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\u201cLet\u2019s move over here \u2013 in the corner. It\u2019ll be better for us to talk in private. Or else some people might get the wrong idea,\u201d chuckles John Mearsheimer, a Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago and co-author of the incendiary book, \u201cThe Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy.\u201d The controversial book\u2019s co-author, Stephen Walt, an Academic Dean at the prestigious Harvard Kennedy School of Government, smiles and concurs as we all find comfortable seats in the back end, lounge corner of San Francisco\u2019s Prescott Hotel.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe wrong idea\u201d according to the authors is the inaccurate labeling and smearing of their reputation as \u201cAnti-Semites.\u201d According to them and their supporters, they\u2019ve unfairly earned this slander solely due to their detailed and systematic criticism of an \u201cIsrael Lobby\u201d and its alleged actions in greatly influencing U.S. foreign policy in the volatile Middle Eastern regions of Israel and Palestine.<\/p>\n
The Anti-Defamation League, which retaliated by publishing \u201cThe Deadliest Lies: The Myth of the Israeli Lobby\u201d on the same release date as \u201cThe Israel Lobby,\u201d lambasted the professors\u2019 work as an \u201canti-Jewish screed: a relentless assault in scholarly guise.\u201d However, talking to them in person and later observing their demeanor at a speech followed by question and answer session held at U.C. Berkeley, the two professors both appeared very calm, rational, collected and lacking the stereotypical, passionate vitriol and acidic anger unfortunately espoused by all parties associated with the endless \u201cIsrael-Palestine conflict.\u201d <\/p>\n
For anyone with even the slightest experience in dealing with the \u201cIsrael-Palestine\u201d issue, whether that experience be academic, polemical, political, or even a friendly discussion over coffee, it becomes glaringly obvious the topic is contentious, divisive and, dare I say, explosive. To call it a \u201cpowder keg\u201d of a situation would be a glorious understatement. I spoke with Mearsheimer and Walt regarding their controversial thesis, their critics and detractors, the stifling of academic dissent, foreign policy in the Middle East, and the resulting profound implications for the United State\u2019s relationship with the Muslim World in the 21st century.<\/p>\n
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I guess life must have been boring for you guys, and you had nothing interesting going on. So, you decided to spice things up, right? What goes on in your head that makes you get up one day and decide, \u201cYou know what? I think we\u2019re going to tackle the \u201cIsraeli Lobby.\u201d<\/b><\/p>\n
(Both laugh.) <\/p>\n
WALT: We wrote this not because our lives were boring, but because we were concerned with what was happening with American foreign policy and specifically American Middle East policy. We felt there was an aspect that wasn\u2019t get that much attention in the U.S; the influence of the \u201cIsraeli Lobby\u201d was the elephant in the room that no one was willing to talk about. We believe this was having unfortunate affects on the U.S., other countries, and Israel itself, and no one, especially mainstream circles, would speak or write about it. We thought we were in positions of relative security and if we didn\u2019t [talk about it], then no one else would.<\/p>\n
MEARSHEIMER: Nevertheless, we fully understood we were grabbing the third rail, and pro-Israeli forces in the U.S. would come after us in a serious way. We\u2019ve not been surprised by the reaction to our piece here in the U.S.<\/p>\n
Ok, for the unacquainted, let\u2019s become familiar with the central thesis of \u201cThe Israel Lobby,\u201d lay it out for me and the readers. There\u2019s this group you label the \u201cIsrael Lobby.\u201d Who are they and why should we, as average Joe Americans, even care about them?<\/b><\/p>\n
WALT: The Lobby isn\u2019t a single organization. It is a loose coalition of different groups and individuals that actively work and try to move American foreign policy in a pro-Israel direction and try to maintain a special relationship with the U.S. and Israel. This group includes some predominantly Jewish American groups, such as AIPAC, the Anti Defamation League, The Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations. It also includes non-Jewish groups like Christian Evangelicals, such as Christians United for Israel. This is not a single organization, and they don\u2019t agree on every issue, but they all want to maintain that special relationship. It\u2019s an interest group like other groups we have in U.S. <\/p>\n
Interest groups are part of American politics. So, there\u2019s nothing illegitimate or wrong with what the Israeli Lobby is doing. But, like some other interest groups, when they have profound impact on U.S. foreign policy, they may be leading to foreign policies that aren\u2019t in the interest of the country as a whole. So, Americans should be concerned about this and other interest groups if they are leading to policies that are contrary to the American national interest.<\/p>\n
