By Salama Ahmed Salama Finding themselves empty-handed at the festivities of Israel's 50th anniversary, the Arabs may resort to their traditional panacea and affirm that Israel not only influences, but indeed dominates and master-minds policies and the media in Europe and the US. In his book about the role of the Jews in politics and history, Abdel-Wahab Elmessiri presents us with another theory on the influence of the Jewish lobby that works to win Western public opinion over to Israel. Most significant among these groups is the American-Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). This committee exercises great leverage on the legislative authority in the US. AIPAC mobilises all the resources available to Jewish and Zionist societies in support of clear policies and objectives which serve Israeli interests, whether this entails promising presidential candidates financial and moral support or taking more direct initiatives. In his elaborate and well-documented study, Elmessiri notes that the Zionist lobby is not restricted to Jews. In fact its membership includes wealthy financiers who see their economic power as contingent on the fragmentation of the Arab and Islamic world, policy-makers who subscribe to the same views, liberals who advocated a more forceful deterrent policy against the Soviet Union when it existed, conservatives who perceive Israel as a bastion of Western civilisation and US interests, and fundamentalists who see the rise of a Jewish state as a sign of salvation. The Zionist lobby also includes non-Jewish, non-Zionist elements who may even be hostile to Judaism, yet are prepared to back the same causes because of the role Israel plays in the Middle East, and especially because Western and Israeli interests coincide. On these grounds, Elmessiri disagrees with the assumption made by so much of Arabic political writing: that the Zionist lobby often directs American policy onto courses that compromise US interests. He contends that many Arab political writers have never contemplated the possibility that, for the US, the status quo of "controlled instability" in the region may be the ideal means to defend US interests in the Arab world. Thus, the Zionist-dominated media and the Zionist lobby may be nothing but a cheap way of accomplishing whatever mission is assigned to them. While such a perspective may be radically opposed to all current Arab policies, which have designated the US as mediator, arbitrator and sponsor of the peace process, such a perspective may provide a clear explanation for many phenomena which smack of complicity and procrastination, and the one step forward, one step backward approach characterising US policy. US support for Israel is inversely correlated with the inter-Arab situation: support for Israel is greater when Arab solidarity declines. Deception ploys designed by Ross and Netanyahu take new forms whenever the Arabs energetically pursue the mirage of negotiating peace with the Likud.
