While (naturally) abjuring anti-Semitism, two Harvard professors are currently blaming the Israel lobby (AIPAC) for a lot of what ails America, specifically its foreign policy. (Their essay, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, is in pdf form here.) Frankly I have some sympathy for the professors because it’s very hard for the secular mind – I know this well from my own experience – to identify with and understand societies deeply bound in faith and tradition. These societies’ behavior must be explained by material conditions – and perhaps they can be, but not nearly as simply, and ultimately dismissively, as these professors do. The Harvard men do not really believe bin Laden and his cohorts when they talk about the Caliphate. It is to us secularists, after all, mythological. So when the Madrid Atocha Station is blown up – at the very heart of Al Andaluz – it must be as a result of the US Israeli policy and not the continuation of a war that has been going on for over a thousand years. Actions by Al Qaeda in Indonesia must be similarly reduced. We could call this reductionism a form of racism, but I think it’s a kind of traditionalist marxism, revisionist or otherwise. After all, despite being a rather prolix book, Das Kapital did make the world simpler and in some ways more comforting to understand – it’s the economic inequality, stupid. But is that true, in the final analysis?
The NYSun has more. (hat tip: Janet Levy)
John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt merely represent the majority thinking of the Democratic Partyís establishment. Many of these individuals hinted at their hostility toward Israel, but were publicly careful not to hurt John Kerryís presidential campaign. Richard Holbrooke was Kerryís foreign policy advisor. Itís not exactly a secret that his wife is Israeli basher Kati Marton! Have we already also forgotten Michael Scheuer and Eric Alterman?
http://www.hfienberg.com/kesher/2005/02/antisemitism-watch-special-kapo-watch.html
Too many people put their head into the sand. A misplaced loyalty to the Democratic Party kept them from asking some hard questions.
who founded harvard? was it a bunch of secularists?
Harvard College was established in 1636 by vote of the Great and General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and was named for its first benefactor, John Harvard of Charlestown, a young minister who, upon his death in 1638, left his library and half his estate to the new institution.
…
uring its early years, the College offered a classic academic course based on the English university model but consistent with the prevailing Puritan philosophy of the first colonists. Although many of its early graduates became ministers in Puritan congregations throughout New England, the College was never formally affiliated with a specific religious denomination. An early brochure, published in 1643, justified the College’s existence: “To advance Learning and perpetuate it to Posterity; dreading to leave an illiterate Ministry to the Churches.”
…
http://www.news.harvard.edu/guide/intro/index.html
IOW: PURITANS FOUNDED HARVARD. A RELIGIOUS SECT.
Economic determinism would have been a very compelling theory if introduced during feudal times. As Marx invented it during the explosion of social mobility it’s hard for me to imagine a more ill-timed, demonstrably untrue, theory. But that’s not what makes it so impressive, the untruth, but the unquestioning acceptance among Marxist fundamentalists worldwide.
My favorite debates with Marxists always end with them quoting Das Kapital and exclaiming, “But that’s not real Marxism!”
Marxism is the only system which has been implemented dozens of times by well-intentioned little Marxist soldiers, but has never been tried.
Rest assured, that angry young college student you’re debating at any particular moment will finally bring us the true Marxism which has been waiting for all these centuries to save us from want, supply and demand, or any need for human conflict.
Roger:
The scholars do have a valid point. It would have been better for the United States to have abandoned Israel and allowed the Goverements of the Middle East to carry out their 5 decade old promise to drive the Jews into the sea. We wouldn’t have as much of the friction between the oil producing states that our economy counts on and there might be a calm middle east that had religous and secular tyrants who kept their population under control with the occasional crackdown that we could turn our heads to in the interest of “stability”. It would be a more simple world and cheaper too. And as long as someone is comfortable with a second Holocaust then it is a simpler road to follow. And if you see no difference between Israeli democracy and the governments of Syria, Saudi Arabia, Iran, ect,ect, ect, then it makes sense as well. But I like to be able to look myself in the mirror and not vomit.
Simone de Beauvior writes about an incident that occurred in the mid-1930s, as she and Sartre were on a cruise down the Elbe. They were talking to a fellow passenger, a German of about 40 who had been a sergeant in WWI. “If there is another war,” said the German, “this time we shall not be defeated. We shall retrieve our honor.” Sartre tells the man that there need never be another war; everyone wants peace.
“Honor comes first. First we must retrieve our honor,” said the German. Reflecting on the incident, de Beauvior wrote “His fanatical tone alarmed me…Never had I seen hatred shine so nakedly from any human face.”
Far too many intellectuals are incapable of believing that people like this German…and like our current enemies…actually exist.
…but I think it’s a kind of traditionalist marxism, revisionist or otherwise.
I just think it’s stupid. It’s the special sort of stupid reserved for academics and other “thinkers.”
