According to a recent study, the Israel lobby in the US dictates Washington's Middle East policy. Emad Mekay reviews the report The pro-Israel lobby in the United States has manipulated Washington's policies in the Arab and Islamic worlds to the point where it is the US that does most of the fighting, dying and rebuilding while Israel gets most of the security benefits. "This situation has no equal in American political history," says the 83-page study, The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy. "Why has the United States been willing to set aside its own security and that of many of its allies in order to advance the interests of another state?" ask the study's authors, Professors John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Stephen Walt of Harvard University. The answer, according to the paper, which is already stirring a debate in academic circles and fury in the pro-Israel circles, is the influence of pro-Israel groups. These groups include The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organisations, Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA) and the Washington Institute for Near Eastern Policy (WINEP) and more recently Christian Zionist organisations. A shorter version of the study was published in the London Review of Books on 10 March. The authors say their research is so strong that they doubt that any US mainstream publication would dare publish it. The study shows how the pro-Israel lobby built power in the country and counts how its intimidation of the press, think tanks and academia lead to presenting a deceptive picture of Israel. The report focuses on how the Israel lobby has since World War II managed to push Washington to channel $140 billion of US money to support Israel and is still expanding their activities and staffs to keep Washington committed to Israel and to guarantee that voices opposed to Israel's policies remain sidelined. The lobby groups are exploiting the sensitivity of US politicians to campaign contributions and major media outlets to maintain their sympathy to Israel regardless of what it does in the region, it explains. "A key pillar of the lobby's effectiveness is its influence in Congress, where Israel is virtually immune from criticism," it says. During AIPAC's annual conference earlier this month which attracted top US officials and congressional leaders, the new Republican majority leader in the US House of Representatives, John Boehner, vowed never allow anti-Israel legislation come to the floor. "As the new House majority leader, I can assure you that under my leadership, legislation that is in any way perceived as anti-Israel will not be considered in the House of Representatives," said John Boehner, a Republican from Ohio. Also at home the lobby's influence has managed to shut up sceptics and critics; something the authors say has not been good for a democracy, especially one that now pretends to be promoting freedom in the Arab world. " Silencing sceptics by organising blacklists and boycotts -- or by suggesting that critics are anti-Semites -- violates the principle of open debate upon which democracy depends," it says. The study was immediately attacked by a number of pro- Israel organisations. The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America for example criticised the study and said it had many errors. "A student who submitted such a paper would flunk," said the pro-Israel CAMERA, which monitors the US media for what it perceives as anti-Israel reporting. Newspapers like The New York Sun, known for its pro- Israel line, linked the paper by publishing praising reaction from a white US supremacist and from the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, a group viewed negatively in the United States, as evidence the paper catered for extreme tastes. Ironically, the 83-page study itself says that "The Lobby" has been bolstered by the support of prominent, and some would say extremist, Christian evangelicals like Gary Bauer, Jerry Falwell, Ralph Reed and Pat Robertson, as well as congressmen Dick Armey and Tom DeLay, former majority leaders in the House of Representatives, all of whom believe Israel's rebirth is the fulfillment of biblical prophecy and supports its expansionist agenda. Neo-conservative "gentiles" such as John Bolton; Robert Bartley, the former Wall Street Journal editor; William Bennett, the former secretary of education; Jeane Kirkpatrick, the former UN ambassador; and the influential columnist George Will are also committed supporters of the Israel lobby. "By contrast, pro-Arab interest groups, in so far as they exist at all, are weak, which makes the Israel Lobby's task even easier," it says. Explaining some of the mechanisms employed by the Israel groups, the authors say the lobby works to make support of Israel the best option for many opinion leaders and law makers. It says that no matter what individual lawmaker or policymaker's own views may be, the lobby tries to make supporting Israel the 'smart' choice. It also explains how the pro-Israel groups strive to ensure that the US public discourse portrays Israel in a positive light, "by repeating myths about its founding and by promoting its point of view in policy debates." While the pro-Israel lobby has managed a number of successes for Israel, the cost for the US is mounting. "This situation is deeply worrisome, because the Lobby's influence causes trouble on several fronts," says the study. These include the possible increases the militant danger that all states face -- including America's European allies. By preventing US leaders from pressuring Israel to make peace, the lobby has also made it impossible to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict which gives extremists a potent recruiting tool and enlarges the pool of potential militants. New endeavors by the lobby have to change regimes in Iran and Syria could lead the US to attack those countries, with potentially disastrous effects. "We do not need another Iraq. At a minimum, the Lobby's hostility toward these countries makes it especially difficult for Washington to enlist them against Al-Qaeda and the Iraqi insurgency, where their help is badly needed," it says. They authors counted a number of other negative effects on both the US and Israel. These include how the US is now supporting Israel's expansions policies in the West Bank and human rights abuses there making Washington look complicit in those atrocities. Washington also looks hypocritical too because it is willing to tolerate Israel's nuclear capabilities and looks read to go to war over Iran's. As for Israel, US backing has emboldened extremism in Israel to where they have missed a number of opportunities for peace deals with Arab countries, with Syria and even with the Palestinians and the implementation of the Oslo Accords. The paper ends on a positive note saying that no matter how powerful the Israel lobby is Americans will eventually notice the damage to their country because of their government's irrational backing of Israel at the expense of their own interests. "Powerful states can maintain flawed policies for quite some time, but reality cannot be ignored forever," the authors concluded, calling for a candid discussion of the pro- Israel lobby's influence. By Emad Mekay
