THE UNITED STATES AND ISRAEL AFTER 9/11

The lobby made considerable progress pushing its agenda during the 1990s, even though it was more difficult to make the case that Israel was a strategic asset for the United States once the Cold War was over. Then came the attacks of September 11, 2001, which forced Americans to focus considerable attention on the Arab and Islamic world, and especially the Middle East. This was a critical moment for Israel and the lobby.
   Would the Bush administration conclude that close ties between the United States and Israel were fueling anti-American terrorism, and would it therefore try to improve its image in the Arab and Islamic world by distancing itself—even if only slightly—from Israel? Specifically, would President Bush put pressure on the Sharon government to end its efforts to colonize the West Bank and instead create a viable Palestinian state? Might the United States also begin to reduce its military presence in the wider Middle East, which had grown considerably since 1990 and which had worked to Israel's advantage?
   These were not idle fears. As we describe in Chapter 2, there was compelling evidence showing that Osama bin Laden was committed to the Palestinian cause and was angry at the United States for backing Israel so strongly. It was also clear that he deeply resented the presence of American troops on Arab soil, especially in Saudi Arabia, and that the combination of these two policies was fueling Arab and Islamic anger at the United States and facilitating al Qaeda's efforts. Might the United States respond to this situation by returning to its earlier position as an "offshore balancer" in the Middle East and pressing more vigorously for an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? There were precedents for precisely this sort of response: the Reagan administration had briefly deployed U.S. troops in Lebanon in the early 1980s but had removed them after a suicide bomber killed 241 marines in Beirut. Presidents Jimmy Carter and George H. W. Bush had also made genuine progress toward peace in the region, but only by putting pressure on Israel and by paying less attention to the lobby.
Yet despite these concerns, the post-September 11 focus on Middle
East threats was also an opportunity for Israel and its American advocates. If the Bush administration could be convinced that Israel was a critical ally in the war on terror and that Israel's enemies were America's enemies as well, then perhaps the United States could be induced to back Sharon's hard-line approach toward the Palestinians and to take aim at Israel's regional adversaries: Hezbollah, Iran, Iraq, and Syria. In essence, American policy makers had to be shown that it made good strategic sense for the United States to try to rid the Middle East of Israel's foes, which were also said to be America's foes. As one would expect, Israel and key groups in the lobby began working together to turn this opportunity into a reality.
   Their efforts succeeded. The Bush administration eventually embraced the lobby's views about the new threat environment and rejected the alternative paradigm. Not only did the United States gradually adopt Israel's policy preferences toward the Palestinians, Iran, and the rest of the region, it also adopted many of Israel's justifications for these policies. American and Israeli leaders began to sound as if they were speaking from the same page.
   The conventional wisdom is that this outcome was overdetermined. In this version of events, Bush and Sharon (and now Ehud Olmert) saw the world in essentially the same way. The president and his advisers needed little encouragement from the lobby, because they had accepted Israel's views on how to deal with the Arab Islamic world from the very beginning, and even more so after 9/11.1
   This interpretation of how U.S. Middle East policy evolved after 9/11 is not accurate, because it overlooks the very real disagreements that occasionally emerged between the Bush administration and the Israeli government. In the first year after September 11, Bush and Sharon clashed on a number of occasions over the Palestinian issue. Even after those disputes were resolved, there were still important differences between them regarding the Palestinians. In fact, Bush's efforts to deal with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict sometimes reflected the alternative paradigm, which called for greater effort to promote Israeli-Palestinian peace and defuse Arab hostility. This view enjoyed considerable support within the State Department and the U.S. intelligence community, as well as among the uniformed military. Bush also had important differences with Israel and the lobby over U.S. policy toward Syria. On both the Palestinian and Syrian issues, however, the lobby successfully pressured Bush to change course and to adopt its policy preferences instead.
   Furthermore, the lobby played a critical role in shaping U.S. policy toward Iraq and Iran, as well as the Bush administration's grand scheme for
transforming the Middle East into a sea of democracies. And the lobby worked overtime to convince Americans that Israel was in the right during its war in Lebanon in the summer of 2006 and to ensure that politicians from both parties supported Israel unreservedly.
   These are controversial claims and should not be made lightly. Both before and during the war in Iraq, a number of public figures suggested that President Bush's Middle East policy—especially his decision to invade Iraq—was at least partly intended to benefit Israel. Not surprisingly, both Israelis and prominent pro-Israel Americans challenged this view, in some cases invoking the familiar charge that such individuals were anti-Semites. But controversial or not, the issue here is a factual one: Did the lobby exert a significant influence on U.S. Middle East policy? And if so, were the results beneficial for the United States or for Israel? The answer to the first question is clearly yes, and we believe the answer to the second question is emphatically no.
   Let us look more closely at the Bush administration's policies in the Middle East, starting with its support for Israel's policies in the Occupied Territories, followed by an examination of its decision to invade Iraq. We will then consider Washington's broader policy of regional transformation, paying special attention to its policy toward Syria and Iran. Finally, we will examine America's handling of the 2006 Lebanon war. We argue that in each case, U.S. policy would have been different if the lobby were not as powerful, or if the main groups within it had favored a different approach. America's actions would have also have been more in line with its national interest, and better for Israel as well.

THE LOBBY VERSUS THE PALESTINIANS

 THE LOBBY IN ACTION
INTRODUCTION TO PART II

The Israel lobby's influence would not be especially worrisome if its agenda were limited to making sure that Congress continued to provide foreign aid for the Jewish state. Although there might be better uses for this money, the United States is a wealthy country and can afford the $3 billion-plus that it annually provides to Israel. But the lobby's efforts have not been limited to foreign aid. Like a number of other special interest groups, it also works to influence various aspects of U.S. foreign policy, in its case focusing primarily on the Middle East. These efforts to shape policy in the region are understandable: although material aid is valuable, it is even more helpful to have the world's only superpower bring its vast capabilities to bear on Israel's behalf.
   Even so, this aspect of the lobby's agenda would be of little concern if it encouraged policies that were obviously in America's best interest. In the next five chapters, we show that this is not the case. The United States has three main interests in the Middle East today: keeping Persian Gulf oil flowing to world markets, discouraging the spread of weapons of mass destruction, and reducing anti-American terrorism originating in the region. There are instances where the lobby has supported policies that advanced these interests, but many of the policies that organizations in the lobby have promoted over time have ultimately left the United States worse off. That was not their intention, of course, and the groups and individuals who pushed for these policies undoubtedly believed that the actions they favored would be good for the United States. They were wrong. Indeed, although these policies were intended to benefit Israel, many of them have damaged Israel's interests as well.
THE LOBBY'S AGENDA
In addition to preserving U.S. aid to Israel, groups in the lobby have sought to ensure that American power is used to shape the Middle East environment in ways they believed would advance Israel's interests, especially in security. In practical terms, this meant backing Israel in its long struggle with the Palestinians and directing American power against other movements or states that might be at odds with Israel.
   As noted in Chapter 4, there are differences within the pro-Israel community about the virtues of creating a viable Palestinian state, with the leaders of the lobby tending to be more hostile to that idea than the rank and file. Nevertheless, few supporters of Israel advocate an evenhanded policy toward the two sides, and fewer still have called for the United States to pressure Israel to produce a settlement.
   Most pro-Israel groups—and especially the central organizations in the lobby—also want the United States to help Israel remain the dominant military power in the Middle East. In addition to maintaining generous aid to Israel's military establishment, these groups favor using American power to deal with Israel's main regional adversaries: Iran, Iraq under Saddam, and Syria. At the very least, the lobby wants America to contain these so-called rogue states and to make sure that they do not acquire nuclear weapons. Some of these groups have gone farther, advocating that the United States use its power to topple the regimes in Iran, Iraq, and Syria and replace them with leaders willing to live peacefully with Israel. In the best of all possible worlds, Washington would transform the entire region by spreading democracy and drying up support for terrorism against both the United States and Israel.
   Finally, the lobby has pushed American leaders to disarm Hezbollah and help create a Lebanon that is friendly to Israel. But these goals cannot be accomplished without radically changing the behavior of Iran and Syria, since those states support and arm Hezbollah, and Syria has a long history of involvement in Lebanese politics. Given these and other links among Israel's adversaries, the lobby tends to see all of them as part of a seamless web of evil that the United States must at least keep at bay if not destroy.
   To deal with these different threats to Israel, key groups within the lobby have encouraged the United States to deploy substantial military forces in the Middle East. As we will show, the lobby played an important role in making the case for war with Iraq, which was the first step in a broader campaign of regional transformation. Even today, many of Israel's most vocifer
ous supporters oppose withdrawing American forces from Iraq and redeploying them outside of the region, because keeping U.S. forces in the neighborhood leaves them well positioned to threaten Israel's adversaries or to take action against them should the need or the opportunity arise.

THE UNITED STATES AND ISRAEL AFTER 9/11

 In all of these cases, there was no evidence of actual anti-Semitism. True anti-Semitism conceives of Jews as being different from other people, in various invidious ways, which gives those others license to single them out and
persecute them in both large and small ways. Anti-Semites maintain that Jews who are engaged in what seem like legitimate political activities—running for office, contributing to political campaigns, writing articles and books, or organizing lobbying groups—are actually engaged in dark and secret conspiracies. Real anti-Semites sometimes favor harsh measures to deny Jews full political rights and at times advocate even more violent persecution of Jews. Even in its milder forms, anti-Semitism indulges in various forms of stereotyping and implies that Jews should be viewed with suspicion or contempt, while seeking to deny them the ability to participate fully and freely in all realms of society. In its essential features, true anti-Semitism resembles other forms of racist or religious discrimination, all of which have been roundly condemned in Europe and the United States since the end of World War II.
   By contrast, almost all of the many gentiles and Jews who now criticize Israeli policy or worry about the lobby's impact on U.S. foreign policy find such views deeply disturbing and categorically reject them. Rather, they believe that Jews are like other human beings, which means that they are capable of both good and bad deeds, and that they are entitled to the same status as other members of society. They also believe that Israel acts like other states, which is to say that it vigorously defends its own interests and sometimes pursues policies that are wise and just and sometimes does things that are strategically foolish and even immoral. This perspective is the opposite of anti-Semitism. It calls for treating Jews like everyone else and treating Israel as a normal and legitimate country. Israel, in this view, should be praised when it acts well and criticized when it does not. Americans are also entitled to be upset and critical when Israel does things that harm U.S. interests, and Americans who care about Israel should be free to criticize it when its government takes actions that they believe are not in Israel's interest either. There is neither special treatment nor a double standard here. Similarly, most critics of the lobby do not see it as a cabal or conspiracy; rather, they argue—as we have—that pro-Israel organizations act as other interest groups do. While the charge of anti-Semitism can be an effective smear tactic, it is usually groundless.
   Indeed, there are signs that the reflexive charge of anti-Semitism is beginning to lose its power to stifle debate. The attacks on Jimmy Carter's book did not deter the former president from publicizing it widely (including a visible and successful appearance at Brandeis University), and a number of other public figures and mainstream publications have recently offered intelligent criticisms of Israeli policy and the lobby's influence.105 Even William Kristol seems to have recognized that calling critics of Israel or the lobby
anti-Semites is losing its capacity to silence others, writing in the Wall Street Journal that "the mainstream Jewish organizations have played the 'anti-Semitism' card so often that it has been devalued."106 The obvious reason is that increasing numbers of people recognize that this serious charge keeps getting leveled at individuals who are not anti-Semites but who are merely questioning Israeli policies or pointing out that the lobby promotes policies that are not always in the U.S. national interest.
   Let us be clear: anti-Semitism is a despicable phenomenon with a long and tragic history, and all people should remain vigilant against its resurgence and condemn it when it arises. Furthermore, we should all be disturbed by the presence of genuine anti-Semitism in parts of the Arab and Islamic world (and in other societies—e.g., Russia), as well as its lingering presence in some segments of American and European society. But it is essential that we distinguish between true anti-Semitism and legitimate criticism of Israeli policy, because blurring them makes it harder to fight true bigotry and makes it more difficult to intelligently discuss U.S. foreign policy. Americans should be free to discuss the activities of groups that are pushing the United States to support Israel generously and unconditionally, in the same way that we examine the political activities of other interest groups without having to worry about being smeared or marginalized.

CONCLUSION

The various strategies that groups in the lobby employ—as discussed in this chapter and the previous one—are mutually reinforcing. If politicians know that it is risky to question Israeli policy or the United States' unyielding support for Israel, then it will be harder for the mainstream media to locate authoritative voices that are willing to disagree with the lobby's views. If public discourse about Israel can be shaped so that most Americans have generally positive impressions of the Jewish state, then politicians will have even more reason to follow the lobby's lead. Playing the anti-Semitism card stifles discussion even more and allows myths about Israel to survive unchallenged. Although other interest groups employ similar strategies in varying form, most of them can only dream of having the political muscle that pro-Israel organizations have amassed. The question, therefore, is what effect does the Israel lobby have on U.S. foreign policy? Is its influence in the American national interest, or has it encouraged policies that are bad for the United States and even for Israel itself? It is to that question that we now turn.
PART II

THE LOBBY IN ACTION

 THE GREAT SILENCER

These fine points notwithstanding, the charge of anti-Semitism remains a widely used weapon for dealing with critics of Israel, especially in the United States. This tactic has been effective for a number of reasons. First, anti-Semitism is a set of beliefs that led to great evils in the past, including the monstrous crimes of the Holocaust, and it is now utterly discredited in most segments of society. The charge of anti-Semitism is one of the most powerful epithets one can level at someone in America, and no respectable person wants to be tarred with that brush. Undoubtedly, the fear of being called an anti-Semite discourages many individuals from voicing reservations about Israel's conduct or the merits of U.S. support.
   Second, smearing critics of Israel or the lobby with the charge of anti-Semitism works to marginalize them in the public arena. If the accusation sticks, the critic's arguments will not be taken seriously by the media, government officials, and other influential elites, and groups that might otherwise pay attention to that person's views will be discouraged from soliciting them. Politicians will be especially reluctant to associate themselves with anyone who has been charged as anti-Semitic, because doing so could have a chilling effect on their own careers.
   Third, this tactic works because it is difficult for anyone to prove beyond all doubt that he or she is not anti-Semitic, especially when criticizing Israel
or the lobby. Proving a negative is hard to do under any circumstances, especially when it comes to something like intentions and motivations that cannot be observed directly, and pointing to other behavior that is inconsistent with anti-Semitism is not likely to carry much weight. Until recently, therefore, the charge of anti-Semitism has been a potent way to make sure that criticisms of Israel or the lobby were rarely spoken and were either ignored or disparaged when they were.
   The accusation is likely to resonate among American Jews, many of whom still believe that anti-Semitism is rife. Not only does the history of Jews in the diaspora provide plenty of cause to worry, that tendency is magnified by the role that the Holocaust plays in the attitudes of a significant number of Jewish Americans. As Peter Novick makes clear in his seminal book, The Holocaust in American Life, that cataclysmic event has become a key element of American Jewish consciousness. It defines how many American Jews think about the world around them, and not surprisingly, it has fostered a powerful sense of victimization for some of them. Despite the great success Jews have achieved in America, many Jewish Americans still worry that virulent anti-Semitism could return at any time. As Jack Wertheimer notes, "By virtually any measure, domestic anti-Semitism has declined sharply; however, many American Jews continue to believe that other Jews in the United States are targets of bigotry." Frank Rich, the New York Times columnist, acknowledges this thinking when he writes, "Like many other Jews, I am perhaps all too willing to believe that the entire world is anti-Semitic."91
   This profound sense of fear among American Jews was clearly evident when Israel was harshly criticized around the world in the spring of 2002. Nat Hentoff, who writes for the Village Voice, remarked at the time that "if a loudspeaker goes off and a voice says, 'all Jews gather in Times Square,' it could never surprise me," and Ron Rosenbaum wrote in the New York Observer, "There is likely to be a second Holocaust." These concerns grew so loud that Leon Wieseltier of the New Republic, himself a deeply committed defender of Israel, felt compelled to write a cover story titled "Hitler Is Dead: The Case Against Jewish Ethnic Panic." Describing Jews in the United States, he wrote, "The community is sunk in excitability, in the imagination of disaster. There is a loss of intellectual control. Death is at every Jewish door. Fear is wild. Reason is derailed. Anxiety is the supreme proof of authenticity. Imprecise and inflammatory analogies abound. Holocaust imagery is everywhere."92 In short, many American Jews find it easy to believe that a person (and especially a gentile) who criticizes either Israel's actions or the influence of groups like AIPAC is probably an anti-Semite at heart.
   For all these reasons, when faced with criticism of Israel's policies, some of its defenders are quick to invoke the charge of anti-Semitism. The first and most visible case is the heated reaction to Jimmy Carter's recent book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid. Despite its provocative title, the book is neither polemical nor unsympathetic to Israel's strategic situation. Carter is certainly critical of Israel's occupation of the West Bank and what that means for the Palestinians living there, and he correctly observes that it is difficult to have a candid discussion of these issues in the United States. But as Yossi Beilin, a prominent Israeli politician, noted, "There is nothing in the criticism that Carter has for Israel that has not been said by Israelis themselves."93 Even Carter's use of the term "apartheid"—which seems to have provoked much of the ire directed at him—echoes the use of the term by Israeli critics of the occupation and by prominent South Africans such as Nobel Peace Prize winner Bishop Desmond Tutu and current Minister of Intelligence Ronnie Kasrils.94
   As noted, the ADL and CAMERA attacked Carter's book in prominent ads in major newspapers, and though a number of critics addressed the substance of Carter's claims, others immediately launched personal attacks on the former president.95 Abraham Foxman said, "I believe he is engaging in anti-Semitism," while Martin Peretz wrote that Carter "will go down in history as a Jew-hater."96 Deborah Lipstadt, the historian who won a landmark suit against notorious Holocaust denier David Irving, wrote in the Washington Post that "Carter has repeatedly fallen back—possibly unconsciously— on traditional anti-Semitic canards" and suggested that there was a strong similarity between some of Carter's views and those of former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke.97 As Carter himself said, "I have been called an anti-Semite. I have been called a bigot. I have been called a plagiarist. I have been called a coward."98 It was a remarkable reaction to the man who in his stewardship of the Egyptian-Israeli peace process had done as much as any human being to enhance Israel's overall security.
   A similar reaction—albeit on a smaller scale—occurred when former neoconservative Francis Fukuyama published an article critiquing Charles Krauthammer's 2004 Irving Kristol Lecture at the American Enterprise Institute. Fukuyama's analysis was pointed but respectful (among other things, he called Krauthammer a "gifted thinker" whose ideas were "worth taking seriously"), but his suggestion that Krauthammer's views on how to deal with the Islamic world derived too much from Israel's experience led Krauthammer to charge Fukuyama with anti-Semitism.99
   We are not unacquainted with this line of attack. When our original article, "The Israel Lobby," was published in the London Review of Books in
March 2006, we were widely and falsely accused of being anti-Semites. Eliot Cohen published an op-ed about our piece in the Washington Post titled "Yes, It's Anti-Semitic," and the New York Sun immediately linked us with David Duke.100 The ADL termed our article "a classical conspiratorial anti-Semitic analysis invoking the canards of Jewish power and Jewish control"—ignoring our explicit statement that the lobby was just another interest group engaged in legitimate political activities—while the New Republic published four separate attacks on our paper, all describing it as anti-Semitic.101 In separate op-eds in the Wall Street Journal, William Kristol accused us of "anti-Judaism," and Ruth Wisse, a Harvard professor of Yiddish literature, likened our piece to the writings of a notorious nineteenth-century German anti-Semite. And in his own critique of Carter's book, Shmuel Rosner of Ha'aretz generously opined that the ex-president and Nobel Peace Prize winner was "not as anti-Semitic as Walt-Mearsheimer."102
   The tendency to accuse critics of Israel of being anti-Semitic reached new heights (or perhaps a new low) in early 2007, when the American Jewish Committee released a paper by the Indiana University English professor Alvin H. Rosenfeld titled "'Progressive'Jewish Thought and the New Anti-Semitism." Rosenfeld identified a group of liberal American Jews (including the playwright Tony Kushner, the historian Tony Judt, the poet Adrienne Rich, and the Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen) who have been critical of Israel and charged them with participating "alongside" a new anti-Semitism that denies Israel's right to exist. In his introduction to the paper, the committee's executive director, David Harris, wrote, "The most surprising—and distressing—feature of this new trend is the very public participation of some Jews in the verbal onslaught against Zionism and the Jewish state."103
   The targets of Rosenfeld's critique vehemently denied his various charges, and Rabbi Michael Lerner oiTikkun pointed out the consequences of such unwarranted accusations. "When we talk to Congressional representatives who are liberal or even extremely progressive on every other issue," he wrote, "they tell us privately that they are afraid to speak out about the way Israeli policies are destructive to the best interests of the United States or the best interests of world peace—lest they too be labeled anti-Semitic and anti-Israel. If it can happen to Jimmy Carter, some of them told me recently, a man with impeccable moral credentials, then no one is really politically safe."104
   In all of these cases, there was no evidence of actual anti-Semitism.

 THE "NEW ANTI-SEMITISM"

No discussion of how the lobby operates would be complete without examining one of its most powerful weapons: the charge of anti-Semitism. Anyone who criticizes Israeli actions or says that pro-Israel groups have significant influence over U.S. Middle East policy stands a good chance of getting labeled an anti-Semite. In fact, anyone who says that there is an Israel lobby runs the risk of being charged with anti-Semitism, even though AIPAC and the Conference of Presidents are hardly bashful about describing their influence and the Israeli media themselves refer to America's "Jewish lobby."70 In effect, the lobby both boasts of its own power and frequently attacks those who call attention to it.
   This accusation is now being made in the context of alarmist claims about a resurgence of virulent anti-Semitism, especially in Europe. In October 2002, Conference of Presidents chairman Mortimer B. Zuckerman wrote in U.S. News & World Re-port of a "shameful contagion of anti-Semitism," warning that "Europe is sick again," and the Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby devoted a March 2004 column to the resurgent "cancer of anti-Semitism in Europe."71 We are "getting to a point," the U.S. ambassador to the European Union said in early 2004, "where it is as bad as it was in the 1930s."72
   Measuring anti-Semitism is a complicated matter, but the weight of evidence points in the opposite direction. Indeed, in the spring of 2004, when accusations of European anti-Semitism were prevalent in America, separate surveys of European public opinion conducted by the ADL and the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press showed that it was actually declining.73
   Consider France, which pro-Israel groups often portray as the most anti-Semitic state in Europe, and whose capital, according to the New Republics Martin Peretz, is "the headquarters of anti-Semitic Europe today, just as during the Third Republic."74 Yet a poll of French citizens in 2002 found that 89 percent could envisage living with a Jew; 97 percent believed making anti-Semitic graffiti is a serious crime; 87 percent thought attacks on French synagogues are scandalous; and 85 percent of practicing French Catholics rejected the charge that Jews have too much influence in business and finance.75 The head of the French Jewish community declared in the summer of 2003 that "France is not more anti-Semitic than America."76 According to Ha'aretz, the French police reported that anti-Semitic incidents in France had declined by almost 50 percent in 2005, and this despite the fact that France has the largest Muslim population of any country in Europe.77
   When a French Jew was brutally murdered by a Muslim gang in February 2006, tens of thousands of French demonstrators poured into the streets to condemn anti-Semitism. President Jacques Chirac and Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin both attended the victim's memorial service in a public show of solidarity with French Jewry.78 It is also worth noting that in 2002, more Jews from the former Soviet empire immigrated to Germany than to Israel, making it "the fastest growing Jewish community in the world," according to an article in the Jewish newspaper Forward.79 If Europe were really "as bad as it was in the 1930s," it is hard to imagine that Jews would be moving there in large numbers.
   We recognize that Europe is not free of the scourge of anti-Semitism. No one would deny that there are still some virulent autochthonous anti-Semites in Europe (as there are in the United States), but their numbers are small and their extreme views are rejected by the vast majority of Europeans. Nor would we deny that there is anti-Semitism among European Muslims, some of it provoked by Israel's behavior toward the Palestinians and some of it straightforwardly racist.80 In Great Britain, for example, the Community Security Trust (CST), a watchdog group that monitors anti-Semitism, reported a 31 percent rise in such incidents in 2006. Although such deplorable events should never be taken lightly, the total number of incidents reported was 594 (in a country of more than sixty million people), and nearly a quarter of them coincided with the 2006 war in Lebanon. As CST's Mark Gardner acknowledged, "This is certainly not comparable with the 1930s or anything remotely like that."81 Several other groups—including the Israel-based Global Forum Against Anti-Semitism—reported that anti-Semitic incidents had actually declined during this same period. Given potential coding and underreporting issues, these conflicting results suggest that claims of a substantial rise or fall in actual anti-Semitism should be made and interpreted with some caution.82
   When pressed to go beyond vague assertions, pro-Israel groups now claim that there is a "new anti-Semitism," which they equate with criticism of Israel.83 When the synod of the Church of England voted in early 2006 to divest from Caterpillar Inc. on the grounds that Caterpillar manufactures the bulldozers used to demolish Palestinian homes, the chief rabbi of the U.K. complained that it would "have the most adverse repercussions on . . . Jewish-Christian relations in Britain," while Rabbi Tony Bayfield, the head of the Reform movement, said, "There is a clear problem of anti-Zionist— verging on anti-Semitic—attitudes emerging in the grass roots, and even in the middle ranks of the Church."84 The church was guilty of neither anti-Zionism nor anti-Semitism; it was merely protesting Israeli policy.85
   Supporters of Israel, in fact, have a history of using fears of a "new anti-Semitism" to shield Israel from criticism. In 1974, when Israel was under increasing pressure to withdraw from the lands it had conquered in 1967, Arnold Forster and Benjamin Epstein of the ADL published The New Anti-Semitism, which argued that anti-Semitism was on the rise and exemplified by the growing unwillingness of other societies to support Israel's actions.86 In the early 1980s, when the invasion of Lebanon and Israel's expanding settlements triggered additional criticisms, and when U.S. arms sales to its Arab allies were hotly contested, then ADL head Nathan Perlmutter and his wife, Ruth Ann Perlmutter, released The Real Anti-Semitism in America, which argued that anti-Semitism was on its way back, as shown by the pressure on Israel to make peace with the Arabs and by events like the sale of AWACS aircraft to Saudi Arabia.87 The Perlmutters also suggested that many "a-Semitic" actions, which they define as acts not motivated by hostility to Jews, may nonetheless harm Jewish interests (and especially Israel's well-being), and could easily bring back genuine anti-Semitism.88
   The troubling logic of this argument is revealed by the fact that there was little mention of anti-Semitism during the 1990s, when Israel was involved in the Oslo peace process. Indeed, one Israeli scholar wrote in 1995 that "never before, at least since the time Christianity seized power over the Roman Empire, has anti-Semitism been less significant than at present."89 Charges of anti-Semitism became widespread only in the spring of 2002, when Israel came under severe criticism around the world for its brutal behavior in the Occupied Territories.
   Critics are also accused of holding Israel to an unfair standard or questioning its right to exist. Thus, Natan Sharansky, the former Soviet dissident who is now a prominent Israeli author and politician, declares, "The new anti-Semitism appears in the guise of 'political criticism of Israel,' consisting of a discriminating approach and double standard towards the state of the Jews, while questioning its right to exist."90 The implication is that anyone who criticizes Israel's actions (or the actions of its supporters) is opposed to its existence and is therefore hostile to Jews. But this is a bogus charge, because it conflates criticism of Israel's actions with the rejection of Israel's legitimacy. In fact, Western critics of Israel hardly ever question its right to exist. Instead, they question its behavior toward the Palestinians, which is a legitimate criticism; many Israelis question it themselves.
   Israel is not being judged by a double standard when Western critics offer such charges. Although a few critics may single Israel out for undue criticism, Israel is for the most part being judged by the same standard that
people in the West apply to all democracies. This criterion is entirely appropriate, especially since Israel and its American supporters constantly emphasize that it deserves special treatment because it is the "only democracy in the Middle East." Israel, in other words, is expected to behave like contemporary Britain, Canada, Denmark, the United States, and so forth, and not like the military junta in Burma, Pervez Musharraf's Pakistan, or Fidel Castro's Cuba. Israel's treatment of the Palestinians elicits criticism because it is contrary to widely accepted human rights norms and international law, as well as the principle of national self-determination. And it is hardly the only state that has faced sharp criticism on these grounds. The United States was widely condemned for the abuses that occurred at Abu Ghraib prison and also for the way it has treated detainees at Guantanamo. But America is not being held to a double standard either; it is merely being expected to live up to its own stated values and to widely accepted human rights principles. And so is Israel.

