Moderator note: Re: Study shows undue Israeli influence on U.S. policy

List:

This post is off-topic and not appropriate for this list. Please
discontinue this thread. Also, just a reminder of the 4 post a day
limit. Some of you are routinely exceeding it. Since there have been
multiple reminders, I will be placing offenders on "moderated" status.

TG

On Apr 24, 2006, at 6:19 AM, RFaussette@aol.com wrote:

> Study shows undue Israeli influence on U.S. policy
>
>
> By PAUL FINDLEY
>
> Published Wednesday, April 19, 2006
>
>
> http://www.sj-r.com/sections/opinion/stories/83937.asp
>
> Words spoken years ago by George W. Ball, a distinguished diplomat,
> author and champion of human rights, have vivid, new currency:
> “When Israel’s interests are being considered, members of Congress
> act like trained poodles. They jump dutifully through hoops held by
> Israel’s lobby.”
>
> In the same interview, Ball said, “The lobby’s most powerful
> instrument of intimidation is the reckless charge of anti-
> Semitism.” Sadly, his words ring true today, verified by my own
> experiences and those of many of my colleagues in the U.S.
> legislature.
>
> Ball could have added that, except for exuberant praise of Israel,
> the poodles remain mute at all times lest they lapse into free
> speech and say something that will spoil their chances for re-
> election.
>
> The fear of being charged with anti-Semitism outranks all other
> worries that bedevil politicians, and the lobby has marketed it so
> efficiently that a wall of silence shields the American people from
> awareness of the lobby’s activities and U.S. complicity in Israel’s
> longstanding abuse of international law and Arab human rights,
> violations that the rest of the world follows with dismay and anger.
>
> Fear of the anti-Semitism stain is intensified these days, because
> the lobby has succeeded in redefining anti-Semitism to include any
> criticism of Israeli behavior, an inferred threat that prompts all
> major media to ignore or sanitize reports of Israeli violations. I
> know. I have experienced that fear myself and have observed closely
> as others, in Congress and out, have remained silent.
>
> My authority for making these statements comes from being a close
> student of the lobby for over 30 years, the first 22 as a member of
> Congress. The lobby leaders chose me as their No. 1 target because
> I met unashamedly with PLO leader Yasser Arafat and later demanded
> the suspension of U.S. aid to Israel for its unlawful use of U.S.-
> donated military supplies.
>
> In 1982, when the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC),
> the main center of Israeli lobbying in Washington, claimed credit
> for keeping me from election to a 12th term in the House of
> Representatives, I became the lobby’s prize trophy. Two years
> later, Sen. Charles Percy, who was also guilty of failing to toe
> AIPAC line, joined me on the trophy shelf. Our fate has, no doubt,
> discouraged others from speaking out about Israel’s misbehavior.
>
> Israel’s U.S. lobby is peerless among the hundreds of lobbies in
> our nation’s capital for one main reason: It alone is armed with
> the ultimate persuader, an ample supply of indictments for anti-
> Semitism.
>
> The supply promotes automatic cooperation when legislation on
> behalf of Israel moves forward. It is the modern-day Sword of
> Damocles, a fearsome instrument that hangs over almost every head
> in our government. Until recently, it seemed to cow all of the
> nation’s prestigious scholars, except for a few hardy ones like
> professor Noam Chomsky of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
> and Juan Cole of the University of Michigan.
>
> Last month, in a rare burst of academic candor, two other
> distinguished professors, John J. Mearsheimer of the University of
> Chicago and Stephen M. Walt of Harvard’s Kennedy School, broke the
> silence with the publication of their 81-page, heavily footnoted
> study titled “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy.”
>
> In the study, they conclude that the flagrant, longstanding,
> unconditional pro-Israel bias in U.S. Middle East policy has
> enabled Israel to tilt U.S. policy in ways that benefit Israel to
> the disadvantage of U.S. national interests, luring America even
> into costly wars and a rising tide of ill fame worldwide. They pin
> much of the blame on the influence of Israel’s U.S. lobby. One of
> their most significant conclusions: “The U.S. has a terrorism
> problem in good part because it is so closely allied with Israel.”
>
> Mearsheimer and Walt quickly discovered why most of their academic
> colleagues behave much like the political poodles on Capitol Hill.
> Their study instantly became controversial, the subject of a
> vigorous, often vitriolic, discussion of Israel’s role in U.S.
> foreign policy, the first since the Jewish state came into being in
> 1948.
>
> First published in the respected London Review of Books because no
> U.S. periodical was brave enough to give it a public audience, the
> study provoked such strong trans-Atlantic shock waves, thanks
> mainly to the Internet, that the wielders of the modern Sword of
> Damocles have gone public with a barrage of full-throated epithets,
> charging Mearsheimer and Walt with “ignorant propaganda, academic
> garbage, anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist drivel.”
>
> The Harvard Crimson quoted Harvard professor Alan Dershowitz as
> labeling the authors “liars” and “bigots.”
>
> Two other academics, in a letter to the London Review of Books,
> wrote ominously: “Accusations of powerful Jews behind the scenes
> are part of the most dangerous traditions of modern anti-Semitism.”
> They overlooked the fact that the lobby also includes powerful
> Christians.
>
> In a New York Daily News piece, less strident critic Harvard
> professor David Gergen rebuked the authors by declaring that “over
> the course of four tours in the White House I never once saw a
> decision in the Oval Office to tilt U.S. foreign policy in favor of
> Israel at the expense of America’s interest.” An experienced
> politician himself, Gergen must know that such tilts would never be
> recorded for anyone to see, even in the privacy of the Oval Office.
>
> In the column, Gergen mistakenly credited President Reagan with
> stopping Israel’s 1982 bloody assault on Lebanon. To the contrary,
> Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin was defiant, conveying his
> refusal in these words: “Nobody, nobody is going to bring Israel to
> her knees. You must have forgotten that the Jews kneel but to God.”
>
> No matter what lies ahead, Mearsheimer and Walt have already well
> served the public. Their initiative has broken through a dangerous
> wall of silence. Thanks to publicity arising from their study, many
> thousands of U.S. citizens are aware for the first time that a
> domestic lobby on behalf of Israel exerts a significant role in
> forming U.S. Middle East policy, even on decisions of war. They are
> also now aware that religious communities - minority elements of
> both Christianity and Judaism - are the main pillars of the lobby.
>
> This knowledge may bestir enough public curiosity to prompt a
> civilized and edifying public debate. It is difficult to conceive
> of a topic more urgently worthy of open, unfettered public
> examination.
>
> Paul Findley was a member of Illinois’ congressional delegation
> from 1961-83. He is the author of the bestseller, “They Dare to
> Speak Out: People and Institutions Confront Israel’s Lobby.” He and
> Mrs. Findley reside in Jacksonville. His e-mail address is
> Findley1@Verizon.net.
>
>

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Colorado State University
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Received on Mon Apr 24 14:12:23 2006