…it’s the economic inequality,…
A man spends his life scrounging for money and writes a book called, tah dah, Das Capital. The core thesis: it’s all about money. Oh, and the course of history is obvious and predictable… after it becomes history.
From the article:
Viewed objectively, Israel’s past and present conduct offers no moral basis for privileging it over the Palestinians
The key word here is “objectively,” a word employed by those godlike individuals, among whom I’m sure the authors would place themselves, who can see beyond mere surface reality, by folks not bound by the conventional beliefs and blinkered vision of the stupid masses. But I do wonder on which moral basis they authors think US *should* be founding it’s actions.
Most recently, the Bush AdministrationÔøΩs attempt to
transform the region into a community of democracies has helped produce a
resilient insurgency in Iraq, a sharp rise in world oil prices, and terrorist
bombings in Madrid, London, and Amman.
I see they believe in the divinity of Bush. A fallen divinity to be sure, but a divinity none-the-less. I blame my cat’s hairballs on Bush.
By the way the resilient insurgency is dying, oil prices will stay high as long as demand from India and China continues to rise, and I don’t see how the bombings can be blamed on Bush when they were hardly the first such bombings: the first world trade center bombing, the Nairobi embassy bombing, the Cole, etc. The rational for the Bali bombings was Australian participation in East Timor, not the Middle East. When the authors display such evident ignorance and put such drivel in the first paragraph, I am disinclined to read the whole thing. Of course they cover their ass in that wonderful foo-foo academic way by inserting the word helped, as in “helped to produce.” Sure, and I helped Walmart spread around the world by once buying a quart of milk from their shelves. I don’t think that is what the authors mean. The JFK School of Government should be ashamed to employ such inadequate faculty.
Idiots!!
All the way back to the Truman administration there have been socalled experts complaining that Washington should not ally with Israel. In fact there were serious people advising Truman not to even recognize Israel as a state.
The truth is if it had not been Israel that set the Jiahdis off, it would have been something else. All you have to do is look at the history of the region to know there has never been a shortage of reasons for war.
“The scholars do have a valid point. It would have been better for the United States to have abandoned Israel and allowed the Goverements of the Middle East to carry out their 5 decade old promise to drive the Jews into the sea.”
1) You would have lost for all time the trust and loyalty of the Jews of America. And given they have produced such an inordinantly large percentage of America’s cultural and material wealth, I don’t believe that would have been such a good idea.
2) Had it not been for Israel and her destruction of Iraq’s nuclear reactor despite the virulent opposition of the entire world (including most vehemently the Reagan White House), Saddam would today have nuclear weapons and Americans would be spending their days hanging out in bomb shelters.
Had the U.S. abandoned Israel, Israel would have survived in the same way it survived without U.S. help until 1967. She would simply have had to cosy up to another power (such as China). She also would have had to come clean about her immense nuclear arsenal and made plain that if she were attacked it would be used.
I for one think it incredibly dangerous though for Israel to depend on the United States to any great degree. After all, it’s not as if the U.S. hasn’t already betrayed the Jewish people on a grand scale. In World War II (a war the U.S. fought in spite of and not because of the Jews) as a result of her anti-Semitic immigration policy and her deliberate inaction, a viciously anti-Semitic America effectively collaborated in the Holocaust, and who is to say that she try and pull the same stunt in the right circumstances.
Before he was struck down, Ariel Sharon suggested that the Holocaust had taught the Jewish people that no gentile nation could be trusted. It seems that Israel has yet to learn that lesson properly. Over 40% of all large gifts to charity in the U.S. are made by Jews and virtually none of that money is given to Jewish or Israeli charities. So it would seem that the Jews of America have not learned that lesson either. This charge of dual loyalty is nothing new. No matter how loyal we have been and how much we have contributed we will always be accused of being disloyal. Whether it’s Russia in 1905 or Hungary in 1920 or Germany in 1933 or Poland in 1935 or America in 2006, the anti-Semitic charge remains the same. It makes one wonder why we should bother giving that loyalty and making those contributions in the first place.
Come a day though when Bush is no longer in power and those professors are advising a new administration, the lesson will be learned both by Israel and the Jews of America.
However, be in no doubt that we Jews will survive, long after those professors are forgotten and the U.S. has ceased to be a major power. If you have any doubts, think for just a moment about the Babylonian and the Roman, the Ottoman and the British empires.
a viciously anti-Semitic America effectively collaborated in the Holocaust…
Sure it did. With the help of the Jews, of course: see A Child of the Century. I note that the Reader’s Digest acquitted itself honorably, not something that can be said about lesser publications like the current NY Times.
If you have any doubts, think for just a moment about the Babylonian and the Roman, the Ottoman and the British empires.
It’s all pointless anyway, in future years the sun will swell and life on the earth will disappear. You have only a few billion years, so whoop it up.
