How Israel's lobby chills Middle East debate

[bemildred]

M J Rosenberg

---

But then one of the senators who had the letter gave it to the New York Times. And within minutes the phones started ringing off the hook. Reporters and AIPAC donors (who had no idea Dine had signed off on the letter) were going crazy.

Levin was asked to appear on all three Sunday morning talk shows. He declined. In fact, he took off for Moscow, on a long-planned trip.

On Sunday, news of the Levin "Letter of 30" was the lead story in the New York Times.

"Thirty United States senators, including many of Israel's staunchest supporters, have written a letter criticising Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir and his Likud party, suggesting they may be obstructing efforts to reach a peace settlement in the Middle East.

The extraordinary public criticism of Israel was contained in a letter addressed to secretary of state George P Shultz, who returned home today after several days in the Middle East. Mr Shultz has proposed the broad outlines of an interim settlement between Israel and the Palestinians ...

The senators who signed the letter said they were dismayed at Mr Shamir's continued resistance to the concept of Israel's ceding some territories it occupies in exchange for peace, a cornerstone of Mr Shultz's efforts. Although the letter also criticises Arab states except for Egypt, congressional aides said it was intended principally to send a message to Mr Shamir and the Likud bloc."

So significant was the fact that any US senator had criticised any Israeli policy in any way (albeit mildly), that the Sunday Times reprinted the whole text.

http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/06/20116291558270488.html

[FLAprogressive]

1. Would K&R if I could.

[oberliner]

2. Good old MJ Rosenberg

Funny how he claims that "criticising Israel is dangerous business" yet he publishes articles that criticize Israel on a regular basis in a variety of major news outlets and has been doing so for years.

And this particular article consists of a story from 20 something years ago. A story he has told (and published) before.

He writes article after article attacking AIPAC and "The Israel Lobby" (often with no new information) claiming that they are somehow "chilling" debate about the Middle East in spite of the fact that he regularly participates in that debate endlessly and freely.

I can't help but find him to be a completely ridiculous individual.

[bemildred]

3. Well, he's not a politician.

The story has resonance with recent events.

But yeah, I think the general self-serving spinelessness of the Congress has as much to do with it as any actual danger to them or their careers, though it would seem likely that persistence in criticism of Israel could affect their campaign cash receipts. Basically, as a politician, with issues where you gain nothing and can lose a lot, they take the easy road most of the time.

[Jefferson23]

8. I like Rosenberg, his prior work for AIPAC is valuable on a few levels

and this story in particular points to the fabricated lies that will be constructed to let politicians
know it's not worth your time to fight...not that I am excusing the behavior of the Congress, Senators etc.

That the story is old is what makes it important today, as there has been no remedy from these tactics. The recent pathetic
display involving cheering/standing ovations for Netanyahu only indicates the strength of the lobby continues. With few exceptions
there is no voice for an honest discussion, and of course that is one of AIPAC's objectives.

You may enjoy this piece by this good gentleman, if you haven't read it already:


On deaf ears: Obama's message to Israel
Robert Grenier

snip*

Nonexistent pressure on Israel

What I was forced to acknowledge - if only to myself - in the 1980s, President Obama has come to learn, somewhat late in his political life, the hard way. In his quest to put pressure on the Israeli government to stop settlements, he really never had a chance. The reason is that where Israel is concerned, at least since the 1960s, the Israeli prime minister - whoever occupies that position - always commands far more influence in Congress than any US president could hope to. It is not even a contest. Pressure? What real pressure could Obama ever hope to exert over Netanyahu? A threat to cut off Congressionally-mandated aid? What could possibly have made him think he could push Netanyahu where he didn't want to go? As soon as Netanyahu decided to resist, the game was over; and the president, humiliatingly, was forced to take whatever temporary "partial moratorium" the Israeli PM was willing to give him. From there, the route to final failure of the George Mitchell project was a long, slow, downward spiral, leading to a muted crash.

