Mearsheimer and Walt: More on what real Americans think
My old colleague Ron Bailey gives a hip hip to this column by Michael Gerson that takes Israel Lobby authors Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer to task for crypto-anti-Semitism. FWIW, I have some severe reservations with their argument and their book, which departs from an interesting study of special-interest politics in D.C. to drag out such tired accusations as the supposed "second-class citizen" status of Israeli Arabs. (I have no doubt that Israeli Arabs get picked on as does any minority in any society, but if I were an Arab from whatever you want to call the former British Mandate territory, I'd rather live in Israel than in any Arab country with the possible exception of Jordan.)
Gerson also makes the valid point that Walt and Mearsheimer's case for the Israel lobby's having helped promote the invasion of Iraq is apparently complicated by the hesitation many actual Israeli leaders felt about the invasion — though to be fair they do not argue that the lobby gets orders directly from Jerusalem but that it is its own extreme player, largely unmoored from Israeli governance and in fact frequently counterproductive to the best interests of Israel. (One argument they make, which in other contexts I think both Ron and I would find compelling, is the moral hazard claim: that unconditional support from the U.S. encourages the Israeli leadership to make stupid decisions without feeling the consequences.)
Beyond that, Gerson's piece is pretty heavy on Godwin's-law fouls, caricatures of the argument under review and slopes so slippery you'd need a greased pole just to climb up to them...or something like that. But I was interested in this bit:
Perhaps many Americans actually prefer Israel's flawed democracy to the aging autocrats and corrupt monarchies of the region.
I didn't include this part of the discussion in our original Primary Source from Mearsheimer and Walt's visit, but their failure to appreciate how fond the American people really are of Israel is a central weakness in their argument. So I asked them about, and you get to read the response at no additional charge:
Tim: There's another side to this, though, and I appreciate your question earlier about, if you wanted a political future would you strongly criticize Israel. I wasn't aware of the Brezinksi episode you mentioned, and certainly we all live in 24-hour horror of Alan Dershowitz...
Stephen Walt: Jimmy Carter is another example.
Tim: Yeah, but you know, the American people support Israel, in their hearts, and how convinced are we that they had to be argued into that position?
Susan Brenneman: That's my question too, and does this book look at the kind of grassroots culture, that we all grew up believing Israel was our brother, sister, you know?
Stephen Walt: Well [to Mearsheimer], I'll, I'll add anything that you leave out.
John Mearsheimer: There's no doubt that if you look at American public opinion, Americans support the existence of Israel and think that Israel is a net plus. No question about that. But it's largely a myth that there is broad and deep support for Israel in the American body politic.
Stephen: It's, it's I think a myth that the American people want the United States to give it unconditional support.
John: Well let me unpack the argument. Uh, I mean, I believe that one of the reasons that the lobby works so hard to, to shape the discourse in a pro-Israel direction, and is so concerned about people like me and Steve is in large part because they understand that the support is not that broad and not that deep. As Steve pointed out, we're talking about support for the present policy — we're not talking about support for the existence of Israel. And as Steve pointed out, we're talking about support for the existing policy. Let me say a few words about that.
The Pew Foundation has done polling between 1993 and the present, asking people whether they favor the Palestinians or the Israelis. And although it's clear that most Americans favor the Israelis over the Palestinians, only once in that entire period have more than 50% of Americans said that they favor the Israelis over the Palestinians. In most cases you find a huge chunk of people favor neither side. It's also clear from some polls of the Pew Foundation that a large number of Americans, over 70% of foreign policy people understand that one of the principle causes of global discontent with the United States is Israel. So American elites are well aware that this has gotten us into a lot of trouble. Unconditional support. And again, the American people are not as kneejerk as one might think, in their support for this, uh, present relationship.
With regard to the depth of the commitment, it's quite clear if you look at poll data that most Americans don't support the existing policy of unconditional aid and our one-sided policy in favor of Israel over the Palestinians. In fact polls show that roughly three-quarters of Americans believe that the United States should favor neither side in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Including an Anti-Defamation League study from 2005; that's three-quarters of the American people who believe that the United States should favor neither the Palestinians nor the Israelis in settling that conflict. And this runs contrary to what the actual policy is. And one final point on this: 60% of Americans, according to a Pew survey, favor withholding aid from Israel if it resists U.S. pressure to settle the conflict with the Palestinians.