Pooh:
I wasn’t trying to advocate that the U.S. end it’s support of Israel. I was trying to make the point that if you took all moral equations out of foreign policy you could make an argument that for our temporary economic gain the argument can be made. If we followed the advice of the profs I would seriously consider moving to Israel because I think that this type of amoral thinking is the beginning of the end of our countries greatness. There is a point to real politic at times but it must be balanced by some type of morality. Not the naive President Carter variety, but a combination of realism and standards. The reason I think the idiot Harvard twins have a point is because you can make a Buchanonite isolationist argument that looks strictly at our own needs and that our rightous support of Israel has cost us at certain times, if you take a short sighted view of History. In the long run it would hurt our collective soul and we would implode from within. Israel is not our weak cousin that can’t defend themselves but the simple population imbalance and the suicidal tendencies of many in the middle east points to the destruction of Israel without our support. Ihe recent comments coming from Iran that pointed out that Israel could destroy some parts of Iran in a nuclear exchange between the countries but that the sacrafice of part of Iran would be worth the price if it lead to the elimination of Israel makes my point. Harvard and Pat Buchannon, idealogical twins. What a sick and twisted thought. But I guess if Stalin and Hitler could make a deal I shouldn’t be suprised.
I spent years writing letters and website comments defending Israel and American Jews because I thought it was the right thing to do, being a student of history. But the new history being written today by American Jews (if not Israeli) is that they need to rationalize, even collaborate in, the attacks on American Christians being waged by extreme secularists and anti-Christians because they dare not risk (with the Holocaust in mind) “getting in the middle of religious disputes”. It was a sad lesson in reality to hear this “lecture” repeatedly at pro-Israel sites when I tried to raise the issue of anti-Christian bias and actions.
Heaven help Israel if American Christians ever take the Jewish strategy to heart, as the professors hint at.
Also, Pooh complains about and at the same time reinforces almost every negative Jewish stereotype I have ever attacked as anti-Semitic.
KP,
” The scholars do have a valid point. It would have been better for the United States to have abandoned Israel and allowed the Goverements of the Middle East to carry out their 5 decade old promise to drive the Jews into the sea. ”
Only, they forgot about the Cold War aspect. America apart from recognising the new state did not actively support it until it was in their interests vis a vis the Russians. And that only came some years later.
The French dumped the Israelis in favour of their future European Arab Dialogue and attempt at countering American influence. The French, if anything further inflamed arab attitudes to America.
The academics don’t consider it of interest to consider arab behaviour well before Israel came into being (1920s); their aligning with Nazi doctrine and the formation of Baathists.
Jews and Israel were always an excuse and before American involvement if one excuses Dulles.
Apart from several obvious bits of nonsense in the paper, which brings into doubt the qualities of said academics, one finds partisan bias that ignores the larger picture and ignores context.
“… looks strictly at our own needs and that our rightous support of Israel has cost us at certain times, if you take a short sighted view of History. ”
begs the question:
“Can anyone give a reasonable picture of would have taken place had Israel, to survive, gone to Russia for support; would material gains that Israeli ingenuity has brought to American companies and society in general have come about?”
The billions made by Intel, Motorola (the cellphone initially designed in Israel) and others with their Israeli R&D, VOIP, memory stick, instant messaging, sending data from Mars thanks to the algorithms developed by Israeli mathematicians. Some 600 improvements to the F-16 saving America’s manufacturers billions in R&D. Helping improve America’s defence with the anti-missile missile Arrow.
The Medical scene with the Israeli invented Stent to keep the blood flowing. Now a possible ‘vacine’ against auto-immune diseases, like MS, in the offing and a host of other improvements in medicine that has brought Johnson&Johnson into partnership with the Hebrew University. Agricultural advancements.
In short what other ‘ally’ has improved things, to the same degree, for Americans in general?
Had America done the bidding of these academics what benefits, to what degree, would have accrued to Americans in general, apart from “pensions for diplomats”?
The Harvard professors may not like this but: Israel exists because it has won its land by military conquest. Because its leaders were idealists and intellectuals, it also justified its existence by United Nations fiat. But make no mistake, it WON THE WAR. And then, it WON ANOTHER WAR. And another one, and another one. And that is all that matters in the Real World (as opposed to some air-conditioned conference room in Harvard.)
Now, to go into woo-woo land… I believe now that a nation or people or country that treats Jews badly is going to suffer true misfortune. I know, this is primitive thinking, back to Abraham and God’s promise to him and his descendents. But. Have you noticed, really noticed how Poland and the rest of the anti Semitic middle Europe – spent some 50 years under the Soviet boot? And how the antiSemitic Russians have gone through a terrible 2 centuries, and may actually disappear from History? And the continuing poverty and ignorance of the anti-Semitic Middle East?
I do not believe that the Jews run the world, or even that they are – as a group – very powerful. I just point out that countries that are anti-semitic are primitive and stay primitive. It is for that reason that I do not think France has a prosperous – or even very nice – future.
