Fourteen Erroneous Theses
James Petras
“…Reflexes that
ordinarily spring automatically to the defense of open
debate and free enquiry shut down – at least among much
of America’s political elite – once the subject turns to
Israel, and above all the pro-Israel lobby’s role in
shaping US foreign policy…Moral blackmail – the fear
that any criticism of Israeli policy and US support for
it will lead to charges of anti-Semitism – is a powerful
disincentive to publish dissenting views. It is also
leading to the silencing of policy debate on American
university campuses, partly as the result of targeted
campaigns against the dissenters…Nothing, moreover, is
more damaging to US interests than the inability to have
a proper debate about the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict…Bullying Americans into consensus on Israeli
policy is bad for Israel and makes it impossible for
America to articulate its own national interests….”
Financial Times, Editorial, Saturday, April 01, 2006.
Introduction
Noam
Chomsky has been called the US leading intellectual by
pundits and even some sectors of the mass media. He has
a large audience throughout the world especially in
academic circles, in large part because of his vocal
criticism of US foreign policy and many of the
injustices resulting from those policies. Chomsky has
nonetheless been reviled by all of the major Jewish and
pro-Israel organizations and media for his criticism of
Israeli policy toward the Palestinians even as he has
defended the existence of the Zionist state of Israel.
Despite his respected reputation for documenting,
dissecting and exposing the hypocrisy of the US and
European regimes and acutely analyzing the intellectual
deceptions of imperial apologists, these analytical
virtues are totally absent when it comes to discussing
the formulation of US foreign policy in the Middle East,
particularly the role of his own ethnic group, the
Jewish Pro-Israel lobby and their Zionist supporters in
the government. This political blindness is not unknown
or uncommon. History is replete of intellectual critics
of all imperialisms except their own, the abuses of
power by others, but not of one’s own kin and kind.
Chomsky’s long history denying the power and role of the
pro-Israel lobby in decisively shaping US Middle East
policy culminated in his recent conjoining with the US
Zionist propaganda machine attacking a study critical of
the Israeli lobby. I am referring to the essay
published by the London Review of Books entitled “The
Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy” by Professor John
Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Professor
Stephan Walt, the purged Academic Dean of the Kennedy
School of Government at Harvard University. (A complete
version of the study was published by the Kennedy School
of Government in March 2006.)
Chomsky’s speeches and
writing on the Lobby emphasizes several dubious
propositions.
1)
The pro-Israel Lobby is just like any
other lobby; it has no special influence or place in US
politics.
2)
The power of the groups backing the
Israel lobby are no more powerful than other
influential pressure groups
3)
The Lobby’s agenda succeeds because it
coincides with the interests of the dominant powers and
interests of the US State.
4)
The Lobby’s weakness is demonstrated by
the fact that Israel is ‘merely a tool’ of US empire
building to be used when needed and otherwise
marginalized.
5)
The major forces shaping US Middle East
policy are “big oil” and the “military-industrial
complex”, neither of which is connected to the
pro-Israel lobby.
6)
The interests of the US generally
coincide with the interests of Israel
7)
The Iraq War, the threats to Syria and
Iran are primarily a product of “oil interests” and the
“military-industrial complex” and not the role of the
pro-Israel lobby or its collaborators in the Pentagon
and other government agencies.
While in
general Chomsky has deliberately refrained from
specifically discussing the pro-Israel lobby in his
speeches, interviews and publications analyzing US
policy toward the Middle East, but when he does, he
follows the above-mentioned repertory.
The
problem of war and peace in the Middle East and the role
of the Israel lobby is too serious to be marginalized as
an after-thought. Even more important, the increasing
censoring of free speech and erosion of our civil
liberties, academic freedom by an aggressive lobby, with
powerful legislative and White House backers, is a
threat to our already limited democracy.
It is
incumbent therefore to examine the fourteen erroneous
theses of the highly respected Professor Chomsky in
order to move ahead and confront the Lobby’s threats to
peace abroad and civil liberties at home.