So again, the point here is not that the American people want to jettison Israel, or that Americans don't have respect for Israel, or that Americans don't believe the United States should work to ensure the survival of Israel. That's not in doubt, and it's certainly not in doubt with regard to me and Steve. The point is that the idea that the American people are demanding that we give Israel unconditional aid because they're so deeply attached to it does not mesh with the available poll data.
Mearsheimer and Walt are currently in heavy We're-not-anti-Semites mode, which is pretty much the definition of a no-win situation: Nothing sounds more anti-Semitic than telling people "I'm not an anti-Semite..." You could say that they have only themselves to blame for that, and their broadly distributed claim about how critics of Israel are silenced is self-refuting. Still, attacks like Gerson's fail even to do any damage to the target.
First, Arabs are not just 'picked on' in Israel. They are systematically discriminated against by the state and by non-state institutions. The 'Citizenship and Entry to Israel Law' for example, places severe restrictions on the unification of families consisting of Arab Israelis and Palestinians. (Compare with the 'Right of Return') Another example, the state and Jewish private organizations both have worked to keep land in Jewish hands, i.e. from being sold to Palestinians/Arabs. See the work of Oren Yiftachel, esp. his book 'Ethnocracy'.
Second, Mearsheimer and Walt do not 'drag out' accusations of the second class citizenship of Arabs at random. Rather, they are pointing out that in significant respects, Israel is not a 'democracy'-- certainly not a 'liberal democracy' -- as the term is currently understood. The Israeli state engages in policies that would likely bring howls of protest from the LAT editorial board if similiar policies were followed by Germany, France, or certainly the US. (See the recent condemnation rained down on a Japanese America who suggested ever so mildly that landmarks in Little Tokyo should be owned by people with some connection to Japan)
Now, Israel and its supporters have good reasons to engage in/support policies which discriminate against Arabs (or discriminate in favor of Jews) -- they want to keep the state Jewish. (Sort of like keeping Little Tokyo Japanese/Japanese American) But those reasons have nothing to do with 'democracy'; indeed they are contradictory to modern conceptions of democracy -- at least good liberals' conceptions of democracy. Therefore the 'only democracy in the Mid East' argument for unbalanced American support for Israel across the political spectrum is wrong; that is why M&W 'drag out' the completely factual 'second class citizen' argument.
Posted by: Mitchell Young | September 22, 2007 at 02:11 PM
Apparently Walt and Mearsheimer have not heard of Pastor John Hagee, nor have they heard of the overwhelmingly dominant strain of American Christianity called Premillenial Dispensationalism, or its enormous popular and institutional strength as manifested in the popularity, wealth, and power of the promulgators of mainstream evangelical media empires, Christian Coalition/Moral Majority-derived political action, and the Left Behind series of books, movies, video games, and "educational" materials, and the rising armed power of their taxpayer-financed mercenary force, The Prince Group (aka Blackwater USA and Christian Freedom International), etc.
These people operate under absolute faith that living in the Biblically prophesied End Times is the ultimate reward for those who live for Christ, and since 1967, that human action can advance the time line of prophesied events. They have no fear that their actions could lead to widespread warfare, including the possible destruction of Israel itself, because those events, in their faith, are prerequisites for Christ's final, eternal, benevolent rule. In other words, while we whisper the words "Armageddon" and "Apocolypse" as our ultimate fear, they shout them as their ultimate desire and reward. And they outnumber AIPAC in numbers, money, and political action by at least 1000 to 1, yet somehow remain under the radar of all progressive opinion-makers save Chris Hedges and Jeremy Scahill. In fact, with their obsessive focus on AIPAC and Jews, Walt and Mearsheimer are helping Hagee, The Prince Group/Blackwater, et al keep the cover that allows them to operate with impunity.
It is this last fact (and it is a fact) that leaves the likes of Mearsheimer and Walt fully, and permanently open to accusations of anti-Semitism. They are ascribing power over events to Jews, and reason for the wider public to fear that power, in a manner not unlike (other than being more sophisticatedly written) attacks of earlier generations of systemic, institutionalized anti-Semitism that led to the necessity of Western powers creating a permanent Jewish refugee camp in the first place, while ignoring other groups and movements, such as neoliberal economic colonialism and the Southern Baptist Convention (and all their branches and offshoots) that wield the real power. That kind of thing doesn't just lead to accusations of anti-Semitism -- it IS anit-Semitism. It's ironic that Mearsheimer, Walt, and their defenders are incapable of seeing that by singling out the one element of the problem that happens to be Jewish for special attention and accusation of undue, and negative, influence over Middle East, American, and world events, they reinforce the sense of many Jews, be they powerful or mundane, that Israel must continue to view itself primarily as a refuge for Jews, and operate its political and military system accordingly.