THE GREAT SILENCER

 OBJECTIONABLE TACTICS

As we have repeatedly emphasized, lobbying on Israel's behalf is wholly legitimate, as are overt efforts to shape public perceptions by participating in public discourse about matters relating to Israel. We do not think the lobby's current influence serves the interest of either the United States or Israel, but most of its tactics are reasonable and simply part of the normal rough-and-tumble that is the essence of democratic politics. Unfortunately, some pro-Israel individuals and groups have occasionally taken their defense of Israel to illegitimate extremes, attempting to silence individuals who hold views they dislike. This endeavor can involve intimidating and smearing critics of Israel, or even attempting to damage or wreck their careers. The previous discussion of the lobby's actions in academia provides a number of examples of this kind of behavior, which has no place in a democratic society. The lobby, however, does not confine its strong-arm tactics to the academic world. Consider what happened in October 2006 to Tony Judt, a New York Uni
versity historian who is Jewish but frequently critical of Israel's actions. He was scheduled to give a lecture at the Polish consulate in New York City, "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy." The Polish government was not sponsoring the event; the consulate had merely rented its facilities to Network 20/20, an independent group that sponsors lectures on a wide range of topics. David Harris, the executive director of the American Jewish Committee, got wind of the event and contacted the Polish consul general. Harris later explained that he had called as a "friend of Poland" and said that the lecture "was going to be entirely contrary to the entire spirit of Polish foreign policy." The consul general also received two inquiries from the ADL, and he later described the calls as "exercising a delicate pressure . . . We are adults and our IQs are high enough to understand that." The consulate canceled Judt's lecture at the last minute, which led a group of prominent American intellectuals to issue an open letter denouncing this obvious effort to stifle free discussion.63 Judt has also reported receiving death threats against him and his family on other occasions, inspired by his previous criticisms of Israeli policy.64
   A similar incident occurred later that same month, when the French embassy in the United States scheduled a reception to celebrate the publication of Carmen Callil's Bad Faith, a widely hailed examination of the role that a scurrilous French official (Louis Darquier) had played in the deportation of French Jews to Auschwitz. Although the book is a passionate and moving indictment of French complicity in the Holocaust, the embassy reportedly received complaints about a brief passage in Callil's postscript: "What caused me anguish, as I tracked down Louis Darquier, was to live so closely to the helpless terror of the Jews of France, and to see what the Jews of Israel were passing on to the Palestinian people." Bowing to the pressure, the French embassy said that "it could not endorse a personal opinion of the author expressed in the postscript of the book" and canceled the reception.65
   An even more prominent case involved My Name Is Rachel Corrie, a play about the young woman who was killed in March 2003 by an Israeli bulldozer when she was attempting to prevent the IDF from demolishing a Palestinian home in the Gaza Strip. The play, which was based on Corrie's diaries and e-mails, opened in April 2005 at the Royal Court Theatre in London and was widely acclaimed. It was scheduled to open in March 2006 at the New York Theater Workshop, which has a well-established reputation for staging controversial productions, only to be postponed about a month before its scheduled opening. The New York Times reported that the workshop's artistic director had decided to postpone the play "after polling local Jewish religious and community leaders as to their feelings about the work,"
and the Los Angeles Times quoted him saying that "what we heard was that after Ariel Sharon's illness and the election of Hamas in the recent Palestinian elections, we had a very edgy situation."66 (The original Royal Court production of the play was eventually brought to New York in the fall of 2006 for a limited run of eighty performances.) A similar occurrence took place in Canada in December 2006 when that country's largest not-for-profit theater canceled a scheduled production of the play, due to fears that it would anger Toronto's Jewish community.67 And the same thing happened again in April 2007, when Miami's Mosaic Theatre canceled plans to mount the play after protests from what the Miami Herald called an "impassioned, vocal minority" of subscribers and outside individuals.68
   The overzealous pursuit of supposedly "dangerous critics" has even landed one prominent group in the lobby in a courtroom. In the 1980s and early 1990s, the ADL enlisted the services of a private investigator named Roy Bullock who also did intelligence gathering for the apartheid government in South Africa. Bullock, in turn, obtained information from a Los Angeles police intelligence officer who allegedly removed confidential documents from the police department and the Department of Motor Vehicles. In all, the two reportedly maintained files on some twelve thousand individuals and six hundred organizations in California, some of which were provided to the ADL. In addition to white supremacists and neo-Nazi groups, the targets of this surveillance included a number of Jewish dissidents, Arab-American groups, and other critics of Israeli government policies. The San Francisco district attorney launched a criminal investigation, and the police officer ultimately pleaded no contest to the unauthorized use of a police computer. But the district attorney was reluctant to prosecute the ADL because he thought it was a force for good. Instead, the district attorney accepted an offer by the ADL to pay $75,000 to fight bigotry in the local area, and no criminal charges were filed against the organization or Bullock.
   There was, however, a civil suit brought by three of the targets, two of them Jewish. The ADL eventually agreed to settle out of court and to pay each $50,000 plus court costs. ADL head Abraham Foxman denied that the ADL spied on anyone, but defended its practice of investigating groups critical of Israel by saying "a viable, safe, secure haven" in Israel is "part and parcel of the safety and security and survival of the Jewish people." The ADL was not protecting the community from anti-Semitism or bigotry, which is its stated mission; it was simply targeting individuals thought to be critical of Israel or of U.S. support.69

THE "NEW ANTI-SEMITISM"

 The lobby's desire to police academia has led to several noteworthy efforts to pressure administrators or influence personnel decisions. In the summer of 2002, for example, pro-Israel groups at the University of Chicago claimed that there was "an atmosphere of intimidation and hate for Jewish students on campus" and charged that the faculty and administration were doing nothing about the problem. Indeed, it was said that faculty and administrators "sanction and even encourage such outbursts." Stung by the allegations, the administration collected all the students' claims and investigated them. Only two charges were found to be valid: an instance of anti-Semitic graffiti in a dormitory, which the resident staff failed to deal with promptly, and an e-mail sent out by a graduate student on a department mailing list that told a joke about Auschwitz. Although regrettable, this hardly constituted evidence of an "atmosphere of persecution and estrangement," which is how one Jewish student described Chicago in 2002. Nevertheless, the Israeli consul general in Chicago and then the Israeli ambassador to the United States visited the university shortly thereafter. Their aim was to force the president and the provost to find ways to improve Israel's profile on campus. During this same period, the prominent Palestinian-American historian Rashid Khalidi, who was then on Chicago's faculty, had his e-mail system bombarded with spam.48
   When Columbia recruited Khalidi away from the University of Chicago, reports Jonathan Cole, the former provost at Columbia, "The complaints started flowing in from people who disagreed with the content of his political views." Princeton faced much the same problem a few years later when it tried to woo Khalidi away from Columbia.49 The late Palestinian-American scholar Edward Said, who taught at Columbia for many years, was the target of similar denunciations, and Cole later said that "any public statement in support of the Palestinian people by the preeminent literary critic Edward Said will elicit hundreds of e-mails, letters, and journalistic accounts that call on us to denounce Said and to either sanction or fire him."50 Columbia's travails did not end there: in 2004, the David Project produced a propaganda film alleging that faculty in Columbia University's Middle East Studies program were anti-Semitic and were intimidating Jewish students who defended Israel.51 Columbia was raked over the coals in neoconservative publications like the New York Sun, but a faculty committee assigned to investigate the charges found no evidence of anti-Semitism and the only incident worth noting was the possibility that one professor had "responded
heatedly" to a student's question. The committee also found that the accused professors had been the target of an overt intimidation campaign.52
   One would like to think that these were just isolated incidents, but much the same thing happened again in 2006, when the Departments of History and Sociology at Yale University voted an appointment for Professor Juan Cole, a distinguished historian at the University of Michigan. Cole is also the author of a prizewinning weblog ("Informed Comment"), and he has been critical of a number of Israeli policies in recent years. Pro-Israel columnists in the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Times attacked Cole's appointment, and the newspaper Jewish Week reported that several prominent Jewish donors had called Yale officials to protest the decision, which was subsequently overturned by Yale's appointments committee. The actual impact of donor pressure is unknown, but the incident underscores the importance that some of Israel's supporters have placed on shaping discourse on campus.53
   Efforts to protect Israel from criticism have also targeted individual speakers, visiting professors, and guest lecturers, in order to create an atmosphere where free expression and open debate are curtailed. In 1984, a student group at Stanford University invited alumnus and former Congressman Pete McCloskey to teach as a visiting lecturer. McCloskey was a prominent critic of unconditional U.S. support for Israel, having proposed an amendment in 1980 that would have reduced American aid by the amount that Israel was spending annually on its West Bank settlements. His actions led to charges that he was an anti-Semite and helped ensure his defeat in his 1982 Senate campaign. But the controversy did not stop there: the director of Stanford's Hillel chapter said his appointment was "a slap in the face of the Jewish community," and members of the student governing council threatened to reduce his compensation or terminate his appointment if he did not remove an article by former Assistant Secretary of State George Ball from his course syllabus and add materials reflecting pro-AIPAC views. In sharp contrast with normal academic practice, they also insisted that he schedule additional class sessions with guests representing alternative perspectives. A faculty review found the student group guilty of "serious abridgments" of academic freedom and McCloskey eventually received a formal apology from the Stanford provost.54
   We have some experience with this tactic ourselves. In early 2006, we were each independently invited to appear on a panel at the U.S. Naval War College's annual Current Strategy Forum. The topic of the panel was "The
Nature of Power," which, it is worth noting, had little to do with Middle East politics or U.S. foreign policy in that region. Following the publication of our original article, "The Israel Lobby," in March 2006, the president of the War College received phone calls from several members of Congress who questioned whether it was appropriate to have us speak at the conference.55 To his credit, the president took no action in response to these calls and we appeared without incident. A subsequent invitation to Walt to speak in a lecture series at the University of Montana also provoked heated denunciations by several faculty members, who began a protracted but unsuccessful campaign to have the faculty coordinator of the lecture series removed from his post.56
   In addition to targeting faculty and hiring on campus, a number of pro-Israel academics and groups have tried to suppress publication of scholarly works that challenged their particular views. In 1998, for example, the ADL called on the publisher of Norman Finkelstein and Ruth Bettina Birn's A Nation on Trial (Metropolitan Books) to halt its release. A Nation on Trial is a sharply worded critique of Daniel Goldhagen's controversial best seller Hitler's Willing Executioners, which argues that the Holocaust was not simply the product of Nazi beliefs and Hitler's own madness but also was rooted in a pervasive "eliminationist ideology" in German society that predated the Nazi period. Like the Goldhagen book, A Nation on Trial elicited both praise and criticism from respected scholars. Yet ADL head Abraham Foxman said A Nation on Trial should not have been published, insisting that the issue was not "whether Goldhagen's thesis is right or wrong but what is 'legitimate criticism' and what goes beyond the pale."57
   A similar episode took place in 2003, when lawyers representing the Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz sent threatening letters to the University of California Press in an attempt to halt publication of Finkelstein's book Beyond Chutzpah, an extended critique of Dershowitz's own The Case for Israel. Dershowitz also wrote to California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger (who has nominal authority of public institutions like the university) as part of his campaign against Finkelstein. Dershowitz subsequently claimed that he was not trying to suppress publication, but that is certainly how officials at UC Press interpreted his actions. They resisted these pressures and issued Finkelstein's book anyway.58
   The campaign to keep Americans from reading or hearing critical views about Israel even occurs at the high school level. In February 2005, for example, the New York Sun reported that Columbia's Khalidi was involved in a lecture program for high school teachers sponsored by New York City's Department of Education. The Sun and some local politicians immediately
went to work to get him fired. The Sun accused him of calling Israel a "racist state" (a charge Khalidi vehemently denied), and his participation was labeled "outrageous" by Congressman Anthony Weiner (D-NY), at that time a candidate for mayor, and "an abomination" by Brooklyn City Council member Simcha Felder. Joel Klein, the chancellor of the Department of Education, dropped him from the program the next day and issued a public statement saying, "Rashid Khalidi should not have been included in a program that provided professional development for [Department of Education] teachers and he won't be participating in the future."59 The following year, New York's City Council approved a study program on Israel "initiated by the public relations department of the Israeli Consulate in New York."60 Meanwhile, a coalition of thirty-plus Jewish groups had already organized a new nationwide program to train high school students to be more effective advocates for Israel.61
   Pro-Israel groups and individuals have fought a multifront battle— against students, professors, administrators, and the curriculum itself—to shape discourse on campus. Their efforts have not been as successful in ac-ademia as they have been on Capitol Hill or even in the media, but their work has not been in vain. Despite the continued turmoil in the region and Israel's continued expansion in the Occupied Territories, there is less criticism of Israel on college campuses today than there was five years ago.62

OBJECTIONABLE TACTICS

 POLICING ACADEMIA

The lobby's campaign to mold debate about Israel has faced the greatest difficulty in academia. Not only do many professors have tenure (which insulates them from many forms of pressure), but they also work in a realm where intellectual freedom is a core value and where challenging the prevailing wisdom is common and often prized. There is also a deep-seated commitment to freedom of speech on college and university campuses. The internationalization of American universities over the past thirty years has brought large numbers of foreign-born students and professors to the United States, and these people are often more critical of Israel's conduct than Americans tend to be.
   Even so, groups in the lobby did not devote significant efforts to shaping discussion on campus during the 1990s, mainly because the Oslo peace process was under way. There was relatively little violence between Israel and the Palestinians during this period, and many believed the conflict was on the verge of being solved. As a result, there was only mild criticism of Israel in the 1990s and little need for the lobby to intervene.
   Criticism at colleges and universities rose sharply after the Oslo process collapsed and Ariel Sharon came to power in February 2001, and it became especially intense in the spring of 2002 when the IDF reoccupied Palestinian-controlled areas in the West Bank and employed massive force against the Second Intifada. As one would expect, the lobby moved aggressively to "take back the campuses." New groups sprang up, like the Caravan for Democracy, which brought "speakers from Israel to discuss the challenges Israel faces as the only democracy in the Middle East."30 The Jewish Council for Public Affairs (JCPA) initiated a series of advocacy training sessions for college students who wanted to defend Israel on their campuses, and a new organization—the Israel on Campus Coalition—was formed to coordinate the twenty-six different groups that now sought to make Israel's case on campus.
   Not to be outdone, Christians United for Israel recently formed a partnership with the David Project, a Boston-based pro-Israel group focused on campus issues. Their goal is to establish college chapters and training programs (the first being at California State University, Bakersfield) designed to help Christian students "make the case for Israel." CUFI executive director David
Brog said the purpose of the program was to "build the next generation," and David Project director Charles Jacobs said it "will teach them how to respond so that they can say more than just God gave Israel the land. We will teach them how to understand the conflict, not as a border war, but as a regional conflict between Arabs and Jews, as the centerpiece of a global war."31
   Predictably, the most important organization in the effort to win back the campuses was AIPAC, which had been monitoring campus activity and training young advocates for Israel since at least the late 1970s. AIPAC more than tripled its spending on college programs as Israel came under fire. The aim of this effort, according to Jonathan Kessler, the director of leadership development at AIPAC, was "to vastly expand the number of students involved on campus, their competence, and their involvement in the national pro-Israel effort." In the summer of 2003, AIPAC brought 240 college students on all-expenses-paid trips to Washington, D.C., for four days of intensive advocacy training. Students were instructed that when they returned to school they should concentrate on networking with campus leaders of all kinds and winning them over to Israel's cause.32 In 2007, more than 1,200 students from nearly 400 colleges and universities attended AIPAC's annual Policy Conference, including 150 student body presidents.33
   This campaign to cultivate students has been accompanied by efforts to influence university faculty and hiring practices. In the early 1980s, for example, AIPAC recruited students to help it identify professors and campus organizations that might be considered anti-Israel. The findings were published in 1984 in The AIPAC College Guide: Exposing the Anti-Israel Campaign on Campus. At the same time, the ADL, which was compiling files on individuals and organizations it considered suspect regarding Israel, surreptitiously distributed a small booklet containing "background information on pro-Arab sympathizers active on college campuses" who "use their anti-Zionism as merely a guise for their deeply felt anti-Semitism."34
   This effort intensified in September 2002, when Daniel Pipes established Campus Watch, a website that posted dossiers on suspect academics and, stealing a page from AIPAC's playbook, encouraged students to report comments or behavior that might be considered hostile to Israel.35 This transparent attempt to blacklist and intimidate scholars prompted a harsh reaction and Pipes later removed the dossiers, but the website still invites students to report alleged anti-Israel behavior at U.S. colleges.36
   Pipes's campaign to stamp out criticism of Israel on campuses did not stop there. Together with Martin Kramer, an Israeli-American scholar who has appointments at both WINEP and Israel's Shalem Center, and Stanley
Kurtz, a contributing editor at the National Review and research fellow at the conservative Hoover Institution, Pipes began encouraging Congress to curtail or at least closely monitor the Title VI funding that the federal government gives to Middle East and other area studies programs at major universities. The aim is to silence or at least inhibit critics of Israel and as a result force universities to hire scholars whose views are more in line with those of Pipes, Kramer, and Kurtz. The International Studies in Higher Education Act (HR 3077), which they supported, would have set up a government-appointed board to watch over international studies centers receiving federal monies. The board's mandate would include making recommendations to the Secretary of Education and Congress that would help ensure that the activities of centers receiving funding "reflect diverse perspectives and the full range of views on world regions, foreign languages and international affairs."37 Though seemingly innocuous, this aspect of the proposed legislation was in fact a response to Kramer and Kurtz's claims that existing Middle East studies programs were biased and fostering anti-American and anti-Israel attitudes.38
   Had the legislation passed as written, universities that wanted government support would have faced a clear incentive to hire individuals for their area studies programs who supported existing U.S. policy and were not critical of Israel. Key groups in the lobby backed the initiative, with AIPAC, the ADL, the American Jewish Congress, and five other organizations dispatching a letter to Congress that accused existing Title VI centers of "uncritically promoting a positive image of Palestinians, Arabs, and the Islamic World, while ignoring or denigrating Israel."39 HR 3077 was approved by the House but was never formally considered by the full Senate.40 Similar legislation was reintroduced in 2005 and passed the House by a narrow margin (221 to 199) in March 2006, but the Senate again declined to act and the legislation expired at the end of the 109th Congress.41
   Kramer and Kurtz claimed victory in 2007, however, when a congression-ally mandated National Research Council study of the Title VI programs recommended the creation of an executive-level presidential appointee to oversee international studies and language programs.42 The NRC study defended the integrity of existing area studies programs and did not endorse Kramer and Kurtz's accusations of bias. In fact, one member of the study group, former Census Bureau director Kenneth Prewitt, told reporters that bias would have been visible if it were rampant, but in his words, "it's not out there."43 Some supporters of existing Title VI centers suggested that assigning these programs to a high-level presidential appointee would enhance their status and help them obtain greater resources. However, giving a sin
gle individual such extensive oversight also raises the worrisome possibility that a future presidential appointee might one day be in a position to implement the Pipes/Kramer/Kurtz program of ideological conformity.
   Moreover, the April 2007 version of the Title VI legislation on international education programs, now under consideration in the Senate, would create a complaint procedure for individuals who felt that an existing Title VI program did not contain sufficiently diverse views. If complainants were not satisfied by the university's response, their grievance could be "filed with the Department [of Education] and reviewed by the Secretary." The draft legislation also directs the secretary to "take the review of such complaints into account when determining the renewal of grants."44 If this clause becomes law, one can easily imagine groups in the lobby leveling repeated complaints against any Middle East studies program that employs someone who has criticized Israeli policies, in order to convince the Department of Education to cut off Title VI support or to encourage the university in question to safeguard its funding by tilting in a pro-Israel direction.
   To further counter a perceived anti-Israel bias in academia, a number of philanthropists have established Israel studies programs at U.S. universities (in addition to the roughly 130 Jewish studies programs that already exist), so as to increase the number of "Israel-friendly" scholars on campus.45 NYU announced the establishment of the Taub Center for Israel Studies on May 1, 2003, and similar programs have been established at other schools, including Berkeley, Brandeis, and Emory. Academic administrators emphasize the pedagogical value of these programs, but they are also intended to promote Israel's image on campus. Fred Lafer, the head of the Taub Foundation, makes clear that his foundation funded the NYU center to help counter the "Arabic [sic] point of view" that he thinks is prevalent in NYU's Middle East programs.46
   Similar motives reportedly lay behind gambling mogul Sheldon Adelson's proposed multimillion-dollar gift to expand the existing Program for Jewish Civilization at Georgetown University so as to create a center focusing on the "Jewish theme as a paradigm of international relations." Ha'aretz reported in August 2006 that "one of the key goals of Adelson and other advocates of the Jewish center is to moderate the Arab presence at the university." The program's first director, Yossi Shain (who also heads the Har-tog School of Government at Tel Aviv University), said it was important to set up such a program at Georgetown "because it's a Jesuit school, because it's in Washington, because it's in the foreign service school." Similarly, university rabbi Harold White said that establishing the new center would bal
ance Georgetown's existing Arab center, and this was particularly important because "many Georgetown graduates end up at the State Department."47
   The lobby's desire to police academia has led to several noteworthy efforts to pressure administrators or influence personnel decisions.

 THINK TANKS THAT THINK ONE WAY

Pro-Israel forces wield significant influence in think tanks, which play an increasingly important role in shaping public debate as well as actual policy on key issues. Instead of relying on government officials or academics to provide analysis and commentary, news media increasingly depend on experts from Washington-based think tanks, most of which have energetic public relations and media relations offices designed to promote their experts' views in the public arena. Many think tanks also distribute brief and easily digested policy memorandums to legislators and other government officials; organize seminars, working breakfasts; and briefings for officials and their staffs; and encourage their own analysts to publish op-eds and other visible forms of commentary, all with the goal of shaping the prevailing climate of ideas. Think tanks like the American Enterprise Institute or Brookings supply advisers to presidential campaigns and officials to new administrations, offer the same people a safe haven when they are out of power, and provide them with platforms from which they can continue to influence debate inside and outside the Beltway. They serve as incubators for new policy ideas and are a critical part of the web of power in Washington.22
   Recognizing the need for a prominent but seemingly "objective" voice in the policy arena surrounding Israel, former AIPAC president Larry Weinberg; his wife, Barbi Weinberg; AIPAC's vice president; and AIPAC deputy director for research Martin Indyk founded the Washington Institute for Near East Policy in 1985.23 Although WINEP plays down its links to Israel and claims that it provides a "balanced and realistic" perspective on Middle East issues, this is not the case.24 In fact, WINEP is funded and run by in
dividuals who are deeply committed to advancing Israel's agenda. Its board of advisers includes prominent pro-Israel figures such as Edward Luttwak, Martin Peretz, Richard Perle, James Woolsey, and Mortimer Zuckerman, but includes no one who might be thought of as favoring the perspective of any other country or group in the "Near East." Many of its personnel are genuine scholars or experienced former officials, but they are hardly neutral observers on most Middle East issues and there is little diversity of views within WINEP's ranks.
   The lobby's influence in the think tank world extends well beyond WINEP. As discussed in Chapter 4, over the past twenty-five years, pro-Israel individuals have established a commanding presence at the American Enterprise Institute, 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. These think tanks are all decidedly pro-Israel and include few, if any, critics of U.S. support for the Jewish state.
   Another indication of the lobby's influence in the think tank world is the evolution of the Brookings Institution. For many years, its senior expert on Middle East issues was William B. Quandt, a distinguished academic and former NSC official with a well-deserved reputation for evenhandedness regarding the Arab-Israeli conflict. In the mid-1970s, in fact, Brookings released an influential report on the Middle East that emphasized the need for Israeli withdrawals, Palestinian self-determination (including the possibility of an independent state), open access to religious sites in Jerusalem, and security guarantees for Israel. The Brookings study was produced by a diverse group of experts and is widely seen as the blueprint behind the Carter administration's successful efforts to negotiate an Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty.25
   Today, however, Brookings's work on these issues is conducted through its Saban Center for Middle East Policy, which was established in 2002 with a $13 million grant, primarily financed by Haim Saban, an ardent Zionist. The New York Times described him as "perhaps the most politically connected mogul in Hollywood, throwing his weight and money around Washington and, increasingly, the world, trying to influence all things Israeli." This "tireless cheerleader for Israel" told the Times, "I'm a one-issue guy, and my issue is Israel." His efforts led Ariel Sharon to describe him as "a great American citizen and a man who always stood by Israel and the Jewish people in times of need."26 The man chosen to run the Saban Center was Martin Indyk, the former Clinton administration official who had previously served as AIPAC's deputy director of research and helped found WINEP.
   It is hard to imagine that a research institute funded by Saban and directed by Indyk is going to be anything but pro-Israel. To be sure, the Saban Center occasionally hosts Arab scholars and exhibits some diversity of opinion. Saban Center fellows—like Indyk himself—often endorse the idea of a two-state settlement between Israel and the Palestinians. But Saban Center publications never question U.S. support for Israel and rarely, if ever, offer significant criticism of key Israeli policies. Moreover, individuals who stray from the Center's line do not remain for long, as former NSC official Flynt Leverett's brief tenure there illustrates.27
   The Center's pro-Israel proclivities are on display at its annual Saban Forum, which brings together prominent U.S. and Israeli leaders for a two-day conference, held in either Washington or Jerusalem. The 2006 Forum, titled "America and Israel: Confronting a Middle East in Turmoil," featured appearances by Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, Bill Clinton, Senator Hillary Clinton, Shimon Peres, William Kristol, Representatives Tom Lantos and Jane Harman, and Israel Minister of Strategic Affairs Avigdor Lieberman, among others. Pro-Arab voices, or voices who might articulate a different view of U.S.-Israeli relations, were conspicuously absent.28
   Given the important role that these institutions play in shaping ideas and policy, the balance of power inside the Beltway strongly favors Israel. There are a few smaller think tanks that are not reflexively pro-Israel—like the New America Foundation, the Cato Institute, and the Middle East Institute—but the largest and most visible foreign policy research institutions in Washington usually take Israel's side and do not question the merits of unconditional U.S. support.
   Finally, a word is in order about the prestigious Council on Foreign Relations, which is based in New York City. Its impressive staff of experts has a more diverse range of views than the leading think tanks in Washington, for many years hosting both visible critics of Israeli policy such as Henry Sieg-man, former head of the American Jewish Congress, along with ardent pro-Israel figures like Max Boot. But the Council is not exempt from pressure, as the reaction to its invitation to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in September 2006 illustrates. Prominent Jewish organizations angrily protested the invitation and an effort to organize a set of high-profile resignations was headed off only when Council president Richard Haass agreed to downgrade the session from a dinner to a "working meeting." As the ADL's Abe Foxman told the New York Times Magazine, "To break bread with the guy . . . was crossing the line." Given Ahmadinejad's offensive remarks about Israel and the Holocaust, this reaction is understandable.29 Yet it illustrates
once again the lobby's efforts to ensure that the various institutions that shape public discourse remain sensitive to its concerns.

POLICING ACADEMIA

  America's Jewish press is not exempt from pressure, either. In 1989, for example, AIPAC's media director, Toby Dershowitz, asked Andrew Carroll, the editor of Washington Jewish Week, not to assign the reporter Larry Cohler to an ongoing story about AIPAC, because his earlier reports—which had been somewhat critical of AIPAC—were supposedly "inaccurate." When Cohler received the assignment anyway, Dershowitz and AIPAC legal counsel David Ifshin called Carroll. Ifshin said that if Cohler remained on the assignment, AIPAC would reexamine his earlier stories "with an eye toward litigation." This not-too-subtle attempt to pressure Carroll did not succeed, but in 1991, AIPAC's foreign policy director, Steven Rosen, sent several board members of Washington Jewish Week an internal AIPAC memorandum arguing that Carroll was too sympathetic to the political left and "sought to bring down the organized Jewish community." In April 1992, a new editor with no professional newspaper experience was hired over Carroll, who resigned three months later and was replaced by the former editor of the AIPAC newsletter Near East Report.14
   One of the lobby's most energetic media watchdog groups—though not the only one—is the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA). It has been especially critical of National Public Radio, which it sometimes refers to as "National Palestine Radio."15 In addition to maintaining a website to publicize alleged examples of media bias, CAMERA organized demonstrations outside National Public Radio stations in thirty-three cities in May 2003, and it tried to convince contributors to withhold support from NPR until its Middle East coverage became more sympathetic to Israel. One of Boston's public radio stations, WBUR, reportedly lost more than $1 million in contributions as a result of these efforts. In 2006, CAMERA ran expensive full-page advertisements in the New York Times and New York Sun criticizing Jimmy Carter's book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, ads that included the publisher's phone number and encouraged readers to call and complain.16
   Additional pressure on NPR comes from Israel's friends in Congress. In March 2003, for example, a group of congressmen—whose ranks included staunch defenders of Israel such as California Democrats Tom Lantos, Brad Sherman, and Henry Waxman—wrote a letter to NPR President Kevin Klose, asking for an internal audit of its Middle East coverage. Klose refused, but he also began reaching out to various Jewish groups in an effort to deflect the pressure.17
   The lobby's efforts to gain favorable coverage take other forms as well. In August 2003, for example, the writer Ian Buruma wrote an article in the
New York Times Magazine titled "How to Talk About Israel." He made the obvious point that it is sometimes difficult to talk "critically and dispassionately" about Israel in the United States and pointed out that "even legitimate criticism of Israel, or of Zionism, is often quickly denounced as anti-Semitism by various watchdogs." In response, Bret Stephens, then the editor of the Jerusalem Post and now a columnist and editorial board member at the Wall Street Journal, published a vitriolic open letter in the Post that began by asking Buruma, "Are you a Jew?" Two paragraphs later, Stephens declared, "What matters to me is that you say, 'I am a Jew.'" Why did this matter? Because in Stephens's view, "One must be at least a Jew to tell the goyim how they may or may not talk about Israel." The message of this remarkable letter was, in short, that non-Jews should talk about this subject only in ways that Jews deem acceptable.18 Sensitivity on this point may also explain why an editor at the New York Times asked the historian Tony Judt to identify himself as Jewish in an op-ed he had written defending our original London Review of Books article.19
   Stephens's views are undoubtedly anathema to many people—including most American Jews—but the fact remains that some leading figures in the lobby are uncomfortable with a free and open discussion of issues related to Israel. ADL head Abraham Foxman told New York Times Magazine writer James Traub that it is "naive" to think that the "free market of ideas ultimately sifts falsehood to produce truth." As Traub recounts, "Experience . . . has taught [Foxman] that the truth does not win on its own merits; the market for falsehood is too powerful." Falsehood, in this view, is what would follow from a serious interrogation of the United States—Israel relationship and Israel's strategic and moral standing. Groups like the ADL want to make sure that critics of Israel and unconditional U.S. support for the Jewish state remain on the margins of public discourse, and that their views about Israel be regarded as illegitimate.20
   The final way to encourage favorable coverage of Israel is to co-opt prominent commentators so that they disseminate a pro-Israel perspective. Toward this end, the Conference of Presidents helped establish America's Voices in Israel, a nonprofit group whose purpose, according to the Conference's website, is "to strengthen American understanding of and support for Israel by inviting U.S.-based radio talk show hosts to see Israel and broadcast their programs live from Jerusalem." The America's Voices website describes the organization as being "on the forefront of Israel's hasbara (public relations) efforts," and Conference of Presidents head Malcolm Hoenlein (who is also president of the America's Voices board) calls it "one of the most
important, exciting, and effective hasbara initiatives." Participants have included radio personalities such as Oliver North, Glenn Beck, Monica Crowley, Michael Medved, Armstrong Williams, and many others. The campaign helps ensure that a growing array of talk show hosts will purvey a pro-Israel message to their listeners.21
   These diverse efforts share a common purpose: to make it less likely that mainstream media organizations will report information or events that portray Israel negatively, and to promote public commentary that reinforces the strategic and moral rationales that are used to justify strong U.S. support. These efforts are not 100 percent successful, of course, but they are still quite effective.