Fourteen Theses
1)
Chomsky claims that the Lobby is just
another lobby in Washington. Yet he fails to observe
that the lobby has secured the biggest Congressional
majorities in favor of allocating three times the annual
foreign aid designated to all of Africa, Asia and Latin
America to Israel (over 100 billion dollars over the
past 40 years). The Lobby has 150 full time
functionaries working for the American-Israel Public
Affairs Committee (AIPAC), accompanied by an army of
lobbyists from all the major Jewish organizations
(Anti-Defamation League, American Jewish Committee,
American Jewish Congress, etc.) and the nation-wide,
regional and local Jewish federations which hew closely
to the line of the “majors” and are active in policy and
local opinion on Israel and promote and finance
legislative candidates on the basis of their adherence
to the Lobby’s party line. No other lobby combines the
wealth, grass roots networks, media access, legislative
muscle and single-minded purpose of the pro-Israel
lobby.
2)
Chomsky fails to analyze the near
unanimous congressional majorities which yearly support
all the pro-Israel military, economic, immigration
privileges and aid promoted by the Lobby. He fails to
examine the list of over 100 successful legislative
initiatives publicized yearly by AIPAC even in years of
budgetary crisis, disintegrating domestic health
services and war induced military losses.
3)
Chomsky’s cliché-ridden attribution of
war aims to “Big Oil” is totally unsubstantiated. In
fact the US-Middle East wars prejudice the oil interests
in several strategic senses. The wars generate
generalized hostility to oil companies with long-term
relations with Arab countries. The wars result in
undermining new contracts opening in Arab countries for
US oil investments. US oil companies have been much
friendlier to peacefully resolving conflicts than Israel
and especially its Lobbyists as any reading of the
specialized oil industry journals and spokespeople
emphasize. Chomsky chooses to totally ignore the
pro-war activities and propaganda of the leading Jewish
pro-Israel organizations and the absence of pro-war
proposals in Big Oil’s media, and their beleaguered
attempt to continue linkages with Arab regimes opposed
to Israel’s belligerent hegemonic ambitions. Contrary
to Chomsky, by going to war in the Middle East, the US
sacrifices the vital interests of the oil companies in
favor of Israel’s quest for Middle East hegemony at the
call and behest of the pro-Israel lobby. In the
lobbying contest there is absolutely no contest between
the pro-Israel power bloc and the oil companies when it
comes to favoring Israeli interests over oil interests,
whether the issue is war or oil contracts. Chomsky
never examines the comparative strength of the two
lobbies regarding US policy toward the Middle East. In
general this usually busy researcher devoted to
uncovering obscure documentation is particularly lax
when it come to uncovering readily available documents,
which shred his assertions about Big Oil and the Israel
Lobby.
4)
Chomsky refuses to analyze the diplomatic
disadvantages that accrue to the US in vetoing Security
Council resolutions condemning Israel’s systematic
violations of human rights. Neither the
military-industrial complex nor Big Oil has a
stranglehold on US voting behavior in the UN. The
pro-Israel lobbies are the only major lobby pressuring
for the vetoes against the US’ closest allies, world
public opinion and at the cost of whatever role the US
could play as a ‘mediator’ between the Arabic-Islamic
world and Israel.
5)
Chomsky fails to discuss the role of the
Lobby in electing Congress-people, their funding of
pro-Israel candidates and the over fifty-million dollars
they spend on the Parties, candidates and propaganda
campaigns. The result is a 90% congressional vote on
high priority items pushed by the Lobby and affiliated
local and regional pro-Israel federations.
6)
Nor does he undertake to analyze the
cases of candidates defeated by the Lobby, the abject
apologies extracted from Congress-people who have dared
to question the policies and tactics of the Lobby, and
the intimidation effect of its ‘exemplary punishments’
on the rest of Congress. The “snowball” effect of
punishment and payoffs is one reason for the
unprecedented majorities in favor of all of AIPAC’s
initiatives. Chomsky’s feeble attempts to equate the
AIPAC’s pro-Israel initiatives with broader US policy
interests is patently absurd to anyone who studies the
alignment of policy groups associated with designing,
pressuring, backing and co-sponsoring the AIPAC’s
measures: The reach of the Jewish lobby far exceeds its
electoral constituency – as the one million dollar slush
fund to defeat incumbent Georgia Congresswoman, Cynthia
McKinny, demonstrates. That she was subsequently
re-elected on the basis of low keying her criticism of
Israel reveals the Lobby’s impact even on consequential
Democrats.
