Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Israel Lobby?

Alarms are clattering in the minds of pro-Israel American activists whose mission in life is to close all gaps between official Israeli and American positions. In the weeks leading up to the annual convention of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), which begins May 3rd in DC, the Obama Administration has made it clear that it doesn't much care what these activists think, and that it is willing to rebuff and challenge Israel when necessary.

Obama seems to understand that he need not be afraid of the big bad Israel lobby. Thus far, he has given the lie to the popular notion that Israel's hawkish supporters have a vice grip on American policy, and that any U.S. president who stands up to them is committing political suicide.

After Obama's Middle East envoy George Mitchell praised a comprehensive Arab League peace plan a few times, Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman called it a "dangerous proposal." The State Department is pushing another idea that is anathema to the Israelis and AIPAC: amending formulas for Palestinian aid to permit the U.S. to funnel money into a unity government that includes ministers from Hamas, even if Hamas itself doesn't meet western conditions for aid. Both Vice President Biden and Defense Secretary Gates have publicly said that an Israeli attack on Iran would be ill-advised, even though ratcheting up tension with Iran is one of AIPAC's highest priorities.

Haaretz claims Obama has been readying Democratic allies in Congress for a possible public confrontation with the Netanyahu government. Neither side wants a public battle and it might not happen in the near future, but if it does, bet on Obama to win. Netanyahu cannot count on his friends in the U.S. to dissuade Obama from taking steps the president believes are in America's interests.

As part of the research for my book on America's Israel lobby, I tried to determine the likely political fall-out from a more evenhanded American approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I interviewed U.S. diplomats, members of Congress and their staffers, and American Jewish activists. Most of them agreed with Samuel Lewis, former U.S. Ambassador to Israel, who told me: "History shows that when presidents are determined to do something in U.S. interests, the [Israel] lobby folds. Congress folds. As Bush demonstrated, the White House can win the fight."

Lewis was referring to squabbles between President George H.W. Bush and the Israel lobby over loan guarantees to Israel, which Bush wanted to ensure were not used to free up money for Israeli settlements. Despite angry objections from Israel's supporters in the U.S., Congress gave Bush what he wanted on the loan guarantees in 1991. Nor did the Israel lobby prevent his administration from dragging Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir kicking and screaming to the Madrid peace conference in 1992.

Jimmy Carter also fought with Israel's supporters in the U.S, but that didn't stop him from implementing Middle East policies be believed in.

Of course there are political risks in arguing with Israel. One oft-cited warning to adventurous presidents is that Carter and Bush pere lost bids for re-election because they lost many Jewish votes. In fact, both would have been defeated anyway, mainly because of terrible recessions and the charisma of their opponents, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton. More important, Obama has political buffers that were not available to Bush or Carter, and will have more leeway to lean on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, instead of just one side.

In the last few years, American Jewish groups that want Obama to have this leeway have begun to flex their muscles in Washington, including J Street, Americans for Peace Now, Brit Tzedek v'Shalom and Israel Policy Forum. J Street raised more money last year for Congressional candidates than any other Political Action Committee connected with Israel. The silent Jewish majority, whose views are more dovish than groups that purport to represent them in Washington, is finally being heard in the corridors of power. And in recent years, the groups that speak for it have begun to cooperate actively in Washington with church groups and a few Arab American organizations that share most of its goals.

This alternative political bloc is not nearly as loud as the status quo lobby, doesn't have as many resources, and can't match AIPAC's grassroots network. But it probably need not be as powerful as AIPAC and the rest of the conventional Israel lobby. One reason is that there is an increasing amount of resentment against AIPAC in Congress. As one former Senate staffer told me, "There is a lot of pent-anger. Lots of staff and members curse the box that AIPAC puts them in. They feel like they are forced to take positions they don't believe are in the best interests of Israel." So the angry waters have been rising, pressing against the dam, and just a little more encouragement might be sufficient to open the floodgates.