MEARSHEIMER: American should care about the Israeli Lobby, because it has a profound effect on the shape of U.S.\u2013 Middle East policy. We believe by and large that effect is negative. In other words, the Lobby is pushing policies not in the U.S. interest and not in Israel\u2019s interest either. The best example of that is the Lobby\u2019s influence has with regards to the occupation and the building of settlements in the West Bank. The U.S. has opposed settlement building since the Israelis first conquered the West Bank and Gaza strip in 1967. It has been the official policy of every president since Lyndon B. Johnson to oppose settlement building, but no president has been able to put any meaningful pressure on Israel to stop building settlements. The principle reason is due to the Lobby, which goes to great lengths to make sure no President can force Israel to do something that it doesn\u2019t want to do. Since Israel doesn\u2019t want to end the settlements, no President has been able to put an end to the settlement building. <\/p>\n
What are the consequences that result from this? It is one of the main reasons why the U.S. is deeply hated in the Arab and Islamic world. It is one of the main causes of America\u2019s terrorism problem. It is clear that Osama bin Laden and Khalid Sheikh Muhammad, one of the main architects of the 9-11 attacks, were deeply battered by American policies in the Occupied Territories [in Palestine.] So, we as Americans should care how the Lobby influences U.S.- Middle East policies, because it sometimes influences them in a way which is not in the best interests of the U.S.<\/p>\n
However, doesn\u2019t the publication of your book, the media publicity blitz surrounding it, the release of Jimmy Carter\u2019s \u201cPalestine: Peace not Apartheid,\u201d and Norman Finkelstein\u2019s very public criticism of Alan Dershowitz\u2019s \u201cCase for Israel,\u201d all provide examples that a healthy debate about Israel does indeed exist and the Lobby is either ineffective or not as influential as you suggest?<\/b><\/p>\n
WALT: Nobody believes that the discourse in the U.S. is 100% pro-Israel. That is completely impossible. Our point in the book and our publication of the book doesn\u2019t contradict this, we contend that conversation and public discourse in mainstream media circles is overwhelmingly pro-Israel. It\u2019s not to say occasionally you won\u2019t have other voices out there. But the fact is we had trouble getting our original article published in the U.S., and we have had some coverage, but relatively little, regarding our book in mainstream media circles. <\/p>\n
We\u2019ve seen various efforts made to try and minimize the exposure by getting events cancelled when were supposed to speak about this, or having media arrangements fall through. So, it\u2019s not to say you can\u2019t occasionally get critical views out there, but the balance of coverage on the Middle East coverage is pro-Israel. But, if you look at the critical reviews of the book, the reviews in England have been uniformly positive. Generally, all across Europe as well. There have been a number of positive reviews in Israel itself. But the mainstream reviews in U.S. [is a different story], for example the Washington Post, the New York Times Sunday Book Review; the New Republic had a vicious attack comparing us to Osama Bin Laden and Ahmadinejad. So, getting favorable reviews, including in Israel, is relatively easy outside of the United States.<\/p>\n
MEARSHEIMEHR: Based on reading our book, one would predict we would get hardly any positive reviews in the United States, and a lot of positive reviews outside of U.S., including Israel. That prediction has held up very well. We have been consistently slammed in the mainstream media inside The United States, and garnered lots of positive reviews outside the U.S., which is what the book would predict.<\/p>\n
Is this proof of the New-Anti-Semitism? Is this the smoking gun evidence that the whole world is ganging up against Israel and American Jewry?<\/b><\/p>\n
MEARSHEIMER: The fundamental flaw with that argument is that the book has received favorable treatment in Israel itself. One of the most positive reviews was written in Haaretz itself written by Daniel Levi who is an Israeli Jew. The most favorable review overall was written by an Israeli, Yuri Avnery. This is not to say that there are not people in Israel or U.S. who see our book as evidence of the The New Anti-Semitism. We don\u2019t believe there is a New Anti-Semitism. We believe there is not a lot of Anti-Semitism in the U.S. or in Europe itself. And that charge is leveled at critics of Israel like us and Jimmy Carter, because it is an effective way of marginalizing and sidelining us. We are not Anti-Semites, Jimmy Carter is not an Anti-Semite, and the vast majority of people who like our book are not Anti-Semites, in fact many of them are Jews.<\/p>\n