Posted by: Eagle Scout | September 23, 2007 at 04:32 AM
Eagle Scout,
Here's a quote from the original, London Review of Books article (the one commissioned and then spiked by the Atlantic)
"The Lobby also includes prominent Christian evangelicals like Gary Bauer, Jerry Falwell, Ralph Reed and Pat Robertson, as well as Dick Armey and Tom DeLay, former majority leaders in the House of Representatives, all of whom believe Israel’s rebirth is the fulfilment of biblical prophecy and support its expansionist agenda; to do otherwise, they believe, would be contrary to God’s will. 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 steadfast supporters."
No doubt the book has more on Christian zionists.
Posted by: Mitchell Young | September 24, 2007 at 01:11 PM
The question is about the degree of importance, and the degree of intransigence, associated with the various players. When someone mentions Gary Bauer, Jerry Falwell, Ralph Reed and Pat Robertson (and I'm at a loss to figure out the omission of John Hagee, who is the commander in chief of the evangelical Christian pro-Israel movement, but perhaps the book mentions him), and/or the collective Evangelical Christian movement, you're talking about people at the helm of a faithful flock (and voting bloc) of 100 million Americans. That's not an exaggeration. Numerous surveys indicate the number to be even higher, but I'm being conservative.
By contrast, there are only 6 million Jews in America, and most of them a) believe in a "land for peace" arrangement that is understood to include the liberation of all, or nearly all, of the West Bank, and b) are modern, secular liberals (of varying degree) who generally don't vote for the kind of nasty far-right Republicans that get the Evangelical Christian vote.
The "land for peace" element is critical. Most American Jews (not all, and even amongst the "most" there are various understandings of how much land, and what assurances of peace) believe in land for peace. None of the Christians do. In fact, the premillenial dispensationalist movement achieved its dominance in American Christianity after the 1967 war that seemed to restore something very close to "Biblical" borders, a lynch pin for end-times prophecy. The evangelical Christians will never agree to "land for peace" because it will set back the chronology of end-times prophecy, possibly forever if it works out. American Christians want Israel to force the prophesied invasion from the East while the Biblical borders are essentially intact. In other words, unlike American Jews, American Christians don't want peace in the region -- their belief system calls for escalating war leading to the ultimate war, so the fact that not giving away the land will likely lead to war is precisely what their political action calls for. Then, when you factor in their numbers, money, and voting habits, by which they outnumber the small percentage of like-minded Jews by the aforementioned 100 to 1, we see that the real problem is not that elements of the Evangelical Christian movement are allied with the American Israel Lobby, but that it's the other way around -- the impact of the Jewish parts of the American Israel Lobby would be nothing without the sea of Christianity upon which it floats.
So that's why I will stick with my interpretation that Mearsheimer and Walt cannot feign such cluelessness about accusations of anti-Semitism. By reversing the roles and their proportional influence on policy both in Israel and America, and making the Jewish element the heavies, they are indeed being anti-Semitic. And they have a lot of help in this -- the Evangelical Christians believe that when their goal is fully realized, all the unconverted Jews are going to be killed.
A much better presentation of this can be found in Chris Hedges' "American Fascists." Unlike Walt and Mearsheimer, he gets the balance between the various players right, and puts a lot of the blame on the mainline Protestant churches for not contesting the Baptists on their radical interpretation and cherry-picking of unconnected prophetic elements scattered throughout the Old and New Testaments to build their nihilistic world view, in which all of us, not just Jews and Arabs, are at risk of being the victims.
Posted by: Eagle Scout | September 26, 2007 at 06:08 AM
i agree wholeheartedly with the claims of Mersheimer and Walt. They are top university professors (who are you?) and most importantly i need ask if you the the complications with them writing this book. If you knew anything about international politics you would know that these two (extremely well published and respected) professors are realist scholars of international thought. which means they theorize that the world is effected by military power and the threat of that military power above anything else. This book does not convey that theory. Furthermore, it flies in the face realism and almost discredits everything they have thought to be true regarding world politics. It is like saying your a republican one day and then running for office on a campaign promise that you will expand government and offer more public benefits.
So for those of you who doubt the notions of this Harvard and University of Chicago professors, i shall ask you to get a reality check.
Posted by: sean | January 06, 2008 at 03:41 PM