The Israel Lobby in the United States

John Mearsheimer, the Wendell Harrison Professor of Political Science at Chicago, and Stephen Walt, the Robert and Renee Belfer Professor of International Affairs at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, have published a working paper titled "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy".

Abstract: In this paper, John J. Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago's Department of Political Science and Stephen M.Walt of Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government contend that the centerpiece of U.S. Middle East policy is its intimate relationship with Israel. The authors argue that although often justified as reflecting shared strategic interests or compelling moral imperatives, the U.S. commitment to Israel is due primarily to the activities of the Â?Israel Lobby." This paper goes on to describe the various activities that pro-Israel groups have undertaken in order to shift U.S. foreign policy in a pro-Israel direction.

A shorter version of the paper is published under the title "The Israel Lobby" in the London Review of Books (Vol. 28 No. 6 dated 23 March 2006. Subscription required.)

This is a very controversial article, by two scholars who can be assumed from their academic positions to be worthy of our attention. The Washington Post Sunday published a summary of some of the comments that the work has drawn.

The authors cite the USAID Greenbook which states that U.S. economic and military aid to Israel has amounted to US$146 billion from World War II to 2004. (2004 dollars). (All of this funding appears to be in the form of grants.) I would note that this is probably an underestimate. For example, it leaves out "tax financing". The last time I checked, Israeli organizations received some one billion dollars of donations from U.S. donors per year. Since these donations tend to be taxdeductiblee, the United States government is forgoing the tax that would be paid on the money. Over the sixty years since the end of World War II, the taxes forgone would add up to a significant amount. Moreover, there are cooperative efforts between the U.S government that do not appear in the foreign assistance budget (The Binational Science Foundation, the Binational Agricultural Research and Development Foundation, and the Binational Industrial Research and Development Foundation come to mind.)

I think also that much of the U.S. assistance to other nations in the Middle East has been the result of our policy with respect to Israel. Thus, the Greenbook informs us that U.S. assistance to Egypt amounted to US$89 billion from World War II to 2004 (again, in constant 2004 dollars). A very significant portion of this sum was spent in support of the peace accord between Israel and Egypt.

Israel has a population of just over six million people, so the conservative estimate of 145 billion dollars in aid comes out to about US$25,000 per person. In short, an Israeli family of four has a nestegg of about $100,000 from the U.S. taxpayer. Per capita GDP of Israel was $22,200 in 2005. Thus, by a conservative estimate, we have given a middle income country financial assistance that exceeds its annual gross domestic product. (I doubt that the average U.S. citizen is aware of this fact.)

The authors suggest that the U.S. war with Iraq (and by implication, its aftermath) should be seen in terms of our policy with regard to Israel. In some ways their argument here is obvious. I would guess that it is true that Israel did provide intelligence on Iraq to the United States prior to, during, and since the war. Surely Israelis should feel reassured that Iraq does not have WMDs to use against them.

Certainly the war was the result of historical circumstances in which Israel and U.S. policy toward Israel and its Arab neighbors were important. I would hope that the decision to go to war included many factors, including WMD's and terrorism, but also oil, Israel, Iran, Korea, Pakistan, Turkey, and domestic politics. Since the cost of the war has been estimated by Nobel Prize winning economists from US500 billion to US$2 trillion, even apportioning a part to Israel would seem to add greatly to the total U.S. support for the country.

In addition the United States provides Israel with a military umbrella, trade advantages, diplomatic support, and other forms of aid.

Mearsheimer and Walt have every right to ask why we provide so much support to Israel. We are not nearly as generous with any other people -- not with our American neighbors with whom we share borders, nor with other nations more in need.

Surprisingly, they don't come up with two of what I would have thought were the most likely answers: that this is explained by history, or that it is simply good policy.

History

United States support for Israel has a long history, going back at least to support for Zionist movements before World War II, and including support for resettlement of European Jews seeking refuge from Europe after the war. That history has its own momentum, in that generations of Americans (and Israelis) have grown up expecting such support and thinking it is right. It also has diplomatic implications. A withdrawal of U.S. support for Israel would be seen by our allies and enemies as historically unprecedented, and of enormous significance.

Good Policy

Mearsheimer and Walt point out that both the Legislative and Executive branches of the government tend to support the pro-Israel policy strongly, as do both the mainstream Republican and Democratic Parties. Moreover, they state that:

Over the past 25 years, pro-Israel forces have established a commanding presence at the American Enterprise Institute, the Brookings Institution, the Center for Security Policy, the Foreign Policy Research Institute, the Heritage Foundation, the Hudson Institute, the Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis and the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA).

It occurs to me that if these folk with very different interests and policy views agree on Israel, there may be merit in their case.

The Israel Lobby

The article instead attributes the policy to the efforts of what it terms the "Israel Lobby". I think the prototypical agency of the Israel Lobby, AIPAC, is indeed an organization of great influence. I attribute that influence both to hard, effective work on the part of AIPAC staff, and to the community on which it draws for support. Moroever, I have been impressed by other organizations that support Israeli organizations and causes, and might be seen as part of a lobby.

But Mearsheimer and Walt use the term Israel Lobby, referring to many different groups, in ways that suggest it is monolithic. These groups include not only AIPAC but U.S. residents of the Jewish faith or ethnicity in general, "Christian Zionists" and the "pro-Israel neo-conservatives". There may be temporary alliances among such groups at specific times for specific issues, but I would think it unproductive to label them in toto as a "lobby".

I wish the article had been better done. Over the years I have wondered why U.S. media focus so much on Israel, while not covering more adequately Africa, Asia and Latin America. My Israeli friends seem to be willing to criticize Israeli policy more than U.S. officials will do in public, and I too feel that there is much to criticize in Israeli government actions over the decades. (I also see considerable to criticise in the actions of the Palestinians, the Arabs, and the U.S. Government, but that is another subject.)

Mearsheimer and Walt would appear to have the credentials and interest to do a sophisticated and useful review of how U.S. policy toward Israel and the Middle East is generated. What is the complex dance of the various factions involved? Why does the media treat the region the way it does, and why do Americans respond to the media coverage as they do? I don't think that they did so in this article.