Cynic:
I am not trying to defend the paper. I am pointing out the moral bankruptcy of the paper. Of course we have benifited in part because of our relationship with Israel. But it has cost us too, a cost I am happy to pay and a cost that if we did not pay would contribute to the corruptions of our souls. There have been costs. The oil embargo. The formation of OPEC was also based on the unity of their hate of Israel allowed them to ignore their traditional hatreds and divisions. Ever pan arab movement from Nasser to today has used the hate for Israel as a rallying point. Israel, naturally, has from time to time followed a opposing course from our foreign policy but I don’t want a lackey for an friend and sometimes the stances they have taken have helped us to wake up and face the truth. France supported Israel until it decided that they could do better by dumping them. And they have gained some small points in doing so. But over the long haul they will come to regret their embrace of Islam and the Palestinian cause. We have gained in some respects by having an honest friend in a region filled with snakes. And the intellignce we have recieved from the Mossad will never be fully known. But my main reason for supporting Israel is not based on what we gain from them, and if we ever go down that road it will bring up a situation there might be a time where our national interests might allow us to abandon Israel. I support them mainly because it is the right thing to do. Are they perfect? No. we are not perfect either. But we are on the same page and if we allow these Islamic apologists to lessen our support of Israel we are doomed. And the fact that these academics would never be allowed to freely practice their trade in any country in the region except for Israel makes their agitprop even more vile.
“Also, Pooh complains about and at the same time reinforces almost every negative Jewish stereotype I have ever attacked as anti-Semitic.”
Mikem represents the very embodiment of everything we Jews have learned to distrust in gentile society over many centuries. He is everything we should revile about gentile society.
I point out a few home truths about how Jews have been treated in the past and this individual jumps in with the twisted conclusion that the anti-Semites are right after all (and that’s leaving aside all the almost pathologically insane nonsense about Jews helping to persecute the poor put-upon Christians).
Let me be more specific about a couple of issues:
1) The Nazis could never have achieved what they did in terms of the genocide of the Jews without the almost complete and willing collaboration of occupied Europe. The Nazis were not operating in a vacuum here, but instead exploiting a hatred of Jews which had been developed and refined over many centuries. The Nazis were not even the first to institutionalise anti-Semitism: many other nations in Europe had been there already – Russia, Poland, Lithuania, and Hungary being amongst them. However much the peoples of occupied Europe may have hated the Nazis they hated the Jews ever more and acted accordingly. As the Poles used to say: “When Hitler dies we will go to his grave to spit on it. We will then return to bring him flowers for helping us get rid of the Jews.” The Nazis gave Europe what she had always wanted.
2) America was a viciously anti-Semitic nation in the 1930s and 1940s. From Father Coughlin with his 50 million radio listeners to the American Firsters who (very much like these professors) blamed Jews for every evil under the sun and suggested that they would drag America into a “Jewish war”. And from America’s heartless and anti-Semitic immigration policy to the openly Jew-hating State Department which did so much to prevent any help reaching the drowning Jews of Europe.
For my part I don’t believe anything has changed. I think gentile society is for the most part inherently anti-Semitic. We would be insane to trust the gentile world ever again simply because after almost 2,000 years of continuous anti-Semitism, a couple of priests whisper a few half-hearted apologies and everyone else suggests that “yes indeedy anti-Semitism is dead and buried in the West,” and if Israel is constantly reviled at the UN and in Europe, well that’s all down to the Jewish state being fundamentally evil. And to cap it all off we have the usual suspects like Mikem with his ritualistic throat-clearing exercise of “some of my best friends are Jews/ I’ve always defended Israel up to now/I’ve always admired the hard-working Israelis” before he follows it up with his main point about the Jews working against the intereststs of good Christians. In fact little different to his fellow travellers who used to talk in a similar fashion before urging yet another pogrom on their Jewish neighbours.
“Sure it did. With the help of the Jews, of course: see A Child of the Century. I note that the Reader’s Digest acquitted itself honorably”
At least the Jews had a reason. They were living in an anti-Semitic country not too different to the ones they had left in Europe, what with their children being beaten up in schools, a prohibtion on them obtaining apartments in many cities, open anti-Semitism on the airwaves, anti-Semitic politicians left, right and center. They had a real and understandable fear for their own safety if they spoke up. They also were extremely worried about being accused of having divided loyalties. And when they did speak up they were either ignored or cursed.
It wasn’t the Jews who instigated an anti-Semitic immigration policy. It wasn’t Jews on the radio stirring up anti-Semitism. It wasn’t Jews who refused to bomb the railroad tracks leading to Auschwitz. It wasn’t Jews running an anti-Semitic State Department. It wasn’t Jews who turned back other Jews fleeing the Holocaust and sent them to their deaths. It wasn’t Jews who put anti-Semitic remarks into Roosevelt’s mind or anti-Semitic thoughts into his head. It wasn’t Jews who were responsible for the United States doing absolutely nothing at the Bermuda Conference in 1943. And the rest.