7)
Chomsky ignores the unmatchable power of
elite convocation which the Lobby has. The AIPAC annual
meeting draws all the major leaders in Congress, key
members of the Cabinet, over half of all members of
Congress who pledge unconditional support for Israel and
even identify Israel’s interests as US interests. No
other lobby can secure this degree of attendance of the
political elite, this degree of abject servility, for so
many years, among both major parties. What is
particularly important is the “Jewish electorate” is
less than 5% of the total electorate, while practicing
Jews number less than 2% of the population of which not
all are ‘Israel Firsters’. None of the major lobbies
like the NRA, AARP, the National Association of
Manufacturers, the National Chamber of Commerce can
convoke such a vast array of political leaders, let
alone secure their unconditional support for favorable
pro-Israel legislation and Executive orders. No less an
authority as the Prime Minister of Israel, Ariel Sharon,
boasted of the power of the pro-Israel lobby over US
Middle East policy. Chomsky merely asserts that the
Pro-Israel lobby is just like any other lobby, without
any serious effort to compare their relative influence,
power of convocation and bi-partisan support, or
effectiveness in securing high priority legislation.
8)
In his analysis of the run-up to the
US-Iraq War, Chomsky’s otherwise meticulous review of
foreign policy documents, analysis of political linkages
between policymakers and power centers is totally
abandoned in favor of impressionistic commentaries
completely devoid of any empirical basis. The principal
governmental architects of the war, the intellectual
promoters of the war, their publicly enunciated
published strategies for the war were all deeply
attached to the Israel lobby and worked
for the Israeli state. Wolfowitz, number 2 in the
Pentagon, Douglas Feith, number 3 in the Pentagon,
Richard Perle, head of the Defense Board, Elliot Abrams
in charge of Middle East affairs for the National
Security Council, and dozens of other key operatives in
the government and ideologues in the mass media were
life-long fanatical activists in favor of Israel, some
of whom had lost security clearances in previous
administrations for handing over documents to the
Israeli government. Chomsky ignores the key strategy
documents written by Perle, Feith and other ZionCons in
1996 demanding bellicose action against Iraq, Iran and
Syria, which they subsequently implemented when they
took power with Bush’s election. Chomsky totally
ignores the disinformation office set up in the Pentagon
by ultra Zionist Douglas Feith – the so-called ‘Office
of Special Plans’ – run by fellow ZionCon Abram Shumsky
- to channel bogus “data” to the White House – bypassing
and discrediting CIA and military intelligence which
contradicted their disinformation. Non-Zionist
specialist in the Pentagon’s Middle East office, Colonel
Karen Kwiatkowski, described in great detail the easy
and constant flow of Mossad and Israeli military
officers in and out of Feith’s office while critical US
experts were virtually barred. None of these key
policymakers promoting the war had any direct connection
to the military-industrial complex or Big Oil, but all
were deeply and actively tied to the State of Israel and
backed by the Lobby. Astonishingly Chomsky, famous for
his criticism of intellectuals enamored with imperial
power and uncritical academics, pursues a similar path
when it concerns pro-Israel intellectuals in power and
their Zionist academic colleagues. The problem is not
only the “lobby” pressuring from outside, but their
counterparts within the State.
9)
Chomsky frequently derides the
half-hearted criticism by liberals of US foreign policy,
yet he nowhere raises a single peep about the absolute
silence of Jewish progressives about the major role of
the Lobby in promoting the invasion of Iraq. At no
point does he engage in debate or criticism of the
scores of Israel First academic supporters of war
with Iraq, Iran or Syria. Instead his criticism of the
war revolves around the role of Party leaders, the Bush
Administration etc… without any attempt to understand
the organized basis and ideological mentors of the
militarists.
10)
Chomsky fails to analyze the impact of
the concerted and uninterrupted campaign organized by
all major US pro-Israel lobbies and personalities to
silence criticism of Israel and the Lobby’s support for
the war. Chomsky’s refusal to criticize the Lobby’s
abuse of anti-Semitism to destroy our civil liberties,
hound academics out of the universities and other
positions for criticizing Israel and the Lobby is most
evident in the recent smear campaign of Professors Walt
and Mearsheimer. While the Lobby successfully pressured
Harvard to disclaim Professor Walt and eventually force
his resignation from the Deanship at the Kennedy School
at Harvard, Chomsky joined the Lobby in condemning their
extensive critical scholarship and meticulous analysis.
