April 2, 2006
by
Rodrigue Tremblay
"Perhaps
the most obvious political effect of controlled news is the advantage it gives
powerful people in getting their issues on the political agenda and defining
those issues in ways likely to influence their resolution."
A taboo but critically
important subject is how pro-Israel lobbyists influence U.S. foreign policy,
and whether it is in America's long term interests to let its foreign policy be
designed along such narrow lines.
A seminal contribution
to this debate is the recently published study by two international affairs
specialists from Harvard University and the University of Chicago. In an
83-page-12,800-word article published in the March 10 '06 issue of The London
Review of Books, and titled "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy"
professors Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer analyzed how, through lies,
disinformation and corruption, a vast network of Neocon journalists, think
tanks, lobbyists, and largely Jewish officials within the Bush-Cheney
administration have seized the foreign policy debate and manipulated America
into invading Iraq in an unjust war. Such a development has important
consequences not only for America, but also for the entire world and for the
international legal system.
The Harvard-Chicago
study attempts to provide answers to questions which have been raised by a host
of distinguished American figures over the years. Indeed, what did former
conservative congressman Paul Findley (R-Illinois) mean
when he said that pro-Israeli groups are able to suppress free debate,
compromise national secrets, and shape American foreign policy? —What did
former senator Ernest "
Fritz" Hollings (D-SC) mean when he said that
"You can’t have an Israeli policy other than what AIPAC gives you
around here"? —What did Congressman Lee Hamilton (D-Indiana) mean when he said that Congress is "not
even-handed" when it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict "for
political reasons," and that "Israeli leaders understand our
system very, very well [and] because they
understand our system they can exploit it"?
—What did Congressman James Moran (D-VA)
mean when he said that "If it were not for the strong support of the
Jewish community for this war with Iraq, we wouldn't be doing this"?
— What did former Bush Sr. national security adviser
Brent Scowcroft mean when he said that "
[Ariel] Sharon has Bush (Jr.) wrapped around his
little finger." What did former Secretary of State Colin Powell's chief of staff Larry Wilkerson mean
when he said that “A lot of these guys [the
Neocons] ... I looked at as card-carrying members of the Likud party, as I
did with Feith. You wouldn’t open their wallet and find a card, but I
often wondered if their primary allegiance was to their own country or to
Israel. That was the thing that troubled me, because there was so much that
they said and did that looked like it was more reflective of Israel’s
interest than our own.”
And, finally, what did
New York columnist Thomas Friedman
mean when he said that "It's the war the
neoconservatives marketed. Those people had an idea to sell when September 11
came, and they sold it. Oh boy, did they sell it. So this is not a war that the
masses demanded. This is a war of an elite"?
Normally, the Lobby's standard tactic when confronted with
an annoying book, study or declaration consists in ignoring it or giving it the
silent treatment in the many media it controls. In this case, because of the
notability and credentials of the authors and their schools, and the fact that
its conclusions were so damaging to the all-powerful Israel Lobby, there was no
question of letting the Harvard-Chicago study become the starting point for an
open and sensible national debate on the subject. Rather, feeling threatened
like a tracked animal, the Lobby reacted viciously and came out firing with all
its cannons. No study revealing how AIPAC and its cohorts of organizations
corrupt the entire American foreign policy process could be left standing. It
had to be denounced and disparaged at all costs.
The pro-Israel lobby itself cannot do anything wrong. Even
Neocon lobbyist Jack Abramoff said he used influence-peddling and corruption of
American public officials in order to please God, just as others wage war in
order to please God: "I felt that the resources coming into my hands
were the consequence of God putting them there" ( New York Times Magazine). The Lobby is to the United
States what the Party used to be to the old Soviet Union: it crushes any
dissent. The Lobby does not want or feel any need to debate and justify itself.
Period. —End of discussion. If you disagree with them and decry their
influence, you're a "Nazi" or an "anti-Semite" —end
of the conversation.
This is too easy. It
is not the end of the discussion. It's only the beginning. In a democracy, when
a political system is being sold to the highest bidders, this has to be
explained to the electorate. Specifically, it has to be explained how such
political influence peddling translates into elements of the U.S. foreign
policy.
No one disputes that the Jewish lobby is an influential
force in US politics and that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac) is one of the most powerful
organizations in Washington. The facts are all there in the open for everyone
to see: it is well known that AIPAC and its web of political organizations keep
a close watch on every U.S. senator and representative, with the ones on the
'right side' being supported and rewarded, and those on the 'wrong side' being
denounced and punished.
