PROFESSORS TONE DOWN ‘LOBBY’ CRITIQUE CRTIQUE
By Paras D. Bhayani
Harvard Crimson, MA
September 10, 2007 2:33 AM
Authors refine and revisit original controversial arguments in new
bestselling book
The two professors who came under fire last year for arguing that
a pro-Israel lobby distorts U.S. foreign policy have returned with
a book, this time toning down parts of their argument and offering
rebuttals to critics of their controversial claims.
"The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy," by international relations
scholars Stephen M. Walt of the Kennedy School of Government and
John J. Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago, hit store shelves
last month and has landed on the New York Times bestseller list-a
distinction shared by few academic books.
The two scholars drew intense criticism when they published an article
in March 2006 arguing that current levels of American support for
Israel can only be explained by the power of the "Israel Lobby," a
"loose coalition" of lobby groups, think tanks, and academics who work
to advance Israel’s foreign-policy interests. The "core" of the lobby,
the professors wrote, is composed of American Jews.
The publication of the essay prompted an unusually vitriolic debate
in academic circles worldwide. The professors drew criticism from
high-profile professors including Frankfurter Professor of Law Alan M.
Dershowitz and MIT linguist Noam Chomsky, while earning praise from
others, like New York University historian Tony Judt.
While far less has been written about Walt and Mearsheimer’s latest
work, an examination of the book shows that it is not like the original
essay in all respects.
Perhaps as a result of the reaction to the essay, the authors take
pains in the book to show that their criticisms of the Israel lobby can
be applied to other lobbies, while also spending more time tracing the
American-Israel relationship. The authors also clarify many of their
criticisms, bringing a less inflammatory tone to the book as a whole.
THE NEW AND THE OLD
In the first part of the book, Walt and Mearsheimer advance their
thesis in three parts-as they did in the original article, which was
published in the London Review of Books.
First, they show that the U.S. provides a high level of support for
Israel. Second, they argue that neither strategic considerations
nor moral ones are valid explanations for the level of American aid
to Israel.
Third, they conclude that the reason for American support for Israel
is the lobby, which they argue has a powerful influence over both
American policymaking institutions and public discourse.
This first section contains few new arguments, but unlike in the
article, the authors devote significant space to a detailed discussion
on history, tracing both the evolution of American relations with
Israel and the development of the lobby.
Walt and Mearsheimer argue that previous American presidents, like
Harry S. Truman and Dwight D.
Eisenhower, were much more evenhanded in dealing with Israel and
its Arab neighbors. Only as the power of the lobby grew throughout
the second half of the twentieth century, they contend, did American
support for Israel increase alongside it.
The discussion of the composition of the lobby is similar, and more
extensive, than the one in the original article, though the professors
in the book admit that the lobby’s boundaries are "somewhat fuzzy." At
one point, they even write that "using the term ‘Israel lobby’ is
itself somewhat misleading, insofar as many of the individuals and
some of the groups in this loose coalition do not engage in formal
lobbying activities."
Walt and Mearsheimer also discuss the role non-Jewish actors, most
notably "Christian Zionists," play in the lobby.
In the second part of the book, as in the article, the authors take
up the influence of the lobby, writing about its impact on relations
with the Palestinians, the war in Iraq, policy toward Syria, possible
military action against Iran, and the 2006 war in Lebanon.
The main arguments are very similar to those made in the article,
though the authors do make two new acknowledgments regarding Iraq
and Iran.
In the original article, the professors claimed that the lobby played a
critical role in taking the U.S. to war with Iraq but never mentioned
the role of the Sept. 11 attacks in any part of the piece. In the
book, the authors write that "the war would probably not have occurred
absent the September 11 attacks," a position they first took in the
July/August 2006 issue of Foreign Policy magazine.
Additionally, many commentators have criticized Walt and Mearsheimer’s
claim that the lobby led the U.S. into Iraq by pointing out that
the Israeli political leadership regarded Iran as a greater threat
than Iraq.
The professors concede this in the book and adjust their original
point: while the lobby would have preferred to attack Iran, they say,
it was perfectly happy to support an invasion of Iraq after it saw
the direction in which the Bush administration was heading.
The discussion of the 2006 war between Israel and Lebanon is also new,
as the article was published before the conflict erupted. To Walt and
Mearsheimer, the war is a microcosm of the problem posed by the lobby:
the conflict, they say, was a "strategic folly" for both the U.S. and
Israel but enjoyed the support of the American government due to the
power of the lobby.