AIPAC's leaders do not want that to happen. They are terrified of a confrontation with an overwhelmingly popular American president who has passionate support from the American Jewish community. Their highest priority is solidifying America's short- and long-term relationship with Israel. For that, they need access to and good relations with bureaucrats in Foggy Bottom, the Pentagon and the White House. A public squabble with Obama and his team is not helpful to AIPAC staffers who need to get into the right rooms with the right people, and who need to get their board members into those very same rooms because that is an expected perk of voluntary leadership.

Right now, the disagreements between Israel and America involve mostly broad principles, not actual facts on the ground. Such disagreements can probably be defused with calm rhetoric. AIPAC is desperately trying to calm the waters when it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It is trying to rev up its troops to lobby for tougher sanctions against Iran, the most important issue on its agenda. That may well spark an argument with the Obama administration. But since it is about American policy, as opposed to Israel policies and behavior, it probably won't lead to a knock-down drag-out battle between the American and Israeli governments.

But eventually, Obama must decide if he is willing to press both Israelis and Palestinians to stop taking steps that will preclude the possibility of peace. He must decide whether to insist loudly and clearly that, like Palestinian violence and incitement, Israel's recalcitrant refusal to stop its settlements projects is unacceptable, and against American, Israeli and Palestinian interests.

If he stakes out that position, most American Jews -like most Americans--will support him, No doubt there will be noisy squalls from pro-Israel right-wingers in the U.S. But there is no reason for Obama or his Congressional allies to fear them.

Comments

[warmonkey]

The answer to the headline question is , not our President, but certain members of congress. AIPAC is powerful, but they do not speak for ALL Americans , Jewish or otherwise. I am proud of our President. He will do the right thing.
The current Israeli regime has destroyed the reputation of a great nation, and the reputation of her good people in the eyes of the world.
Some people see it so very differently Mbogdan. "A History of Israel" is not a very good book for you to read, unless you only like to read books that support your viewpoint. [yes ,I have read it, also the "History of the Jews", which also does not pretend to be unbiased, check out the intro to both of these fine books. } Have you read "Palestine: Peace; not Apartheid" by Jimmy Carter? If you do not understand your opponants arguement, you can not understand your own.
A very famous and wise Jew once said, " take the beam from your own eye before you try to help your brother remove the splinter from his"

[tommyj7648]

George Washington on Israel

"A passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists, and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter without adequate inducement or justificat­ion." ~George Washington Farewell Address

"The nation which indulges toward another habitual hatred or habitual fondness is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interests.­" ~ George Washington

"Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations; entangling alliances with none." ~ Thomas Jefferson

[mbogdan]

Lest you forget who you’ve implored Israel to negotiate with, here are a few lines of "compassion" from the Palestinians' treatise on civilized life, the Qur'anic hadiths of Kitab Al-Fitan wa Ashrat As-Sa'ah, as cited in Hamas' charter:

"The last hour would not come unless the Muslims will fight against the Jews and the Muslims would kill them until the Jews would hide themselves behind a stone or a tree and a stone or a tree would say: Muslim, or the servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me; come and kill him; but the tree Gharqad would not say, for it is the tree of the Jews."

This tenet of Islam explains why the Arabs opposed the generous partitioning of the Palestine mandate in 1936-7, why they murdered Jewish civilians in 1921 and 1936-39 (even though the Zionists purchased uncultivated land from Arabs and developed it, leading to enormous tax windfalls for the mandate's gov't, which directed most funds to the Arabs), and have kept up their banditry and terror against Jews from the 1930s through today through various fronts. You are deluded to expect a good-faith effort from the Arabs, whereby Israel concedes land and its security for empty promises from practitioners of the Islamic doctrine of taqiyyah – lying to the infidel to protect the Muslim agenda. Get down from your ivory towers and see what we deal with in the real world.

[powercosmic]

Look these are all problems of bad blood from the PAST

Keep it up because you are making the case for Americans to reject religion as they are starting to and that can only be good for America and the world.

Besides, like it or not, within 20 years Israel will be host to an Arab Israeli majority and then there will be ONE STATE and it will be called Palestine, welcome to DEMOCRACY BABY!

