Did you notice what a divisive election we just had in the U.S. and there wasn’t a peep about our Middle East policy? Here’s an interesting interview at the Institute for Palestine Studies with Lawrence Davidson, a professor of history in Pennsylvania, in which he argues that American policy in the Middle East is entirely-lobby-driven. Davidson is author of a piece on Truman and the establishment of the state of Israel, and he sees the Israel lobby as a growing force in American political life from the 1920s and 30s, when the Congress bought the lobby line and the executive dismissed it– and then Truman came to power. Interviewer is Clea Thouin.
Davidson: Harry Truman was the first president that essentially carried the Congressional attitude that Palestine is essentially a domestic political issue over into the presidency. Now the Zionists had the influence in the Congress, the political parties, and the presidency. Harry Truman was the tipping point for that.
CT: What could possibly break the influence of the Israel lobby in Washington? And what is the probability of that happening anytime soon?
LD: Well, if you want to change policy what you have to do is compete at this special interest level. And that is what is kind of starting. You saw Mearsheimer and Walt’s book on the Israel lobby along with President Carter’s book Peace not Apartheid; these are the two opening shots in a campaign to essentially change, at least, elite public opinion. Then you get J Street, the formulation of J Street, as a way of trying to compete with AIPAC.
The real question is, yeah, in the long run we will be able to compete against AIPAC and eventually kind of almost deny it of the kind of influence that it has now, the question is will there be anything left of Palestine at the time. Once you have got the Israelis successfully absorbing all the lands they want, then AIPAC can go away, they all can retire and go up and ski in Utah or something like that..
[George] Marshall is a very respected man, he is going to be the Secretary of State, and Truman respects him. But, he is not going to let Marshall dictate policies that Truman thinks are going to lose him the election. There is no point of leverage that they can work against him.
Truman, and the Zionists too, are actually the types of people who hold grudges. So the people like [Loy] Henderson, the head of the Near East and Africa division who worked very diligently pushing what he considers to be the best policy for the United States, ultimately he will accede to the President, but he is going to push what he thinks he knows. Truman takes homage to this and afterwards they will, essentially, get him out. They will punish him and send him to India or something like that. Truman is a gruff, aggressive, insecure, biased kind of guy and if you stand against him he is going to hold a grudge.
CT: How else is Truman’s legacy still with us?
LD: Well, I think that it is with us by virtue of the fact that everyone now knows that the State Department has essentially been emasculated. The tradition of it being a center of folks who have deep knowledge of different parts of the world, and that they then give that knowledge to the policy makers who take that knowledge seriously is gone. They still have plenty of people who know a lot, and some of my students want to go into the Foreign Service and I always tell them you can do this, but I cannot imagine a more frustrating job than being a middle echelon player in the State Department or even in the intelligence agencies, because you develop all of this knowledge and insight, you know the languages, you know the cultures, all of that stuff about a particular area and then you give your advice, you write your reports, and if it does not fit into some domestic political ideological angle that is working now amongst the Congress of the political parties, then they just trash it.