THINK TANKS THAT THINK ONE WAY

 THE MEDIA IS THE MESSAGE

A key part of preserving positive public attitudes toward Israel is to ensure that the mainstream media's coverage of Israel and the Middle East consistently favors Israel and does not call U.S. support into question in any way. While serious criticism of Israel occasionally reaches a large audience across the United States, the American media's coverage of Israel tends to be strongly biased in Israel's favor, especially when compared with news coverage in other democracies.
   This claim might sound to some like the old anti-Semitic accusation that "Jews control the media." It is anything but. There is no question that some Jewish Americans, such as Martin Peretz and Mortimer Zuckerman, use their positions in the media to advance their views on Israel and the Middle East. This behavior is legitimate and unsurprising, as all elites tend to use their privileged positions to advance their various interests. More to the point, however, there are certainly owners, publishers, editors, columnists, and reporters in the mainstream media who have no special feelings for Israel and would feel comfortable criticizing its policies as well as the United States-Israel relationship. There are surely even influential individuals who may be strongly pro-Israel but would nevertheless welcome a more open discourse about that country.
   It is therefore wrong—and objectionable—to argue that Jews or pro-Israel forces "control" the media and what they say about Israel. In fact, the reason that the lobby works so hard to monitor and influence what the mainstream media says about Israel is precisely that the lobby does not control them. If the media were left to their own devices, they would not serve up as consistent a diet of pro-Israel coverage and commentary. Instead, there would be a more open and lively discussion about the Jewish state and U.S. policy toward it, as there is in virtually every other democracy in the world. Indeed, that debate is especially lively in Israel itself, the one state where Jews clearly do "control the media."
   The lobby's perspective on Israel is widely reflected in the mainstream media in part because a substantial number of American commentators who write about Israel are themselves pro-Israel. In a 1976 comparison of domestic interest groups and U.S. Middle East policy, Robert H. Trice found that "one of the most serious political handicaps of pro-Arab groups during the 1966-1974 period was their inability to gain support from any of the best-known and nationally-syndicated columnists." Trice also found that "pro-Israel groups could count on media support not only from national
columnists but also from the editors of some of the country's most widely read newspapers." Pro-Israel groups were more active shaping media coverage than pro-Arab groups were; in 1970, for example, the Conference of Presidents distributed press kits (complete with photos and feature stories) to more than seventeen hundred newspapers and to major wire services. In Trice's words, "At virtually every level of media organization—from local communities, syndicated columnists, and major national papers, to the international news services that supply the country with information—pro-Israel groups were more successful than pro-Arab groups at getting their side of the story transmitted to both the articulate and mass publics."1
   Matters have not changed much since then. The debate among Middle East pundits, wrote the media critic Eric Alterman in 2002, is "dominated by people who cannot imagine criticizing Israel." He listed fifty-six "columnists and commentators who can be counted upon to support Israel reflex-ively and without qualification." Conversely, Alterman identified only five pundits who consistently criticize Israeli behavior or endorse pro-Arab positions.2 Although some readers subsequently challenged Alterman's coding of a handful of cases and a few of those he listed are now deceased, the disparity remains overwhelming and the challenges did not undermine his core claim.3
   Consider the columnists who have covered the Middle East for the New York Times and the Washington Post in recent years. William Safire and the late A. M. Rosenthal were passionate defenders of Israel (and in Safire's case, especially favorable toward Ariel Sharon); today, David Brooks consistently defends Israel's position. Thomas L. Friedman is more moderate; he has been critical of some of Israel's policies (and occasionally the lobby itself), but he almost never takes the Palestinians' side or advocates that the United States distance itself from Israel. Nicholas D. Kristof is frequently critical of various aspects of American foreign policy and wrote one controversial column in March 2007 decrying the lack of serious public discussion of U.S. relations with Israel. But the Middle East is not a frequent theme in his commentary and he certainly did not take a pro-Palestinian position.4 Maureen Dowd has been sharply critical of pro-Israel neoconservatives, but like Kristof, she rarely writes about the Jewish state or U.S. policy toward it. No one in the Times's stable of regular columnists is a consistent defender of the Palestinians, or even as evenhanded as former columnist Anthony Lewis, who retired in 2001.
   As for the Washington Post, it has had several columnists in recent years who consistently supported Israel: Jim Hoagland, Robert Kagan, Charles
Krauthammer, and George Will. It used to feature two others: the late Michael Kelly and William Kristol, who runs the Weekly Standard and has a column in Time. Not only were these individuals staunchly pro-Israel, they tended to favor the ideas and policies of the hawkish Likud party rather than Israeli moderates. Richard Cohen also writes about the Middle East for the Post, but he has the same profile as the Times's Friedman: attached to Israel but willing to offer qualified and intelligent criticism. Neither of these papers—which are arguably the two most influential daily newspapers in the United States—employs any full-time commentator who consistently favors the Arab or Palestinian side.
   In recent years, the only prominent columnist who has frequently criticized Israel is Robert Novak, whose column is syndicated by the Chicago Sun-Times and regularly appears in the Post. Still, Novak is hardly a champion of the Palestinian cause. The fact is that the "other side" has no equivalent of Safire and Krauthammer, or even Friedman and Cohen, at either the Times or the Post, or any other major American newspaper, for that matter. The Los Angeles Times, for example, regularly publishes three opinion columnists who are staunch defenders of Israel: Max Boot, Jonathan Chait, and Jonah Goldberg. It employs no columnist who is critical of Israel, much less anyone who routinely defends the Palestinians against the Israelis.
   Although these papers occasionally publish guest op-eds that challenge Israeli policy, the balance of opinion clearly favors Israel. There is no American commentator comparable to a Robert Fisk or a Patrick Seale, who are often sharply critical of Israel and who publish regularly in British newspapers, and no one remotely like Israeli commentators Amira Hass, Akiva El-dar, Gideon Levy, and Bradley Burston, all of whom are openly critical of particular policies that their country pursues. The point here is not that these individuals are always right and pro-Israel commentators are wrong; the point is that voices like theirs are almost entirely absent from major American newspapers.
   Not surprisingly, this pro-Israel bias is also reflected in newspaper editorials. Robert Bartley, the late editor of the Wall Street Journal, once remarked, "Shamir, Sharon, Bibi—whatever those guys want is pretty much fine by me."5 The Journal, along with other prominent newspapers like the Chicago Sun-Times, the New York Sun, and the Washington Times, regularly runs editorials that read as if they were written by the Israeli prime minister's press office. To its credit, the New York Times's editorials sometimes criticize Israeli policies, and in recent years, the criticism has occasionally been strongly worded. The Times recognizes that the Palestinians have legitimate
grievances and a right to have their own state. Still, its treatment of the two sides over the years has not been evenhanded.6 In his memoirs, former Times executive editor Max Frankel recounted the impact his own pro-Israel attitudes had on his editorial choices: "I was much more deeply devoted to Israel than I dared to assert . . . Fortified by my knowledge of Israel and my friendships there, I myself wrote most of our Middle East commentaries. As more Arab than Jewish readers recognized, I wrote them from a pro-Israel perspective."7
   Magazines like Commentary, the New Republic, and the Weekly Standard also zealously defend Israel at every turn. Indeed, Commentary's former editor, Norman Podhoretz, once told a gathering of journalists in Jerusalem that "the role of Jews who write in both the Jewish and general press is to defend Israel, and not join in the attacks on Israel."8 Martin Peretz, the longtime editor of the New Republic, once proclaimed, "I am in love with the state of Israel," and admitted that "there's a sort of party line on Israel" at his journal.9
   The media's reporting of news events involving Israel is less slanted than their editorial commentary, in part because most reporters strive to be objective, but also because it is difficult to cover events in the Occupied Territories or in southern Lebanon without acknowledging Israel's actual behavior. But still, to discourage unfavorable reporting on Israel, groups in the lobby organize letter-writing campaigns, demonstrations, and boycotts against news outlets whose content they consider anti-Israel. As the Forward reported in April 2002, "Rooting out perceived anti-Israel bias in the media has become for many American Jews the most direct and emotional outlet for connecting with the conflict 6,000 miles away."10 One CNN executive has said that he sometimes gets six thousand e-mail messages in a single day complaining that a story is anti-Israel, and papers such as the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, the Miami Herald, the New York Times, the Philadelphia Inquirer, and the Washington Post have faced consumer boycotts over their Middle East reporting.11 One correspondent told the journalist Michael Massing that newspapers were "afraid" of AIPAC and other pro-Israel groups, saying that "the pressure from these groups is relentless. Editors would just as soon not touch them."12 As the former spokesman for the Israeli consulate in New York, Menachem Shalev, once put it, "Of course, a lot of self-censorship goes on. Journalists, editors, and politicians are going to think twice about criticizing Israel if they know they are going to get thousands of angry calls in a matter of hours. The Jewish lobby is good at orchestrating pressure."13
   America's Jewish press is not exempt from pressure, either.

 DOMINATING PUBLIC DISCOURSE

One of the lobby's central concerns is to ensure that public discourse about Israel echoes the strategic and moral rationales dissected in Chapters 2 and 3. Its various elements do this by constantly reaffirming Israel's strategic value, by repeating one-sided accounts about Israel and its founding, and by defending Israel's actions in policy debates. The goal is to convince the public that America's and Israel's interests and values are one and the same.
   At the same time, groups in the lobby try to marginalize anyone who criticizes Israeli policy or challenges the "special relationship," and try to prevent that person's views from getting a fair hearing in the public arena. To do this, the lobby sometimes employs heavy-handed tactics to silence critics, accusing them of being anti-Israel or anti-Semitic. Channeling public discourse in a pro-Israel direction is critically important, because an open and candid discussion of Israeli policy in the Occupied Territories, Israeli history, and the lobby's role in shaping America's Middle East policy might easily lead more Americans to question existing policy toward Israel and to call for a relationship with Israel that more effectively serves the U.S. national interest.
   Accordingly, key elements in the lobby strive to influence discourse about Israel in the media, think tanks, and academia, because these institutions are critical to shaping popular opinion. They promote efforts to portray Israel in a positive light and they go to considerable lengths to marginalize anyone who questions Israel's past or present conduct or seeks to cast doubt on the merits of unconditional U.S. backing. Pro-Israel forces are well aware that dominating discussions about the Jewish state is essential to their agenda. These efforts do not always succeed, of course, but are still remarkably effective.

THE MEDIA IS THE MESSAGE

The Israel lobby is no different. As we have noted, the Clinton administration's Middle East policy was heavily shaped by officials with close ties to Israel or to prominent pro-Israel organizations. The two most notable individuals in this regard were Martin Indyk, the former deputy director of research at AIPAC and cofounder of the pro-Israel Washington Institute for Near East Policy, who served on Clinton's National Security Council, as ambassador to Israel (1995—97, 2000—01), and as assistant secretary of state (1997-2000); and Dennis Ross, who served as Clinton's special envoy to the
Middle East and joined WINEP after leaving government in 2001.65 They were among President Clinton's closest advisers at the Camp David summit in July 2000.
   Although both Indyk and Ross supported the Oslo peace process and favored the creation of a Palestinian state—which led hard-liners to denounce them unfairly for betraying Israel—they did so only within the limits of what would be acceptable to Israeli leaders.66 As discussed in Chapter 1, the American delegation at Camp David took most of its cues from Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, coordinated negotiating positions with Israel in advance, and did not offer its own independent proposals for settling the conflict. Even the "Clinton parameters" presented in December 2000 were less an independent American proposal than Clinton's summary of where the negotiations stood and his assessment of the bargaining space within which a solution might be found. Palestinian negotiators complained that the Israelis would sometimes present them with a specific proposal, and then later the Americans would offer the same idea, only the Americans would label it a "bridging proposal." As another member of the U.S. team later admitted, Israeli proposals were often "presented [to the Palestinians] as U.S. concepts, not Israeli ones," a subterfuge that fooled no one and reinforced Palestinian suspicions. Not surprisingly, Palestinian representatives protested that they were "negotiating with two Israeli teams—one displaying an Israeli flag, and one an American flag."67
   The issue is not whether individuals like Indyk or Ross were dedicated public servants acting in what they thought to be the best interest of the United States—they surely were. The issue, rather, is whether their well-known sympathies for Israel made it more difficult for the administration to operate effectively during the negotiations and made it less inclined to bring U.S. leverage to bear on the Israeli government, thus reducing the chances of securing a peace deal. We believe that this situation hampered the entire Oslo process, including the abortive Camp David summit.
   The problem is even more pronounced in the second Bush administration, whose ranks have included staunchly pro-Israel neoconservatives like Elliott Abrams, John Bolton, Douglas Feith, Aaron Friedberg, John Hannah, I. Lewis Libby, William Luti, Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, and David Wurmser. As we shall see in Part II, these officials consistently pushed for policies favored by Israel and backed by key organizations in the lobby.
   By the same token, groups in the lobby also try to make sure that people who are seen as critical of Israel do not get important foreign policy jobs. In 1987, former AIPAC head Tom Dine told an interviewer that AIPAC was
helping vet presidential advisers, saying, "This is an actual example . . . One of the [1988] presidential candidates called us and said 'I will be publicly declaring soon, and I am interested in hiring so and so for a top campaign position. Tell me what you think about him.'" Dine said his answer was "thumbs up" in that case, but others are less fortunate.68 Jimmy Carter wanted to make George Ball his first secretary of state, but he knew that Ball was perceived as critical of Israel and that the lobby would oppose the appointment.69 Similarly, Richard Marius, a Harvard lecturer hired in 1995 as Vice President Al Gore's chief speechwriter, has said that he was fired before he began work after the New Republic publisher Martin Peretz (who was Gore's undergraduate tutor and a close confidant) falsely claimed that Marius was an anti-Semite, based on a book review Marius had published in Harvard Magazine in 1992.70 A few years later, in 2001, when Bruce Riedel left his position handling Middle East issues on the National Security Council, the New Republic reported that the Pentagon had "held up the appointment of Riedel's designated successor, the Middle East expert Alina Romanowski, whom Pentagon officials suspect of being insufficiently supportive of the Jewish state."71 The person appointed instead was Elliott Abrams, who had previously pleaded guilty to withholding information from Congress during the Iran-contra affair. Abrams is hardly objective about Israel, having previously written in a 1997 book that "there can be no doubt that Jews, faithful to the covenant between God and Abraham, are to stand apart from the nation in which they live. It is the very nature of being Jewish to be apart—except in Israel—from the rest of the population."72 This is a remarkable comment coming from an individual who holds a critically important position on Middle East policy in the U.S. government. "For the government of Israel," wrote Nathan Gutt-man in Ha'aretz, his appointment was "a gift from heaven."73

CONCLUSION

Like other foreign policy interest groups, the Israel lobby seeks to influence the U.S. government through a variety of different channels. It is in a better position to do so than most other groups, which is one reason its efforts are so effective. But its efforts are not limited to building influence inside the Beltway. The lobby also strives to shape public discourse about Israel and the Middle East, so that the American public generally supports a pro-Israel orientation and does not question the merits of unconditional U.S. backing. This second strategy is the subject of the next chapter.
   
DOMINATING PUBLIC DISCOURSE

 THE MAKING OF PRO-ISRAEL PRESIDENTS

Whether through influence on Congress or in more direct ways, groups in the lobby also exert significant leverage over the executive branch. American presidents are not as sensitive to pressure as Congress is, and most of them have taken positions that Israel or the lobby opposed at one time or another. But such instances are becoming increasingly rare, even though Israel's strategic value has declined and some of its actions (such as the continued effort to colonize the Occupied Territories) are at odds with stated U.S. policy.
   Influence over the executive branch derives in part from the impact Jewish voters have on presidential elections. Despite their small numbers in the population (less than 3 percent), American Jews make large campaign donations to candidates from both parties. As presidential adviser and former White House Chief of Staff Hamilton Jordan wrote in a confidential memorandum to President Jimmy Carter, "Wherever there is major political fundraising in this country, you will find American Jews playing a significant role."55 Indeed, the Washington Post once estimated that Democratic presidential candidates "depend on Jewish supporters to supply as much as 60 percent of the money raised from private sources."56 Other estimates are lower, but contributions from Jewish Americans form a substantial share— between 20 and 50 percent—of the contributions made to the Democratic party and its presidential candidates.57 Israel is not the only issue that inspires these contributions, of course, but candidates who are perceived as hostile (or even indifferent) to Israel run the risk of seeing some of these funds go to their opponents.
   Furthermore, Jewish voters have high turnout rates and are concentrated in key states like California, Florida, Illinois, New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania, which increases their weight in determining who becomes president. Although they still favor the Democratic party, their support for Democratic candidates can no longer be taken for granted. John F. Kennedy received 82 percent of the Jewish vote in 1960, for example, but George McGovern received only 64 percent in 1972, and Jimmy Carter got a mere 45 percent in 1980. In close races, therefore, the so-called Jewish vote can tip the balance in key states. Jeffrey Helmreich of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs exaggerates only slightly when he writes that "American Jewish voters maintain the potential to be the decisive factor in national election results . . . American Jews wield power through their high concentration in key states and their tendency to behave as a swing vote in ways that set them apart from virtually all other groups in American politics."58 Because Jewish
voters matter in close elections, presidential candidates go to considerable lengths to cultivate their support. Indeed, a 2007 story in the Jerusalem Post referred to this effort to court Jewish support as "a Washington ritual as reliable as the cherry blossoms."59 Candidates are especially eager to appeal to AIPAC and other organizations in the lobby—and not just to Jewish voters as a bloc—because they know that the seal of approval from these prominent organizations will facilitate fund-raising and encourage higher turnout on their behalf.
   Gaining and retaining that support means backing Israel down the line, which is why presidential candidates John Edwards, Mitt Romney, and John McCain all made emphatic pro-Israel speeches to the 2007 Herzliya conference (an annual meeting on Israeli national security organized by the hawkish Institute for Policy and Strategy). They wanted to avoid the fate that befell Howard Dean in the 2004 presidential campaign, when he made the mistake of recommending that the United States take a more "even-handed role" in the Arab-Israeli conflict. In response, one of Dean's rivals for the nomination, Joseph Lieberman, accused him of selling Israel down the river and labeled his statement "irresponsible."60 Even more remarkably, virtually all of the top Democrats in the House of Representatives signed a hardhitting letter to Dean criticizing his comments, and the Chicago Jewish Star reported that "anonymous attackers . . . are clogging the e-mail inboxes of Jewish leaders around the country, warning—without much evidence—that Dean would somehow be bad for Israel."61
   This worry was absurd, because Dean is in fact an unabashed supporter of Israel.62 His campaign cochair was former AIPAC president Steven Grossman, and Dean said his own views on the Middle East more closely reflected those of AIPAC than the more moderate Americans for Peace Now. Moreover, Dean's wife is Jewish and his children were raised Jewish as well. Dean wasn't questioning U.S. support for Israel; he had merely suggested that to "bring the sides together," Washington should act as an honest broker. This is not a radical idea, but key groups in the lobby do not welcome the idea of evenhandedness when it comes to the Arab-Israeli conflict. Dean's failure to win the Democratic nomination has many causes, of course, but the incident underscored the potential cost of being anything less than ardently pro-Israel during a presidential campaign.
KEEPING THE ADMINISTRATION IN LINE
Key organizations in the lobby also directly target the administration in power. The principal mission of the Conference of Presidents is to pressure the White House when it acts in ways that the Conference opposes, as it did when Gerald Ford threatened to reassess U.S. support for Israel, when George H. W. Bush briefly withheld loan guarantees in 1992, or, as discussed in Chapter 7, when George W. Bush called for the creation of a Palestinian state in the immediate aftermath of September 11.
   But there is an even more obvious way to shape an administration's policy: the lobby's goals are served when individuals who share its perspective occupy important positions in the executive branch. In a notorious incident in 1992, for example, the New York businessman Haim Katz, calling as a potential donor to pro-Israel candidates, secretly taped a phone call with AIPAC President David Steiner. In addition to describing how AIPAC had helped direct campaign contributions to friendly politicians, Steiner told Katz that he had met personally to "cut a deal" with Secretary of State James Baker for $3 billion in foreign aid to Israel, plus "a billion dollars in other goodies that people don't even know about." More to the point, he told Katz that "we have a dozen people in [Clinton's] campaign, in the headquarters . . . and they're all going to get big jobs." Steiner was forced to resign after Katz went public, and he later said his statements to Katz were not true, but there is little reason to doubt the thrust of his remarks.63 After all, wouldn't any powerful interest group want individuals who shared its views to get key appointments in each administration? In fact, plenty of other lobbies have done exactly that. Former Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton and Deputy Secretary J. Steven Griles both worked as lobbyists for oil or mining industries prior to their appointments in the Bush administration, for example, and Daniel A. Troy was a lawyer who frequently represented tobacco and pharmaceutical companies before being appointed chief counsel to the Food and Drug Administration in 2001.64
   The Israel lobby is no different.

  AIPAC's ability to influence elections helps ensure that Israel gets generous aid each year and makes it dangerous for senators or representatives to utter even mild criticisms of Israel's conduct. But its influence on Capitol Hill goes even farther. Lobbying groups of all types exercise influence not merely by direct persuasion and by using campaign contributions to gain access, but also by providing a "legislative subsidy" to sympathetic lawmakers and supplying overworked staffs with direct assistance in analyzing issues, framing legislation, and offering talking points and speeches to give to constituents.44 Not only does every member of Congress receive AIPAC's biweekly newsletter Near East Report, its personnel are also available to help staffers when issues affecting Israel arise. According to Douglas Bloomfield, a former AIPAC staff member, "It is common for members of Congress and their staffs to turn to AIPAC first when they need information, before calling the Library of Congress, the Congressional Research Service, committee staff or administration experts." More important, he notes that AIPAC is "often called upon to draft speeches, work on legislation, advise on tactics, perform research, collect co-sponsors and marshal votes."45 In other words, AIPAC inserts itself directly into the legislative and policy-making process with considerable frequency, as we explore in more detail in Part II.
   To seal the deal, an AIPAC sister organization, the American Israel Education Foundation (AIEF), funds free congressional trips to Israel itself. These junkets burnish a legislator's pro-Israel credentials and facilitate fund-raising, and also expose him or her to the policy preferences and basic worldview of Israel's leaders. This situation helps explain why about 10 percent of all congressional trips overseas are to Israel, even though it is but one of the nearly two hundred countries in the world. The Center for Public Integrity reports that AIEF spent nearly $1 million on these visits from January 2000 to mid-2005. Not surprisingly, AIPAC and other Jewish groups lobbied hard—and successfully—to make sure that the new ethics rules enacted following the Jack Abramoff and Tom DeLay scandals did not interfere with these visits.46
   It is important to emphasize again that AIPAC's activities are similar to the behavior of other influential lobbies and consistent with the interest group tradition of the U.S. political system. In his study Jews and American Politics, Stephen Isaacs described AIPAC's Morris Amitay as saying, "What is important... is that none of this is untoward . . . You use the traditional tactics of the democracy . . . letters, calls."47
   These "traditional tactics" to influence Congress also enable the lobby to put pressure on the executive branch when it takes actions that are consid
ered to be not in Israel's interest. When that happens, the president or cabinet official is likely to get a hard-hitting letter from one or both houses of Congress, signed by most of its members, as President Gerald Ford did when he threatened a reassessment of U.S.-Israeli relations in 1975. President Bush got a similar letter in April 2002, when he briefly sought to pressure Israel to end a large-scale military incursion in the Occupied Territories. The lopsided percentage of signatories for each of these letters is eloquent testimony to AIPAC's ability to twist arms. As Senator Daniel In-ouye (D-HI) commented after signing the letter to Ford in 1975, "It's easier to sign one letter than to answer 5000." Or as Senator John Culver (D-IA) later admitted, "The pressure was just too great. I caved."48 Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice felt the same pressure as she sought to restart the peace process by visiting the Middle East in March 2007. Just before her departure, Rice received an AIPAC-sponsored letter signed by seventy-nine senators, urging her to avoid contact with the new Palestinian "unity government" until it recognized Israel, renounced terror, and agreed to abide by Israeli-Palestinian agreements.49 No wonder former Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger once told AIPAC's Tom Dine, "Dine, I deal with you because you could hurt me."50
   The bottom line is that AIPAC, which bills itself as "America's Pro-Israel Lobby," has an almost unchallenged hold on Congress.51 One of the three main branches of the American government is firmly committed to supporting Israel. Open debate about U.S. policy toward Israel does not occur there, even though that policy has important consequences for the entire world. As Senator Ernest Hollings (D-SC) noted as he was leaving office in 2004, "You can't have an Israeli policy other than what AIPAC gives you around here."52 Another senator, speaking on condition of anonymity, told a Washington Post reporter in 1991, "My colleagues think AIPAC is a very, very powerful organization that is ruthless, and very, very alert. Eighty percent of the senators here roll their eyes on some of the votes. They know that what they're doing isn't what they really believe is right, but why fight on a situation where they're liable to get beat up on?"53
   Small wonder, then, that former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon once told an American audience, "When people ask me how they can help Israel, I tell them—Help AIPAC." His successor, Ehud Olmert, agrees, remarking, "Thank God we have AIPAC, the greatest supporter and friend we have in the whole world."54