This president is too sagacious to make the same mistake twice. I retain enough naïve faith in the sense and decency of the people of the US to believe that, in the past at least, when a two-state solution was still possible, a US president could have appealed to the US public over the heads of a lobby-dominated congress to exert enough pressure to save Israel from itself. But under the best of circumstances, to do so would trigger a mammoth political firestorm. To prevail, a US president would have to be willing to sacrifice his entire programme to this one cause. No president would do such a thing; arguably, no president should. And this president certainly will not.

That was one of the clear messages from Obama in his so-called "Arab Spring" speech of May 19. Like others writing in these spaces, I was harshly critical of that speech, particularly where Palestine was concerned. "passive", I said; a refusal to lead. And when, in light of the perversely negative reactions to the speech from both the Israeli prime minister and his supporters in the US, one heard that Obama would be addressing the annual convention of AIPAC, the leading US pro-Israel lobby, three days later, I didn't want to listen. One can stomach only so much compensatory pandering at a single go.

But I soon realised that I was missing the point. In fact, far from a simple exercise in pandering - although his speech to AIPAC was replete with it - the second of the presidential speeches in question was actually quite consistent with the first. Of course the president was not going to expose himself politically, yet again, to try to press an achievable peace on an unwilling Israel. He cannot. Instead, these two speeches should be seen for what they are: An attempt by Barack Obama, insofar as politics will allow, to speak honestly with the Israeli people and all who support them.

in full: http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/06/20116494815209668.html

[King_David]

6. I can not even read him,

Every article is the same.

All I hear is blah blah blah , when I read his articles.

[shira]

7. Yeah, another kook obsessed with Israel, sees lobby influence everywhere, conspiracies....

Total nutball who should be wearing his very own patented....

:tinfoilhat:

[shaayecanaan]

12. Yeah...

"And this particular article consists of a story from 20 something years ago."

Are you suggesting that things have changed in this respect?

"Funny how he claims that "criticising Israel is dangerous business" yet he publishes articles that criticize Israel on a regular basis in a variety of major news outlets and has been doing so for years."

As far as I know, he writes for al-Jazeera now, and wrote for the Detroit Free Press in the past. If you're simply wanting someone to concede that the Israel lobby does not have much sway over at al-Jazeera, then I grant that concession freely.

Otherwise, this is a ridiculous straw man argument. The mere fact that someone can publish in one or two press outlets does not prove that there is no "chilling effect" and that there is no reticence amongst US media outlets to allow opinions such as Rosenberg's to be heard.

[Never Stop Dancin]

4. Shamir

is long gone. This article is not current news.

[LeftishBrit]

5. Interesting story; but a lot has changed since 1988

And one of the few things that hasn't changed is that Carl Levin is still a senator - so it can't have damaged his career *that* much.

[Never Stop Dancin]

9. There is no "lobby"

[LeftishBrit]

10. There are lots of lobbies

AIPAC does exist and has some influence - but then so does the oil lobby, generally in the other direction.

[Never Stop Dancin]

17. please don't lecture me

just make your point

[bemildred]

11. A lot of what happens in Congress is theater, public show.

So one ought never just believe what is said, or that any of it is "real". The more unanimous they are, the more probable it is that most of them are faking it, just playing a part in a drama they do not care much about, doing the accepted or conventional thing.

However, one can easily see even here in our own little forum that people do obsess and freak out over minutae, accuse others of faults they obviously share themselves, debate about and distort the meaning of words whose meaning was not formerly at all obscure in pursuit of political advantage, etc. All of which I generally interpret as insecurity and defensiveness.

I often feel down here that what is going on is more in the nature of preventing discussion than doing discussion.

Mr Levin certainly has not been harmed much by his past transgressions, that is quite true.

[Jefferson23]

13. It's Not Either / Or

05.01.2006
By Norman G. Finkelstein

In the current fractious debate over the role of the Israel Lobby in the formulation and execution of US policies in the Middle East, the "either-or" framework -- giving primacy to either the Israel Lobby or to U.S. strategic interests -- isn't, in my opinion, very useful.