At no point does Chomsky deal with the central facts of
their analysis about the Lobby’s contemporary power over
US Middle East policy. The irony is Chomsky himself an
occasional victim of academic Zionist hatchet jobs; this
time he is on the givers’ end.
11)
Chomsky fails to assess the power of the
Lobby in comparison with other institutional forces.
For example top US Generals have frequently complained
that Israeli armed forces receive new high tech military
hardware before it has become operational in the US.
Thanks to the Lobby, their complaints are rarely
heeded. US defense industries (some of whom have joint
production contracts with Israeli military industries)
have bitterly complained of Israel’s unfair competition,
violation of trade agreements and the illegal sale of
high tech weaponry to China. Under threat of losing all
their lucrative ties with the Pentagon, Israel cancelled
sales to China, while the Lobby looked on… During the
run-up to the US invasion of Iraq, many active and
retired military officials and CIA analysts opposed the
War, questioned the assumptions and projections of the
pro-Israel ideologues in the Pentagon like Wolfwitz,
Feith, Perle and in the National Security Council, the
State Department and the Vice President’s office (Irving
‘ZionCon’ Libby). They were over-ruled, their advice
dismissed by the ZionCons and belittled by their
ideological backers writing in the major print media.
The position of the ZionCons in the government
successfully overcame their institutional critics in
large part because their opinion and policies toward the
war were uncritically accepted by the mass media and
particularly by the New York Times whose primary
war propagandist, Judith Miller, has close links with
the Lobby. These are well known historical linkages and
debates which a close reader of the mass media like
Chomsky was aware of , but deliberately chose to omit
and deny, substituting more ‘selective’ criticism of the
Iraq war based on the exclusion of vital facts.
12)
In what passes for Chomsky’s “refutation”
of the power of the Lobby is a superficial historical
review of US-Israel relations citing the occasional
conflict of interests in which, even more occasionally,
the pro-Israel lobby failed to get its way. Chomsky’s
historical arguments resemble a lawyer’s brief more than
a comprehensive review of the power of the Lobby. For
example, while in 1956 the US objected to the joint
French-British-Israeli attack on Egypt, over the next 50
years the US financed and supplied the Israeli war
machine to the tune of $70 billion dollars, thanks
largely to the pressure of the Lobby. In 1967, the
Israeli air force bombed the US intelligence gathering
ship, the USS Liberty, in international waters and
strafed to US Naval personnel killing or wounding over
200 sailors and officers. The Johnson Administration,
in a historically unprecedented move, refused to
retaliate and silenced the survivors of the unprovoked
attack with threats of ‘court-martial’. No subsequent
administration has ever raised the issue, let alone
conducted an official Congressional investigation, even
as they escalated aid to Israel and prepared to use
nuclear weapons to defend Israel when it seem to be
losing the Yom Kippur War in 1973. The US defense of
Israel led to the very costly Arab oil boycott, which
brought on a massive increase in the price of oil and
the animosity of former Arab allies threatening global
monetary stability. In other words, in this as in many
other cases, the pro-Israel lobby was more influential
than the US armed forces in shaping US response to an
Israeli act of aggression against American service men
operating in international waters. In recent years, the
power of the Lobby has seriously inhibited the FBI’s
prosecution of the scores of Israeli spies who entered
the US in 2001. The most that was done was their quiet
deportation. The recent arrest of two AIPAC officials
for handing confidential government documents over to
Israeli embassy officials has led the pro-Israel lobby
to mobilize a massive media campaign in their defense,
converting an act of espionage against the US into an
‘exercise of free speech’. Editorials and op-ed
articles in favor of dismissal of the charges have
appeared in most of the leading newspapers in what must
be the most unprecedented campaign in favor of agents of
a foreign government in US history. The power of the
propaganda reach of the Lobby far exceeds any
countervailing power, even though the case against the
AIPAC officials is very strong, including the testimony
of the key Pentagon official convicted of handing them
the documents.