THE MAKING OF PRO-ISRAEL PRESIDENTS

 GUIDING THE POLICY PROCESS

The groups and individuals who make up the lobby pursue two broad strategies to encourage steadfast U.S. support for Israel. First, they exert significant influence on the policy-making process in Washington. Second, these organizations go to considerable lengths to ensure that public discourse about Israel is favorable and that it echoes the strategic and moral rationales discussed in Chapters 2 and 3. We examine the first of these strategies in this chapter and explore the lobby's efforts to shape public discourse in Chapter 6.
   Because political power in the United States is divided between the legislative and executive branches, the lobby's tactics sometimes vary depending on which branch of government is involved. In addition to helping get sympathetic individuals elected or appointed to key positions, groups in the lobby strive to shape the political calculations of officials who might be tempted to chart a more independent course. Whatever a legislator's or policy maker's personal views might be, the lobby wants uncritical support for Israel to be the "smart" political choice. Like other powerful interest groups, in short, the Israel lobby achieves its aims by constraining the policies key officials are willing to consider, pressing them to take steps they would rather avoid (but will pretend to favor), making it hard for U.S. leaders to sustain initiatives that groups in the lobby oppose, and shaping perceptions and framing options so that many key leaders willingly favor the policies that these groups endorse.1
HOLDING SWAY ON CAPITOL HILL
A key pillar of the lobby's effectiveness is its influence in the U.S. Congress. Unlike virtually every other country, Israel is largely immune from criticism on Capitol Hill. This situation is remarkable by itself, because Congress frequently deals with contentious issues and competing viewpoints are usually easy to find. Whether the issue is abortion, arms control, affirmative action, gay rights, the environment, trade policy, health care, immigration, or welfare, there is almost always a lively debate on Capitol Hill. But where Israel is concerned, potential critics fall silent and there is hardly any debate at all.
   The absence of serious deliberation when Israel is involved was revealed in a hearing on the Israeli-Palestinian peace process held on February 14, 2007, by the Subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia in the House of Representatives. With Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice trying to restart the moribund peace process, the subcommittee sought testimony from three witnesses. Despite some differences on certain policy issues, all three are central players in the lobby: Martin Indyk, the former AIPAC official and former U.S. ambassador to Israel who now heads the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution; David Makovsky of the pro-Israel Washington Institute for Near East Policy; and the neoconservative pundit Daniel Pipes, who directs the right-wing Middle East Forum. No critic of Israel, much less a Palestinian or Arab American, was brought in to offer alternative views or suggest the United States take a different approach. M. J. Rosenberg, who once worked for AIPAC and is now a key figure with the Israel Policy Forum, a moderate pro-Israel group that actively supports a two-state solution, nicely summed up the situation: "This was a hearing about two sides of a conflict where only one side was allowed to speak," adding that "everyone who saw an official Congressional hearing that banned the Arab point of view was either hurt by the spectacle or angered by it. And that damages the interests of America, and of Israel."2
   One reason for the lobby's success in Congress is that some key members have been Christian Zionists, such as former House Speaker Richard Armey, who said in September 2002 that "my No. 1 priority in foreign policy is to protect Israel." One would think that the top priority for any U.S. representative would be to "protect America," but that is not what Armey said. Regarding Tom DeLay, Armey's successor as speaker, Morton Klein, the president of ZOA, said that "he cared about Israel in every fiber of his being." DeLay himself said that he was "an Israeli at heart."3
There are also Jewish senators and representatives who work to make
U.S. foreign policy support Israel's interests. In 2006, in fact, a record number of Jewish Americans were elected to the House and Senate, a fact that underscores their impressive achievements in American society and their traditionally high level of civic engagement and political participation.4 Some of these legislators—such as Senators Joseph Lieberman (D-CT) and Charles Schumer, and Representatives Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), Henry Wax-man (D-CA), and Robert Wexler (D-FL)—are ardent defenders of Israel.5 Indeed, Waxman said in the wake of the 2006 election that "there will be some Democratic chairmen who may not share all my views ... on Israel." He made it clear, however, that "they will not be chairing committees dealing with Israel and the Middle East."6 He was right, of course: the chair of the House subcommittee that held the hearing described above was Gary Ackerman (D-NY), another avid backer of Israel, while the chair of the larger Committee on Foreign Affairs is Tom Lantos (D-CA), who has no rival on Capitol Hill in his devotion to Israel. As one former AIPAC leader put it, Lantos "is true blue and white."7
   But it isn't only the representatives themselves who can tilt legislation in a pro-Israel direction. Congressional staffers are at the center of the legislative process, registering the positions of outside interest groups and parsing different policy options for their bosses. As Morris Amitay, a former head of AIPAC, once noted, "There are a lot of guys at the working level up here [on Capitol Hill] . . . who happen to be Jewish, who are willing ... to look at certain issues in terms of their Jewishness . . . These are all guys who are in a position to make the decision in these areas for those senators . . . You can get an awful lot done just at the staff level."8 As discussed below, representatives from groups in the lobby sometimes participate directly in this process, helping Hill staffers draft legislation, providing them with talking points that legislators can use in public, helping write the "Dear Colleague" letters that legislators send one another to position themselves on key issues, and drafting and circulating open letters designed to put congressional pressure on the executive branch.
   Of all the groups that make up the lobby, it is AIPAC that holds the key to influence in Congress, a fact that is widely acknowledged by politicians from both parties.9 Bill Clinton once described AIPAC as "stunningly effective" and "better than anyone else lobbying in this town," while former House Speaker Newt Gingrich called it "the most effective general-interest group . . . across the entire planet." Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) agrees, saying, "I can't think of a policy organization in the country as well-organized and respected [as AIPAC]." The New Yorker's Jeffrey Gold
berg calls it "a leviathan among lobbies," and AIPAC's own website proudly quotes the New York Times's assessment that it is "the most important organization affecting America's relationship with Israel."10
   AIPAC's success is due in large part to its ability to reward legislators and congressional candidates who support its agenda and to punish those who do not, based mainly on its capacity to influence campaign contributions. Money is critical to U.S. elections, which have become increasingly expensive to win, and AIPAC makes sure that its friends get financial support so long as they do not stray from AIPAC's line.
   This process works in several ways. To begin with, many of the same individuals who bankroll AIPAC are often important political contributors in their own right. Using data from the Federal Election Commission (FEC), the journalist Michael Massing found that "between 1997 and 2001, the 46 members of AIPAC's board of directors gave well in excess of $3 million in campaign contributions," and many of them remain generous donors to pro-Israel PACs and candidates today.11 "Since 2000," the Washington Post reported in 2004, "[AIPAC] board members have contributed an average of $72,000 each to campaigns and political committees."12
   Second, AIPAC helps connect political candidates to other donors and sources of funds. Despite its name, AIPAC is not a political action committee and does not officially endorse candidates or give money directly to their campaigns. Instead, AIPAC screens potential candidates and arranges meetings with potential donors and fund-raisers, and provides information to the growing number of pro-Israel PACs. According to the historian David Biale, "The American Jewish 'Israel lobby' has developed since the Six Day War into one of the most sophisticated and effective lobbying organizations in the United States Congress. It has done so in part by developing a national network of Jewish Political Action Committees for contributing funds to congressional candidates based on the criterion of support for Israel."13 As AIPAC President Howard Friedman told the organization's members in August 2006, "AIPAC meets with every candidate running for Congress. These candidates receive in-depth briefings to help them completely understand the complexities of Israel's predicament and that of the Middle East as a whole. We even ask each candidate to author a 'position paper' on their views of the U.S.-Israel relationship—so it's clear where they stand on the subject."14
   Friedman's description of AIPAC's modus operandi is consistent with testimony from other political figures. Tom Hayden, the antiwar figure who was running for a seat in the California Assembly in the early 1980s, explains how he won support from the local power broker Michael Berman
(brother of longtime California Congressman Howard Berman) on the condition that he would always be a "good friend to Israel." Hayden, who won the election, notes that he "had to be certified 'kosher,'not once but over and over again. The certifiers were the elites, beginning with rabbis and heads of the multiple mainstream Jewish organizations . . . An important vetting role was held as well by . . . [AIPAC], a group closely associated with official parties in Israel. When necessary, Israeli ambassadors, counsels general and other officials would intervene with statements declaring someone a 'friend of Israel.'" Hayden, one may note, merely held state-level offices in his political career, although he was unusually visible in that role."
   In the same vein, Harry Lonsdale, the Democratic candidate who ran unsuccessfully against Senator Mark Hatfield (R-OR) in 1990, has described his own visit to AIPAC headquarters during that campaign. "The word that I was pro-Israel got around," he writes. "I found myself invited to AIPAC in Washington, D.C., fairly early in the campaign, for 'discussions.' It was an experience I will never forget. It wasn't enough that I was pro-Israel. I was given a list of vital topics and quizzed (read grilled) for my specific opinion on each. Actually, I was told what my opinion must be, and exactly what words I was to use to express those opinions in public . . . Shortly after that encounter at AIPAC, I was sent a list of American supporters of Israel . . . that I was free to call for campaign contributions. I called; they gave, from Florida to Alaska."16
   Former Idaho governor John V. Evans tells a similar story about his 1986 campaign against incumbent Idaho Senator Steven Symms. He visited AIPAC headquarters, where, according to Evans, they "emphasized constantly that they were not a PAC (political action committee) . . . But they noted that there were Jewish organizations all over the country that had their own PACs and that if we could contact them, they would be able to help us." According to the Wall Street Journal, AIPAC "steered Mr. Evans to a series of supposedly independent organizations—many of them run by people with ties to AIPAC—that gave him $204,950 for his losing race against Republican Sen. Steve Symms."17
   AIPAC also keeps track of congressional voting records and makes these records available to its members, so that they can decide which candidates or PACs to support.

 THE QUESTION OF "DUAL LOYALTY"

This picture of a powerful special interest group, comprised mainly of American Jews and working to move U.S. policy in a pro-Israel direction, is bound to make some people uncomfortable, because it seems to invoke the specter of "dual loyalty," which was once a common anti-Semitic canard in old Europe. The charge, in its original incarnation, was that Jews in the diaspora were perpetual aliens who could not assimilate and become good patriots. According to this now-discredited argument, Jews were thought to be loyal only to each other. The infamous Protocols of the Elders ofZion, a tsarist forgery that was exposed and discredited long ago, claimed that Jews operate as a fifth column in the countries where they live, working for a committee of Jewish elders who are secretly plotting to dominate the world.
In this earlier, anti-Semitic incarnation, dual loyalty was in fact a mis
nomer, as the charge implied that Jews were loyal only to each other and felt no genuine loyalty to their home countries. Today, however, both scholars and commentators use the term in a neutral and nonpejorative fashion to describe the widespread circumstance where individuals feel genuine attachments (or loyalties) to more than one country. Thus, in his recent comparison of different ethnic diasporas, the Israeli political scientist Gabriel Sheffer distinguishes among "total," "dual," and "divided" loyalty, and notes that all three responses occur when members of a particular ethnic, national, or religious group are scattered across different states.139 As discussed below, other thoughtful Jewish Americans have used "dual loyalty" to describe their own attitudes and experiences, but their use of the term is very different from its past employment as an anti-Semitic slander.
   Any notion that Jewish Americans are disloyal citizens is wrong. We fully agree with Malcolm Hoenlein, who directs the Conference of Presidents, that "it is safe to say that American Jews are among the most patriotic and loyal of American citizens."140 As we have made clear, those who lobby on Israel's behalf are acting in ways that are consistent with long-standing political traditions. Indeed, political life in the United States has long proceeded from the assumption that all individuals have a variety of attachments and loyalties—to country, religion, family, employer, just to name a few—and that American citizens will create formal and informal associations that reflect those loyalties and interests. Consider, for example, a 2006 Pew Global Attitudes survey of Christians in thirteen countries in which 42 percent of the U.S. respondents saw themselves as Christians first and Americans second.141 These different attachments, which sometimes include an affinity for a foreign country, may reflect ancestry, religious affiliation, personal experience (such as overseas study or a Peace Corps assignment), or any number of other sources. It is legitimate for U.S. citizens to express such attachments and affinities in political life; this is in fact what democratic theory implies that they should do. As we have noted, it is even permissible for Americans to hold dual citizenship and to serve in foreign armies— including the IDF—and some have done so.
   Americans who work to influence U.S. foreign policy in ways that benefit Israel almost always believe that the policies they favor will benefit the United States as well. As former AIPAC executive director Tom Dine told one interviewer, "I came to this job thinking American foreign policy and how to strengthen America's position in the world. At the same time, I thought a lot about Israel because I am Jewish."142 More to the point, Theodore Mann, a former head of the Conference of Presidents, said in
2001 that "leading American Jews really feel very deeply that American interests and Israeli interests are one and the same."143
   While there is no question that this perspective is widely and deeply held, there is a problem with it: no two countries will always have the same interests. It is just not the way international politics works. There have been instances in the past, and there will be more in the future, where U.S. and Israeli interests were at odds. For example, it made good strategic sense for Israel to acquire nuclear weapons in the 1960s, but it was not in America's interest to have Israel go nuclear. Nor is it in the U.S. national interest when Israel kills or wounds innocent Palestinian civilians (even if only unintentionally) and especially not when it uses American-made weapons to do it. One sees a similar divergence of interests in Israel's decision to invade Lebanon in 1982, and in its recent opposition to U.S. plans to sell advanced weaponry to Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf states.144
    Nonetheless, many of Israel's supporters find it hard to acknowledge that Jerusalem and Washington could have fundamentally different interests. In other words, they fully accept the strategic and moral rationales that we laid out and refuted in Chapters 2 and 3, and they work hard to convince policy makers of their continued validity. They may also hold to these views because humans are usually uncomfortable when important values conflict. Even when U.S. and Israeli interests are clearly at odds, some of Israel's American backers will find it difficult to acknowledge that a significant tradeoff exists.
   There are, however, thoughtful Jewish Americans—including some prominent policy makers—who openly acknowledge that conflicts can and do arise among their Jewish identities, their understandable interest in Israel's well-being, and their genuine loyalty to the United States. To his credit, Henry Kissinger dealt forthrightly with this issue in his memoirs, writing that "though not practicing my religion, I could never forget that thirteen members of my family had died in Nazi concentration camps . . . Most Israeli leaders were personal friends. And yet... I had to subordinate my emotional preferences to my perception of the national interest... It was not always easy; occasionally it proved painful."145
   Kissinger acknowledges what many would deny: tensions are bound to arise whenever Americans have strong affinities for other countries, no matter what the origins of those attachments and no matter how consistently they resolve them on behalf of their homeland. Or as one of Bill Clinton's Middle East advisers admitted anonymously, "We act in America's interest, but through a prism." Another veteran Jewish-American diplomat expressed a sim
ilar feeling by saying, "I thank God that I'm not working in Middle East affairs or at the U.N., where you might have to vote to condemn the Israelis."146
   These statements are in no sense confessions of disloyalty; on the contrary, they are admirably honest reflections on the multiple loyalties that all human beings feel and that sometimes come into conflict. The journalist Eric Alterman offered an equally candid acknowledgment in 2003, noting that his own "dual loyalties" were "drilled into me by my parents, my grandparents, my Hebrew school teachers and my rabbis, not to mention Israeli teen-tour leaders and AIPAC college representatives." But instead of pretending that potential tradeoffs will never arise, Alterman recognizes that "we ought to be honest enough to at least imagine a hypothetical clash between American and Israeli interests. Here, I feel pretty lonely admitting that, every once in a while, I'm going to go with what's best for Israel."147
   Yet Alterman is not in fact alone. Consider the remarks of Stephen Stein-light, former director of national affairs at the American Jewish Committee. After recounting his own upbringing in America as a "Jewish nationalist, even a quasi-separatist," Steinlight remarks,

The process of my nationalist training was to inculcate the belief that the primary division of the world was between "us" and "them." Of course we saluted the American and Canadian flags and sang those anthems, usually with real feeling, but it was clear where our primary loyalty was meant to reside. I am also familiar with the classic, well-honed answer to this tension anytime this is cited: Israel and America are democracies; they share values; they have common strategic interests; loyalty to one cannot conceivably involve disloyalty to the other, etc., etc. All of which begs huge questions . . . and while it may be true in practice most of the time, it is by no means an absolute construct, devoid of all sort of potential exceptions . . . We have no less difficult a balancing act between group loyalty and a wider sense of belonging to America. That America has largely tolerated this dual loyalty—we get a free pass, I suspect, largely over Christian guilt about the Holocaust—makes it no less a reality.148
  
   It is important to emphasize that this phenomenon is not confined to Jewish Americans; rather, such tensions are an inevitable feature of a melting pot society that has drawn its citizens from all over the world.149 It is equally important to note that most American Jews would surely reject any
suggestion that they would place Israel's interests ahead of America's if an obvious conflict arose between them.
   Jews and non-Jews who believe that the United States should continue to give Israel strong and unconditional support have every right to advocate their positions, and it is wrong to question their loyalty when they do. Yet it is equally legitimate for critics to point out that organizations like AIPAC are not neutral, or that the individuals who run AIPAC, the ADL, the Conference of Presidents, and similar organizations are motivated by an attachment to Israel that is bound to shape their thinking about many foreign policy issues. Why else would Malcolm Hoenlein describe his job as follows: "I devote myself to the security of the Jewish state"?150 Or why does John Hagee of CUFI address the potential conflict between his support for Israeli settlements and official U.S. opposition to them by saying that "the law of God transcends the laws of the United States government and the U.S. State Department"?151 If he were not inspired by a strong attachment to Israel, why would Lenny Ben-David, the former director of information and research at AIPAC, agree to serve as Israel's deputy chief of mission in Washington from 1997 to 2000?152
   It is equally legitimate to question whether the policies advocated by these individuals and the organizations they represent are in the U.S. national interest, just as it is legitimate to question the impact of other special interest lobbies on other elements of U.S. domestic or foreign policy. Their patriotism can be above reproach, but their advice might be fostering policies that are wreaking havoc in a region of considerable strategic importance to the United States and indeed to the rest of the world. To question the soundness of that advice has nothing to do with the older, discredited use of "dual loyalty" to imply that Jews were unpatriotic.

CONCLUSION

The Israel lobby is the antithesis of a cabal or conspiracy; it operates out in the open and proudly advertises its own clout. In its basic operations, the Israel lobby is no different from interest groups like the farm lobby, steel and textile workers, and a host of ethnic lobbies, although the groups and individuals who comprise the Israel lobby are in an unusually favorable position to influence U.S. foreign policy. What sets it apart, in short, is its extraordinary effectiveness. In the next two chapters, we examine the strategies it employs to achieve its goals.

GUIDING THE POLICY PROCESS

 THE (MODEST) IMPACT OF OIL

Neither Arab governments nor the vaunted "oil lobby" pose a significant counterweight to the Israel lobby. The belief that oil companies and/or wealthy oil sheikhdoms exert a powerful influence on U.S. Middle East policy is widespread and is reflected in the frequent claim that the war in Iraq in 2003 was a "war for oil" and for related corporate interests such as Halliburton.125 Interestingly, this view is advanced by some of Israel's most persistent critics—such as Noam Chomsky and Stephen Zunes—as well as by fervent defenders like Martin Peretz.126 More conspiratorial versions of this perspective suggest that personal and financial connections between the Bush family and the House of Saud have shaped U.S. Middle East policy to America's detriment.127 These various interpretations portray the Israel lobby as just one player among many, and probably not the most important one.
   There is no question that the United States has a major strategic interest in the energy resources located in the Persian Gulf. Although the United States currently imports more of its energy from Canada, Mexico, and Venezuela than from states in the Middle East, oil and natural gas are bought and sold in a tightly integrated world market and thus anything that reduces the overall supply is going to push prices up and hurt the American economy.128 As discussed in Chapter 2, this is why U.S. leaders see the Persian Gulf as a vital interest and why they have taken steps to preserve a lo
cal balance of power there and prevent any hostile state from interfering with the flow of oil from that region. This basic fact also explains why the United States has sought to preserve good relations with a number of different countries in the Gulf, despite differing with them on various domestic and foreign policy issues. The importance of Middle East oil led the United States to become a close ally of Saudi Arabia after World War II and is one reason why Washington backed the shah of Iran for many years. After his regime fell in 1979, this same desire to maintain a local balance of power and to keep the oil flowing convinced the Reagan administration to tilt toward Saddam Hussein's Iraq during the Iran-Iraq War (1980-88). The United States then intervened to evict Iraq from Kuwait after it seized the sheikhdom in 1990, a policy consistent with the long-standing U.S. policy of preventing any single power from establishing hegemony in the region. A powerful lobby was not needed to encourage these policies, because few questioned the need to keep Persian Gulf oil out of unfriendly hands.
   Beyond this obvious interest in preserving access to Middle East oil, however, there is little evidence that either wealthy Arab states or a powerful "oil lobby" has had much impact on the broad thrust of U.S. Middle East policy. After all, if Arab petrodollars or energy companies were driving American policy, one would expect to see the United States distancing itself from Israel and working overtime to get the Palestinians a state of their own. Countries like Saudi Arabia have repeatedly pressed Washington to adopt a more evenhanded position toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but to little avail, and even wielding the "oil weapon" during the 1973 October War had little effect on U.S. support for Israel or on overall American policy in the region. Similarly, if oil companies were driving U.S. policy, one would also have expected Washington to curry favor with big oil producers like Saddam Hussein's Iraq, Muammar Gaddafi's Libya, or the Islamic Republic of Iran, so that U.S. companies could make money helping them develop their energy resources and bringing them to market. Instead, the United States imposed sanctions on all three of these countries, in sharp opposition to what the oil industry wanted. Indeed, as we will show in Part II, in some cases the U.S. government deliberately intervened to thwart business deals that would have benefited U.S. companies. If the oil lobby were as powerful as some critics believe, such actions would not have occurred.
   Wealthy oil producers such as Saudi Arabia have hired public relations firms and professional lobbyists to enhance their image in the United States and to lobby for specific arms deals, and their efforts have occasionally borne fruit. Their most notable achievement was convincing Congress to approve
the sale of AWACS aircraft to Saudi Arabia in 1982, despite AIPAC's strong opposition. This episode is sometimes invoked to demonstrate the Israel lobby's limited influence and the power of the "Arab lobby," but the latter's victory in this case was mostly due to a set of unusually favorable conditions. The strategic importance of Saudi oil was obvious, the Soviet Union was seen as a serious military threat to the Gulf at that time, Ronald Reagan was a popular president, and his administration pulled out all the stops to win congressional approval. Even so, the sale barely squeaked through (the final Senate vote was 52-48 in favor), and Reagan was forced to withdraw several subsequent arms packages to Saudi Arabia and Jordan in the face of renewed opposition from the lobby and from Congress.129
   One reason why Arab oil producers have only limited influence is their lack of an indigenous base of support in the United States. Because they are forced to rely on professional lobbyists and public relations firms, it is easier for critics to denigrate their representatives as mere agents of a foreign power. AIPAC's Tom Dine once dismissed Saudi lobbying efforts by saying, "They hire foreign agents like Fred Dutton to do their bidding. Their support is not rooted in American soil."130 The Israel lobby, by contrast, is a manifestation of the political engagement of a subset of American citizens, and so its activities are widely and correctly seen as a legitimate form of political activity.
   Furthermore, because most oil-exporting governments depend on large revenues to keep themselves in power, threatening to cut off the supply is not credible and their leverage is thus reduced. Many of these governments also have sizable investments in Western economies and would suffer considerable losses in the event of a sustained economic downturn. Reducing production would drive prices up and make alternative energy sources more attractive, and give the United States and other countries a big incentive to wean themselves from oil dependence once and for all. Because major oil exporters like Saudi Arabia want to keep the industrial powers hooked on oil and gas, they have an obvious disincentive to using what little leverage may be at their disposal. As a result, U.S. dependence on imported energy supplies has not given these countries much influence over U.S. policy.
   What about energy companies? These corporations do engage in plenty of lobbying activities, but their efforts in recent decades have focused almost entirely on their commercial interests rather than on broader aspects of foreign policy. Specifically, energy companies concentrate on tax policy, government regulation, environmental concerns, access to potential drilling sites, and other practical dimensions of energy policy. For them, foreign policy is normally a secondary concern, and according to Robert Trice, their
"primary goal ... is to create a political and economic environment in the Middle East that will allow them to maximize profits. As such, the political interests of corporate actors are generally much narrower than those of the pro-Arab groups."131
   This relatively narrow focus is apparent when one examines the website of the American Petroleum Institute, the flagship trade association of the oil industry. Five topics appear under the general heading of "policy issues": climate change, exploration/production, fuels, taxes and trade, and homeland security. There is no reference to "Israel" or the "Arab-Israeli conflict" anywhere on the site, and few references to foreign policy at all. By contrast, Israel and U.S. foreign policy are front and center on the websites of AIPAC, the ADL, and the Conference of Presidents.132 As AIPAC's Morris Amitay noted in the early 1980s, "When oil interests and other corporate interests lobby, 99 percent of the time they are acting in what they perceive to be their own self-interest—they lobby on tax bills . . . We very rarely see them lobbying on foreign policy issues ... In a sense, we have the field to ourselves."133
   In addition, American corporations appear to be discouraged from trying to influence U.S. Middle East policy by the fear of retaliation from well-organized pro-Israel groups. In 1975, for example, the revelation that Gulf Oil had underwritten a number of pro-Arab activities in the United States led to public condemnations by the Conference of Presidents and the Anti-Defamation League. In response, Gulf bought a half-page ad in the New York Times in which it apologized for its action and told readers, "You may be certain it will not happen again." As Trice notes, "A vigilant, sensitive, and reactive pro-Israel lobby is one reason why U.S. corporations have tended to avoid direct participation in domestic political debates on Middle East questions."134
   Some commentators believe that oil and gas companies are driving U.S. policy either to gain lucrative concessions in places like Iraq, or to foment instability that will drive up oil prices and enable them to reap windfall profits.135 Not only is there little direct evidence of such behavior, but it runs counter to the long-term interests of major energy companies. Energy companies do not like wars in oil-rich regions, sanctions, or regime change—the staples of U.S. Middle East policy in recent years—because each of them threatens access to oil and gas reserves and thus their ability to make money, and such events also encourage Americans to think more seriously about reducing demand for the oil companies' main product. Thus, when Vice President Dick Cheney was the president of Halliburton, Inc., a major oil services firm, in the 1990s, he opposed U.S. sanctions on Iran (a policy, as discussed in Chapter 10, driven largely by the lobby) and complained that
U.S. firms were being "cut out of the action" by America's "sanctions happy" policy.136 Cheney's earlier position suggests that if oil companies controlled Middle East policy, the United States would have pursued a very different agenda in recent years.
   None of this denies that oil companies, good capitalists that they are, will seek to profit from foreign policy initiatives that they did not encourage. It is not surprising that oil companies want to obtain lucrative concessions in post-Saddam Iraq, just as they would have been happy to do business with Saddam himself. On balance, however, wealthy Arab governments and the oil lobby exert much less influence on U.S. foreign policy than the Israel lobby does, because oil interests have less need to skew foreign policy in the directions they favor and they do not have the same leverage.137 Writing in the early 1970s, the Columbia University professor and former Assistant Secretary of State Roger Hilsman observed, "It is obvious to even the most casual observer . . . that United States foreign policy in the Middle East, where oil reigns supreme, has been more responsive to the pressures of the American Jewish community and their natural desire to support Israel than it has to American oil interests." In his comparison of the Israel and Arab lobbies, Mitchell Bard acknowledges that although oil companies like Aramco have conducted lobbying campaigns in the past, the effort "has had no observable impact on U.S. policy." Or as AIPAC's former legislative director, Douglas Bloomfield, told BBC News in 2003, "AIPAC has one enormous advantage. It really doesn't have any opposition."138

THE QUESTION OF "DUAL LOYALTY"

 THE LOBBY'S SOURCES OF POWER

Why is the Israel lobby so effective? One reason is the wide-open nature of the American political system. The United States has a divided form of government, a well-established tradition of free speech, and a system in which elections are very expensive to run and where campaign contributions are weakly regulated. This environment gives different groups many different ways to gain access or influence policy. Interest groups can direct campaign contributions to favored candidates and try to defeat candidates whose views are suspect. They can also lobby elected representatives and members of the executive branch, and they can try to get their own supporters appointed to key policy-making positions. Moreover, there are numerous ways for interest groups to mold public opinion: by cultivating sympathetic journalists; writing books, articles, and op-eds; and working to discredit or marginalize anyone with different views. For a group that is highly motivated and has sufficient resources, there is no shortage of ways to influence public policy.117
   The lobby's effectiveness also reflects the basic dynamics of interest group politics in a pluralistic society. In a democracy, even relatively small groups can exercise considerable influence if they are strongly committed to a particular issue and the rest of the population is largely indifferent. Even if the group's absolute numbers are small, policy makers—and especially members of Congress-—will tend to accommodate them, because they can be confident that the rest of the population will not penalize them for doing so. As one U.S. senator put it, when asked why he and his colleagues signed a piece of controversial legislation pushed by the lobby, "There is no political advantage in not signing. If you do sign you don't offend anyone. If you don't you might offend some Jews in your state."118
   The disproportionate influence of small but focused interest groups increases even more when opposing groups are weak or nonexistent, because politicians have to accommodate only one set of interests and the public is likely to hear only one side of the story. Whether the issue is farm subsidies or foreign policy, special interest groups often wield political power that far exceeds their absolute numbers in the population.
   As will become clear in the next chapter, the Israel lobby enjoys a number of advantages in the competition for influence in the United States. American Jews are relatively prosperous and well educated, and have an admirable philanthropic tradition. They give generously to political parties and have very high rates of political participation. A sizable minority of American Jews is not strongly committed to Israel, but a clear majority is at least somewhat
engaged and a significant minority is strongly energized by this issue. When married to the support Israel gets from Christian Zionists, it is a potent base.
   Equally important is the impressive level of resources and expertise within the major Jewish organizations in the lobby. According to the political scientist Robert Trice, "Most major Jewish groups are characterized by large memberships, well-trained professional staffs, adequately financed social, welfare and political programs, specialized working groups for particular problems and elaborate internal communications networks." Moreover, the existence of numerous organizations at the local and national level explains "the ability of the pro-Israel movement to mobilize rapidly and in a coordinated fashion on a national scale when important foreign policy issues arise."119
   These efforts are facilitated by Israel's generally favorable image in the United States. As former Senator Warren Rudman (R-NH) once commented, "They have a pretty good product to sell."120 As we shall see, that favorable image is due in good part to the lobby's own efforts to make sure that Israel is portrayed favorably, as well as the broad sense that the United States and Israel are part of a common Judeo-Christian culture and are linked by various informal connections.121
   Finally, the lobby benefits from the absence of effective opposition. As one senator explained, "There's no countervailing sentiment ... If you vote contrary to the tremendous pressure of AIPAC, nobody says to you, 'That's great.'"122 Although Arab Americans are a significant minority, they are neither as wealthy, well organized, numerous, or politically active as Jewish Americans. As a group, Arab Americans have not been as successful in reaching prominent positions in academia, business, and the media, and they are also less visible in politics. This is partly because the main waves of Arab immigration to the United States occurred relatively recently, and first-generation immigrants are less affluent, less represented in important professions, less familiar with American mores and institutions, less active in politics, and therefore less influential than subsequent generations tend to be.
   Pro-Arab organizations are also no match for the major groups that make up the Israel lobby. There are a handful of pro-Arab and pro-Palestinian interest groups in the United States, but they are smaller than AIPAC and other pro-Israel organizations, not nearly as well funded, and nowhere near as effective. According to Mitchell Bard, the former editor of AIPAC's Near East Report, "From the beginning, the Arab lobby has faced not only a disadvantage in electoral politics but also in organization. There are several politically oriented groups, but many of these are one-man operations with little financial or popular support." U.S. politicians rarely, if ever, complain about
pressure from an "Arab-American lobby" and have little reason to adjust their behavior to accommodate it. As Harry Truman famously remarked, "In all of my political experience I don't ever recall the Arab vote swinging a close election."123
    Moreover, because Arab Americans come from a variety of countries and backgrounds, and include Christians as well as Muslims, they are unlikely to speak with a unified voice on Middle East issues. Indeed, they sometimes hold sharply opposing views. And whereas many Americans sense a degree of cultural proximity between Israel and the United States and believe Israelis are "like us," Arabs are often seen as part of an alien (or even hostile) civilization. As a result, winning hearts and minds in the United States is an uphill battle for its Arab-American citizens in ways that it has not been for American Jews or their Christian allies. Robert Trice's 1981 assessment of Arab-American groups remains true today: "Their impact on most aspects of U.S. Middle East policy remains negligible."124