Briefly describe your initial journey towards publication at the Atlantic Monthly. Why did they ultimately reject the draft, and how did you find a publication home at London Review of Books?<\/b><\/p>\n
MEARSHEIMER: Stephen and I decided in early 2002 to think seriously about writing a piece on The Israeli Lobby and U.S. foreign policy. Then, in the fall of 2002, we were commissioned by The Atlantic to write that piece, and we began working on it. We were slowed down by the fact the Iraq war was about to take place. We couldn\u2019t write about it while it was still happening, because the Lobby was involved in pushing that war. So, we didn\u2019t get a draft of the piece to the Atlantic until the Spring of 2004. After they saw the initial draft, they were very happy with it and asked us to make a number of changes, which we did. We submitted the second draft in January 2005, and shortly thereafter they rejected it. We believe they rejected it because they came to believe the subject was too controversial and would cause problems.<\/p>\n
Were you surprised when it was rejected?<\/b><\/p>\n
WALT: We differed on this. I was more surprised than John was. But we were both disappointed. Again, we had no indication that they weren\u2019t going to publish it, and they had seen all of our previous drafts and had been very positive about all of them. So, for them to suddenly discover at the last minute that the entire piece was unacceptable, and that they didn\u2019t want us to re-write it to make it acceptable, was very disappointing.<\/p>\n
MEARSHEIMER: So, the Atlantic rejected the piece, and of course, surely, they will never say they rejected it out of fear about how the Lobby would react to the piece, but rather how the piece was written. We don\u2019t believe that\u2019s the case. We believe they got cold feet. After it got rejected, we talked to a number of journals about the possibility of getting the piece published somewhere in the 2005.<\/p>\n
By the early summer of 2005, it became clear it would be impossible to get it published in the United States. So, we put the article away and didn\u2019t think it was possible to get it published in the U.S. Someone gave a prominent American academic a copy of the piece we had submitted to the Atlantic, and he knew the editor of the London Review of Books. He wrote to me and asked me if we were interested in publishing it there. We talked about it and thought it was an excellent idea, and we talked to them and made an agreement to submit it by January 2006, a new version of the article. They published it two months later in March 2006. I mean, it\u2019s interesting to think had this academic not gotten hold of the final draft we submitted to the Atlantic, it would have never appeared.<\/p>\n
I want to talk about this \u201cstifling\u201d of criticism. Let\u2019s discuss this recent \u201cGoogle\u201d speech, where you were scheduled to appear, but according to you a Google representative at the last minute told you, \u201cYou can\u2019t appear without having the other side represent,\u201d and then they cancelled at the last second. In your opinion, is this \u201cother side\u201d really present?<\/b><\/p>\n
WALT: As part of the publicity campaign for the book, our publicist began to setup various venues to come talk about the book. Three of those agreements were cancelled. We were cancelled at the Chicago Council of Global Affairs who had invited us to come and speak. The President of the Council got in contact with John and said, \u201cIn order to protect the institution, he was canceling the event. The subject was just too hot to cover,\u201d and we can only appear there if they had someone who would represent the \u201cother side,\u201d and it was too late to get someone from the other side. I should mention they\u2019ve had plenty of people who represent \u201cthe other side\u201d speak at the Chicago Council and those people spoke on their own. Michael Oren, an Israeli American historian, for example has spoken on his own without someone else representing the other side.<\/p>\n
MEARSHEIMER: Dennis Ross would be another good example. And we always say there is nothing wrong with this.<\/p>\n
WALT: We think that\u2019s fine. It\u2019s entirely appropriate for Oren or Dennis Ross or lots of other people to come and speak there. They never said anything to us or our publicist about having someone there to debate us when were arranging everything. It was only after the cancellation, did they mention this. We had an agreement to speak at the City University of New York also in September, but that also fell through without an explanation. Finally, we were scheduled to speak at Google Headquarters here in Mountain View, California, which regularly hosts an author series where they bring authors on a variety of subjects to give talks. So, our publicist got an email the previous Friday late in the afternoon that the event had been cancelled and didn\u2019t give us an explanation. <\/p>\n