Nice binary good/bad world you live in, Pooh. Btw, what was the religion of Arthur Ochs “Punch” Sulzberger, publisher of the Holocaust denying New York Times? Or can you rationalize that away too?
who flung Pooh?
Pooh,
You didn’t really read the extract, did you? Tsk, tsk. As Ben Hecht says,
On the other hand, Goverenor Dewey acted:
And this against the advice of “Rabbi Stephen Wise [who] had brought a delegation of twelve important Jews to Albany and obtained an audience with the governor.” So, against much well meaning Jewish opposition, Rose and Hecht put on their pageant, which enjoyed great success and went on the road. Now, I don’t know how accurate Ben Hecht is in his book, but I don’t imagine that he has made it all up.
Where you come by your rabid bigotry is something of a mystery, though it certainly reeks of the Left in one of its totalitarian incarnations. But whatever.
Poor pitiful Pooh. But for an accident of time and place he might have found his true calling, defending the master race against the various mongerel tribes of the world, as an SS officer in 1940. Now that was a grand romatic gesture!
Instead as a Jewish supremacist in 21st century America he has to try to stir up trouble with a nation full of indifferent Christians. And they just pat him indulgently on the head. Where is the pathos in that?
However, be in no doubt that we Jews will survive, long after those professors are forgotten and the U.S. has ceased to be a major power. If you have any doubts, think for just a moment about the Babylonian and the Roman, the Ottoman and the British empires.
Strange. You appear to be double-daring America to come up with a Final Solution to the Jewish Problem. I’ve got it! You are actually Osama bin Laden, right?
Pooh:
I am not going to use the “some of my best friends are Jews” line. I have posted almost every time that Roger has written an article about the israeli=Arab conflict and I have been extremely supportive of Israel. I have been posting about the lies of Arafat and I am regular reader of MEMRI and I have a good grasp about the true goals of the middle eastern governments, the destruction of Israel. I have also written about the amazing self hate shown by many secular and liberal Jewish groups in America and Europe that beleive that Israel and the American support of Israel is the cause of the misery of that region. I love the security fence, I don’t want a penny of aid to go to Hamas led Palestine and I have felt this way for years, even when I was a misguided liberal. But I am a gentile. So I must take your knowledge and just assume this support of Israel is a temporary phase and my inherent anti-semitism will soon raise it’s ugly head. I don’t expect Israel and it’s Jewish supporters to place all their trust in America. But if you think that societies can’t change then you are fooling yourself. And instead of using the Gentile bad, Jew good view of the world you might want to use a more sophisticated way of examining the world. Israel has problems within the liberal wing of Judaism in America that are naivly willing to feed Israel to the wolves and Israel has a large pool of fervant support among many of those hated gentiles.
I am only on page 7 of the report, and I see this blunder:
Huh? Was there no terrorism before 1967? How about 1929.
G.A.W.
It’s tempting to suspect pooh of being an anti-Semitic troll, but more than likely he is not. He’s a bit more vicious in tone than usual, but the basics are exactly what response I get when I suggest a bit of support for American Christians from the American Jewish community.
I should add that the scenario is for like attacks by pooh people in America (?) to be followed by a sincere expression of support and appreciation from Israeli commenters for their Christian supporters. The people under the gun know who their steadfast friends are even if pooh people get off calling everyone Nazis.
I’m sure that Israel’s treatment of Palestinians has something to do with Muslim hostility, or, rather, the orchestrated propaganda in the Muslim world based on Israel’s treatment of Palestinians.
Yet Israel _is_ trying to deal with that. They did withdraw from Gaza, where they were outnumbered 100 to 1, and they are segregating Jewish Israeli areas from Palestinian Arab areas.
I do think they use a bit too heavy a hand — was it really necessary to use 100 soldiers and APC’s and tanks to pick up 6 guys from prison — but they are making progress.
And I think to call something “Marxist” in this context is easily misunderstood. What is meant by Marxism in this context is simply the importance of empirical factors rather than the mere calculation of ideological factors. It’s true that the ideological factors in the ME are strong; the whole Jihad mentality. But there are real serious structural problems, including overpopulation, and a social, economic, political and religious apparatus that’s incapable of handling the demands of a stagnant population throughout the Arab world.
These underlying causes are the reason why, Israel or no Israel, we would be having a confrontation with Arab terrorists. It may be that Israel was one of things on the minds of the 9/11 thugs. But I am sure that if there was no Israel they would have been thinking about the oil. Let’s be clear on that. These fundamentalists would hate us regardless of Israel.
In the larger picture, are Israeli interests and American interests the same? I don’t think so. For this reason we have to evaluate Israeli lobbying the same way we evaluate other people’s lobbying: is it good for the US?
