Every week or so in Haaretz, Shmuel Rosner rates American presidential candidates on Who is best for Israel? Giuliani is usually first, what with all the neocons in his braintrust, and Hillary is not that far behind. Ron Paul is way down. This is the way that Israel happily messes in our politics. Rosner is addressing American Jews and telling them to support Giuliani and Hillary because Israel thinks they won't support the division of Jerusalem. It's a score-card for donors or voters.
Mearsheimer and Walt are playing the same card but the opposite way in the LA Times, where they write that Hillary and Obama and every other presidential candidate are "false friends" to Israel because they are not calling it on the occupation and its behavior toward the Palestinians. "If the Democratic and Republican contenders were true friends of Israel, they would be warning it about the danger of becoming an apartheid state, just as Carter did."
Any reader of this blog knows that I love Walt and Mearsheimer, but it seems to me they are not being realists about this. Maybe this is Israel: Maybe--per Rosner--it's a country that loves to occupy Arab lands. Certainly it's been doing so for 40 years without interruption and without serious demurral. Do we say that the caste system is not in India's best interests? Or that agricultural subsidies are bad for France? Or that nukes are not in Iran's best interest? Things are too confused here. Why don't we let Israel be Israel and the U.S. be the U.S.? As W&M say elsewhere, let's figure out the American interest here-which is not to support the oppression of Arabs, whether in Palestine or Syria--and stick with it. Part of the dual-loyalty problem is insisting that America and Israel share interests, so we have to look out for Israel. We don't. We're different countries.
P.S. Bury the lead: Congrats to the LA Times for giving prominence to W&M's ideas, with a giant op-ed on a Sunday. Perestroika.
From the Mearsheimer/Walt essay: [Absent the two-state solution, Israel] "can retain control of the territories it occupies or surrounds, building more settlements and bypass roads and confining the Palestinians to a handful of impoverished enclaves in Gaza and the West Bank. Israel would control the borders around those enclaves and the air above them, thus severely restricting the Palestinians' freedom of movement. But if Israel chooses this second option, it will lead to an apartheid state."
This is disingenuous in two respects. First, it employs the salesman's "false choice" close, implying that the two choices offered (Palestinian statehood or apartheid) are the only ones. A third option, unitary state, is not even considered.
Second, the occupation, the settlement-building, Israel's "restricting the Palestinians' freedom of movement," have existed for 40 years now. These policies will not "lead to" an apartheid state; it already IS an apartheid state. Would Mearsheimer and Walt have claimed in 1961, when East Germany began building its equivalent of Israel's "security fence" around Berlin, that it was "becoming" a totalitarian state? Winston Churchill had reached that conclusion in 1946, in his "Iron Curtain" speech.
Apparently Mearsheimer and Walt have been cowed into pulling their punches with carefully-hedged weasel words. Let's face it; housing, schools and the military in Israel are almost completely segregated. If U.S. aid to Israel were made contingent upon Israel's compliance with the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Fair Housing Act of 1968, Israel would not receive a penny of U.S. aid.
It seems as if Mearsheimer and Walt have their own political agenda to advance. If they can't call a spade a spade, they should sink back into the academic obscurity from which they emerged.
The editor of Rosner's paper wants America to Rape Israel and force it to give up the settlements.
Gee, what do you know, diversity of opinion even at Haaretz.
The reason you sound foolish so often Phil is that you construct the world in black and white terms and then are surprised when your beliefs don't map to the way the world actually is.
"Ron Paul is way down." So far down he doesn't even make Rosner's Rate Who's Good For Israel list.
What's good for South Africa is good for Israel?
I thought the Times should have given the W&M piece the cover of the Opinion page myself.
Don't miss this one.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7C8avvdzR4
"Part of the dual-loyalty problem is insisting that America and Israel share interests, so we have to look out for Israel. We don't. We're different countries."
This is anti semitic talk Mr. Weiss.
Don't you know, Israel's and USA's interests are the same. EXACTLY the same.
Didn't you know that?