We were subsequently told that the decision had been made \u201cvery high up in the company,\u201d and the Google representative said they had never seen an event like this get cancelled like the way they did. They said they would be interested in possibly rescheduling us, but we\u2019ve never been able to reschedule the event, so clearly, it\u2019s not going to happen. But, just to add a number of other places where we\u2019ve spoken, such as the World Affairs Council in Dallas, the Hammer Museum, The City Club of Cleveland, all these people told us they had gotten emails, phone calls, or messages protesting our appearance and suggesting we be dis-invited. To their great credit, none of these places gave into that kind of pressure. In each of these places, we appeared without note-worthy incident; we had good discussions, they asked challenging questions. Some people agreed with us, some people disagreed with us a lot, but in all these places we had a very useful discussion and nothing bad happened at all.<\/p>\n
I want you to hear some comments by your critics. George Schultz, Reagan\u2019s Secretary of State, writes in the new book \u201cThe Deadliest Lies: The Myth of the Israeli Lobby\u2026\u201d<\/b><\/p>\n
MEARSHEIMER: That book was scheduled to be published on exactly the same date as our book was published on September the 4th. <\/p>\n
WALT: Publishers know when things are going to appear months in advance and once our publisher made it clear it was going to be on their Fall list, then they can start preparing \u201cThe Deadliest Lies,\u201d which is a very thin book that didn\u2019t involve much work, and thus it could be arranged to have it timed with the release of our book. I mean, there are no secrets in the publishing world. Nothing unusual about this.<\/p>\n
MEARSHEIMER: The Abraham Foxman book [\u201cThe Deadliest Lies] and the George Schultz preface in the forward are not based on the book we wrote, \u201cThe Israeli Lobby,\u201d because it hadn\u2019t been published at that time. It was rather based on the article that was published [in 2006.] <\/p>\n
Well, he writes in the forward, \u201c\u2026those who blame Israel and its Jewish supporters for U.S. policies they do not support \u2013 are wrong. They are wrong because, to begin with, support for Israel is in our [The U.S.] best interests. They are also wrong because Israel and its supporters have the right to try to influence U.S. policy. And they are wrong because the U.S. government is responsible for the policies it adopts.\u201d If you both concede that what the Israeli Lobby does is within the confines of a democratic process, then isn\u2019t Schultz\u2019s critique valid? If the Lobby isn\u2019t working democratically, then how is it abusing the process?<\/b><\/p>\n
WALT: We make it very clear in our book that what the Israeli Lobby is doing is not an abuse of the Democratic Process, but we think all Americans have the right to organize around political causes they believe about. But the fact that it is legitimate activity doesn\u2019t mean it is in the best interest of the country. Lots of other interest groups have skewed American policy in a way that is not good for the country as a whole. We never argue, and we don\u2019t believe what the Lobby is doing is illegitimate, inappropriate, or not Democratic, it\u2019s just that the effects are harmful to the United States.<\/p>\n
Now, if George Schultz disagrees with us, then he can make that argument and we can have a debate on it. One of the reasons we wrote the book is to try and encourage debate. \u201cWhether or not unconditional support for Israel is good for the U.S. or not? Was it making Americans safer? Was it Americans more popular around the world? Was it improving our relation with allies in The Middle East and elsewhere?\u201d If all those are true, then, maybe, we\u2019re wrong. We\u2019re making the argument that unconditional support for Israel, as encouraged by the Israeli Lobby, has been deeply harmful.<\/p>\n
I\u2019d alert anybody who reads this article that they should go back and read page 112 of George Schultz\u2019s memoirs called \u201cTurmoil and Triumph\u201d where he talks about his own involvement trying to do Middle East policy in the face of pressure from the Lobby. When he and President Regan were dealing with the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, he discovered Congress was about to vote a $250 million supplemental military aid package to Israel after the invasion of Lebanon, after [Israel] had used cluster bombs, after the Shatila-Sabra camp massacres. This is what he writes in his own memoirs:<\/p>\n
\u201cWe fought the supplement and fought it hard. President Reagan and I weighed in personally making numerous calls to Senators and Congressman. The supplement sailed right by us and was approved by Congress as though President Reagan and I had not even been there. I was astonished and disheartened. This brought home for me vividly Israel\u2019s leverage in our Congress. I saw that I must work carefully with the Israelis if I was to have any handle on Congressional action that might affect Israel, and if I were to maintain Congressional support for my efforts to make peace or progress in the Middle East.\u201d<\/p>\n
