Lobbying Degree Zero (Page 4)

The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy is a notable example of a new form of nativism that sees foreigners and their domestic allies as a big source of America's problems and believes that the country would be better off if it could eradicate such influences. Anti-Semitic this is not, but it is still an evasion of the truth that could turn out to be highly dangerous. America will remain in its infantilized state as long as it tries to shift blame for its ills onto foreigners and their domestic agents. It will never solve its problems until it realizes that they originate entirely at home.

In an article in The New York Times Magazine last January, James Traub described a lunch with Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, at which Foxman got so exercised at the suggestion that the ADL was trying to stifle criticism of Israel that "he began to choke on his gratin." Foxman's denial that the ADL intimidates critics of Israel is harder than ever to swallow following the publication of The Deadliest Lies: The Israel Lobby and the Myth of Jewish Control. Criticism that "faults specific Israeli policies and proposes realistic alternatives...is legitimate," he writes. But "criticism that condemns Israel simply for existing and implies that the only way Israel can satisfy its critics is by disappearing is not legitimate" (emphasis in original).

Thus, even asking why a Christian, Muslim or white state is discriminatory but a Jewish state is not is beyond the pale. Similarly, criticism that takes into account Israel's security concerns is permissible but not "criticism that ignores every problem Israel faces, assumes that its people and leaders can accomplish anything they desire instantly and without difficulty, and therefore concludes that only bad faith or evil motives can explain any failure or error on Israel's part." While it is OK to attribute "rejectionism, hatred, violence, and terrorism" to the Palestinians, as Foxman in fact does in The Deadliest Lies, it is not OK to attribute them to the Israelis, since that would mean charging them with bad faith or something else equally unpleasant. Only Palestinians are capable of terrorism, not Israelis, and if you don't understand how this can possibly be, just ask the people at the ADL. They'll straighten you out.

Statements like these are absurd, of course. The question, however, is not why people like Foxman utter them but why others take them so seriously. The reason is that such statements go to the heart of the US-Israeli alliance, an alliance that, until recently, few people dared question. Foxman sums up the situation quite nicely when he writes apropos of the Holocaust, "International complicity in that crime leads many people to feel that Israel deserves support as a way of saying to the Jewish people, 'We will never again leave you without a home and a safe haven from hatred.'" Whether or not establishing the State of Israel was an appropriate response to the crimes of the Nazis--it certainly raises the question of why the Palestinians should then be forced to pay the price for the complicit parties' own misdeeds--Foxman at least makes his position crystal clear. But then he goes on to say:

Whether or not Israel is a shining moral paragon, it certainly is not a pariah state to be condemned. It is, in fact, a nation among nations--a country much like any other, with its problems, its opportunities, its virtues, and, at times, its failings and shortcomings. In short, Israel is a "normal" country.

But is it? If it is "a country much like any other," then outsiders should be free to criticize it with the same abandon with which they might criticize Britain or France. (When was the last time someone was accused of anti-British bigotry for criticizing British policy in Northern Ireland?) But if the establishment of Israel was a form of restitution, a way of making amends for the unparalleled crime of the Holocaust, then it is not a normal country and outsiders must be careful about what they say about it, because they still owe it an enormous moral debt. Criticism is permissible except when it's not, and only the ADL and like-minded groups know whether the light is flashing green or red.

This is the great contradiction that stifles debate over the US-Israel alliance in this country. If Mearsheimer and Walt have accomplished anything, it is to demonstrate that nothing is beyond criticism, including the American-Israeli alliance, and that Foxman's self-appointed role as guardian over what Americans can and cannot say about Israel must come to an end. The Israel Lobby gets a lot of things wrong, but at least it gets one important thing right.

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