Apart from the Israel-Palestine conflict, fundamental U.S. policy in the Middle East hasn't been affected by the Lobby. For different reasons, both U.S. and Israeli elites have always believed that the Arabs need to be kept subordinate. However, once the U.S. solidified its alliance with Israel after June 1967, it began to look at Israelis, and Israelis projected themselves, as experts on the "Arab mind." Accordingly, the alliance with Israel has abetted the most truculent U.S. policies, Israelis believing that "Arabs only understand the language of force" and every few years this or that Arab country needs to be smashed up. The spectrum of U.S. policy differences might be narrow, but in terms of impact on the real lives of real people in the Arab world these differences are probably meaningful, the Israeli influence making things worse.

The claim that Israel has become a liability for U.S. "national" interests in the Middle East misses the bigger picture. Sometimes what's most obvious escapes the eye. Israel is the only stable and secure base for projecting U.S. power in this region. Every other country the U.S. relies on might, for all anyone knows, fall out of U.S. control tomorrow. The U.S. discovered this to its horror in 1979, after immense investment in the Shah. On the other hand, Israel was a creation of the West; it's in every respect, culturally, politically, economically in thrall to the West, notably the U.S. This is true not just at the level of a corrupt leadership, as elsewhere in the Middle East but, what's most important, at the popular level. Israel's pro-American orientation exists not just among Israeli elites but also among the whole population. Come what may in Israel, it's inconceivable that this fundamental orientation will change. Combined with its overwhelming military power, this makes Israel a unique and irreplaceable American asset in the Middle East.

in full: http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/article.php?pg=11&ar=205

[bemildred]

15. Yes, much that is interesting can lie in the excluded middle.

That, along with the fact that it makes everything so simple, is why the exclusive or is so popular in politics.

[shaayecanaan]

16. That's exactly the phrase I was looking for, the "excluded middle"...

the standard rhetorical ploy on here is to insist that because the Israel lobby does not have godlike omnipotence and occasionally does not get its own way (for example, in relation to arms deals with the Saudis) that therefore it has no influence at all.

The level of debate on this issue is puerile. People can reasonably disagree on the degree of influence that any lobby has, but its not as though people expend energy trying to deny the existence of an oil lobby or a gun lobby.

[Jefferson23]

14. Rosenberg writes an update:

AIPAC: The unrivalled lobby

Not surprisingly, my recent piece on an ugly 1988 experience with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the Israeli government, and late New York Times newspaper columnist William Safire elicited some controversy. I knew it would.

There aren't that many first-person accounts of encounters with the lobby (for obvious reasons) so my recollections of how it went down on Capitol Hill fill a vacuum. Hopefully, there will be more such accounts as those of us who dealt with the lobby in the 1980s move into a position (career-wise or financially) where we feel free to talk and write about it without any fear of retribution.

If I were 35, there is no way that I would challenge an institution which has a long history of preventing its critics from advancing professionally. I am not that brave - although the terrain is finally changing for the better thanks to the internet.

One problem in making analogies between the lobby today and in the 1970s and 1980s is that it was infinitely less aggressive and right-wing then than it is now.

In my description of an event that took place in 1988, I refer to AIPAC's then-executive drector, Thomas Dine. Dine, who today is close to the more liberal Jewish lobby group J Street, came to the AIPAC lobby from Ted Kennedy's 1980 presidential campaign. He had worked previously for several Democratic senators and, in his twenties, in the LBJ White House. By contrast, AIPAC's current executive director, Howard Kohr, is a conservative Republican who was hired largely because of his personal and political closeness to Newt Gingrich. In the Israeli context, Dine was Labor and Kohr is Likud.

A muted beginning

Back then, the Palestinians had not yet recognised Israel, so AIPAC's argument that Israel had no negotiating partner was not totally unfounded. Today, 17 years after Israel and the PLO exchanged mutual recognition, the "no partner" claim is nothing but a device to avoid negotiations.

remainder: http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/06/201164151342193909.html

[oberliner]

18. MJ has written another article about his first article!

In spite of the Israel lobby "chilling" Middle East debate, MJ has managed to crank out article after article (sometimes only days apart) - vehemently attacking the Israel lobby without consequence.