In 1982, and when he wrote his memoirs, he understood the Israeli Lobby was very powerful and he understood that it wasn\u2019t good; it was interfering with what he and President Reagan wanted to do. But he understood it was too powerful to fight it. He might\u2019ve forgotten that in 2006-2007, but that\u2019s what he wrote in his own memoirs.<\/p>\n
MEARSHEIMER: There\u2019s no question that Israeli supporters in the U.S. have the right to push pro-Israeli policies. Their behavior in that regard is as American as apple pie. However, there is one form of behavior that many members of the lobby engage in that is antithetical to the American way of doing business. That is the proclivity for smearing critics of Israel. If you criticize Israeli policy, or the power of the Lobby in formulating, or influencing U.S. Middle East policy, you are almost certain to be called an Anti-Semite or worse. Smearing people has become one of the key tactics that large numbers of organizations and individuals use in the Lobby to deal with critics, and this is not as American as apple pie. This kind of behavior should be condemned.<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s switch gears and talk about an Arab-American professor at Columbia, Joseph Massad, who published a stinging criticism of your book in Al-Ahram. He suggests your thesis falls into a predictable trap, and I quote him, \u201c\u2026the attraction of this argument is that it exonerates the United States\u2019 government from all the responsibility and guilt that it deserves for its policies in the Arab world and gives false hope to many Arabs and Palestinians who wish America would be on their side instead of on the side of their enemies.\u201d So, my question, after listening to this, does your thesis help exonerate the U.S. government from all its responsibility? Moreover, perhaps the U.S. is in fact using Israel, instead of Israel and its Lobby using the U.S, correct?<\/b><\/p>\n
WALT: Professor Massad greatly overstates it when he says this exonerates the U.S. government from all responsibility. We understand that actors in the U.S. government are independent actors to some degree. You take the Iraq war where we believe the Israeli Lobby had a key role in pushing the U.S. to do this, but ultimately George Bush made the decision to invade. So, we wouldn\u2019t let him or Vice President Cheney off the hook. We are not exonerating those people in the U.S. government. Any official or most officials in the government, and certainly people in Congress are shaped by the political and social forces that exist within American society. They always pay attention where the political support is going to be, and it\u2019s quite clear, as we just saw from the George Schultz quote a moment ago, where the Secretary of State thinks policy ought to go in one direction [not giving Israel the supplementary aid] and President Reagan agrees and thinks it\u2019s a terrible idea, but they get rolled by Congress as if they had not even been there. <\/p>\n
So, I think the idea that the U.S. government would be pursuing the same policies vis a vis the Middle East the same policies it would be pursuing absent the Israeli Lobby and the political power of AIPAC, I think it is just wrong. It has been the official policy of every president, every president since Lyndon Johnson to not support the settlements but none of them ever do anything about it, and they are the Presidents. It\u2019s because of an array of political forces that make it impossible for them to take action. Problem #2 is the dog wagging the tail argument, here the argument is that Israel basically is our tool, we give it orders, and it does what we want it to do in the Middle East.<\/p>\n
MEARSHEIMER: That Israel is our Rottweiler argument.<\/p>\n
WALT: I mean, if you look carefully at the record, there is not much evidence that it is the tool we are using to shape the Middle East. I\u2019ll give you three examples. One is the first Gulf War of \u201991 where the U.S. goes into throw Hussein\u2019s Iraq out of Kuwait, Israel didn\u2019t participate in the war, not because they didn\u2019t want to, but if they had participated the Arab coalition would have fallen apart. So, we went to great lengths to keep them out. And then we had to defend them when the SCUD missiles starting coming to Israel. The second example is the Iraq War of 2003, here we are our knocking off an Israeli enemy, but the Israelis are not there doing it, it\u2019s us doing it. They are on the sideline yet again. The third example is the Lebanon War in the Summer of 2006. We don\u2019t like Hezbollah very much, and of course the Israelis don\u2019t like them very much, but there is absolutely no evidence that we were pushing the Israelis to go after Hezbollah. More importantly, we certainly didn\u2019t want the Israelis to go after Lebanon. If Israel was taking our orders in the Summer of 2006, they would have left Beirut alone. They would have done nothing to undermine the democratically elected government in Lebanon, which is something that Bush takes great credit for. We had helped put the government in power, and it was one of the big successes you could point to in Bush\u2019s Middle East policy. If Israel was taking orders from us, they would\u2019ve had a very different approach than us in Lebanon. It\u2019s not that there isn\u2019t some collusion, but the idea they are our obedient servant carrying out the wishes of American Imperialism in the Middle East is just dead wrong<\/p>\n