A NEW TONE
Though Walt and Mearsheimer’s central arguments change only marginally,
the book does contain several new assertions and clarifications which,
taken together, have the effect of moderating their overall tone. Even
Ira E. Stoll ’94, managing editor of The New York Sun and a strong
critic of the authors, acknowledged that the new presentation is more
"polished."
For example, the professors situate the Israel lobby as just one
lobby among a host of ethnic lobbies-something they did not do
in the original article. The authors write that "ethnic lobbies
representing Cuban Americans, Irish Americans, Armenian Americans,
and Indian Americans have [also] managed to skew U.S. foreign policy
in directions they favored."
Likewise, in the article, the professors wrote that the expansion of
Israeli settlements in the West Bank and Gaza have led to "crimes
perpetrated against the Palestinians." While they do not back off
this claim, they acknowledge in the book that "virtually all states
have committed serious crimes at one time or another" and that "some
of Israel’s Arab neighbors have at times acted with great brutality."
On the question of Israel’s security, the professors repeat well over a
dozen times that there is a "strong moral case" for Israel’s existence,
something they mentioned only briefly in the original article. They
also argue in the book that "the United States should stand willing
to come to Israel’s assistance if its survival were ever in jeopardy."
At one point, the professors even write that they themselves "are
‘pro-Israel,’ in the sense that we support its right to exist,
admire its many achievements, want its citizens to enjoy secure and
prosperous lives, and believe that the U.S. should come to Israel’s
aid if its survival is in danger."
Finally, gone from the book are two items that had incensed critics
of the original essay.
First, the authors no longer assert that Israeli "citizenship is
based on the principle of blood kinship," a charge that had prompted
Harvard’s Dershowitz to declare that the "mendacious emphasis on
Jewish ‘blood’ "might indicate that the professors had used "neo-Nazi
propaganda" in their sourcing.
And second, the pair use a lowercase "l" in the word "lobby," in
contrast to the capital "L" used in the article. Many critics of the
original essay had taken issue with Walt and Mearsheimer’s use of
a capital "L," saying that it made the lobby seem like a unified,
monolithic "cabal" without internal disagreements.
THE EARLY RESPONSE
So far, the reception of the book has been more muted than the response
following the original essay.
Over the past week, the book has ranked in first place in three
categories-general U.S. history, Israeli history, and international
relations-according to Amazon.com data. It also reached number 17
on the New York Times bestseller list for hardcover nonfiction as of
yesterday evening.
Few reviews of the book have appeared so far, but those that have
been published range widely.
Stoll wrote in his review that the authors’ command of the relevant
facts is "shaky" and that "anti-Semitism manages to poke through"
in the book.
"[A]t least two professors are calling not for a defeat of the Islamist
terrorists but for appeasing them at Israel’s expense," wrote Stoll,
a former Crimson president.
On the other end of the spectrum, Publisher’s Weekly praised the
authors for "careful reasoning and meticulous documentation" while
also acknowledging that the book "increase[s] the megatonnage of
their explosive claims."
And The New York Times, one of the few major newspapers to run a
review, has taken the middle ground, calling the book "ruthlessly
realistic" and saying the authors make their case "deliberately
and dispassionately." But the review went on to call the book a
"prosecutorial brief" and said that its "general tone of hostility
to Israel grates on the nerves."
Many of the strongest voices of condemnation from the first time
around have remained silent so far. Most notably, the American Israel
Public Affairs Committee, a group that Walt and Mearsheimer say is
the central part of the lobby-and, indeed, calls itself "America’s
Pro-Israel Lobby"-has said it will not respond to the book, according
to The Jerusalem Post.
At Harvard, Dershowitz, Professor of Public Service David R. Gergen,
and Murrow Professor of Press and Public Policy Emeritus Marvin Kalb
all criticized the original article but have not yet said anything
publicly about the book.
And though Peretz Professor of Yiddish Literature Ruth R. Wisse has
not directly commented on the book, she released a book of her own
earlier this month titled "Jews in Power." In her work, Wisse makes
a point of taking to task those who, like Walt and Mearsheimer,
accuse the Bush administration of caving in to pressure from Jewish
organizations when pushing to invade Iraq.