In this newest piece, he is claiming that his initial article "elicited controversy".

No evidence of how and where that supposed controversy manifested itself, but there we are.

[Jefferson23]

19. AIPAC and Reform Syria.org

snip* The party's leader, Farid Ghadry, was born in Aleppo, Syria and comes from a well-known Syrian family of civil servants and politicians.

The RPS supported the candidacy of Nicolas Sarkozy in France's 2007 presidential election.<1>

Actually, during the 2011 Syrian uprising the Reform Party of Syria, as a political party of the Syrian opposition in exile, is preparing a series of demonstrations and protests in cities of the Unites States and Western Europe

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reform_Party_of_Syria



snip* Farid al-Ghadry (Arabic: فريد الغادري) (born on June 18, 1954) is the Syrian-born co-founder and current president of the United States-based Reform Party of Syria, a party of Syrians who wish to see regime change in Syria. Ghadry has functioned as an American defense contractor and businessman, "Frank Ghadry," who represents himself as being born in Lebanon.<1> Ghadry is a member of AIPAC, Israel's main lobbying group in the U.S.,<2> and has strongly supported all of Israel's recent wars in Lebanon and the Palestinian territories.<3>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farid_Ghadry

[bemildred]

20. Dang, you could just knock me over with a feather. nt

[Jefferson23]

21. hee hee. n/t

[shira]

22. Do you prefer other democratic reform parties WRT Lebanon/Syria?

If so, which ones and what do they stand for - why prefer them?

Thanks.

[Jefferson23]

23. Oh please, enough with trying to defend your AIPAC shit already. You had no idea

no idea who is behind this group when you first posted it..it's just a coincidence AIPAC is involved and you didn't
want to add that info to your OP?

Other democratic reform parties, like this is one?? LOL, good luck selling that garbage.

[shira]

24. So are there better reform parties/movements you prefer WRT Lebanon/Syria...

...and who are they, and what do they stand for?

[bemildred]

25. You really ought not say "Lebanon/Syria" like that, people will get annoyed. nt

[shira]

26. Okay, thanks. I'm curious to see who you favor over the RPS. n/t

[bemildred]

27. I favor the current movement for political reform in Syria.

But that would not entail any particular support for any current Syrian political party, and certainly not any ex-patriate groups. What matters is the legitimacy of the eventual result, it's ability to govern, which comes from the consent and support of the population as a whole.

[shira]

28. No matter what they stand for? What if it's for more sharia law?

You'd prefer a theocratic, anti-democratic, anti-human rights / civil liberties movement to the RPS, if that's what the people mostly want in their dictator-for-life?

[bemildred]

29. You also ought not equate a denial of support for anybody with support for somebody.

That's the old "excluded middle" thing, I chose none of the above (NOTA).

[bemildred]

30. So you think the right of the Syrian people to run their own affairs is contingent? nt

[shira]

31. I just want to know if you prefer a theocratic Iranian or Saudi style gov't...

...over something like the RPS, whether the majority supports it or not.

I'm fairly certain you don't prefer or support an Israeli gov't run by Avigdor Lieberman or the Kach Party's goons (as opposed to say Meretz or another left/liberal party), so I'm wondering why you'd prefer/support a party FAR more lunatic rightwing than the RPS in Syria.

[bemildred]

32. And I have told you that I don't like either one.

It's also called a "false dichotomy", when one is presented with two unpleasant choices and told that one must choose to support one or the other. Do you prefer dog shit or pig shit?

[shira]

33. You answered WRT your preference in #27 but you don't seem to know anything about...

...what they stand for, which is odd.

[bemildred]

34. Yes, I did too, it's just not in the form you want.

That was this part: "What matters is the legitimacy of the eventual result, it's ability to govern, which comes from the consent and support of the population as a whole."

What I didn't do is accept your false dichotomy between Iran and the Saudis. How's this: I hope the result is like Norway, but better.