to the Jewish refugees from the USSR?" With regard to the Soviet Jews, London advises American Jews to stop using their power to divert to Israel Soviet Jews who would prefer to go to the US, and instead to do the reverse of what the Jewish lobby wants them to do.

''If American Jews feel called upon to do something for the Jews of the USSR, they would be best advised to avoid exerting any pressure on the White House. They should instead press Israel into accepting all of Bush's conditions as soon as possible. . . The invocation of Auschwitz for the sake of legitimizing Israeli territorial conquest is a perverted stratagem."

Such censure is seldom heard in the mainstream US media. But in Yediot Ahronot London goes even further. He censures all Israeli officials who abused Bush. Among them are not only the rather junior minister Rehav'am Ze'evi, who twice accused Bush of anti-Semitism, but also the minister of finance, Yitzhak Moda'i, who on Israeli TV said that "while demanding from us portions of the land of Israel's living flesh in return for his money, Bush behaved like Shylock."

London comments that, " in the metaphor of Moda'i, the conquered territories are presented as our very own flesh and blood. The implied equation of land with blood is nothing else but fascist music. This is perversion. Let us not delude ourselves that perversion, when Jewish, ceases to be a perversion.''

Dr. Israel Shahak, a Holocaust survivor and retired professor of chemistry at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, is chairman of the Israeli League of Human and Civil Rights. His monthly translations From the Hebrew Press are available to Washington Report readers for $25 a year.