As for changing our relationship with Israel: well, we give them military aid. Essentially they test our hardware for free. I don’t have a problem with it. We also give them some other aid, but not near as much of that kind of aid than we give other countries.
Israel’s future? Well, they can’t live behind a wall forever. They can’t totally give up the West Bank either, because they need to control the water resources from Lake Tiberias down to the Red Sea. Even now, the Palestinian areas are totally dependent on Israel for power and water. The future is going to be Israeli-Palestinian. The Palestinians have no capability with what land they have left to be autonomous. And Israel has no chance of being autonomous without being dependent on natural resources (principally water) that are in Palestinian areas. So, we’re looking at a binational state down the road.
There’s an extensive discussion of this paper going on at Dan Drezner’s blog. Dan is a political scientist.
It never occurs to the anti-Israel crowd that the US is yanking Israel’s chain and not the other way around. Without an American brake, why would Israel tolerate Gaza? At the minimum Israel could simply cut off the water and electric power service to Gaza.
It’s not fear of offending the Arabs or the EU that prevents her from doing so. America has told Israel don’t do it. US aid comes with strings. Our money our rules. Don’t like the terms don’t take the cash.
I agree with the concept of those who want American aid accept American terms. But let’s not kid ourselves, our terms are for our benefit.
It takes a certain profound level of stupidity to be a Marxist academic. For the sake of argument, the US cuts off aid and arms sales to Israel. What would they think Israel would do? Roll over and die to appease the Muslims and the lefties? No aid means no strings and that means no leverage over Israel.
Unlike the Arab world, Israel is a real and vital productive state. She has homegrown science, technology and industry. Every single Arab state is to varying degrees a failed state. They produce virtually nothing. Even the oil states are nothing more than renters of mineral rights, incapable of maintaining their infrastructure on their own, let alone design and create one.
If Israel actually has the nuclear arsenal she is reputed to have, why would anyone think that such a small country that is nevertheless capable of building such an arsenal would settle for low yield weapons? How do we know there weapons are only low kiloton weapons like the Hiroshima bomb and not far more powerful weapons like those of Russia and the US. That would radically change the equation. Israel could annihilate the oil ticks in an afternoon with plenty of weapons left over. As long as the oil fields are relatively intact who the hell would care? It was not Arabs who discovered the oil, or design and produce the equipment to extract it. Or ship it. Or refine it into useful products.
Has it ever occurred to the lefties, the anti-Semites and the Arab/Muslim sycophants that it is US aid and markets that is also a bribe to keep Israel from dealing harshly with her enemies?
As long as the Arabs and Muslims keep acting as an existential threat to Israel it would be foolish to expect Israel not to take her enemies seriously and act in her own self interest, particularly if we cut them off. At that point what incentive do they have to take our interests into consideration?
If pushed to the wall Israel has nothing to loose by destroying her enemies. And if we drive her away, she will make whatever deals with the devil she must to survive.
It would be considered utter insanity as well as absolute stupidity to drive an ally with such an advanced scientific and technical abilities like the UK in to the arms of one of our key adversaries. No one would dispute that. So why would we do that to a smaller but nevertheless very potent ally like Israel? Something for the Israel haters to ponder. It may have been Sharon who once said “they have the oil but we have the matches”.
I agree that US support for any country comes with strings, and that you can’t influence a country if you don’t support it. That’s why the fantasy of “just withdraw aid from Israel” is stupid.
At the same time, however, Israel really can’t do whatever it wants. Israel needs to import food, fuel, and many other things. It is not autarkic by any stretch of the imagination.
Moreover, probably 50% of the Jewish support for Israel is liberal support, i.e., there are strings attached there, too. Israel would not survive without strong US Jewish support, no matter how many nukes it has.
BTW, Rog -
At the time of his resignation, I was the ONLY blogger to cite Larry Summersí support for Israel and his opposition to ìIsraeli divestmentî as the beginning of his end with the faculty at harvard – a faculty which is patently Leftist and anti-Semitic.
LINK:http://astuteblogger.blogspot.com/2006/02/left-wing-anti-semites-strike-again.html
excerpt:
Like Jospin, Summers supported Israel too much (he opposed divestment of Israeli assets in Harvardís HUGE asset funds) and this pissed off the hard-Left of Harvardís faculty. Then, when he raised accurate but ìpolitically incorrectî questions about gender-based bifurcation in a few academic fields, it was his death knell; the Leftist faculty agitated until they finally forced him to resign this week. THE NY SUN AGREES:
Mr. Summers has shown flashes of brilliance since taking over in July 2001 as president of Americaís oldest, richest, and most famous university. We were among those who cheered his willingness to confront political anti-Semitism on campus; his speech in Memorial Church, where he said the signers of a petition to get the university to divest from Israel were anti-Semitic in their effect if not their intent, is one of the most important ever given by a Harvard president. When Mr. Summers came under attack for remarks on gender differences, we observed – in an editorial called ìThe Soul of Harvardî – that Mr. Summersís travail could not be separated from his defense of Israel.