THE (MODEST) IMPACT OF OIL

The strong ties between the two main branches of the lobby were on display at the 2007 AIPAC Policy Conference, where John Hagee's address to the opening dinner received an overwhelmingly enthusiastic reception from those in attendance. The response to Hagee is somewhat surprising, given that he has recently written that Jews "have everything but spiritual life," that anti-Semitism was the result of the Jews' "rebellion [against God]," and that God was going to drag "anti-Semitic nations to the nations of Israel to crush them so that the Jews of Israel as a whole will confess that He is the Lord."107 Despite Hagee's worrisome statements, ADL's Foxman declared, "There is a role for him . . . because of his support for Israel."108
   Awareness of the Christian Zionists' agenda has made more moderate Israelis and Jewish Americans deeply wary of their embrace. "But for the needs of Israel," observes the historian Naomi Cohen, "most American Jews would have rejected out of hand any dealings with the New Christian Right."109 They fear that converting Jews to Christianity is still a long-term goal of many evangelical groups, and they worry that the Christian Zionists' uncompromising views will make it more difficult to reach a lasting peace with the Palestinians. Jo-Ann Mort of Americans for Peace Now terms the collaboration between American Jews and the Christian Right an "unholy alliance," and the Israeli moderate Yossi Alpher warns that Christian support for continued settlement expansion is "leading us into a scenario of out-and-out disaster." As he told CBS News, "God save us from these people." Similarly, the Israeli-American scholar Gershom Gorenberg notes that dispensational-ist theology does not foresee a happy fate for Jews: in the end-times "the Jews die or convert." In particular, he warns, the Christian Zionists "don't love real Jewish people. They love us as characters in their story, in their play . . . [and] it's a five act play in which the Jews disappear in the fourth act."110
   How important is the Christian Zionist branch of the Israel lobby? By providing financial support to the settler movement and by publicly inveigh
ing against territorial concessions, the Christian Zionists have reinforced hard-line attitudes in Israel and the United States and have made it more difficult for American leaders to put pressure on Israel. Absent their support, settlers would be less numerous in Israel, and the U.S. and Israeli governments would be less constrained by their presence in the Occupied Territories as well as their political activities. Plus, Christian tourism (a substantial portion occurring under evangelical auspices) has become a lucrative source of income for Israel, reportedly generating revenues in the neighborhood of $ 1 billion each year.111
   The presence of a vocal but non-Jewish voice in support of Israel also makes U.S. backing more than just a response to special pleading by American Jewry and probably exerts some effect on the political calculations of politicians who do not have large Jewish constituencies. Irvine Anderson suggests that dispensationalist thinking reinforces "an American cultural predisposition to support the State of Israel, based in part on the influence of the Christian Bible." In particular, "having grown up hearing Bible stories ... or having read about . . . the ingathering of Jews to Palestine as a prelude to the Second Coming, it is not surprising that many, though certainly not all, Americans simply assume that it is right and proper for Jews to return to Palestine and create their own state there."112
   Yet the influence of the Christian Zionists should not be overstated. Their strong commitment to a "greater Israel" and resulting opposition to a two-state solution did not prevent the Clinton administration from pursuing the latter at Camp David in 2000, did not halt the 1998 Wye Agreement mandating an Israeli redeployment from parts of the West Bank, and, perhaps most revealingly, did not stop President George W. Bush, who has close ties to the Christian Right, from declaring his own support for a Palestinian state in 2001.
   There are several reasons why Christian Zionists exert less impact on U.S. Middle East policy than the other parts of the Israel lobby do. Although the Christian Right has been a key part of President Bush's political base (which has to some degree magnified the visibility of the Christian Zionist elements within this broader movement), the alliance goes well beyond the issue of Israel to include a broad array of social issues. Supporting Israel is only one of the many issues that evangelicals like Robertson, Bauer, and Fal-well have been concerned with, and it may not even be the most important. Leaders of the Christian Right often claim to speak on behalf of forty million or more professed evangelical Christians, but the number of followers who care deeply about Israel is undoubtedly smaller. In addition, and in
sharp contrast to groups like AIPAC, Christian Zionists lack the organizational capacity to analyze national security topics or to offer specific legislative guidance on concrete foreign policy issues. Surveys of congressional aides by Ruth Mouly in the 1980s and Irvine Anderson in 1999 found "little evidence of extensive direct lobbying of Congress by Falwell or other prominent members of the Religious Right on the subject of Israel."113 Similarly, Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein, founder of IFCJ, told the Israeli writer Zev Chafets that a delegation of evangelicals he had taken to visit then National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice in 2003 "was the only Christian group ever to lobby the White House specifically on behalf of Israel."114 Even if Eckstein overstated the case somewhat, it is clear that Israel is only one of many items on the evangelicals' list of concerns. By contrast, groups like AIPAC, the Anti-Defamation League, ZOA, and the Conference of Presidents put U.S. support for Israel at the top of their agenda, and their efforts to influence foreign policy are reinforced by think tanks like JINSA and WINEP.
   Furthermore, Christianity contains a complex set of moral and religious teachings, and many of its most important precepts neither justify nor encourage unconditional support for Israel. Christian Zionists may believe that biblical prophecy justifies Jewish control of all of Palestine, but other Christian principles—such as Christ's command to "love thy neighbor as thyself"—are sharply at odds with Israel's treatment of its Palestinian subjects. Familiarity with Old Testament stories and other aspects of the Judeo-Christian tradition has not prevented many mainline Christian churches from openly backing a two-state solution and criticizing various aspects of Israeli policy, based on their own commitment to Christian principles of peace and justice.115 Just as many American Jews do not support everything that Israel is doing, neither do many Christians, including evangelicals.
   Christian Zionists also lack the financial power of the major pro-Israel Jewish groups, and they do not have the same media presence when it comes to Middle East issues.116 Leaders like Robertson or Bauer may get lots of media attention when they speak on moral or religious questions, but media organizations are more likely to turn to the Brookings Institution or WINEP when discussing current events in Israel or the Middle East. For all these reasons, the Christian Zionists are best seen as a significant adjunct to the Jewish elements of the lobby, but not its most important part.

THE LOBBY'S SOURCES OF POWER

 THE CHRISTIAN ZIONISTS

The lobby includes another important group of gentiles—the Christian Zionists, a subset of the broader politically oriented Christian Right. Prominent members of this constituency include religious figures such as the late Jerry Falwell, Gary Bauer, Pat Robertson, and John Hagee, as well as politicians like former House Majority Leaders Tom DeLay (R-TX) and Richard Armey (R-TX), and Senator James Inhofe (R-OK). Although support for Israel is not their only concern, a number of Christian evangelicals have become increasingly visible and vocal in their support for the Jewish state, and they have recently formed an array of organizations to advance that commitment within the political system.77 In a sense, the Christian Zionists can be thought of as an important "junior partner" to the various pro-Israel groups in the American Jewish community.
   The origins of Christian Zionism lie in the theology of dispensationalism, an approach to biblical interpretation that emerged in nineteenth-century England, largely through the efforts of Anglican ministers Louis Way and John Nelson Darby. Dispensationalism is a form of premillennialism, which asserts that the world will experience a period of worsening tribulations un
til Christ returns. Like many other Christians, dispensationalists believe that Christ's return is foretold in Old and New Testament prophecy, and that the return of the Jews to Palestine is a key event in the preordained process that will lead to the Second Coming. The theology of Darby, Way, and their followers influenced a number of prominent English politicians and may have made British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour more receptive to the idea of creating a Jewish national home in Palestine.'8
   Dispensationalist theology was popularized in the United States in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by a number of Protestant theologians, including the evangelist Dwight Moody (founder of Chicago's Moody Bible Institute), C. I. Schofield, and William E. Blackstone. Recent popular expressions include Hal Lindsey's best-selling Late Great Planet Earth and Timothy LaHaye's Left Behind series, a fictional account of Armageddon whose combined sales reportedly total more than fifty million copies.79
   The founding of the state of Israel in 1948 gave new life to the dispensationalist movement, but the Six-Day War in 1967, which its leaders saw as a "miracle of God," was even more important for its emergence as a political force.80 Dispensationalists interpreted Israel's seizure of all of Jerusalem and the West Bank (which, like Israel's Likud party, they refer to as Judea and Samaria) as the fulfillment of Old and New Testament prophecy, and these "signs" encouraged them and other Christian evangelicals to begin working to ensure that the United States was on the "right side" as the Bible's blueprint for the end-times unfolded.81 According to Timothy Weber, former president of the Memphis Theological Seminary, "Before the Six Day War, dispensationalists were content to sit in the bleachers of history, explaining the End-Time game on the field below . . . But after [the] expansion of Israel into the West Bank and Gaza, they began to get down on the field and be sure the teams lined up right, becoming involved in political, financial, and religious ways they never had before."82 Their efforts were part of the broader rise of the so-called Christian Right (not all of whom are strongly committed to Israel) and were clearly aided by the growing political prominence of the evangelical movement.
   Given these beliefs, it is not surprising that Daniel Pipes believes that "other than the Israel Defense Forces, America's Christian Zionists may be the Jewish state's ultimate strategic asset." Or as Michael Freund, former director of communications for Benjamin Netanyahu, wrote in 2006, "Thank God for Christian Zionists. Like it or not, the future of the relationship between Israel and the U.S. may very well hinge far less on America's Jews than on its Christians."83
   Christian Zionists have formed a number of organizations whose avowed purpose is to encourage support for Israel. These groups include Christians United for Israel (CUFI, described by founder John Hagee as "a Christian version of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee"), the National Christian Leadership Conference for Israel, the Unity Coalition for Israel, Christian Friends of Israeli Communities (CFIC), the Christians' Israel Public Action Committee, the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem (ICEJ), and a host of smaller groups.84 Christian Zionists are also key players in the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews (IFCJ), a Chicago-based organization run by Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein, whose mission is "to promote understanding and cooperation between Jews and Christians and to build broad support for Israel." In 2002, IFCJ allied with the former Christian Coalition director and GOP strategist Ralph Reed to form a new group, Stand for Israel, that seeks "to engage people both spiritually and politically on behalf of Israel" and sponsors an annual "international day of prayer and solidarity" on Israel's behalf.85
   In this modern, activist phase, Christian Zionist beliefs naturally align with groups in the American Jewish community and in Israel that support the settler movement and oppose a two-state solution. According to CUFI founder Hagee, "We support Israel because all other nations were created by an act of men, but Israel was created by an act of God!" Hagee has also told followers that "God opposes giving away the land" and claims his movement has raised more than $12 million to help settle new immigrants in Israel, including in settlements in the Occupied Territories.86
   Hagee's views are typical of Christian Zionism. The late Ed McAteer, founder of the evangelical Religious Roundtable and a major organizing force in the Christian Right, once declared that "every grain of sand between the Dead Sea, the Jordan River, and the Mediterranean Sea belongs to the Jews. This includes the West Bank and Gaza."87 According to ICEJ director Malcolm Hedding, "We stand for the right that all the land that God gave under the Abrahamic covenant 4000 years ago is Israel's . . . There is no such thing as a Palestinian."88 Similarly, Ted Beckett, founder of CFIC, describes the mission of CFIC as providing "solidarity, comfort and aid" to settlers in "Judea, Samaria, and Gaza"; the organization pairs U.S. churches with individual Israeli settlements so that the former can support the latter. In one celebrated example, Faith Bible Chapel in Arvada, Colorado, "adopted" the West Bank settlement of Ariel, reportedly providing funds for a library, health clinic, and other needs.89
As noted above, Christian Zionists oppose a two-state solution or any
other form of territorial concession to the Palestinians. On the eve of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat's breakthrough visit to Jerusalem in 1977, evangelical groups published advertisements in major American newspapers saying that they viewed "with grave concern any effort to carve out of the Jewish homeland another nation or political entity."90 In 1996, the Third International Christian Zionist Congress resolved that "the Land which He promised to His People is not to be partitioned ... It would be further error for the nations to recognize a Palestinian state in any part of Eretz Israel."91 Such ardent beliefs led the Christian Right leader (and former GOP presidential hopeful) Pat Robertson to suggest that the stroke suffered by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in January 2006 was divine retribution for Sharon's decision to withdraw from the Gaza Strip. In Robertson's words, "He was dividing God's land and I would say woe unto any prime minister of Israel who takes a similar course to appease the [European Union], the United Nations, or the United States of America . . . God says, 'this land belongs to me. You better leave it alone.'" Robertson later apologized for his "inappropriate and insensitive" remarks, but they offer a revealing insight into how some Christian evangelicals justify a greater Israel.92
   These same beliefs appear to have influenced several prominent U.S. politicians. In 2002, House Majority Whip (and later Majority Leader) Tom DeLay told AIPAC's annual policy conference that he opposed giving land to the Palestinians, saying, "I've toured Judea and Samaria, and I've stood on the Golan Heights. I didn't see occupied territory. I saw Israel."93 DeLay's predecessor as Majority Leader, Richard Armey, told Hardball's Chris Matthews in May 2002 that he was "content to have Israel grab the entire West Bank" and that he "happened to believe that the Palestinians should leave."94 Or as Senator James Inhofe told his colleagues in a floor speech explaining why Israel had the right to all of Palestine: "This is the most important reason: Because God said so ... It is at this place [Hebron] where God appeared to Abraham and said, 1 am giving you this land,' the West Bank."95
   Given the Christian Zionists' support for an expansionist Israel, it is not surprising that Israeli hard-liners have been eager to make common cause with them, especially given the growing opposition to the occupation within mainline Christian churches. As Colin Shindler observes, "A symbiotic relationship thus came into existence after 1977 that served both the ideologies of the Israeli Right and the Christian Right."96 Menachem Begins Likud government actively courted evangelicals in this period, giving Falwell a private jet in 1979 and making him in 1980 the only gentile ever to receive the coveted Jabotinsky Medal for "outstanding achievement" (other recipients
include authors Leon Uris and Elie Wiesel). When Israel bombed Iraq's Osirak reactor in 1981, Begin reportedly called Falwell before calling President Reagan, asking Falwell to "get to work for me" and explain Israel's action to the American public.97 Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu brought a group of evangelical leaders to Israel in 1996 under the auspices of the Israel Christian Advocacy Council, and Pat Robertson and Ehud Olmert (mayor of Jerusalem at the time) served as cochairs of the Praying for Jerusalem campaign in 2002.98
   The Israeli government has encouraged Christian tour groups to visit Israel, both as a source of tourism income and to solidify evangelical support back in the United States. Thus, in 2002, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon told ICEJ's annual Feast of Tabernacles meeting (reportedly the largest foreign religious gathering in Israel) that "we need you and we need your support ... I also have a message I would like you to take home: send more people like you to visit Israel."99 Sharon's successor, Ehud Olmert, offered a similar message when he was mayor of Jerusalem, telling the gathering, "You are part of our army, of our power, of our defense."100
   Christian Zionist organizations have become increasingly visible on other Middle East issues as well. CUFI organized a pro-Israel meeting in Washington during the second Lebanon war in the summer of 2006, and Jerry Falwell chose that moment to warn, "We are on the verge of a war without borders," which "will serve as a prelude or forerunner to the future Battle of Armageddon and the glorious return of Jesus Christ."101 The best-selling millenarian author Hal Lindsey wrote in January 2007 that a preemptive nuclear strike on Iran was "the only logical choice available to Israel," and John Hagee warned in his 2006 book, Jerusalem Countdown, "The coming nuclear showdown with Iran is a certainty. The war of Ezekiel 38-39 could begin before this book gets published."102 Hagee also condemned the bipartisan Iraq Study Group report in December 2006, saying that James Baker "is once again sticking the knife in Israel's back" and declaring that "my father's generation . . . would have bombed Iran by this time."103
   Some Jewish-American organizations have welcomed this alliance with the Christian Zionists, despite lingering concerns that these groups seek to advance a Christian agenda in the United States and to convert Jews to Christianity. AIPAC established its own liaison office to work with the evangelical movement, pro-Likud organizations such as the Zionist Organization of America forged close links with Falwell, and cooperation with Christian evangelicals even received a blessing in the pages of Commentary from Irving Kristol, one of neoconservatism's founding fathers.104 According to
Nathan Perlmutter, former director of the ADL, "Jews can live with all the domestic priorities of the Christian Right, on which liberal Jews differ so radically, because none of these concerns is as important as Israel." Perlmut-ter's successor, Abraham Foxman, who has regularly criticized the domestic political agenda of the Christian Right, echoed this view in early 2007, saying that the ADL welcomed evangelical support "at a time when there are serious threats to the Jewish state."105 According to David Harris, executive director of the American Jewish Committee, willingness to align with the Christian Right was essentially pragmatic: "the end of time may come tomorrow, but Israel hangs in the balance today."106
   The strong ties between the two main branches of the lobby were on display at the 2007 AIPAC Policy Conference,

 THE ROLE OF THE NEOCONSERVATIVES

The lobby's drift to the right has been reinforced by the emergence of the neoconservatives. The neoconservative movement has been an important part of American intellectual and political life since the 1970s, but it has
drawn particular attention since September 11. This group has been prominent in shaping the Bush administration's unilateralist foreign policy, and especially the ill-fated decision to invade Iraq in March 2003.
   Neoconservatism is a political ideology with distinct views on both domestic and foreign policy, although only the latter is relevant here.67 Most neoconservatives extol the virtues of American hegemony—and sometimes even the idea of an American empire—and they believe U.S. power should be used to encourage the spread of democracy and discourage potential rivals from even trying to compete with the United States.68 In their view, spreading democracy and preserving U.S. dominance is the best route to long-term peace. Neoconservatives also believe that America's democratic system ensures that it will be seen as a benign hegemon by most other countries, and that U.S. leadership will be welcomed provided it is exercised decisively. They tend to be skeptical of international institutions (especially the UN, which they regard as both anti-Israel and as a constraint on America's freedom of action) and wary of many allies (especially the Europeans, whom they see as idealistic pacifists free-riding on the Pax Americana).69 Viewing U.S. leadership as "good both for America and for the world," to quote the website of the neoconservative Project for New American Century, neoconservatives generally favor the unilateral exercise of American power instead.
   Very importantly, neoconservatives believe that military force is an extremely useful tool for shaping the world in ways that will benefit America. If the United States demonstrates its military prowess and shows that it is willing to use the power at its disposal, then allies will follow our lead and potential adversaries will realize it is futile to resist and will decide to "bandwagon" with the United States.70 Neoconservatism, in short, is an especially hawkish political ideology.
   Neoconservatives occupy influential positions at a variety of organizations and institutions. Prominent neoconservatives include former and present policy makers like Elliott Abrams, Kenneth Adelman, William Bennett, John Bolton, Douglas Feith, the late Jeane Kirkpatrick, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, James Woolsey, and David Wurmser; journalists like the late Robert Bartley, David Brooks, Charles Krauthammer, William Kristol, Bret Stephens, and Norman Podhoretz; academics like Fouad Ajami, Eliot Cohen, Aaron Friedberg, Bernard Lewis, and Ruth Wedgwood; and think-tank pundits like Max Boot, David Frum, Reuel Marc Gerecht, Robert Kagan, Michael Ledeen, Joshua Muravchik, Daniel Pipes, Danielle Pletka, Michael Rubin, and Meyrav Wurmser. The leading neocon
servative magazines and newspapers are Commentary, the New York Sun, the Wall Street Journal op-ed page, and the Weekly Standard. The think tanks and advocacy groups most closely associated with these neoconserva-tives are the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), the Center for Security Policy (CSP), the Hudson Institute, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA), the Middle East Forum (MEF), the Project for a New American Century (PNAC), and the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP).
   Virtually all neoconservatives are strongly committed to Israel, a point they emphasize openly and unapologetically. According to Max Boot, a leading neoconservative pundit, supporting Israel is "a key tenet of neoconser-vatism," a position he attributes to "shared liberal democratic values."'1 Benjamin Ginsberg, a political scientist who has written extensively about American politics as well as anti-Semitism, convincingly argues that one of the main reasons that the neoconservatives moved to the right was "their attachment to Israel and their growing frustration during the 1960s with a Democratic party that was becoming increasingly opposed to American military preparedness and increasingly enamored of Third World causes." In particular, writes Ginsberg, they embraced Ronald Reagan's "hardline anti-communism" because they saw it as a "political movement that would guarantee Israel's security."72
   Given their hawkish orientation, it is not surprising that the neoconservatives tend to align with right-wing elements in Israel itself. For example, it was a group of eight neoconservatives (led by Richard Perle and including Douglas Feith and David Wurmser) that drafted the 1996 "Clean Break" study for incoming Likud Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. That study advocated that Israel abandon the Oslo peace process and use bold measures— including military force—to topple unfriendly Middle Eastern regimes and thereby "transcend" the Arab-Israeli conflict.73
   Many neoconservatives are connected to an overlapping set of Washington-based think tanks, committees, and publications whose agenda includes promoting the special relationship between the United States and Israel. Consider Richard Perle, one of the most prominent neoconservatives, who is a fellow at AEI and also affiliated with the right-wing CSP, the Hudson Institute, JINSA, PNAC, MEF, and FDD, and also serves on WINEP's board of advisers. His fellow neoconservatives are similarly well connected: William Kristol is the editor of the Weekly Standard, cofounder of PNAC, and previously associated with FDD, MEF, and AEI. The Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer is a past recipient of AEI's Irving Kristol Award
(named for William's father, one of neoconservatism's founding figures), a signatory of several PNAC open letters, a contributing editor at the Weekly Standard, and is also affiliated with FDD. The list of past and present connections would delight a network theorist: Elliott Abrams (CSP, Hudson, PNAC); William Bennett (AEI, CSP, PNAC); John Bolton (AEI, JINSA, PNAC); Douglas Feith (CSP, JINSA); David Frum (AEI, Weekly Standard); Reuel Marc Gerecht (AEI, PNAC, Weekly Standard); Michael Ledeen (AEI, JINSA); Jeane Kirkpatrick (AEI, FDD, JINSA, PNAC, WINEP); Joshua Muravchik (AEI, JINSA, PNAC, WINEP); Daniel Pipes (PNAC, MEF, WINEP); Norman Podhoretz (Hudson, Commentary, PNAC); Michael Rubin (AEI, CSP, MEF); Paul Wolfowitz (AEI, PNAC, WINEP); David Wurmser (AEI, MEF, FDD); and James Woolsey (CSP, JINSA, PNAC, FDD).
   This summary by no means exhausts the interrelated affiliations within the neoconservative movement, but what may seem to some like a shadowy conspiracy (or even a "right-wing cabal") is anything but. On the contrary, the various think tanks, committees, foundations, and publications that have nurtured the neoconservative movement operate much as other policy networks do. Far from shunning publicity or engaging in hidden plots, these groups actively court publicity for the explicit purpose of shaping public and elite opinion and thereby moving U.S. foreign policy in the directions they favor. The neoconservative network is both undeniably impressive and similar to networks that have arisen in other policy areas, such as tax reform, the environment, or immigration.
   Of course, the neoconservatives care about America's security as well as Israel's, and they believe that their policy prescriptions will benefit both countries. In the 1980s, however, some more traditional conservatives— sometimes referred to as "paleoconservatives"—claimed that the neoconservatives were more concerned about Israel than the United States. For example, Russell Kirk, the well-known conservative political theorist, maintained that "what really animates the neoconservatives ... is the preservation of Israel. That lies in back of everything."74 The neoconservatives vehemently denied these charges, which led to several bitter exchanges between these contending conservative factions. That conflict eventually subsided, but tension still remains between these two strands of the conservative movement.75
   A number of commentators have emphasized the Jewish roots of neo-conservatism, even though many of the movement's key tenets run counter to the liberal attitudes that still predominate in the American Jewish community. In The Neoconservative Revolution: Jewish Intellectuals and the Shap
ing of Public Policy, a book that paints a sympathetic portrait of its subject, Murray Friedman goes so far as to describe neoconservatism as "American Jewish conservatism."76 But not all neoconservatives are Jewish, which reminds us that the lobby is defined not by ethnicity or religion but by a political agenda. There are a number of prominent gentiles who have adopted most if not all of the basic tenets of neoconservatism, to include vigorous support for Israel and a tendency to favor its more hard-line elements. Their ranks include the Wall Street Journal editor Robert Bartley, former Secretary of Education William Bennett, former UN Ambassadors John Bolton and Jeane Kirkpatrick, and former CIA director James Woolsey. Although these non-Jews have played an important role in pushing forward the neoconser-vative agenda, Jews nonetheless comprise the core of the neoconservative movement. In this sense, neoconservativism is a microcosm of the larger pro-Israel movement. Jewish Americans are central to the neoconservative movement, just as they form the bulk of the lobby, but non-Jews are active in both. Neoconservatives are also emblematic insofar as much of their political agenda is at odds with the traditional political views of most American Jews.

THE CHRISTIAN ZIONISTS

 THE LOBBY MOVES RIGHT

Most American Jews have long supported liberal causes and the Democratic party, and a majority of them favor a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.54 Nonetheless, some of the most important groups in the lobby—including AIPAC and the Conference of Presidents—have become increasingly conservative over time and are now led by hard-liners who support the positions of their hawkish counterparts in Israel. As J. J. Goldberg chronicles in his important book, Jewish Power, the Six-Day War and its aftermath brought into prominence a group of "New Jews" drawn disproportionately from hard-line Zionist, Orthodox, and neoconservative circles. "Their defiance was so strident, and their anger so intense," he writes, "that the rest of the Jewish community respectfully stood back and let the New Jews take the lead. The minority was permitted to speak for the mass and become the dominant voice of Jewish politics."55
   This trend was reinforced by the campaign on behalf of the 1974 Jackson-Vanik amendment (which linked most-favored-nation trading status for the Soviet Union to Moscow's willingness to permit greater Jewish emigration), by the emergence and growth of the so-called neoconservative movement (see below), and by the Likud party's successful effort to cultivate and strengthen hard-line support in key pro-Israel organizations during the years when Likud was sharing power with Israel's Labor party. According to Goldberg, "The genius of Shamir's strategy . . . was to manipulate the central bodies of Jewish representation so that, without taking sides, they became voices for the Likud half of the government." Likud party officials (including Prime Minister Shamir's chief of staff Yossi Ben-Aharon) worked to ensure that the Conference of Presidents was chaired by more conservative officials and also helped engineer the selection of Malcolm Hoenlein as executive vice chairman of the conference in 1986. More hard-line groups were given greater access and attention by Israeli leaders, which reinforced the perception that they were the authoritative voices of the Jewish community. As an adviser to Labor party leader Shimon Peres later admitted, "Ignoring American Jewry was one of the biggest mistakes we made . . . We let Shamir's people do whatever they wanted."56
   This rightward shift also reflects the way decisions are made in some key organizations in the lobby, as well as the growing influence of a small number of wealthy conservatives who increasingly dominate organizations like AIPAC. There are more than fifty organizations represented in the Conference of Presidents, for example, and each has a single vote regardless of size. But as Michael Massing points out, "Smaller conservative groups in the conference decisively outnumber the larger liberal ones and so can neutralize their influence. And that leaves considerable discretion in the hands of [executive vice chairman] Malcolm Hoenlein," who is a longtime supporter of Israel's settler movement and was deeply skeptical about the Oslo peace process.57
   Similarly, membership on AIPAC's board of directors is based on each director's financial contributions, not, observes Massing, on "how well they represent AIPAC's members."58 The individuals willing to give the largest amounts to AIPAC (and to sympathetic politicians) tend to be the most zealous defenders of Israel, and AIPAC's top leadership (consisting primarily of former presidents of the organization) is considerably more hawkish on Middle East issues than are most Jewish Americans. Although AIPAC formally endorsed the Oslo peace process in 1993, it did little to make it work and dropped its opposition to a Palestinian state—without endorsing the idea— only after Ehud Barak became prime minister in 1999.59
   Indeed, AIPAC and other hard-line groups have occasionally backed more extreme positions than those favored by the Israeli government. In 1994, for example, the hawkish ZOA successfully lobbied for an amendment to the foreign aid bill that placed additional restrictions on U.S. aid to the Palestinian Authority, even though both the Clinton administration and the Rabin government in Israel opposed the measure.60 The Conference of Presidents never endorsed the Oslo peace process, and AIPAC helped sponsor the 1995 Jerusalem Embassy Act, a transparent attempt to disrupt the peace process by requiring the United States to move its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.61 Indeed, the key donors that form AIPAC's inner circle reportedly ousted executive director Tom Dine because his views were insufficiently hawkish.62
   In addition to this tendency for those with more extreme views to back and dominate key organizations in the lobby, there is another reason that many pro-Israel groups have moved rightward: to keep contributions flowing in. As Waxman notes, "Many American Jewish organizations now need Israel to legitimate their own existence. Although these organizations may have been established for the purpose of enhancing and strengthening Is
rael, today Israel is vital for their continued viability."63 Portraying Israel as beleaguered and vulnerable and issuing dire warnings about continued or growing anti-Semitism helps maintain a high level of concern among potential supporters and thus helps ensure these organizations' continued existence. Writing in 1992, Jonathan Woocher of the Jewish Education Service of North America made precisely this point: "We have seen the emergence of a whole new industry in America, of organizations monitoring and purporting to fight anti-Semitism everywhere in the world . . . The success of the Simon Wiesenthal Center has been particularly striking. It has become a major direct mail fundraising enterprise by outflanking even the ADL in the hunt for anti-Semitic threats to Jewish security. It is (sadly) not uncommon today to see organizations jockeying for position in a context to determine who among them is 'toughest' in fighting anti-Semitism that is waged in the Jewish press and barrages of direct mail appeals."64 Or as Thomas L. Friedman of the New York Times remarked three years later, "Ever since Mr. Rabin and Mr. Arafat shook hands they have received only the most tepid support from mainstream American Jewish groups, like the Conference of Presidents, and outright hostility from the orthodox and fringe Jewish groupings. It is as if these organizations can only thrive if they have an enemy, someone to fight."65
   It bears repeating that a number of groups in the American Jewish community are critical of certain Israeli policies, and especially its continued presence in the Occupied Territories. Some of these organizations, such as the Israel Policy Forum or Brit Tzedek v'Shalom, actively promote U.S. engagement in the peace process and have been able to win some minor legislative victories in recent years. Yet such groups lack the financial resources and the influence of AIPAC, the ADL, ZOA, or the Conference of Presidents, whose right-of-center views are unfortunately taken by politicians, policy makers, and the media to be the representative voice of American Jewry.66 For the moment, therefore, the major organizations in the lobby will continue to advocate policy positions at odds with many of the people in whose name they claim to speak.