MEARSHEIMER: Two quick points. The U.S. can\u2019t use Israel to support its policies in the Middle East in a large part because it is radioactive, and by that I mean so unpopular in the region. We couldn\u2019t use Israel in the first Gulf War or second Gulf War. My second point would be to focus on what happened after the Shah of Iran fell in 1979. Up until that point, the U.S. had relied heavily on the Shah to do much of its heavy lifting in the Middle East. After the Shah fell, the U.S. was deeply concerned that the Soviet Union might intervene in Iran, and number two that Iraq or Iran might try to dominate the region. In that case, we would need military forces in that region to deal with the problem did it arrive.<\/p>\n
So, the United States, if we are to believe the story where Israel is our Rottweiler, then we should\u2019ve been able to turn to Israel to replace the Shah. But, of course, we couldn\u2019t do that, and instead we had to build the rapid deployment force, which is an over the horizon military capability. But we need bases in the Middle East to deploy equipment for the rapid deployment force should it have to come into the region quickly. None of the equipment for the rapid deployment force was put in Israel, because it was unacceptable for the U.S. to station or to put equipment in Israel. So, what we did is we developed a rapid development force of our own, and we deployed that equipment in Arab countries.<\/p>\n
Why do these pro-Israeli groups have such a loyal and firm alliance with hawkish, Neo-conservatives and the Christian Right in recent years? This is, after all, the same Christian Right, if you read some of their ideology and dogma, who believe that the Second coming of Christ will end in either the mass slaughter or mass conversion of Jews in Israel.<\/b><\/p>\n
WALT: The Israel Lobby is a heterogeneous group. They all want to maintain a special relationship with the U.S., but they don\u2019t agree on everything. There are a number of prominent groups, such as AIPAC, the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish organizations, the ADL, the Zionist Organization of America. There are a number of moderate groups that support a 2 state solution as well. The Israeli Policy Forum, the Americans for Peace Now are just a few examples. Then, there is this movement of Christian Evangelicals known as Christian Zionists. The more influential and wealthier organizations have tended to be right of center and more hard-line. AIPAC for example is hard-line. The Zionist Organization of America is very hard-line, opposing a 2 state solution.<\/p>\n
Wait, what exactly do you mean by \u201chard-line?\u201d<\/b><\/p>\n
WALT: Generally those who oppose a 2 state solution, or like AIPAC never endorsing it. And also, basically supporting the \u201cSettlement\u201d enterprise. Groups like Israeli Policy Forum believe in the 2 state solution and oppose the Settlement enterprise.<\/p>\n
MEARSHEIMER: It\u2019s marginally a function of how you think of the [President] Clinton parameters. The Clinton parameters would be a broad outline for a 2 state solution. Organizations like the Israeli Policy Forum, people like Dennis Ross endorse the parameters, I mean he helped craft them.<\/p>\n
WALT: I think we argue this in our book, if you look at the major organizations they tend to be more right of center, but they have become more conservative over time, and become more aligned with the Likud party in Israel, more aligned at least politically with conservative movements here in the U.S. The Israeli Lobby has moved in a rightward direction over time. And, it has been strengthened by the Christian Evangelicals who believe, and I\u2019m oversimplifying a lot here, but their view of Israel is shaped by their interpretation of Old Testament prophecy. They believe the re-establishment of a Jewish state in all of Palestine is foreordained in Biblical prophecy, and it is a key sign leading up to the Second Coming, the End of times.<\/p>\n
Like a pre-requisite?<\/b><\/p>\n
WALT: It\u2019s a pre-requisite, it\u2019s gotta\u2019 happen. It\u2019s one of several steps we have to go through. So, they oppose any form of Palestinian state, they oppose any withdrawl of the settlement enterprise, because they think that\u2019s inconsistent with what the Bible has predicted.<\/p>\n
MEARSHEIMER: What the Bible says is necessary for the End times to come about.<\/p>\n