[http://www.nysun.com/article/27844]
This sad news about Summers reinforces my firm belief that todayís Left – (the Left of Sheehan and Moore and Belafonte and Chavez, to name just a few who have made frequent and blatant anti-Semitic comments) – is utterly reactionary and the true home of anti-Semitism. SCRATCH A LEFTIST AND YOU FIND AN ANTI-SEMITE.
For a small country, that resemble us as close as our closest neighbor to the north and yet surrounded by mortal enemies, it sets them free. Had Zachariah Musawi attacked Israel he would have been just another habitual release.
We sure hate to see what the “lobby” is capable of.
Martin Kramer nailed the key issue in the Walt Meershiemer thesis. Read the following extract, but then RTWT:
… If you need an ally somewhere, don’t you want it to be the smartest, most powerful, and most resourceful guy on the block, who also happens to admire you? …
It took the United States some twenty years to figure this out. … The United States recognized Israel in 1948, but it didn’t do much to help it defend itself, for fear of alienating Arab monarchs, oil sheikhs, and the “Arab street.” …
So Israel went elsewhere. It got guns from the Soviet bloc, and fighter aircraft and a nuclear reactor from France. … Then came June 1967, and Israel showed its stuff. In October 1973, it achieved what military analysts have called an even greater victory …
It was then that the United States began to look at Israel differently: as a potential ally. The fact that the United States hadn’t backed Israel before 1967 didn’t prevent key Arab capitals from falling into the Soviet orbit. To the contrary: along with Nasser, they tried to play Washington off Moscow, with a preference for Moscow since it made policy by uncomplicated diktat. …
Israel looked to be the strongest, most reliable, and most cost-effective ally against Soviet penetration of the Middle East, because it could defeat any combination of Soviet clients on its own. … expanded U.S. support for Israel persuaded Egypt to switch camps, winning the Cold War for the United States in the Middle East. …
Since 1973, the Arab states have understood not only that Israel is strong, but that the United States is Israel’s guarantor. As a result, there have been no general Arab-Israeli wars, and Israel’s Arab neighbors have either made peace with it (Egypt, Jordan), or keep their borders quiet (Syria, Lebanon). The Levant corner of the Middle East, for all the saturation coverage it gets from an overwrought media, has not been a powder keg, and its crises haven’t required direct American military intervention. …
United States support for Israel has enhanced its standing in another way, as the only force, in Arab eyes, that can possibly persuade Israel to cede territory it has occupied since 1967. …
It is this “peace process” that has turned even revolutionary Arab leaders into supplicants at the White House door. …
Compare this to the situation in the Gulf, where U.S. allies are weak. …
It’s precisely because the Gulf doesn’t have an Israelóa strong, capable local allyóthat Walt’s offshore balancing act can’t possibly succeed. If the United States is not perceived to be willing to send in troops thereóand it will only be perceived as such if it sometimes does send themóthen heavily populated and technologically advanced states (formerly Iraq, today Iran) will attempt to muscle Saudi Arabia and the smaller Arab Gulf states, which have the bigger reserves of oil. …
In the overall scheme of the Pax Americana, then, U.S. policy toward Israel and its neighbors over the past thirty years has been a tremendous success. …
Walt’s notion that U.S. support for Israel is the source of popular resentment, propelling recruits to Al-Qaeda, is of a piece with his argument that the United States is hated for what it does (its detested policies), and not what it is (its admired values). In fact, America … [i]s hated because of what they can’t do, and what they aren’t. They can’t accumulate power, and they can’t handle modernity, and they resent anyone who reminds them of it. …
And is it not actually better for the United States to signal the Arabs that until they change, Israel will remain America’s favorite son? … What lever would remain to encourage progressive change in the Arab world, if the United States were to back away from the one democratic, modern, and pluralistic society in the Middle Eastóthe most persuasive and proximate argument made to the Arabs, for the empowering and overpowering might of Western democracy and Western modernity? …
Indeed, for argument’s sake, let’s imagine that we have followed Walt’s policy … How long would it be before the Arabs would revert to their pre-1967 fantasy of defeating or destroying Israel? … How long would it be before Israel felt compelled, as it did in 1967, to launch a preemptive strike against Egypt, with its massive conventional force, or Iran, which even now rattles a nuclear saber against Israel? … It is populated by the remnant of a people that was nearly obliterated in the twentieth century, and that’s unlikely to take chances in the twenty-first. Less American support would mean less Israeli restraint, less Israeli maneuverability, and a quicker Israeli finger on the trigger. …
The idea that everybody should be equal materially is one of the prime arguments against freedom.
Funny how few academics get that these days.