But then do Jews and Israelis believe in Democracy?

[mbogdan]

Powercosmic, what majority do you mean? In absolute numbers, Jews come out on top with 5.4 million versus 1.4 million Arabs in the Israeli Census Bureau's 2007 estimate. If the Israeli Arab population continues to grow 2.8% annually, and Israeli Jews grow at 1.4% annually, there would be a Jewish majority in Israel-run areas until 2106. Meanwhile, the Arab population of the West Bank and Gaza is falling due to emigration. The Pal. Central Bureau of Statistics apparently didn't bother to conduct an '07 census, and just recycled 30%-inflated forecasts from '97, while the World Bank's data sees a 32% gap between the PCBS' inflated first-grader population and the actual Min. of Education tally.

I guess all the Palestinian Arabs that left the West Bank and Gaza didn't like the local version of democracy that much after all. As with Egypt and Syria, there is always some group, like Hamas or the Muslim Brotherhood, creating a state within a state, self-legitimized by some hadith or Qur'an verse, that undermines even the most earnest attempt at democratic institutio­n-building­.

[mhchien]

Somehow, your author sees it fitting that he and other Americans should somehow be stakeholders in stripping away Israel's every defense against its enemies.

The Israel lobby is so "big" and "bad" because the US is as apathetic as the Europeans when it comes to how its misdeeds seal Israel's fate. The US failed Israel by barely lifting a finger to accommodate Jews fleeing the Nazis, and didn't spend one red cent in helping Israel defeat the Arabs in 1948 or 1967. Washington made Israel a superpower client only in 1973, when the IDF had encircled tens of thousands of Egyptian soldiers in Sinai and was ready to liquidate them - when Israel showed proof positive that it was dominant over ALL of the Arabs' Soviet-armed military forces.

Israel probably will strike at Iran, not just because Iran threatens its existence, but because Washington and Brussels will complain and insolently demand the handover of the Golan Heights and greater West Bank to Arab murderers REGARDLESS of what Israel does. Israel's pioneers drained uncultivated, malarial swamps and re-irrigated the desert on their own, created an economy that boomed even during the Great Depression, succoring Arab immigrants, effendi, and peasants alike with Zionist tax revenues, fought like lions against the Arabs who refused to allow the Jews so much as self-rule, and invented a lot of the high-tech gear we use every day. They'll get by without Obama's rabbit-pellet incentives.

[NoamShelef]

Good post Dan. This supporter of peace and Israel hopes that Biden's speech yesterday is an indication of where the Obama administration is going.

[powercosmic]

AIPAC is America's enemy.

Israels APARTHEID government is living on borrowed time and they know it, but the longer the conflict lasts the more US Taxpayer money they can steal to the tune of $3 BILLION a year.

Corruption? Yeah you bet $3 BILLION a year buys you lots of it.

They know the trend, within 20 years there will be an Arab Israeli MAJORITY and for America to talk democracy in the middle east means giving these folks a voice in that government.

There will be a SINGLE STATE and it will be called Palestine because there will be an Arab majority.

If Zionists want to live in the "holy land" they'll have to do it in a democracy dominated by Arabs, oh but the APARTHEID government in Tel Aviv doesn't want to talk about this FACT does it?

Perhaps they have a "Final Solution" for this, ahem, growing problem.

Wake up AMERICA you are getting shafted vaseline free.

[mbogdan]

powercosmic, Sudan and Yemen are much better examples of apartheid than Israel. How'd you like to clean the streets of Sana'a because you have dark skin and are of Ethiopian descent? Or get "shafted" out of oil revenues and be exterminated by Khartoum for the same disgusting reasons? Why is it that Druze Muslims fight alongside Israel? Did "apartheid" make them do that? Read "A History of Israel." There's plenty of information that would make you change your mind about the so-called "Middle East" conflict.

[powercosmic]

But we don't give American taxpayer dollars to them AND turn a blind eye to their atrocities.

I don't care what they do in their own country, let Israel do its dirty work without MY MONEY and without endangering American security and National Interests.

Whats wrong with Israel surviving on its own?