WALT: Now, as you said, obviously this image of what happens to Israel or the Jewish people is not optimistic. Either they die, are converted, or they get left behind. But, obviously, if you are Jewish you don\u2019t believe any of that prophecy stuff, and therefore there has been a tactical alliance between these groups, because it strengthens the political influence of both hard-line organizations. To put it in crude terms, I think the Jewish groups don\u2019t much care for the Christian Zionist\u2019s other views, because they don\u2019t think they\u2019re true, and they\u2019re happy to get their support on this foreign policy dimension. As we can see the support for our very confrontational policy with Iraq and Iran today, where the Christian Zionists have been very bellicose, as have members of the Israeli Lobby been as well.<\/p>\n
MEARSHEIMER: An additional point to make is that Israel, itself, has been progressively moving to the right as well. If you look carefully at Israeli public opinion, there is little support for the Clinton parameters, which is the only meaningful way you can create a viable Palestinian state. The Israelis say they are willing to give the Palestinians a state and favor a 2 state solution, but when you see what the majority of the Israelis want to give the Palestinians it does not in any shape, way, or form add up to a viable Palestinian state. Basically, it would be a series of enclaves in the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip would be another enclave. These enclaves would not be territorially contiguous, not connected, and the Israelis wouldn\u2019t give the Palestinians control of East Jerusalem. The point I\u2019m trying to make is that the fact the Lobby is dominated by hard-line individuals is facilitated by the fact that it is a worldview that is largely reflected by a majority of Israelis.<\/p>\n
Professor Mearsheimer, you and several academics recently convened in Chicago, Rockafeller Chapel, and you said academia is the only space where Israel is \u201ctreated as a normal country, where past and present actions are critically assessed,\u201d and the place where public opinion on the matter is most accurately reflected. If that is the case, then how do we explain the abrupt denial of tenure of Israeli and Dershowitz critic Norman Finkelstein? [Finkelstein\u2019s very public tenure controversy at DePaul University ended in September \u201907 when the Board decided to reject his tenure bid, despite overwhelming support for Finkelstein by his peers, his students, and national and international scholars]<\/b><\/p>\n
MEARSHEIMER: I said in my comments, academia \u201ctends to be the one place,\u201d where Israel is treated like a normal country. I think there\u2019s no question that there is more criticism of Israel in the academic world and in college campuses, then there is in mainstream media. Nevertheless, the Lobby works very hard to influence the discourse on university campuses and goes to considerable length in influencing hiring and promotion decisions regarding critics of Israel. The Normal Finkelstein case is illustrative of this. Nobody disputes that the Lobby put considerable pressure on DePaul University to deny Finkelstein tenure. They will deny that the pressure had any effect on the ultimate decision to deny him tenure, but this is hard to believe.<\/p>\n
You suggest in your book that the image and framing of the issues has been skewed to reflect Israel as a \u201cDavid\u201d fighting a \u201cGoliath\u201d that is the Palestinians and neighboring Arab enemies. How much of this alleged symbolism is actually reflected in reality? How has this image been popularized and cemented in the mindset of American psychology?<\/b><\/p>\n
MEARSHEIMER: There is no question that Israeli\u2019s supporters have been very successful in conveying the message to most Americans that Israel is a David surrounded by an Arab goliath. Anyone who looks carefully at the history of the conflict quickly discovers that is not the case. To be more specific, Israelis won the 1948 war decisively, they won the 1956 decisively, they won the 1967 war decisively, and they won the 1973 decisively after suffering a massive surprise attack. All those victories were gained before massive U.S. aid came to Israel.<\/p>\n
WALT: Up thru \u201967 that\u2019s exactly right. The U.S. was starting to provide significant military aid after \u201967, but the aid goes up even more after the \u201973 war.<\/p>\n
MERSHEIMER: So, Israel won those 4 wars, and since then no Arab state has picked a fight with Israel for the simple reason they all understand Israel is the \u201cGoliath\u201d and they are the \u201cDavids.\u201d Today, Israel has the most powerful conventional army in the region by far. It\u2019s the only state in the region that has nuclear weapons, it has a couplhem very angry. The fact we are so hypocritical and inconsistent with our own professed values.<\/p>\n
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Correspondent Wajahat Ali speaks with Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer, authors of the book “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy,” about how their groundbreaking book and ideas have been received.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2673","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-newsmakers","category-wajahat-ali"],"yoast_head":"\n