‘National Journal’ expert: Gaza ought to break ‘taboo’ on discussing Israel lobby

by Philip Weiss on January 6, 2009 · 3 comments

A little more debate. National Journal is having an experts colloquium on Should we maintain a  special relationship with Israel. The discussion was marked till yesterday by an absence of Realists, let alone lefties, and imbalance, with 6 of the then-7 experts saying that Israel and the U.S. are joined at the hip because… well, we're joined at the hip! Dov Zakheim saying there is no Israel lobby, Americans love Israel. Happy talk, now very tired. Now I see they have Paul Pillar, a former CIA guy with a B- record on Iraq and some distinction since as an expostfacto intelligence whistleblower. Here he is on the distinct interests of the US and Israel, beginning with the point that Israel may be a democracy, but 

every occupation is inherently undemocratic).  Litanies of other interests that the United States and Israel share lead people to overlook the other matters–perhaps less numerous, but still very important–on which U.S. and Israeli interests diverge.  The litanies tend to reinforce the unfortunate taboo against any discussion of divergence between US. and Israeli interests.

These patterns are all too apparent in discussion of the current bloodshed in the Gaza Strip. …Most discussion overlooks the astonishing disproportionality represented by those casualties, which in just a few days have become an order of magnitude greater than all of the Israeli victims of all of the rockets fired from the Gaza Strip since the Israelis departed it several years ago.  The discussion also largely bypasses whether the current conflict could have been avoided by more attention to the Israeli blockade of Gaza (the other major subject of the cease-fire that broke down last month) and whether the current military action has any hope of solving the Hamas problem (whether the problem is defined in terms of politics or in terms of security).

If Bruce Hoffman is correct that because of Israel's dependence on the United States it would be responsive to U.S. pressure–and I believe he is–then there is a long continuum between the extremes represented by the current administration's policy at one end and the straw man of "abandonment" at the other.

Weiss comment: This piece by an establishment figure is in its careful way about the Israel lobby, which the great Michael Scheuer dispatches in the same colloquium here as a "cancer" on our foreign policy. Note that only one of the extremes Pillar offers is actually an extreme: neoconservatism. Abandonment is a straw man. John Mearsheimer and the realists are 2-state-guys. Obama's friend Ali Abunimah would insist, I'm sure, on preserving Jewish life, property, even position in his imagined One state. I'm an anti-Zionist 2-state-guy out of a belief that an American interest requires self-determination by a significant and oppressed minority; and as for the Jewish state, I'm somewhat indifferent: there are tons of other religious states. Though the US is shackled to none of their radiators.

Related posts:

  1. ‘Vanity Fair’ Breaks Taboo on Discussing Jewish Rise and WASP Decline
  2. Hawkish ex-CIA counter-terror expert virtually accuses Israel of genocide
  3. In the ‘Wall Street Journal’! (’Israel Is Committing War Crimes’)
  4. Charlie Rose Breaks a Taboo, Allowing Open Discussion of ‘Jewish Lobby’
  5. Vermont Jew breaks personal taboo and decries Gaza as Warsaw Ghetto (Gaza effect in U.S. is still subterranean but Huge)

{ 3 comments }

1 Jim Haygood January 6, 2009 at 12:07 pm

'Abandonment is a straw man.'

It may be. But it's also the neutral option, the default option; the policy the US wisely follows vis-a-vis most of the other hundred-odd nation-states of the planet. Nothing extreme about that, except in relation to the current policy of extreme support for the rogue state of Israel.

The mirror image to current policy would be for the U.S. to recognize Israel for the dangerous destabilizer it is, and take decisive action — such as destroying Israel's airfields and air force — to neutralize the threat.

2 Joachim Martillo January 6, 2009 at 1:48 pm

Merely talking about the Israel Lobby in terms of politics and medium is not sufficient.

At least 1/3 to over 1/2 of major US VC firms have a specialist or specialist team whose job is directing investment to Israel.

These guys act in venture finance just like the media gatekeepers and facilitators for the discussion of the ME.

See Blaming Jews for Financial Meltdown.

Non-Zionist Jews and Jewish Zionists have no problem with working together in corrupt and manipulative social networks in the finance industry.

3 D. January 7, 2009 at 12:00 am

Patrick Lang's contribution is quite good, focusing on the military benefits we receive (or not). He's quite scathing on the much-vaunted Israeli intelligence contributions–

"The Israelis have been careful to separate "things" into neat groupings. They have operated on the basis that their things are their things and US things are their things. I was the principal officer in the US military intelligence relationship with Israel for many years. That was how the relationship worked. It was not a truly two-sided arrangement. The products of Israeli intelligence are sometimes valuable but often do not reach the standard of the legend concerning them. The reverse is not true. … "

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