13)
Chomsky, a highly reputable critic of the
bias of the mass media, attributes corporate ties to
their anti-workers news reports. However when it comes
to the overwhelming pro-Israel bias he has never
analyzed the influence of the Israel lobby, the link
between the pro-Israel media elite and the pro-Israel
bias. Merely a blind spot or a case of ideologically
driven intellectual amnesia…?
14)
Chomsky cites Israel’s importance for US
imperial strategy in weakening Arab nationalism, its
role in providing military aid and military advisers to
totalitarian terrorist regimes (Guatemala, Argentina,
Colombia, Chile, El Salvador, and so on) when the US
Congress imposes restrictions to direct US involvement.
There is little doubt that Israel serves US imperial
purposes, especially in situations where bloody politics
are involved. But Israel did so because it benefited
from doing so – it increased military revenues, gained
backers favoring Israel’s colonial policies, provided
markets for Israeli arms dealers etc. However, a more
comprehensive analysis of US interests demonstrates that
the costs of supporting Israel far exceed the occasional
benefit, whether we consider advantages to US imperial
goals or even more so from the vantage point of a
democratic foreign policy. With regard to the costly
and destructive wars against Iraq, following Israel’s
lead and its lobbies, the pro-Israel policy has severely
undermined US military capacity to defend the empire,
has led to a loss of prestige and discredited US claims
to be a champion of freedom and democracy. From the
viewpoint of democratic foreign policy it has
strengthened the militarist wing of the government and
undermined democratic freedoms at home. Israel
benefits, of course, because the war destroyed a major
secular adversary and allowed it to tighten its
stranglehold on the Occupied Territories.
The
unconditional commitment to the Israeli colonial state
has eroded US relations with the richest and most
populous states in the Arab and Islamic world. In
market terms the difference is between hundreds of
billions of dollars in sales versus defending a receiver
of massive US aid handouts. The economic losses far
outweigh any small-scale questionable military
benefits. The Arab states are net buyers of US military
hardware. The Israeli arms industry is a stiff
competitor.
US oil and
gas companies are net losers in terms of investments,
profits and markets because of the US ties to Israel
which, because of its small market, has little to offer
in each of the above categories.
Finally
Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Palestinians and the
Lobby’s effective campaign to secure US vetoes against
international resolutions puts the US on the side of
widespread, legalized torture, legalized extrajudicial
executions and illegal massive population displacement.
The end result is the weakening of international law and
increased volatility in an area of great strategic
importance. Chomsky takes no account of the
geo-strategic and energy costs, the losses in our
domestic freedoms resulting directly from the Middle
East wars for Israel, and even less of the rise of a
virulent form of Zionist Neo-McCarthyism spreading
throughout our academic, artistic and other public and
private institutions. If anything demonstrates the
Zionists’ growing power and authoritarian reach, the
brutal and successful campaign against Professors
Mearsheimer and Walt confirm it, in spades.
Conclusion
In normal
times one would give little attention to academic
polemics unless they have important political
consequences. In this case, however, Noam Chomsky is an
icon for the US anti-war movements and what stands for
intellectual dissent. That he has chosen to absolve the
pro-Israel lobby and its affiliated groups and media
auxiliaries is an important political event, especially
when questions of war and peace hang in the balance,
when the majority of Americans oppose the war. Giving a
‘free ride’ to the principle authors, architects and
lobbyists in favor of the war is a positive obstacle to
achieving clarity about who we are fighting and why. To
ignore the pro-Israel lobby is to allow it a free hand
in pushing for the invasion of Iran and Syria. Worse,
to distract from their responsibility by pointing to
bogus enemies is to weaken our understanding not only of
the war, but also of the enemies of freedom in this
country. Most of all, it allows a foreign government a
privileged position in dictating our Middle East policy,
while proposing police state methods and legislation to
inhibit debate and dissent. Let me conclude by saying
that the peace and justice movements, at home and
abroad, are bigger than any individual or intellectual –
no matter what their past credentials.
Yesterday
the major Zionist organizations told us who we may or
may not criticize in the Middle East, today they tell us
who we may criticize in the United States, tomorrow they
will tell us to bend our heads and submit to their lies
and deceptions in order to engage in new wars of
conquest at the service of a morally repugnant colonial
regime.