THE ROLE OF THE NEOCONSERVATIVES

 Although a few Jewish leaders defended Breira, a powerful backlash soon emerged from the major Jewish organizations. AIPAC's Near East Report accused Breira of undermining support for Israel, and the president of the Reform rabbinate, Arthur Lelyveld, said that groups like Breira "gave aid and comfort... to those who would cut aid to Israel and leave it defenseless before murderers and terrorists." A Hadassah newsletter labeled Breira members "cheerleaders for defeatism" and warned its own members to "reject the advances of these organizations with their dogmas that run counter to Israeli security and Jewish survival." The president of the conservative Rabbinical Assembly declared that Breira was "fronting for the PLO," and forty-seven rabbis issued a statement terming Breira's positions "practically identical with the Arab point of view." The prosettlement group Americans for a Safe Israel distributed a thirty-page pamphlet smearing Breira's leaders for their involvement with other left-wing causes and referring to them as "Jews for Fatah." Not to be outdone, the ZOA magazine American Zionist accused Breira of abusing the right of free speech, warning that "the Jews who cry 'Foul!' in public must realize the treacherous consequences of their efforts . . . Ramifications are felt not by them, but by fellow Jews thousands of miles away."
   In the face of this assault, Breira stood little chance of building a following or establishing a more open climate for discussion. Local community groups excluded Breira representatives, and the Jewish Community Council of New Haven agreed to admit the local Breira chapter only on the condition that it confine its criticism within the community. An internal memorandum prepared by the American Jewish Committee recommended co-opting the group, but only if it agreed to "direct the exposition of their different views on sensitive Israel-Diaspora issues to the Jewish community itself and refrain from appealing to the general public." Unable to attract sustained funding and weakened by leadership defections, Breira disbanded after five years.44
   In response to the Breira controversy, organizations like the Conference of Presidents, the Synagogue Council of America, the American Jewish Committee, and NJCRAC conducted internal studies or public inquiries on the proper place of dissent. According to J. J. Goldberg, "All these organizations reached the same conclusion: American Jews had the right to discuss issues freely, but only within discreet forums outside public view." In 1976, the Israeli ambassador to the United States, Simcha Dinitz, working with
representatives from NJCRAC and the Conference of Presidents, developed a set of principles to guide behavior within the Jewish community. The first principle, Goldberg notes, was that "Israelis were the only ones entitled to decide Israeli policy" and the second was that "American Jews should stand publicly united with Israel and air disputes only in private."45 By the 1970s, writes Edward Tivnan, "Total support of Israel had become a requirement of leadership in local Jewish communities throughout America."46
   The norm against public criticism of Israeli policy remains for the most part intact.47 In October 1996, for example, the president of ZOA, Morton Klein, sent a letter to ADL head Abraham Foxman protesting an invitation to New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman to speak at an ADL dinner, charging that Friedman "regularly defames Israel and its Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu." Klein then circulated the letter to an array of officials at the Conference of Presidents, leading Foxman to denounce him as a "thought policeman." The dispute intensified when David Bar-Man, Netanyahu's director of communications, weighed in and declared that Friedman should not be given a platform by "any organization that purports to be Zionist." Though sometimes critical of certain Israeli policies, Friedman is hardly anti-Israel, and Foxman himself is one of Israel's most ardent defenders. But Klein's response shows how deep the opposition to open discussion runs.48
   A few years later, Edgar Bronfman Sr., then president of the World Jewish Congress, was accused of "perfidy" when he wrote a letter to President Bush urging him to pressure Israel to curb construction of its controversial "security fence." The executive vice president of the congress, Isi Liebler, declared that "it would be obscene at any time for the president of the World Jewish Congress to lobby the president of the United States to resist policies being promoted by the government of Israel."49 Liebler and others were similarly incensed two years later, when the president of the moderate Israel Policy Forum, Seymour Reich, advised Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to pressure Israel to reopen a critical border crossing in the Gaza Strip in November 2005. Reich's advice to Rice was reasonable and well inten-tioned, but Liebler denounced his action as "irresponsible behavior," and the president of the Orthodox Union, Stephen Savitzky, said it was "not only disrespectful to Israel's government but offensive to millions of American Jews who categorically reject such an approach." Liebler also warned, "There is obviously something sick in the state of World Jewry when purportedly mainstream leaders feel that they can lobby freely against the security policies of the democratically elected government of Israel. If this sort of behav
ior is to be tolerated we may as well write off our one remaining ally— Diaspora Jewry." Recoiling from these attacks, Reich announced that "the word pressure is not in my vocabulary when it comes to Israel."50
   The reluctance to criticize Israel's policies openly is not difficult to fathom. In addition to the obvious desire not to say anything that might aid Israel's enemies, groups or individuals who criticize Israeli policy or the U.S.-Israel relationship are likely to find it harder to retain support and raise funds within the Jewish community. They also run the risk of being ostracized by the larger mainstream organizations. Although groups like Americans for Peace Now, the Tikkun Community, the Israel Policy Forum, and the New Israel Fund have endured and thrived where Breira did not, other progressive Jewish groups, such as New Jewish Agenda, encountered the same opposition that Breira had faced and lasted little more than a decade.51 Similarly, although Americans for Peace Now was eventually admitted to the Conference of Presidents in 1993 after a contentious struggle, the progressive Meretz USA and the liberal Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association were denied membership in 2002 despite support from moderate groups within the Conference. On a smaller scale, Jewish Voice for Peace was denied a booth at a major Jewish community event in the San Francisco area on the grounds that it was insufficiently supportive of Israel, and the Hillel chapter at the University of Texas refused to give an organization called Jewish Students for Palestinian Rights space to conduct a study group.52
   Efforts to marginalize dissenting Jewish voices continue to this day. When the Union of Progressive Zionists (UPZ) sponsored campus appearances in 2006 by Breaking the Silence, an organization of former Israeli soldiers that is critical of IDF operations in the Occupied Territories, ZOA denounced UPZ and demanded that it be expelled from the Israel on Campus Coalition (ICC), a network of pro-Israel groups that includes AIPAC and the ADL. According to ZOA's Klein, sponsoring groups that are critical of Israel "is not the mission of the ICC." UPZ's director emphasized the group's "love for Israel," other groups rallied to its defense, and the ICC steering committee unanimously rejected ZOA's demand. Undeterred, Klein denounced the members of the steering committee and said, "Their mission includes fighting incitement, and yet we are astonished that they would ignore this incitement by Israelis against Israel." ZOA also issued a press release urging member organizations in the ICC to change their votes. The press release quoted an Israeli Foreign Ministry report saying, "The willingness of Jewish communities to host these organizations and even sponsor
them is unfortunate . . . Their negative effect on Israel's image must be stopped." At least one Orthodox group on the ICC steering committee subsequently announced it was now in favor of removing the UPZ.53

THE LOBBY MOVES RIGHT

 UNITY IN DIVERSITY AND THE NORM AGAINST DISSENT

As noted above, the lobby is not a centralized, hierarchical movement. Even among the Jewish elements of the lobby, there are important differences on specific policy issues. In recent years, AIPAC and the Conference of Presidents have tilted toward Likud and other hard-line parties in Israel and were skeptical about the Oslo peace process (a phenomenon we discuss at greater length below), while a number of other, smaller groups—such as Ameinu, Americans for Peace Now, Brit Tzedek v'Shalom (Jewish Alliance for Justice and Peace), Israel Policy Forum, Jewish Voice for Peace, Meretz-USA, and the Tikkun Community—strongly favor a two-state solution and believe Israel needs to make significant concessions in order to bring it about.29
   These differences have occasionally led to rifts within or among these different organizations. In 2006, for example, the Israel Policy Forum, Americans for Peace Now, Jewish Voice for Peace, and Brit Tzedek v'Shalom openly opposed an AIPAC-sponsored congressional resolution (HR 4681) that would have imposed even more draconian restrictions on aid to the Palestinians than the Israeli government sought.30 A watered-down version of the resolution passed by a comfortable margin, but the episode reminds us that pro-Israel groups do not form a monolith with a single party line.
   These divisions notwithstanding, the majority of organized groups in the American Jewish community—especially the largest and wealthiest among them—continue to favor steadfast U.S. support for Israel no matter what policies the Jewish state pursues. As an AIPAC spokesman explained in June 2000, when concerns about Israel's arms sales to China led to calls for a reduction in U.S. support, "We are opposed to linking Israel's aid under any circumstances because once it starts it never stops."31 Even the dovish Americans for Peace Now supports "robust U.S. economic and military assistance to Israel," opposes calls to "cut or condition" U.S. aid, and seeks only to prevent U.S. aid from being used to support settlement activities in the Occupied Territories.32 Similarly, the moderate Israel Policy Forum does not advocate making American aid more conditional but rather focuses its efforts on persuading the U.S. government to work more actively and effectively for a two-state solution.33 Despite differences on the peace process and related
issues, in short, almost every pro-Israel group wants to keep the "special relationship" intact. A notable exception is Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), which has called for the U.S. government to suspend military aid to Israel until it ends the occupation of the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem.34 Indeed, given this position, one might argue that JVP is not part of the lobby at all.
   Given their desire to maximize U.S. backing, Israeli officials frequently engage American Jewish leaders and ask them to help mobilize support in the United States for particular Israeli policies. As Rabbi Alexander Schindler, former chair of the Conference of Presidents, told an Israeli magazine in 1976, "The Presidents' Conference and its members have been instruments of official governmental Israeli policy. It was seen as our task to receive directions from government circles and to do our best no matter what to affect the Jewish community." (Schindler thought this situation was "not acceptable," telling the interviewer that "American Jewry is in no mood to be used by anyone.")35 Yet Albert Chernin of NJCRAC offered a similar appraisal in the 1970s, saying that "in domestic areas we made policy, but in Israel affairs the policy was a given ... In reality, [the Conference of Presidents] was the vehicle through which Israel communicated its policy to the community."36 Ori Nir of the Forward quotes an unnamed activist with a major Jewish organization claiming in 2005 that "it is routine for us to say: 'This is our policy on a certain issue, but we must check what the Israelis think.' We as a community do it all the time." Or as Hyman Bookbinder, a high-ranking official of the American Jewish Committee, once admitted, "Unless something is terribly pressing, really critical or fundamental, you parrot Israel's line in order to retain American support. As American Jews, we don't go around saying Israel is wrong about its policies."37
   Israel's ability to galvanize support within the United States has been demonstrated on numerous occasions. Zionist (and later, Israeli) officials encouraged American Jewish leaders to campaign for the UN partition plan in 1947 and for U.S. recognition in 1948, and to lobby against the abortive peace plan formulated by the UN mediator Folke Bernadotte in 1948. Coordinated efforts such as these also helped convince the Truman administration to significantly increase economic aid to Israel in 1952 and to abandon a Pentagon and State Department proposal for a $ 10 million grant of military assistance to Egypt.38 During the crisis preceding the 1967 Six-Day War, the Israeli government instructed its ambassador in Washington to "create a public atmosphere that will constitute pressure on the [Johnson] administration . . . without it being explicitly clear that we are behind this public campaign." The effort involved getting sympathetic Americans to
write letters, editorials, telegrams, and public statements, etc.—"in a variety of styles"—whose purpose, according to the Israeli Foreign Ministry, was "to create a public atmosphere . . . that will strengthen our friends within the administration." White House officials eventually asked their Israeli counterparts to shut down the letter-writing campaign, but the Israeli ambassador reported back to Jerusalem that "of course we are continuing it." According to the historian Tom Segev, the White House was "inundated with letters from citizens calling on the president to stand by Israel."39
   This tendency to support Israel's actions reflexively may be less prevalent today, but major organizations in the lobby still defer to the preferences of Israel's leaders on many occasions. Following the release of the Bush administration's "road map" for Middle East peace in March 2003, for example, Malcolm Hoenlein of the Conference of Presidents reportedly told Ha'aretz that if the Israeli government expressed reservations about the road map, it would have the support of America's Jewish community. And, Hoenlein emphasized, "We will not hesitate to make our voice heard."40
   Despite the fissures that have emerged between the Israeli government and some groups within American Jewry, this community "has generally accepted the principle that on matters of fundamental security there ought to be no public criticism of Israel."41 According to Steven Rosenthal, "For millions of American Jews, criticism of Israel was a worse sin than marrying out of the faith." Or as Bookbinder once acknowledged, "There is a feeling of guilt as to whether Jews should double-check the Israeli government . . . They automatically fall into line for that very reason."42 Recent surveys of American Jewish opinion reveal that roughly two-thirds of the respondents agree that "regardless of their individual views on the peace negotiations with the Arabs, American Jews should support the policies of the duly-elected government of Israel."43 Thus, even when both leaders and rank and file of important Jewish-American organizations have serious reservations about Israeli policy, they rarely call for the U.S. government to put significant pressure on the Israeli government.
   The norm against public criticism has been vividly illustrated on a number of occasions over the past several decades. In 1973, for example, a group of progressive American Jews formed a new organization, Breira (Alternative), which called for more open discussion between Israel and the diaspora and sought to mobilize support for withdrawal from the Occupied Territories and a peace settlement with the Palestinians. In addition to making their views publicly known through advertisements in major American newspapers, several Breira leaders were part of a delegation of American
Jews who met in a private capacity with a group of Palestinian representatives, under the auspices of the American Friends Service Committee.
   Although a few Jewish leaders defended Breira, a powerful backlash soon emerged from the major Jewish organizations.

 THE ROLE OF AMERICAN JEWRY

The bulk of the lobby is comprised of Jewish Americans who are deeply committed to making sure that U.S. foreign policy advances what they believe to be Israel's interests. According to the historian Melvin I. Urofsky, "No other ethnic group in American history has so extensive an involvement with a foreign nation." Steven T. Rosenthal agrees, writing that "since 1967 . . . there has been no other country whose citizens have been as committed to the success of another country as American Jews have been to Israel."4 In 1981, the political scientist Robert H. Trice described the pro-Israel lobby as "comprised of at least 75 separate organizations—mostly Jewish—that actively support most of the actions and policy positions of the Israeli government."5 The activities of these groups and individuals go beyond merely voting for pro-Israel candidates to include writing letters to politicians or news organizations, making financial contributions to pro-Israel political candidates, and giving active support to one or more pro-Israel organizations, whose leaders often contact them directly to convey their agenda.
   Yet the Israel lobby is not synonymous with American Jewry, and "Jewish lobby" is not an appropriate term for describing the various individuals and groups that work to foster U.S. support for Israel. For one thing, there is significant variation among American Jews in their depth of commitment to Israel. Roughly a third of them, in fact, do not identify Israel as a particularly salient issue. In 2004, for example, a well-regarded survey found that 36 percent of Jewish Americans were either "not very" or "not at all" emotionally attached to Israel.6 Furthermore, many American Jews who care a lot about Israel do not support the policies endorsed by the dominant organizations in the lobby, just as many gun owners do not support every policy that the NRA advocates and not all retirees favor every position endorsed by the AARP. For example, American Jews were less enthusiastic about going to war in Iraq than the population as a whole, even though key organizations in the lobby supported the war, and they are more opposed to the war today. Finally, some of the individuals and groups that are especially vocal on Israel's behalf, such as the Christian Zionists, are not Jewish. So while American Jews are the lobby's predominant constituency, it is more accurate to refer to this loose coalition as the Israel lobby. It is the specific political agenda that defines the lobby, not the religious or ethnic identity of those pushing it.
   The attachment that many American Jews feel for Israel is not difficult to understand, and as noted in the Introduction, it resembles the attitudes
of other ethnic groups that retain an affinity for other countries or peoples with similar backgrounds in foreign lands.7 Although many Jews in the United States were ambivalent about Zionism during the movement's early years, support grew significantly after Hitler came to power in 1933 and especially after the horrors inflicted on the Jews during World War II became widely known.8
   Relatively few Jews chose to leave the United States and move to Israel after its founding in 1948, a pattern that Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion and other Israeli leaders initially criticized. Nevertheless, a strong commitment to Israel soon became an important element of identity for many American Jews.9 The establishment of a Jewish state in historic Palestine seemed miraculous in itself, especially in the aftermath of the Nazi Holocaust. Israel's achievements in "making the desert bloom" were an obvious source of pride, and a close identification with Israel provided a new basis for community for a population that was rapidly assimilating into American society and becoming increasingly secular at the same time. As Rosenthal notes:

To equate Israel with Judaism was a comforting way to avoid the encumbrances of religion by focusing one's Jewishness on a secular state 8,000 miles from home . . . Synagogues, the new mainstay of American Jewish life in the postwar era, became Israel-centered. A new class of Jewish professionals . . . arose in the suburbs. They soon discovered that Israel was the most effective means to counter the growing religious indifference of their constituencies. Primarily in response to Israel's overwhelming need for financial and political support, new institutions . . . arose, and fundraising and lobbying increasingly defined American Jews'relationship to Israel.10
  
   American Jews have formed an impressive array of civic organizations whose agendas include working to benefit Israel, in many cases by influencing U.S. foreign policy. Key organizations include AIPAC, the American Jewish Congress, ZOA, the Israel Policy Forum (IPF), the American Jewish Committee, the ADL, the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, Americans for a Safe Israel, American Friends of Likud, Mercaz-USA, Hadassah, and many others. Indeed, the sociologist Chaim I. Waxman reported in 1992 that the American Jewish Yearbook listed more than eighty national Jewish organizations "specifically devoted to Zionist and pro-Israel activities . . . and for many others, objectives and activities such as 'promotes
Israel's welfare,' 'support for the State of Israel' and 'promotes understanding of Israel' appear with impressive frequency."11 Fifty-one of the largest and most important organizations come together in the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, whose self-described mission includes "forging diverse groups into a unified force for Israel's well-being" and working to "strengthen and foster the special U.S.-Israel relationship."12
   The lobby also includes think tanks such as the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA), the Middle East Forum (MEF), and WINEP, as well as individuals who work in universities and other research organizations. There are also dozens of pro-Israel PACs ready to funnel money to pro-Israel political candidates or to candidates whose opponents are deemed either insufficiently supportive of or hostile to Israel. The Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan research group that tracks campaign contributions, has identified roughly three dozen such "pro-Israel" PACs (many of them "stealth PACs" whose names do not reveal a pro-Israel orientation) and reports that these organizations contributed approximately $3 million to congressional candidates in the 2006 midterm election.13
   Of the various Jewish organizations that include foreign policy as a central part of their agenda, AIPAC is clearly the most important and best known. In 1997, when Fortune magazine asked members of Congress and their staffs to list the most powerful lobbies in Washington, AIPAC came in second behind AARP but ahead of heavyweight lobbies like the AFL-CIO and the NRA.14 A National Journal study in March 2005 reached a similar conclusion, placing AIPAC in second place (tied with AARP) in Washington's "muscle rankings."15 Former Congressman Mervyn Dymally (D-CA) once called AIPAC "without question the most effective lobby in Congress," and the former chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Lee Hamilton, who served in Congress for thirty-four years, said in 1991, "There's no lobby group that matches it. . . They're in a class by themselves."16
   The influence that groups like AIPAC now enjoy did not emerge overnight. During Zionism's early years, and even after Israel's founding, lobbying on Israel's behalf tended to occur quietly behind the scenes and usually depended on personal contacts between influential government officials, especially the president, and a small number of Jewish leaders, pro-Zionist advisers, or Jewish friends. For example, Woodrow Wilson's support for the Balfour Declaration in 1917 was due in part to the influence of his Jewish friends Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis and Rabbi Stephen Wise.
Similarly, Harry S. Truman's decision to back Israel's creation and to recognize the new state was influenced (though not determined) by intercessions from Jewish friends and advisers.17
   The tendency for Israel's supporters to keep a low profile reflected concerns about lingering anti-Semitism in the United States, as well as the fear that overt lobbying on Israel's behalf would expose American Jews to the charge of dual loyalty. AIPAC itself had explicitly Zionist roots: its founder, I. L. "Si" Kenen, was head of the American Zionist Council in 1951, which was a registered foreign lobbying group. Kenen reorganized it as a U.S. lobbying organization—the American Zionist Committee for Public Affairs—in 1953-54, and the new organization was renamed AIPAC in 1959. Kenen relied on personal contacts with key legislators rather than public campaigns or mass mobilization, and AIPAC generally followed "Kenen's Rules" to advance Israel's cause. Rule No. 1 was: "Get behind legislation; don't step out in front of it (that is, keep a low profile)."18
   According to J. J. Goldberg, the editor of the Jewish newspaper Forward, Zionist influence "increased exponentially during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, because the affluence and influence of Jews in American society had increased," and also because Kennedy and Johnson "counted numerous Jews among their close advisers, donors and personal friends."19 AIPAC was still a small operation with a modest staff and budget, and as Stuart Eizenstat points out, "Not until the mid-1960s did overt organized Jewish political activity on behalf of the state of Israel come into its own."20
   The lobby's size, wealth, and influence grew substantially after the Six-Day War in June 1967. According to Eizenstat, that conflict "galvanized the American Jewish public like no event since Israel's War of Independence . . . The sense of pride in 'new Jews,' proud, strong, capable of defending themselves, had an incalculable effect on American Jewry." The successful campaign against anti-Semitism, aided by the widespread awareness of the horrors of the Holocaust, helped remove lingering discriminatory barriers, and Jewish Americans "lost the sense of fear that had stunted their political will" in earlier years. And because Israel was becoming a central focus of Jewish identity in a world where assimilation was increasingly viable and widespread, there were few reasons not to express that attachment in politics.21
   The heightened concern with Israel's well-being within Jewish organizations continued during the War of Attrition (1969-70) and the October War (1973). These conflicts reinforced pride in Israel's military prowess, but they also raised fears about Israel's security, thereby reinforcing the Israelcentric
focus of many Jewish community-relations groups.22 Albert Chernin, the executive director of the National Jewish Community Relations Advisory Council (NJCRAC, later renamed the Jewish Council for Public Affairs), expressed this perspective in 1978 when he said that our "first priority is Israel, of course, reflecting the complete identity of views of the American Jewish leadership with the concerns of the rank and file." The historian Jack Wertheimer terms this comment a "stunning admission that political efforts to shore up Israel superseded all other concerns of Jewish community relations organizations in the United States."23
   As American foreign aid to Israel began to exceed private contributions, pro-Israel organizations increasingly focused on political activities intended to preserve or increase U.S. governmental support. According to Wertheimer, "The overall responsibility for lobbying for Israel was assumed by the Conference of Presidents . . . and AIPAC. Both had been founded in the 1950s and had played a modest role prior to 1967. The needs of Israel for political support catapulted these two organizations to prominence in the 1970s and 1980s."24
   This increased effort reflected awareness that backing Israel was costly for the United States and therefore had to be justified and defended in the political sphere. As Morris Amitay, who replaced Kenen as AIPAC's executive director in 1975, put it, "The name of the game, if you want to help Israel, is political action."25 Under Amitay and his successor, Tom Dine, AIPAC was transformed from an intimate, low-budget operation into a large, mass-based organization with a staff of more than 150 employees and an annual budget (derived solely from private contributions) that went from some $300,000 in 1973 to an estimated $40-60 million today.26 Instead of shunning the limelight, as it had done under Kenen, AIPAC increasingly sought to advertise its power. According to one former staffer, "The theory was, no one is scared of you if they don't know about you."27 In contrast to the earlier patterns of intimate lobbying on behalf of Jews by Jewish advisers and sympathetic gentiles, AIPAC and other groups in the lobby did not define their public agenda as humanitarian support for Jews in Israel. Rather, the evolution of the lobby increasingly involved the formulation and promotion of sophisticated arguments about the alignment of America's and Israel's strategic interests and moral values.
   Flush with cash and well positioned in the Cold War political landscape, AIPAC found its political muscle enhanced by new federal rules on campaign financing, which triggered the creation of independent PACs and made
it easier to channel money toward pro-Israel candidates. AIPAC may not have been all that formidable in the early 1960s, but by the 1980s, notes Warren Bass, it was a "Washington powerhouse."28

UNITY IN DIVERSITY AND THE NORM AGAINST DISSENT

WHAT IS THE "ISRAEL LOBBY"?

In the United States, interest groups routinely contend to shape perceptions of the national interest and to convince legislators and presidents to adopt their preferred policies. The interplay of competing factions was famously extolled by James Madison in the Federalist No. 10, and the influence of different interest groups has long shaped various aspects of American foreign policy, including decisions for war.
   When a particular interest group is especially powerful or politically adept, it may influence policy in ways that are not good for the country as a whole. A tariff that shields a particular industry from foreign competition will benefit certain companies but not the many consumers who have to pay more for that industry's goods. The National Rifle Association's success in thwarting gun control legislation undoubtedly benefits gun manufacturers and dealers, but it leaves the rest of society more vulnerable to gun-related violence. When a former lobbyist for the American Petroleum Institute becomes chief of staff at the White House's Council on Environmental Quality, and uses this position to water down reports on the connection between greenhouse gas emissions and global warming (before resigning to take a job at ExxonMobil), one may reasonably worry that the oil industry is protecting its interests in ways that may harm all of us.'
   The influence of the Israel lobby on U.S. foreign policy merits the same scrutiny as the impact of energy interests on environmental regulations or the role of pharmaceutical companies in shaping policy on prescription drugs. We believe the activities of the groups and individuals who make up the lobby are the main reason why the United States pursues policies in the Middle East that make little sense on either strategic or moral grounds.
Were it not for the lobby's efforts, the strategic and moral arguments that are commonly invoked to justify unconditional American support would be called into question more frequently and U.S. policy in the Middle East would be significantly different than it is today. Pro-Israel forces surely believe that they are promoting policies that serve the American as well as the Israeli national interest. We disagree. Most of the policies they advocate are not in America's or Israel's interest, and both countries would be better off if the United States adopted a different approach.
   As we have already noted, we are not questioning American support for Israel's right to exist, because that right is clearly justified and is now endorsed by more than 160 countries around the world. What we are questioning—and what needs to be explained—is the magnitude of U.S. support for Israel and its largely unconditional nature (as described in Chapter 1), as well as the degree to which U.S. Middle East policy is conducted with Israel's welfare in mind (as explored in detail in Part II). To begin that task, this chapter identifies the central components of the Israel lobby and describes how it has evolved over time. We also discuss why it has become so influential, especially when compared to potential competitors like the "Arab lobby" and the "oil lobby." The following chapters describe the different strategies that have made it such a powerful interest group and a remarkably effective player in the making of U.S. Middle East policy.

DEFINING THE LOBBY

We use "Israel lobby" as a convenient shorthand term for the loose coalition of individuals and organizations that actively work to shape U.S. foreign policy in a pro-Israel direction. The lobby is not a single, unified movement with a central leadership, however, and the individuals and groups that make up this broad coalition sometimes disagree on specific policy issues. Nor is it some sort of cabal or conspiracy. On the contrary, the organizations and individuals who make up the lobby operate out in the open and in the same way that other interest groups do.
   Using the term "Israel lobby" is itself somewhat misleading, insofar as many of the individuals and some of the groups in this loose coalition do not engage in formal lobbying activities (direct efforts to persuade elected officials). Rather, the various parts of the lobby work to influence U.S. policy in a variety of ways, much as other interest groups do. One might more accurately dub this the "pro-Israel community" or even the "help Israel move-
ment," because the range of activities that different groups undertake goes beyond simple lobbying. Nonetheless, because many of the key groups do lobby, and because the term "Israel lobby" is used in common parlance (along with labels such as the "farm lobby," "insurance lobby," "gun lobby," or other ethnic lobbies), we have chosen to employ it here.2
   As with other special interest groups, the boundaries of the Israel lobby cannot be identified precisely, and there will always be some borderline individuals or organizations whose position is hard to classify.3 It is easy to identify groups that are clearly part of the lobby—such as the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA)—as well as individuals who are key members— such as Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. There are also many groups that are obviously not part of the lobby—such as the National Association of Arab-Americans—and individuals who should clearly be excluded as well—such as Columbia University scholar Rashid Khalidi. Nevertheless, there will always be some groups and individuals whose position is more ambiguous. Like other social and political movements, the Israel lobby's boundaries are somewhat fuzzy.
   This situation highlights that the lobby is not a centralized, hierarchical organization with a defined membership. There are no membership cards or initiation rites. It has a core consisting of organizations whose declared purpose is to encourage the U.S. government and the American public to provide material aid to Israel and to support its government's policies, as well as influential individuals for whom these goals are also a top priority. The lobby, however, also draws support from a penumbra of groups and individuals who are committed to Israel and want the United States to continue supporting it, but who are not as energetically or consistently active as the groups and individuals that form the core. Thus, a lobbyist for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), a research fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), or the leadership of organizations like the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and Christians United for Israel (CUFI) are part of the core, while individuals who occasionally write letters supporting Israel to their local newspaper or send checks to a pro-Israel political action committee should be seen as part of the broader network of supporters.
   This definition does not mean that every American with favorable attitudes toward Israel is a member of the lobby. To offer a personal illustration, the authors of this book are "pro-Israel," in the sense that we support its right to exist, admire its many achievements, want its citizens to enjoy se
cure and prosperous lives, and believe that the United States should come to Israel's aid if its survival is in danger. But we are obviously not part of the Israel lobby. Nor does it imply that every American official who supports Israel is part of the lobby either. A senator who consistently votes in favor of aid to Israel is not necessarily part of the lobby, because he or she may simply be responding to political pressure from pro-Israel interest groups.
   To be part of the lobby, in other words, one has to actively work to move American foreign policy in a pro-Israel direction. For an organization, this pursuit must be an important part of its mission and consume a substantial percentage of its resources and agenda. For an individual, this means devoting some portion of one's professional or personal life (or in some cases, substantial amounts of money) to influencing U.S. Middle East policy. A journalist or academic who sometimes covers Middle East issues and occasionally reports events that portray Israel favorably—such as the New York Times reporter David Sanger or the Duke University professor Bruce Jentleson— should not be seen as part of the lobby. But a journalist or scholar who predictably takes Israel's side and devotes a significant amount of his or her writing to defending steadfast U.S. support for Israel—such as the Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer or the former Princeton University historian Bernard Lewis—clearly is.
   Of course, the level of effort and the specific activities will vary in each case, and these various groups and individuals will not agree on every issue that affects Israel. Some individuals—such as Morton Klein of ZOA, John Hagee of CUFI, and Rael Jean Isaac of Americans for a Safe Israel—oppose a two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians and believe instead that Israel should retain all or most of the Occupied Territories. Others, such as Dennis Ross of WINEP and Martin Indyk of the Brookings Institution, favor a negotiated settlement and have occasionally criticized specific Israeli actions. Despite these differences, however, each of these individuals believes that the United States should give Israel substantial diplomatic, economic, and military support even when Israel takes actions the United States opposes, and each has devoted a significant amount of his or her professional life to encouraging this sort of support. Thus, although it would clearly be wrong to think of the lobby as a single-minded monolith, much less portray it as a cabal or conspiracy, it would be equally mistaken to exclude anyone who works actively to preserve America's special relationship with the Jewish state.