Many of these
politically-oriented organizations, including the American Israeli Political
Action Committee (AIPAC), are part
of the Council of Presidents of Major
Jewish American Organizations, which regroups 52
national Jewish organizations. One of its recent chairmen was media baron
Mortimer Zuckerman, the owner of the NY Daily News and US News and World
Report, and whose job it was to lobby the President of the United States.
Zuckerman is a frequent guest on the TV public affairs program "The
McLaughlin Group".
So the Lobby's attack machine thought it to be its duty to
disparage the authors of the study, with smear, slander and "ad
hominem" defaming attacks. It immediatly launched a "preemptive"
hate campaign directed at professors John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, using
the entire panoply of negative epithets in their arsenal, with the obvious
objective of harassing and intimidating the two authors, and to send a lesson
to anyone in academia who would dare to imitate them.
Like the fishes that produce an opaque liquid to confuse
their adversaries when pursued, the pro-Israel Lobby has many attack tools at
its disposal.
First, the pro-Israel lobbyists tried the old trick of
"guilt by association".
They began by insinuating that professors Mearsheimer and
Walt published a study whose conclusions did not differ that much from other
messages previously issued by Islamist scholars or by far right American
individuals, such as David Duke and Rev. Louis Farrakhan. The fact that the two
authors had probably never met anyone among the individuals in question and did
not share their views did not matter. The purpose was to put everybody in the
same basket in order to undermine the authors' credibility. The two authors
were even accused by a zealot of promoting the Protocols of the Elders of
Zion,
the old czarist forgery that asserted, in 1903, a Jewish plan for world
domination.
Then they relied on intimidation and launched the over-used
"anti-Semite" epithet.
It used to be that
"anti-Semitism" referred to racial hatred, racial exclusion, threats
of racial expulsion or even racial extermination. —Not anymore. The mere
fact of analyzing or criticizing a public policy remotely involving Jewish
policy makers, which is perfectly legitimate and is the sign of a mature
democracy, opens one up to an accusation of anti-Semitism. Intellectual
totalitarianism would seem to prevail in the U.S., whenever and wherever a
public policy involves somewhat the state of Israel or Jewish policy makers, or
both. You may live in a democracy, but you cannot question any Jewish-led
public agenda, as could be the case, for example, with a globalistic and
militaristic U.S. foreign policy. —This is the supreme tactic of
intimidation, used to silence critics and analysts and coerce them to
self-censor.
Then, the
Lobby used a a third level of weapons of mass intellectual destruction: character assassination. To destroy the study and prevent a public debate on its
merits, its propaganda machine did not hesitate to slander and defame the two
authors, pretending the study was not of a high intellectual caliber. Some
Jewish professors from professional schools, such as well-known defense lawyer
and pro-Israel advocate Alan Dershowitz, came out publicly to chastize the
authors' sources, deemed not to be reliable enough. A front organization acting
as a propaganda machine for the Lobby, called the Committee for Accuracy in
Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA) did not want to be left out and proclaimed that "virtually
every word and argument (in the study) is,
or ought to be, in serious dispute.”
The substantial content and the conclusions did not seem to be worth discussing
for these critics. Only the assumed research methods were relevant in their
views.
But the final salvo came from the money class who supplies
funds to universities such as Harvard and Chicago, and does not hesitate to
pull the strings when asked. The Lobby enlisted lawyer Robert Belfer, a former
Enron director, and other "pro-Israel donors and so-called
philanthropists" to give a hand at pressuring the two universities
involved. For one, it seems Mr. Belfer, in 1997, contributed $7.5 million to
Harvard's Kennedy School. Probably imbued with the need to
protect academic freedom, lawyer Bob Belfer is reported to have called Harvard
(presumably departing Harvard president Laurence Summers) expressing his deep
concerns about the study and asking that professor Stephen Walt not use his
professorship title in publicity related to his study. If this is not
censorship, what is censorship?
There you have it. —How a powerful political machine
works to suppress debate, research and publications that are inimical to its
agenda. Short of murder, all means seem to be justified to deprecate and
undermine the credibility of the researchers and their work.
This time, however, the Lobby may have gone too far.
With its outrageous overkill tactics, it has only succeeded
in discrediting itself all over the world. Its strong-armed tactics designed to
slander and intimidate two respected scholars is backfiring. It has served only
to illustrate and demonstrate the fascist-like tactics and methods that the
Lobby ruthlessly employs to silence its critics. In fact, this episode may mark
a turning point in the unchallenged stronghold that the Israel Lobby exercises
over public information and public policy in the United States. Too many eyes
and too many ears have been opened by this revealing incident.
_______________________________________________
Posted by Rodrigue Tremblay,
April 2, 2006, at 5:00 pm
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