One could get the idea that when the revolution comes, they don’t expect to be in the proletariat, but the nomenclatura.
After reading the article a bit more carefully, I think people are over-reacting if the think that the aim of the article is to get America to stop providing support for Israel.
The real premise of the article is that the US invaded Iraq — with all that that entailed — due to the Israel lobby’s persistence.
I don’t think that premise is accurate, but it’s an argument that can be made, and we don’t need to freak out when it is made.
But the real point of that argument, therefore, concerns not Iraq but what happens next. The authors are concerned about widening the war into Iran and/or Syria, which they also feel is being lobbied for by Israel. There is no question that Israel is lobbying against Iran and Syria. The question is whether the US will go to war as the result of such lobbying.
My guess is no for both. In particular, a war with Iran is going to put a huge fifth column of Iraqi Shi’ites in our rear. Therefore, since the war isn’t going to happen, the authors don’t have to worry about it.
We tolerate Arab and Muslim depravity as long as it suits us. When the price of their insanity gets to high we have two basic options:
1-kill the Arabs ourselves and take the oil fields.
a bit of ruthlessness will solve any lingering insurgency.
2-take an economic hit and make ourselves energy independent. Drill more in Alaska, off the California coast as well as off the eastern seaboard coast. Give incentives to low yield well producers to use additional methods for extraction. Go ethanol and methanol full scale. Extract shale oil in the west. Can it be done with current technology? Yes. Are we at the price/pain threshold? No.
Is Israel autarkic? Off course not. But then again neither is the US or any other country. The only country to really go out on such a scheme is North Korea. We have seen how successful that has been. The point being is if Israel is threatened with extinction today, she is going to take out her enemies tonight and not worry about her next month’s imports. Or ours.
Oil is a commodity. And the oil ticks are rent collectors. Israel on the other hand is something the ticks aren’t; they are real genuine producers of technology and as long as they can do so they will find suppliers for their needs.
We play a tough balancing act. We give aid to Israel in return for her not destroying her enemies. We support the ticks in order to supply us and others with fairly cheap oil and remind them to not get too crazy or we won’t be able to restrain the Israeli’s.
Again for the Israel haters, here is something to ponder. Cut her off and cast her aside, do we really want to see the Chinese Air force armed with the best Russian aircraft employing the best Israeli electronics and avionics and weapons?
Do we or the Europeans really expect Israel to commit national suicide for our short term benefit? For all their bluster the ticks need us as suppliers even more than we need their oil.
First sign of us getting really serious about getting free from them as suppliers the ticks will drop oil prices faster than a whore drops her panties.
As for Harvard perhaps it’s time for the US taxpayer to disinvest from the university. Do we really want to subsidize a university that in the beginning of the 21st century employs professors who use a discredited 19th century method to analyze a 7th century cargo cult? Strip Harvard of it’s tax exempt and charitable status. Deny them accepting 529 plan funds. Cutting the financial oxygen from the Marxist cancer in our schools would be far better use of our tax funds than cutting Israel off.
K-P
The Embargo of 1973/4 used Israel as its excuse. The reason for the formation of OPEC and the Embargo had to do with the prices paid by the 8 Sisters (oil Companies) and the value of a barrel of oil as compared to the traditional value of gold to oil. Not all of OPEC is composed of Arab countries.
Johnson took the US off the gold standard in the 1960s when France wanted to exchange all its Marshall Plan dollars for US Gold. Johnson had a butter and bullets inflation to cope with. Then Nixon in an effort to offset inflation broke the US dollar link of gold at $32 an ounce. And price of gold jumped to the low $50s if I remember correctly.
As a result their benchmark, the value of oil to gold, plummeted and OPEC countries got even. BTW the only port embargoed was Rotterdam.
The 1973 war and the Israeli victory were the reasons stated by the MSM and believed by the world. The real value of oil was never mentioned.
Dear Roger, been really busy at work. Just finished reading your ’88 book: “Raising the Dead” — about Jewish fundamentalists, etc.
I’m sure you say something similar to this above: “because it’s very hard for the secular mind – I know this well from my own experience – to identify with and understand societies deeply bound in faith and tradition. These societies’ behavior must be explained by material conditions – and perhaps they can be, but not nearly as simply, and ultimately dismissively, as these professors do.”
And I think it was true in the book; for Moses Wine; and is true today.
I am not a Jew, but am a former student of Mearsheimer. I have read these posts with great interest. What bothers me is the seeming inability of intelligent poeple to reach a middle ground on this issue.
Why has no one in these posts addressed Israel’s aggresive espinoage against the United States? Or the fact that Israel has sold technology, developed by the US and Israel, to America’s principal adversary, the Chinese?
BTW – just so we are clear, Mearsheimer is from the University of Chicago, Walt is from Harvard. They are two of the world’s most respected IR thinkers and are saying things that many poeple know, but are afraid to.