THE ROLE OF AMERICAN JEWRY

 WHAT DO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE WANT?

The six moral arguments that we have just examined underpin the broader claim that the real basis of U.S. support for Israel is the American people's enduring identification with the Jewish state. The columnist Jeff Jacoby of the Boston Globe writes that "solidarity with Israel is an abiding feature of American public opinion. Because the American people are pro-Israel, the American government is pro-Israel. And because Americans so strongly support Israel in its conflict with the Arabs, American policy in the Middle East is committed to Israel's defense." As the AIPAC spokesman Josh Block said on the eve of its 2007 Policy Conference, "There's one issue—that is, support for the U.S. relationship with Israel—that brings everyone together." In fact, he argued that "all trends indicate that Americans . . . understand quite clearly that the basic values we celebrate are reflected in only one country in the Middle East—our ally Israel."144
   This claim, however widely believed, does not stand up to close inspection. There is a degree of cultural affinity between the United States and Israel, based in part on the shared Judeo-Christian tradition. There is also no question that many Americans look favorably on Israel because it is a democracy, because of the history of anti-Semitism, and because they sympathize with Israel in its fight against Palestinian terrorism. But the common roots of Judaism and Christianity have hardly been a reliable source of amity between Jews and Christians in the past.145 Not only have Christians waged brutal wars against each other, but they have also been the primary perpetrators of violent anti-Semitism in previous centuries. And some fundamentalists— including Christian Zionists—still regard the conversion of Jews as an important evangelical objective. By itself, therefore, this "cultural affinity" cannot
account for the consistent level of U.S. support, or even the generally favorable attitudes that many Americans express toward the Jewish state.
   As will become clear in later chapters, the American people are inclined to support Israel in part because its supporters in the United States cultivate sympathy by stifling criticism of Israel while simultaneously portraying it in a favorable light. Indeed, there is much more criticism of Israel's actions in Israel itself than there is in America. If there were a more open and candid discussion about what the Israelis are doing in the Occupied Territories, and about the real strategic value of Israel as a U.S. ally, there would be much less sympathy for Israel in the American public.
   Nonetheless, the degree of public support for Israel—and for specific Israeli policies—should not be overstated. Although the American people have favorable perceptions of Israel and clearly support the existence of a Jewish state, support for Israel is not especially deep. Most Americans also recognize that the United States pays a price for its unyielding support of Israel. For example, the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press has been asking Americans for many years whether they sympathize more with Israel or the Palestinians. There has always been much more sympathy for Israel, but from 1993 through 2006, the number went above 50 percent only once—it was 52 percent during the second Lebanon war in 2006—and was as low as 37 percent in July 2005.146
   Regarding the consequences of U.S. support for Israel, a Pew survey conducted in November 2005 found that 39 percent of the American public said that it was "a major cause of global discontent." Among opinion leaders, the numbers were substantially higher. Indeed, 78 percent of members of the news media, 72 percent of military leaders, 72 percent of security experts, and 69 percent of foreign affairs specialists believe that backing Israel seriously damages America's image around the world.147 A Newsweek poll released a few weeks after the September 11 attacks found that 58 percent of the respondents believed that U.S. support for Israel was a factor in Osama bin Laden's decision to attack America.148
   The American people are considerably more critical of some Israeli actions than U.S. politicians are, and the public clearly supports taking a hard-nosed approach to dealing with Israel when they think it is in the national interest to do so. As we explain in Chapter 7, a survey in the spring of 2003 showed that 60 percent of Americans were willing to withhold aid to Israel if it resisted U.S. pressure to settle its conflict with the Palestinians. In fact, 73 percent said the United States should not favor either side in the conflict.149 Two years later, the Anti-Defamation League found that 78 percent
of Americans believed that Washington should favor neither Israel nor the Palestinians.150 Andrew Kohut, the director of the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, points out that "average Americans see shades of gray in the Middle East conflict, and their sympathies notwithstanding, they favor a neutral role for the United States."151
   Unlike their leaders, the American people displayed a tough-minded approach to dealing with Israel during the Lebanon war in 2006. As discussed in Chapter 11, polls showed that slightly more than half of the public thought that Israel was either equally responsible or mainly responsible for the war, and in at least two polls more than half of the respondents said that the United States should not take sides.152 But the United States emphatically took Israel's side in Lebanon, as it has in every recent conflict involving Israel. This enthusiastic and unconditional support cannot be explained by the generally favorable opinion of Israel held by most Americans.

CONCLUSION

The moral or strategic arguments commonly invoked by Israel's backers cannot account for America's remarkable relationship with the Jewish state over the past three decades. This is especially true for the post-Cold War period, when the strategic rationale largely evaporated and the moral rationale was badly undermined by Israeli behavior in the Occupied Territories. Yet the relationship continued to grow and deepen.
   Some Americans surely do not find this situation anomalous, as they sincerely believe that there are powerful moral and strategic reasons behind U.S. support for Israel. Because the essential facts in this story are so at odds with this perspective, it is hard to imagine that the number of true believers is large enough to account for America's exceptional relationship with the Jewish state. We are left with a puzzle: either a relatively small number of true believers are exerting a disproportionate influence on U.S. foreign policy, or they have managed to persuade lots of other people—especially key politicians and policy makers—that these flawed rationales are in fact correct. Because the strategic and moral case is increasingly weak, something else must be behind the striking pattern of ever-increasing U.S. support. We address that issue in the next chapter.

WHAT IS THE "ISRAEL LOBBY"?

The Second Intifada broke out shortly after Ariel Sharon visited the Temple Mount, Judaism's most holy site, on September 28, 2000. He had to be accompanied by more than a thousand Israeli police, because Muslims consider that same site, the location of the al-Aqsa Mosque, to be the third holiest site in Islam. But Sharon's provocative move was only the precipitating cause, not the root cause, of the violence. Trouble had been brewing among the Palestinians well before Sharon's visit, and key individuals on both sides recognized the danger. In fact, Palestinian leaders asked American and Israeli officials to bar Sharon's visit precisely because they anticipated a violent reaction and wanted to prevent it.133
Part of the problem was the Palestinians' growing dissatisfaction with
Arafat, whose corrupt leadership had done little to improve their lives, much less deliver a state. But the main cause was Israel's provocative policies in the Occupied Territories, compounded by its harsh response to the demonstrations that immediately followed Sharon's visit.134 Ben-Ami is exactly right that the Second Intifada "did not start merely as a tactical move. It erupted out of the accumulated rage and frustration of the Palestinian masses at the colossal failure of the peace process since the early days of Oslo to offer them a life of dignity and well-being, and at the incompetence and corruption of their own leaders in the Palestinian Authority."135
   The Palestinians' frustrations are not hard to fathom. Between the start of the Oslo peace process in September 1993 and the outbreak of the Second Intifada seven years later, Israel confiscated more than forty thousand acres of Palestinian land, built 250 miles of bypass and security roads, established thirty new settlements, and increased the settler population in the West Bank and Gaza by almost one hundred thousand, which effectively doubled that population.136 The Israelis also reneged on promises to transfer territory back to the Palestinians and created a system of checkpoints that sharply reduced the Palestinians' freedom of movement and badly damaged their economy. The Palestinians were primed to explode by 2000, and when they did, the Israelis unleashed their superior firepower with scant restraint.137 The IDF, as noted, fired more than a million bullets in the first few days of the uprising.
   Although Arafat did not launch the Second Intifada, he exploited the resulting violence in a foolish attempt to enhance his bargaining position. Not only did this move make Barak less willing to cut a deal, but it also damaged Barak's standing with the Israeli electorate and paved the way for Sharon's election in February 2001. Arafat's attempt to leverage the uprising also delayed the negotiations, which meant that the lame-duck Clinton administration had even less time in which to complete the process.
   Some argue that Arafat's ultimate goal in manipulating the violence was to erase Israel from the map. That was certainly his goal when he first emerged on the world stage in the 1960s, but he recognized by the late 1980s that there was no way that the Palestinians could make Israel go away. Arafat went to some lengths in the 1990s—certainly by participating in the Oslo peace process—to make clear that he accepted Israel's existence and that his struggle with Israel was over control of the Occupied Territories, not all of historic Palestine.138 When Camp David failed and the Second Intifada began, almost all of Israel's key intelligence figures believed that Arafat accepted Israel's existence and merely sought a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza.139 Furthermore, as the Middle East specialist Jeremy
Pressman points out, if Arafat and the Palestinians were determined to eliminate Israel, they would have accepted Barak's offer and used the new state as "a launching pad for the elimination of Israel." But instead they negotiated "as if they expected to abide by any agreements and live for the long term within the framework of a two-state solution."140
   Finally, the oft-repeated claim that Arafat rejected the December 2000 Clinton parameters, which did improve on Barak's last offer at Camp David, is also wrong. The official Palestinian response thanked Clinton for his continued efforts, declared that considerable progress had been made, asked for clarification on some points, and expressed reservations about others.141 The Israeli government also had its own reservations about the proposal, which Barak outlined in a twenty-page single-spaced document. Thus, both the Palestinians and the Israelis accepted the Clinton parameters and saw them as the basis for continued negotiation, but neither side accepted them in toto. The White House spokesman Jake Siewert made just this point on January 3, 2001, when he said that "both sides have now accepted the President's ideas with some reservations," and Clinton confirmed this point in a speech to the Israel Policy Forum four days later.142 Negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians continued at Taba, Egypt, until late January 2001, when Ehud Barak, not Arafat, broke off the talks. With elections in Israel imminent and public opinion there running strongly against the talks, Barak felt that the clock had run out on him.143 His successor, Ariel Sharon, who was adamantly opposed to the Oslo peace process as well as the Clinton parameters, refused to resume negotiations despite repeated Palestinian requests. We will never know if peace was within sight by early 2001, but the charge that Arafat and the Palestinians rejected a last chance for peace and chose violence over reconciliation is false.

SUPPORTING ISRAEL IS GOD'S WILL

There is a final moral claim that some say justifies the close embrace between the United States and Israel. As discussed in more detail in Chapter 4, some evangelical Christians—especially so-called Christian Zionists—view the establishment of the Jewish state as the fulfillment of biblical prophecy. Genesis says that God gave Abraham and his descendants the land of Israel; by colonizing the West Bank, Jews are merely taking back what God gave them. Some Christians also see the creation of a greater Israel as a key event leading to the end-time "final battle" depicted in the New Testament's Book
of Revelation. Both perspectives imply that Israel deserves U.S. support not because it is a democracy, an underdog, or a morally superior society, but because backing Israel is God's will.
   This line of argument undoubtedly appeals to some fervently religious individuals, but anticipating Armageddon is not a sound basis for making American foreign policy. Church and state are separate in the United States, and the religious opinions of any group are not supposed to determine the country's foreign policy. It is also an odd reading of Christian ethics to support the powerful Israeli state in its mistreatment of dispossessed Palestinians and its suppression of their rights.

WHAT DO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE WANT?

CAMP DAVID MYTHS

The portrayal of Israel as primed for peace and the Palestinians as bent on war is reinforced by the standard interpretation of the Clinton administration's failed effort to complete the Oslo peace process. According to this story, Prime Minister Barak offered the Palestinians "almost everything" they wanted at Camp David in July 2000.121 But Arafat, still determined to derail the peace process and eventually destroy Israel, rejected this generous offer and instead launched the Second Intifada in late September 2000. Israel accepted and Arafat rejected an even more generous proposal—the so-called Clinton parameters—put forth by President Clinton on December 23, 2000, providing further evidence that he had no interest in peace.
   In this story, the failure of the peace process was almost entirely Arafat's fault. Israel was eager to make peace but could not find a reliable partner, confirming Abba Eban's famous quip that "the Arabs never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity." This account also implies that neither Israel nor the United States bears responsibility for the continued conflict and bol
sters the argument that Israel was correct in refusing to make concessions to the Palestinians as long as Arafat was in charge.
   There is only one problem with this widely held version of events: it is not correct.122 Although Barak deserves credit for being the first—indeed, the only—Israeli leader to offer the Palestinians their own state, the terms he offered them at Camp David were far from generous. To start, it seems clear that Barak's best offer at Camp David promised the Palestinians immediate control of Gaza and eventual control of 91 percent of the West Bank.123 Even so, there were major problems with this offer from the Palestinians' perspective. Israel planned to keep control of the Jordan River Valley (roughly 10 percent of the West Bank) for between six and twenty-one years (different accounts of the negotiations vary on this point), which meant that the Palestinians would be given immediate control over no more than 81 percent of the West Bank, not 91 percent. The Palestinians, of course, could not be sure that Israel would ever relinquish control of the Jordan River Valley.
   In addition, the Palestinians had a slightly more expansive definition of what constituted the West Bank than the Israelis did. This difference, which amounted to roughly 5 percent of the territory in question, meant that the Palestinians saw themselves immediately getting 76 percent of the West Bank and, if the Israelis were willing to surrender the Jordan River Valley at some future date, maybe 86 percent. What made this deal especially difficult for the Palestinians to accept was the fact that they had already agreed in the 1993 Oslo Accords to recognize Israeli sovereignty over 78 percent of the original British Mandate.124 From their perspective, they were now being asked to make another major concession and accept at best 86 percent of the remaining 22 percent.
   To make matters worse, the final Israeli proposal at Camp David in the summer of 2000 would not have given the Palestinians a continuous piece of sovereign territory in the West Bank. The Palestinians maintain that the West Bank would have been divided into three cantons separated by Israeli territory. Israelis dispute this claim, but Barak himself acknowledges that Israel would have maintained control of a "razor-thin" wedge of territory running from Jerusalem to the Jordan River Valley.125 This wedge, which would completely bisect the West Bank, was essential to Israel's plan to retain control of the Jordan River Valley. Thus, the Palestinian state proposed at Camp David would have been composed of either two or three distinct cantons in the West Bank, and Gaza, which is itself separated from the West Bank by Israeli territory. Barak later said that the Palestinian areas on the West Bank
could have been connected by "a tunnel or bridge," while Gaza and the West Bank would have been connected by a travel corridor.126
   With regard to the thorny issue of Jerusalem, Barak's proposal to divide the city was a major step in the right direction. Nonetheless, the Palestinians were not offered full sovereignty in a number of Arab neighborhoods in East Jerusalem, which made the proposal significantly less attractive to them. Israel would also have kept control over the new Palestinian state's borders, its airspace, and its water resources, and the Palestinians would be permanently barred from building an army to defend themselves.127 It is hard to imagine any leader accepting these terms. Certainly no other state in the world has such curtailed sovereignty, or faces so many obstacles to building a workable economy and society. Given all this, it is not surprising that Barak's former foreign minister, Shlomo Ben-Ami, who was a key participant at Camp David, later told an interviewer, "If I were a Palestinian I would have rejected Camp David, as well."128
   The common claim that Arafat launched the Second Intifada in late September 2000—either to enhance his leverage in the negotiations or to destroy the peace process itself—does not stand up against the evidence either.129 He continued negotiating with the Israelis and the Americans after Camp David, and he even visited Prime Minister Ehud Barak's home a few nights before the violence broke out. According to Charles Enderlin, a French journalist who has written an important book on the failure of these negotiations, the two leaders were uncharacteristically friendly and optimistic about the negotiations that evening.130 Moreover, the former head of Shin Bet, Ami Ayalon, has stated that "Arafat neither prepared nor triggered the Intifada."131 The so-called Mitchell Commission, headed by former U.S. Senator George Mitchell and charged with restarting the peace process, reached the same conclusion.132
   The Second Intifada broke out shortly after Ariel Sharon visited the Temple Mount, Judaism's most holy site, on September 28, 2000.

 A similar pattern can be seen in Israel's response to the escalation in violence in Gaza and Lebanon in 2006. The killing of two Israeli soldiers and the capture of a third by Hamas in June 2006 led Israel to reoccupy Gaza and launch air strikes and artillery fire that destroyed critical infrastructure, including the electric power station that provided residents of Gaza with half of their electricity. The IDF has also killed hundreds of Palestinians since moving back into Gaza, many of them children.112 This dire situation led the UN high commissioner for human rights, Louise Arbour, to proclaim in November 2006 that "the violation of human rights in this territory ... is massive."113 Likewise, when Hezbollah units crossed the Israeli-Lebanese border in July 2006 and captured two IDF soldiers and killed several more, Israel unleashed a bombing campaign that was designed to inflict massive punishment on Lebanon's civilian population by destroying critical infrastructure like roads, bridges, gas stations, and buildings. More than one thousand Lebanese died, most of them innocent civilians. As discussed in Chapter 11, this response was both strategically foolish and a violation of the laws of war. In short, there is little basis for the often-heard claim that Israel has consistently shown great restraint in dealing with its adversaries.
   An obvious challenge to this point is the claim that Israel has faced a mortal threat throughout its history, both from "rejectionist" Arab governments and from Palestinian terrorists. Isn't Israel entitled to do whatever it
takes to protect its citizens? And doesn't the unique evil of terrorism justify continued U.S. support, even if Israel often responds harshly?
   In fact, this argument is not a compelling moral justification either. Palestinians have used terrorism against their Israeli occupiers as well as innocent third parties; their willingness to attack civilians is wrong and should be roundly condemned. This behavior is not surprising, however, because the Palestinians have long been denied basic political rights and believe they have no other way to force Israeli concessions. As former Prime Minister Barak once admitted, had he been born a Palestinian, he "would have joined a terrorist organization."114 If the situation were reversed and the Israelis were under Arab occupation, they would almost certainly be using similar tactics against their oppressors, just as other resistance movements around the world have done.115
   Indeed, terrorism was one of the key tactics that the Zionists used when they were in a similarly weak position and trying to obtain their own state. It was Jewish terrorists from the infamous Irgun, a militant Zionist group, who in late 1937 introduced into Palestine the now-familiar practice of placing bombs in buses and large crowds. Benny Morris speculates that "the Arabs may well have learned the value of terrorist bombings from the Jews."116 Between 1944 and 1947, several Zionist organizations used terrorist attacks to drive the British from Palestine and took the lives of many innocent civilians along the way.117 Israeli terrorists also murdered the UN mediator Count Folke Bernadotte in 1948, because they opposed his proposal to internationalize Jerusalem.118 The perpetrators of these acts were not isolated extremists: the leaders of the murder plot were eventually granted amnesty by the Israeli government and one of them was later elected to the Knesset. Another terrorist leader, who approved of Bernadotte's murder but was not tried, was future Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir. He openly argued that "neither Jewish ethics nor Jewish tradition can disqualify terrorism as a means of combat." Rather, terrorism had "a great part to play ... in our war against the occupier [Britain]." Nor did Shamir express regrets about his terrorist past, telling an interviewer in 1998 that "had I not acted as I did, it is doubtful that we would have been able to create an independent Jewish state of our own."119
   Of course, Menachem Begin, who headed the Irgun and later became prime minister, was one of the most prominent Jewish terrorists in the years before Israeli independence. When speaking of Begin, Prime Minister Levi Eshkol often referred to him simply as "the terrorist."120 The Palestinians' use of terrorism is morally reprehensible today, but so was the Zionists' re
liance on it in the past. Thus, one cannot justify American support for Israel on the grounds that its past or present conduct was morally superior.
   Another possible line of defense is that Israel does not purposely target noncombatants, while Hezbollah and the Palestinians do aim to kill Israeli civilians. Moreover, the terrorists who strike at Israel use civilians as human shields, which regrettably leaves the IDF no choice but to kill innocent civilians when it strikes at its deadly foes. These rationales are not convincing either. As discussed in Chapter 11, the IDF targeted civilian areas in Lebanon, and there is little evidence that Hezbollah was using civilians as human shields. While there is also no evidence that it has been official Israeli policy to kill Palestinian civilians, the IDF has often failed to take care to avoid civilian casualties when fighting against groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad. The fact that Hezbollah and the Palestinians target civilians does not entitle Israel to jeopardize civilian lives by using disproportionate force.
   There is no question that Israel is justified in responding with force to violent acts by groups like Hamas and Hezbollah, but its willingness to use its superior military power to inflict massive suffering on innocent civilians casts doubt on its repeated claims to a special moral status. Israel may not have acted worse than many other countries, but it has not acted any better.

CAMP DAVID MYTHS

"VIRTUOUS ISRAELIS" VERSUS "EVIL ARABS"

Another moral argument portrays Israel as a country that has sought peace at every turn and showed great and noble restraint even when provoked. The Arabs, by contrast, are said to have acted with deep wickedness and indiscriminate violence. This narrative is endlessly repeated by Israeli leaders and by American apologists for Israel such as Alan Dershowitz and the New Republic editor in chief Martin Peretz. Israel, according to Peretz, adheres closely to a doctrine called "purity of arms," which means that "everything reasonable must be done to avoid harming civilians, even if that entails additional risks to Israeli soldiers." Moreover, he maintains that "Israel has for years vacillated between responding to terror with exquisitely calibrated force and pacifying terrorists by giving them some of what they want," while its Arab enemies are part "of the very same terror that was launched on us on Sept. 11."89 The IDF, according to Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert, among others, "is the most moral army in the world."90 This description of Israeli behavior is yet another myth, another element in what Meron Benvenisti, the former deputy mayor of Jerusalem, calls Israel's "sacred narrative."91
   Israeli scholarship shows that the early Zionists were far from benevolent toward the Palestinian Arabs.92 The Arab inhabitants did resist the Zionists' encroachments, sometimes killing Jews and destroying their homes. But this resistance would be expected given that the Zionists were trying to create their own state on Arab lands. "Were I an Arab," Ben-Gurion candidly remarked in June 1937, "I would rebel even more vigorously, bitterly, and desperately against the immigration that will one day turn Palestine and all its Arab residents over to Jewish rule."93 The Zionists responded vigorously and often ruthlessly, and thus neither side owns the moral high ground during this period.
   This same scholarship also reveals that the creation of Israel in 1948 involved explicit acts of ethnic cleansing, including executions, massacres, and rapes by Jews.94 Of course, Zionist leaders did not tell their troops to
murder and rape Palestinians, but they did advocate using brutal methods to remove huge numbers of Palestinians from the land that would soon be the new Jewish state. Consider what Ben-Gurion wrote in his diary on January 1, 1948, at a time when he was involved in a series of important meetings with other Zionist leaders about how to deal with the Palestinians in their midst: "There is a need now for strong and brutal reaction. We need to be accurate about timing, place and those we hit. If we accuse a family—we need to harm them without mercy, women and children included. Otherwise, this is not an effective reaction . . . There is no need to distinguish between guilty and not guilty."95 It is hardly surprising that this sort of guidance from the Zionist leadership—Ben-Gurion was summarizing the emerging policy—led Jewish soldiers to commit atrocities. After all, we have seen this pattern of behavior in many wars, fought by many different peoples. Regardless, the occurrence of atrocities in this period undercuts Israel's claim to a special moral status.
   Israel's subsequent conduct toward its Arab adversaries and its Palestinian subjects has often been severe, belying any claim to morally superior conduct. Between 1949 and 1956, for example, Morris estimates that "Israeli security forces and civilian guards, and their mines and booby-traps, killed somewhere between 2,700 and 5,000 Arab infiltrators." Some of them were undoubtedly bent on killing Israelis, but according to the available evidence, "the vast majority of those killed were unarmed; the overwhelming majority had infiltrated for economic or social reasons." Morris notes that this "free-fire" policy led to "a series of atrocities" against the infiltrators.96
   These kinds of acts were not anomalous. The IDF murdered hundreds of Egyptian prisoners of war in both the 1956 and 1967 wars.97 In 1967, it expelled between 100,000 and 260,000 Palestinians from the newly conquered West Bank and drove 80,000 Syrians from the Golan Heights.98 When the victims of these ethnic cleansings tried to sneak back to their homes, often unarmed, Israelis sometimes shot them on sight.99 Amnesty International estimates that between 1967 and 2003, Israel destroyed more than ten thousand homes in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.100 Israel was also complicit in the massacre of innocent Palestinians by a Christian militia at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps following its invasion of Lebanon in 1982. An Israeli investigatory commission found Defense Minister Ariel Sharon to bear "personal responsibility" for these atrocities by allowing the Phalangists to enter the camps.101 While the commission's willingness to hold a top official like Sharon accountable is admirable, we should not forget that Israeli voters subsequently elected him prime minister.
   Israel has now controlled the West Bank and Gaza for forty years, making it, as the historian Perry Anderson notes, "the longest official military occupation of modern history."102 When the occupation began, Benny Morris explains, Israelis "liked to believe, and tell the world, that they were running an 'enlightened' and 'benign' occupation, qualitatively different from other military occupations the world had seen. The truth was radically different. Like all occupations, Israel's was founded on brute force, repression and fear, collaboration and treachery, beatings and torture chambers, and daily intimidation, humiliation, and manipulation."103 During the First Intifada (1987-91), for example, the IDF distributed truncheons to its troops and encouraged them to break the bones of Palestinian protestors. The Swedish branch of the Save the Children organization released a thousand-page report in May 1990 that detailed the effects of that conflict on the children in the Occupied Territories. It estimated that "23,600 to 29,900 children required medical treatment for their beating injuries in the first two years of the [first] intifada." Moreover, it estimated that almost one-third of the children were ten years or under; one-fifth were five and under; more than four-fifths "had been beaten on their heads and upper bodies and at multiple locations"; and almost one-third of the children "sustained broken bones, including multiple fractures."104
   Ehud Barak, the IDF's deputy chief of staff during the First Intifada, said at the time, "We do not want children to be shot under any circumstances . . . When you see a child you don't shoot." Nevertheless, Save the Children estimated that sixty-five hundred to eighty-five hundred children were wounded by gunfire during the first two years of the Intifada. Regarding the 106 recorded cases of "child gunshot deaths," the report concluded that almost all of them "were hit by directed—not random or ricochet— gunfire"; almost 20 percent suffered multiple gunshot wounds; about 12 percent were shot from behind; 15 percent of the children were ten years or younger; "most children were not participating in a stone-throwing demonstration when shot"; and "nearly one-fifth of the children were shot dead while at home or within ten meters of their homes."
   Israel's response to the Second Intifada (2000-05) was even more violent, leading the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz to declare that "the IDF ... is turning into a killing machine whose efficiency is awe-inspiring, yet shocking."105 The IDF fired one million bullets in the first days of the uprising, which is hardly a measured response.106 Over the course of that uprising, Israel killed 3,386 Palestinians, while 992 Israelis were killed by the Palestinians, which means that Israel killed 3.4 Palestinians for every Israeli lost.
Among those killed were 676 Palestinian children and 118 Israeli children; thus, the ratio of Palestinian to Israeli children killed was 5.7 to 1. Of the 3,386 Palestinian deaths, 1,815 were believed to be bystanders, 1,008 were killed while fighting the Israelis, and the circumstances of 563 deaths are unknown. In other words, well over half of the Palestinian fatalities appear to have been noncombatants. A similar pattern holds on the Israeli side, where 683 of its 992 deaths were civilians; the remaining 309 were military.107 Israeli forces have also killed several foreign peace activists, including a twenty-three-year-old American woman crushed by an Israeli bulldozer in March 2003.108 Yet the Israeli government rarely investigates these civilian deaths, much less punishes the perpetrators.109
   These facts about Israel's conduct have been amply documented by numerous human rights organizations—including prominent Israeli groups— and are not disputed by fair-minded observers.110 And that is why four former officials of Shin Bet (the Israeli domestic security organization) condemned Israel's conduct during the Second Intifada in November 2003. One of them declared, "We are behaving disgracefully," and another termed Israel's conduct "patently immoral."111
   A similar pattern can be seen in Israel's response to the escalation in violence in Gaza and Lebanon in 2006.

COMPENSATION FOR PAST CRIMES

A third moral justification is the history of Jewish suffering in the Christian West, especially the tragic experience of the Holocaust. Because Jews were persecuted for centuries and many believe they can be safe only in a Jewish homeland, Israel is said to deserve special treatment. This view formed the basis for the original Zionist program, played an important role in convincing the United States and other countries to back Israel's founding, and continues to resonate today.
   There is no question that Jews suffered greatly from the despicable legacy of anti-Semitism and that Israel's creation was an appropriate response to a long record of crimes. This history provides a strong moral case for supporting Israel's founding and continued existence. This backing is also consistent with America's general commitment to national self-determination. But one cannot ignore the fact that the creation of Israel involved additional crimes against a largely innocent third party: the Palestinians. Crimes against Jews justify backing Israel's existence, but its crimes against Palestinians undermine its claim to special treatment.
   The history of these events is well documented. When political Zionism began in earnest in the late nineteenth century, there were only about fifteen thousand to seventeen thousand Jews living in Palestine.54 In 1893, for example, the Arabs comprised roughly 95 percent of the population, and though under Ottoman control, they had been in continuous possession of this territory for thirteen hundred years.55 The old Zionist adage that Palestine was "a land without people for a people without a land" was dead wrong regarding the land; it was occupied by another people.56
   The early Zionists hoped that the waves of Jews who began leaving Europe in the last decades of the nineteenth century would come to Palestine, allowing the Jews to gain a decisive numerical advantage over the Arabs there. But that did not happen, mainly because most of these Jews preferred to go to the United States. Only one hundred thousand of the four million Jews who left Europe between 1880 and 1920 went to Palestine.57 In fact, until Hitler came to power, the Jews in Palestine could not fill "the generous immigration quotas allowed by the British."58 In 1948, when Israel was founded, its 650,000 Jews were only about 35 percent of Palestine's population and they owned only 7 percent of its land.59
   From the start, the leading Zionists were determined to create a Jewish state that covered virtually all of Palestine, and even parts of Lebanon and Syria.60 Of course, there were differences among them on where they
thought the borders should be drawn in an ideal world, and almost all recognized that it might not be possible to realize all of their territorial ambitions. The mainstream Zionist leadership, it should be emphasized, was never interested in establishing a binational state where Arabs and Jews lived side by side in a country that had no religious identity and might even have more Arabs than Jews. The goal from the beginning was to create instead a Jewish state in which Jews comprised at least 85 percent of the population.61
   The Zionists' ambitions also went beyond a permanent partition of Palestine. It is widely believed in the United States, especially among Israel's supporters, that the Zionists were willing to agree to a permanently partitioned Palestine, and indeed they did agree to the partition plans put forward by Britain's Peel Commission in 1937 and the UN in 1947. But their acceptance of these plans did not mean that they intended to accept only part of Palestine in perpetuity, or that they were willing to support the creation of a Palestinian state. As recent scholarship makes abundantly clear, the Zionist leadership was sometimes willing to accept partition as a first step, but this was a tactical maneuver and not their real objective. They had no intention of coexisting alongside a viable Palestinian state over the long run, as that outcome was in direct conflict with their dream of creating a Jewish state in all of Palestine.
   There was fierce opposition among the Zionists to the Peel Commission's partition plan, and their leader, David Ben-Gurion, was barely able to get his fellow Zionists to accept it. They eventually agreed to the proposal, however, because they recognized that Ben-Gurion intended eventually to take all of the land of Palestine. The Zionist leader made this point clearly in the summer of 1937 when he told the Zionist Executive, "After the formation of a large army in the wake of the establishment of the state, we will abolish partition and expand to the whole of Palestine." Similarly, he told his son Amos that same year, "Erect a Jewish State at once, even if it is not in the whole land. The rest will come in the course of time. It must come."62
   The Peel Commission's plan went nowhere in 1937, and over the course of the ensuing decade the Zionists remained committed to incorporating all of Mandate Palestine into a future Jewish state. Ben-Gurion made a number of comments in the first half of 1947 that show he still wanted all of Palestine. For example, the Israeli scholar Uri Ben-Eliezer reports:

On May 13, 1947, Ben-Gurion told a meeting of the Jewish Agency Executive which was held in the United States: "We want the Land of Israel in its entirety. That was the original intention." A week later,
speaking to the Elected Assembly in Jerusalem, the leader of the Yishuv wondered: "Does anyone among us disagree that the original intention of the Balfour Declaration and the Mandate, and the original intention of the hopes harbored by generations of the Jewish people, was finally to establish a Jewish state in the whole Land of Israel?" Speaking to the Mapai Secretariat in June, Ben-Gurion stated that it would be a mistake to forgo any part of the land. We have no right to do that, he said, and there is no need for it.63
  
   Later that year, in November, the UN devised a new plan to partition Palestine between the Zionists and the Palestinian Arabs. The Zionists publicly accepted this plan as well. But in fact Ben-Gurion had already negotiated a deal with King Abdullah of Transjordan to divide up Palestine between Israel and Transjordan and deny the Palestinians a state.64 This secret arrangement, which Britain endorsed, allowed Transjordan to acquire the West Bank and Israel to take what it could of the rest of Palestine. The deal was ultimately implemented during the 1948 war, although in a somewhat disjointed fashion. Israeli leaders, not surprisingly, gave serious thought during the war to conquering the West Bank and taking all of Mandate Palestine for their new state, but they decided that the likely costs outweighed the potential benefits. Transjordan, which later became Jordan, controlled the West Bank until the 1967 Six-Day War, when the IDF conquered it. In short, Israel's founding fathers were determined from the beginning to create a "greater Israel," which left no room for a Palestinian state and little room for Palestinians inside the Jewish state.
   Given that Arabs heavily outnumbered Jews in Palestine and that the Zionists were bent on conquering as much territory as feasible, they had little choice but to expel large numbers of Arabs from the territory that would eventually become Israel. There was no other way to accomplish their objective, as the Arabs were hardly likely to give up their land voluntarily. This is why the Peel Commission's plan to partition Palestine called explicitly for population transfer. It is also why the UN partition plan, which called for establishing an Israel that was 55 percent Jewish and 45 percent Arab, was unworkable.65 There was certainly no way that a Jewish state could be created in all of Palestine without convincing large numbers of Arabs to leave.
   In light of these realities, expulsion was a frequent topic of conversation among Zionists since the earliest days of the movement, and it was widely recognized as the only realistic way to solve the demographic problem that stood in the way of creating a Jewish state.66 Ben-Gurion saw the problem
clearly, writing in 1941 that "it is impossible to imagine general evacuation [of the Arab population] without compulsion, and brutal compulsion."67 Or as he wrote his son in October 1937, "We shall organize a modern defense force . . . and then I am certain that we will not be prevented from settling in other parts of the country, either by mutual agreement with our Arab neighbors or by some other means."68 No doubt he would have preferred to do so via "mutual agreement," but Ben-Gurion understood that this was a remote possibility and that the Zionists would need a strong army to accomplish their aims. Morris puts the point succinctly: "Of course, Ben-Gurion was a transferist. He understood that there could be no Jewish state with a large and hostile Arab minority in its midst. . . Ben-Gurion was right. If he had not done what he did, a state would not have come into being. That has to be clear. It is impossible to evade it. Without the uprooting of the Palestinians, a Jewish state would not have arisen here."69
   Expulsion is a horrible and controversial strategy and it makes no sense for any group contemplating the transfer of a rival population to announce its intentions to the world. Thus, after commenting in 1941 that he could not imagine how transfer could be accomplished without "brutal compulsion," Ben-Gurion went on to say that the Zionists should not "discourage other people, British or American, who favour transfer from advocating this course, but we should in no way make it part of our programme."70 He was not rejecting this policy, however; he was simply noting that the Zionists should not openly proclaim it. Further reflecting how "highly sensitive" the subject of transfer was to Israel's founding fathers, Benny Morris notes that "it was common practice in Zionist bodies to order stenographers to 'take a break' and thus to exclude from the record discussion on such matters." Moreover, he notes that "Jewish press reports" describing how Ben-Gurion and other Zionist leaders reacted to the Peel Commission's plan for partitioning Palestine "generally failed to mention that Ben-Gurion, or anyone else, had come out strongly in favor of transfer or indeed had even raised the subject."71
   The opportunity to expel the Palestinians and create a Jewish state came in 1948, when Jewish forces drove up to seven hundred thousand Palestinians into exile.72 Israelis and their supporters in the United States long claimed that the Arabs fled because their leaders told them to, but scholars have demolished this myth. In fact, most Arab leaders urged the Palestinian population to stay home, but fear of violent death at the hands of Zionist forces led most of them to flee.73 After the war, Israel barred the return of the Palestinian exiles. As Ben-Gurion put it in June 1948, "We must prevent
at all costs their return."74 By 1962, Israel owned almost 93 percent of the land inside its borders.75 To achieve this outcome, 531 Arab villages were destroyed "and eleven urban neighborhoods emptied of their inhabitants."76 Former Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Dayan captures the catastrophe that the Zionists inflicted on the Palestinians to create the state of Israel: "Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages. You do not even know the names of these Arab villages, and I do not blame you because geography books no longer exist, not only do the books not exist, the Arab villages are not there either . . . There is not a single place built in this country that did not have a former Arab population."77
   The fact that the creation of Israel entailed a grave injustice against the Palestinian people was well understood by Israel's leaders. As Ben-Gurion told Nahum Goldmann, president of the World Jewish Congress, in 1956, "If I was an Arab leader I would never make terms with Israel. That is natural: we have taken their country. Sure, God promised it to us, but what does that matter to them? Our God is not theirs. We come from Israel, it's true, but two thousand years ago, and what is that to them? There has been anti-semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They only see one thing: we have come here and stolen their country. Why should they accept that?"78
   Ze'ev Jabotinsky, the founding father of the Israeli right, made essentially the same point when he wrote in 1923, "Colonization is self-explanatory and what it implies is fully understood by every sensible Jew and Arab. There can only be one purpose in colonization. For the country's Arabs that purpose is essentially unacceptable. This is a natural reaction and nothing will change it."79 Berl Katznelson, a close ally of Ben-Gurion and a leading intellectual force among the early Zionists, put the point bluntly: "The Zionist enterprise is an enterprise of conquest."80
   In the six decades since Israel was created, its leaders have repeatedly sought to deny the Palestinians' national ambitions.81 Prime Minister Golda Meir, for example, famously remarked that "there was no such thing as a Palestinian."82 Many Israeli leaders also maintained a deep interest in incorporating the West Bank and Gaza into Israel. In 1949, for example, Moshe Dayan proclaimed that Israel's boundaries were "ridiculous from all points of view." Israel's eastern border, he felt, should be the Jordan River. Dayan was no exception in this regard; many of his fellow generals as well as Ben-Gurion himself were keen on acquiring the West Bank for Israel.83 Benny Morris is certainly correct when he notes that "the vision of 'Greater Israel' as Zionism's ultimate objective did not end with the 1948 war."84
   After the start of the First Intifada in December 1987, some Israeli leaders began to countenance giving the Palestinians limited autonomy in particular areas of the West Bank and Gaza. Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who signed the 1993 Oslo Accords, is often said to have been willing to allow the Palestinians to have a viable state in almost all of the Occupied Territories. But this view is not correct; Rabin in fact opposed creating a full-fledged Palestinian state. Speaking in 1995, the year that he was murdered, Rabin said, "I seek peaceful coexistence between Israel as a Jewish state, not all over the land of Israel, or most of it; its capital, the united Jerusalem; its security border with Jordan rebuilt; next to it, a Palestinian entity, less than a state, that runs the life of Palestinians . . . This is my goal, not to return to the pre—Six-Day War lines but to create two entities, a separation between Israel and the Palestinians who reside in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip."85
   The depth of Israel's opposition to creating a Palestinian state—even in the late 1990s—is reflected in an incident involving First Lady Hillary Clinton. In the spring of 1998, Israelis and their American supporters sharply criticized her for saying that "it would be in the long-term interests of peace in the Middle East for there to be a state of Palestine, a functioning modern state that is on the same footing as other states." White House officials, according to the New York Times, immediately "disowned" her comments and "insisted that she was speaking only for herself." Her view, the White House press secretary said, "is not the view of the President."86
   By 2000, however, it was finally acceptable for American politicians to speak openly about the desirability of a Palestinian state. At the same time, pressure from extremist violence and the growing Palestinian population has forced recent Israeli leaders to dismantle the settlements in the Gaza Strip and to explore territorial compromises involving the West Bank. Still, no Israeli government has been willing to offer the Palestinians a viable state of their own. As discussed below, even Prime Minister Ehud Barak's purportedly generous offer at Camp David in July 2000 would have given the Palestinians only a disarmed and dismembered state under de facto Israeli control. In 2002, former Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir reiterated his opposition to giving the Palestinians any kind of state, while former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made it clear the following year that he favored only a semisovereign Palestinian state.87
   Europe's crimes against the Jews provide a strong moral justification for Israel's right to exist. No new settler state can hope to come into existence without some degree of violence, but Israel has continued to impose terrible violence and discrimination on the Palestinians for decades. These policies
can no longer be justified on the grounds that the existence of Israel is at stake. Israel's survival is not in doubt, even if some Islamic extremists harbor unrealistic hopes or Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says that Israel "should vanish from the page of time."88 More important, the past suffering of the Jewish people does not obligate the United States to help Israel no matter what it does today.

"VIRTUOUS ISRAELIS" VERSUS "EVIL ARABS"

 AIDING A FELLOW DEMOCRACY

American backing is often justified by the claim that Israel is a fellow democracy. Indeed, its defenders frequently remind Americans that Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East and that it is surrounded by hostile dictatorships. This rationale sounds convincing, but it cannot account for the current level of U.S. support. After all, there are many democracies around the world, but none receives the level of unconditional aid that Israel does.
   In fact, whether a country is democratic is not a reliable indicator of how Washington will relate to it. The United States has overthrown a few democratic governments in the past and has supported numerous dictators when doing so was thought to advance U.S. interests. The Eisenhower administration overthrew a democratically elected government in Iran in 1953, while the Reagan administration supported Saddam Hussein in the 1980s. Today, the Bush administration has good relations with dictators like Hosni Mubarak in Egypt and Pervez Musharraf in Pakistan, and at the same time it has worked to undermine the democratically elected Hamas government in the Occupied Territories. It also has an acrimonious relationship with Hugo Chavez, the elected leader of Venezuela. Being democratic neither justifies nor fully explains the extent of American support for Israel.
   The "shared democracy" rationale is also weakened by aspects of Israeli democracy that are at odds with core American values. The United States is a liberal democracy where people of any race, religion, or ethnicity are supposed to enjoy equal rights. While Israel's citizens are of many backgrounds, including Arab, Muslim, and Christian, among others, it was explicitly founded as a Jewish state, and whether a citizen is regarded as Jewish ordinarily depends on kinship (verifiable Jewish ancestry).32 Israel's Jewish character is clearly reflected in the Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel, which was officially proclaimed on May 14, 1948. It explicitly refers to the United Nations' recognition "of the right of the Jewish people to establish their state," openly proclaims "the establishment of a Jewish state in Eretz-Israel," and later describes the new state as "the sovereign Jewish people settled in its own land."33
   Given Israel's Jewish character, its leaders have long emphasized the importance of maintaining an unchallenged Jewish majority within its borders. Israelis worry a great deal about the flow of Jews and Palestinians into and out of Israel, the relative birthrates of Palestinians and Jews, and the possibility that expanding Israel's borders beyond the pre-1967 lines might result in many more Arabs living in their midst. David Ben-Gurion, for example, proclaimed that "any Jewish woman who, as far as it depends on her, does not bring into the world at least four healthy children is shirking her duty to the nation, like a soldier who evades military service."34 There are now about 5.3 million Jews and 1.36 million Arabs living in Israel, including the disputed area of East Jerusalem. There are another 3.8 million Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, which means that there are only about 140,000 more Jews than Palestinians living in what used to be called Mandate Palestine, and by almost all accounts the Palestinians have a higher birthrate than
the Jews.35 It is not surprising, in light of these numbers, that it is commonplace these days for Israeli Jews to talk about their fellow Arab citizens and Palestinian subjects as a potential "demographic threat."36
   One might think that although Israel is a Jewish state at its core, its Basic Laws (there are eleven) still guarantee equal rights for all its citizens, Arabs or Jews. But that is not the case. The initial draft of the Basic Law on Human Dignity and Liberty, which approximates the U.S. Bill of Rights, contained language that promised equality for all Israelis: "All are equal before the law, and there shall be no discrimination on the grounds of gender, religion, nationality, race, ethnic group, country of origin or any other irrelevant factor."37 Ultimately, however, a Knesset committee removed that clause from the final version that became law in 1992. Since then, Arab members of Israel's Knesset have made numerous attempts to amend that Basic Law by adding language that provides for equality before the law. But their Jewish colleagues have refused to go along, a situation that stands in marked contrast to the United States, where the equality principle is enshrined in law.38
   In addition to Israel's commitment to maintaining its Jewish identity and its refusal to grant de jure equality for non-Jews, Israel's 1.36 million Arabs are de facto treated as second-class citizens. An Israeli government commission found in 2003, for example, that Israel behaves in a "neglectful and discriminatory" manner toward them.39 Indeed, there is widespread support among Israeli Jews for this unequal treatment of Israeli Arabs. A poll released in March 2007 found that 55 percent of Israeli Jews wanted segregated entertainment facilities, while more than 75 percent said they would not live in the same building as an Israeli Arab. More than half of the respondents said that for a Jewish woman to marry an Arab is equal to national treason, and 50 percent said that they would refuse employment if their immediate supervisor was an Arab.40 The Israel Democracy Institute reported in May 2003 that 53 percent of Israeli Jews "are against full equality for the Arabs," while 77 percent of Israeli Jews believe that "there should be a Jewish majority on crucial political decisions." Only 31 percent "support having Arab political parties in the government."41 That sentiment squares with the fact that Israel did not appoint its first Muslim Arab cabinet minister until January 2007, almost six decades after the founding of the state. And even that one appointment, which was to the minor portfolio of science, sports, and culture, was highly controversial.42
   Israel's treatment of its Arab citizens is more than just discriminatory. For example, to limit the number of Arabs in its midst, Israel does not permit
Palestinians who marry Israeli citizens to become citizens themselves and does not give these spouses the right to live in Israel. The Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem called this restriction "a racist law that determines who can live here according to racist criteria."43 Also, the Olmert government is pushing—and the Knesset's ministerial committee on legislation approved on January 10, 2007—a law that would allow the courts to revoke the citizenship of "unpatriotic" citizens. This legislation, which is clearly aimed at Israeli Arabs, was labeled "a drastic and extreme move that harms civil liberties" by Israel's attorney general.44 Such laws may be understandable in light of Israel's founding principles—the explicit aim of creating a Jewish state—but they are not consistent with America's image of a multiethnic democracy in which all citizens are supposed to be treated equally regardless of their ancestry.
   In early 2007, Benjamin Netanyahu apologized to ultra-Orthodox Israelis with large families for the hardships that were caused by welfare cuts that he had made in 2002 when he was finance minister. He noted, however, that there was at least one important and unexpected benefit of these cuts: "there was a dramatic drop in the birth rate" within the "non-Jewish public."45 For Netanyahu, like many Israelis who are deeply worried about the so-called Arab demographic threat, the fewer Israeli Arab births, the better.
   Netanyahu's comments would almost certainly be condemned if made in the United States. Imagine the outcry that would arise here if a U.S. cabinet official spoke of the benefits of a policy that had reduced the birthrates of African Americans and Hispanics, thereby preserving a white majority. But such statements are not unusual in Israel, where important leaders have a history of making derogatory comments about Palestinians and are rarely sanctioned for them. Menachem Begin once said that "Palestinians are beasts walking on two legs," while former IDF Chief of Staff Rafael Eitan referred to them as "drugged roaches in a bottle" and also said that "a good Arab is a dead Arab." Another former chief of staff, Moshe Ya'alon, referred to the Palestinian threat as like a "cancer" on which he was performing "chemotherapy. "46
   Such discriminatory views are not restricted to Israeli leaders. In a recent survey of Jewish high school students in Israel, 75 percent of the respondents said that Arabs are "uneducated." The same percentage said that they are "uncivilized," while 74 percent of those polled said that Arabs are "unclean." Commenting on this last finding, Larry Derfner wrote in the Jerusalem Post: "To say Arabs are unclean is not a hard-line political statement. It's not an unduly harsh comment on Arab behavior. To say Arabs are un
clean is to evince an irrational, hysterical, impenetrable, absolute hatred for an entire ethnic group—which, in fact, happens not to be unclean, no more than Jews are. To say Arabs are unclean is an expression of racism in about its purest, most virulent form." The person who oversaw the survey said, "We were not surprised by the outcome of the research. Anyone who is familiar with the field knows that these warped perceptions exist, but these findings are at the most severe extreme of a disturbing phenomenon." It is noteworthy that the same survey polled Israeli Arab youth as well, and Derfner reports that "while their attitudes toward Jews are awful, they're considerably less awful than the Jewish students' attitudes toward them."47 These hostile attitudes toward Israeli Arabs, coupled with fears about a "demographic threat" and the desire to maintain a Jewish majority, have led to considerable support among Israeli Jews for expelling or "transferring" much of the Arab population from Israel. Indeed, Avigdor Lieberman, who was appointed deputy prime minister for strategic threats in 2006, has made it clear that he favors expulsion, so as to make Israel "as much as possible" a homogeneous Jewish state. Specifically, he advocates trading portions of Israel that are densely packed with Arabs for areas of the West Bank that contain Jewish settlers. He is not the first Israeli cabinet minister to advocate expulsion.48
   Although he is a controversial figure, Lieberman is not an outlier in Israel on this issue. The Israel Democracy Institute reported in May 2003 that 57 percent of Israel's Jews "think that the Arabs should be encouraged to emigrate." A 2004 survey conducted by Haifa University's Center for the Study of National Security found that the number had increased to 63.7 percent. One year later, in 2005, the Palestinian Center for Israel Studies found that 42 percent of Israeli Jews believed that their government should encourage Israeli Arabs to leave, while another 17 percent tended to agree with the idea. The following year, the Center for Combating Racism found that 40 percent of Israel's Jews wanted their leaders to encourage the Arab population to emigrate, while the Israel Democracy Institute found the number to be 62 percent.49 If 40 percent or more of white Americans declared that blacks, Hispanics, and Asians "should be encouraged" to leave the United States, it would surely prompt vehement criticism.
   These attitudes are perhaps to be expected, given the long conflict between Israelis and Palestinians and the considerable suffering it has produced on both sides. They are also no worse than the attitudes that many Americans had for different minority groups (especially African Americans) throughout much of American history. Yet whatever their origins, they are
clearly attitudes that would now earn widespread condemnation here in the United States, if their existence were more widely known, and they pose a serious challenge to cliches about "our shared values, our strong commitment to freedom."
   Finally, Israel's democratic status is undermined by its refusal to grant the Palestinians a viable state of their own and by its continued imposition of a legal, administrative, and military regime in the Occupied Territories that denies them basic human rights. Israel at present controls the lives of about 3.8 million Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, while colonizing lands on which they have long dwelt. Israel formally withdrew from Gaza in the summer of 2005 but continues to maintain substantial control over its residents.50 Specifically, Israel controls air, sea, and land access, which means that the Palestinians are effectively prisoners within Gaza, able to enter or leave only with Israeli approval. Jan Egeland, a senior UN figure, and Jan Eliasson, the Swedish foreign minister, wrote in September 2006 that the Palestinians are "living in a cage," which naturally has had devastating effects on their economy, as well as their mental and physical well-being.51
   On the West Bank, Israel continues to expropriate Palestinian land and build settlements. The situation was succinctly described in a Ha'aretz editorial in late December 2006: "Virtually not a week goes by without a new revelation, each more sensational and revolting than the previous one, about the building spree in West Bank settlements, in blatant violation of the law and in complete contradiction to official government policy."52 Indeed, the Israeli organization Peace Now recently released a study based on Israeli government records, which shows that more than 32 percent of the land that Israel holds for the purpose of building settlements is privately owned by Palestinians. Israel intends to keep almost all of this land forever. This seizure of Palestinian property violates not only Israeli law but also a fundamental principle of democracy: the protection of private property.53
   In sum, Israel has a vibrant democratic order for its Jewish citizens, who can and do criticize their government and choose their leaders in open and free elections. Freedom of the press is also alive and well in Israel, where, paradoxically, it is much easier to criticize Israeli policy than it is in the United States. This is why so much of the evidence in this study is drawn from the Israeli press. Despite these positive features, Arab Israelis are systematically marginalized, the millions of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories are denied full political rights, and the "shared democracy" rationale is correspondingly weakened.

COMPENSATION FOR PAST CRIMES

BACKING THE UNDERDOG

Israel is often portrayed as weak and besieged, a Jewish David surrounded by a hostile Arab Goliath. This image has been carefully nurtured by Israeli leaders and sympathetic writers, but the opposite is closer to the truth. Israel has always been militarily stronger than its Arab adversaries. Consider Israel's 1948 War of Independence, where the popular belief is that the Zionists—who fought against five Arab armies as well as the Palestinians— were badly outnumbered and outgunned. Benny Morris, a prominent Israeli historian, refers to this description of the balance of power as "one of the most tenacious myths relating to 1948."7
   One might think that Israeli forces were at a significant quantitative and qualitative disadvantage in 1948, because it was a small new country surrounded by Arab states that had far more people and far greater material resources. In fact, comparing the population size and the resources of Israel and the Arab world tells you little about the balance of military power between them. As Morris notes, "The atlas map showing a minuscule Israel and a giant surrounding Arab sea did not, and, indeed, for the time being, still does not, accurately reflect the true balance of military power in the region. Nor do the comparative population figures; in 1948, the Yishuv [the Jewish settlement in Palestine before Israel was created] numbered some 650,000 souls—as opposed to 1.2 million Palestinian Arabs and some 30 million Arabs in the surrounding states (including Iraq)."8 The reason is simple: the Arab states have been remarkably ineffective at translating those latent resources into actual military power, while Israel, by contrast, has been especially good at doing so.
   The War of Independence was actually two separate conflicts. The first was a civil war between the Jews and the Palestinians, which started on November 29, 1947 (the day of the UN decision to partition Mandate Palestine) and ran until May 14, 1948 (the day Israel declared its independence). The second was an international war between Israel and five Arab armies, which began on May 15, 1948, and ended on January 7, 1949.
   The Zionists won a lopsided victory over the Palestinians in their civil war because they enjoyed a decisive advantage in numbers and quality of both soldiers and weapons.9 Jewish fighting units were far better organized and trained than the Palestinian forces, which had been decimated by the British during the 1936-39 revolt and had not recovered by 1948. As the Israeli historian Ilan Pappe notes, "A few thousand irregular Palestinians and Arabs were facing tens of thousands of well-trained Jewish troops."10 Not surprisingly, Israeli leaders were fully aware of this power imbalance and sought to take advantage of it. In fact, Yigal Yadin, a senior military commander in the 1948 war and the IDF's second chief of staff, maintained that if it had not been for the British presence in Palestine until May 1948, "we could have quelled the Arab riot in one month."11
   The Israelis also had a clear advantage in manpower throughout their war with the five Arab armies. Morris notes that when the fighting started in mid-May, Israel "fielded some 35,000 armed troops as compared with the 25-30,000 of the Arab invading armies. By the time of Operation Dani, in July, the IDF had 65,000 men under arms and by December, close to 90,000 men under arms—at each stage significantly outnumbering the combined strength of the Arab armies ranged against them in Palestine."12 Israel also enjoyed an advantage in weaponry, save for a brief twenty-five days at the start of that conflict (May 15-June 10, 1948). Moreover, with the possible exception of Transjordan's small Arab Legion, the quality of the Israeli fighting forces was far superior to their Arab adversaries and they were much better organized as well. In short, the Zionists won the civil war against the Palestinians and the international war against the invading Arab armies because they were more powerful than their adversaries, despite the absolute advantage in population that their Arab foes enjoyed. As Morris notes, "It was superior Jewish firepower, manpower, organization, and command and control that determined the outcome of battle."13
   The IDF won quick and decisive victories against Egypt in 1956 and against Egypt, Jordan, and Syria in 1967—before large-scale U.S. aid began flowing to Israel. In October 1973, Israel was a victim of a stunning surprise attack by the Egyptian and Syrian armies. Although an outnumbered IDF
suffered serious setbacks in the first days of fighting, it quickly recovered and was on the verge of destroying the Egyptian and Syrian armies when the United States and the Soviet Union intervened to halt the fighting. The remarkable turnaround, according to Morris, was due to the fact that "the IDF's machines, both in the air and on the ground, were simply superior. So was its manpower: Israeli pilots, maintenance and ground control staffs, tank officers, and men were far better trained and led than their Arab counterparts."14 These victories offer eloquent evidence of Israeli patriotism, organizational ability, and military prowess, but they also reveal that Israel was far from helpless even in its earliest years.15
   Today, Israel is the strongest military power in the Middle East. Its conventional forces are far superior to those of its neighbors, and it is the only state in the region with nuclear weapons. Egypt and Jordan have signed peace treaties with Israel, and Saudi Arabia has offered to do so as well. Syria has lost its Soviet patron, Iraq has been decimated by three disastrous wars, and Iran is hundreds of miles away and has never directly attacked Israel. The Palestinians barely have effective police, let alone a military that could threaten Israel's existence, and they are further weakened by profound internal divisions. The deaths caused by Palestinian suicide bombers are tragic and strike fear in the hearts of all Israelis, but they do relatively little damage to Israel's economy, much less threaten its territorial integrity.16 Groups like Hezbollah can launch low-yield missiles and rockets at Israel and might be able to kill a few hundred Israelis over the course of months or years, but these attacks do not represent an existential threat to Israel. According to a 2005 assessment by Tel Aviv University's prestigious Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies, "The strategic balance decidedly favors Israel, which has continued to widen the qualitative gap between its own military capability and deterrence powers and those of its neighbors."17 If backing the underdog were a compelling rationale, the United States would be supporting Israel's opponents.
   Of course, there is another dimension to the argument that Israel has long been under siege and is always the victim: the claim that despite Israel's military superiority, its Arab neighbors are determined to destroy it. Indeed, some argue that the Arabs precipitated wars in 1948, 1967, and 1973 in order "to drive the Jews into the Sea."18
   While there is no question that Israel faced serious threats in its early years, the Arabs were not attempting to destroy Israel in any of those three wars. This is not because the Arabs were happy about the presence of a Jewish state in their midst—they clearly were not—but rather because they have
never had the capability to win a war against Israel, much less defeat it decisively. There is no question that some Arab leaders talked about "driving the Jews into the Sea" during the 1948 war, but this was largely rhetoric designed to appease their publics. In fact, the Arab leaders were mainly concerned with gaining territory for themselves at the expense of the Palestinians, one of the many occasions when Arab governments put their own interests ahead of the Palestinians' welfare. Morris, for example, writes:

What ensued, once Israel declared its independence on 14 May 1948 and the Arab states invaded on 15 May, was "a general land grab," with everyone—Israel, Transjordan, Syria, Egypt, and even Lebanon—bent on preventing the birth of a Palestinian Arab state and carving out chunks of Palestine for themselves. Contrary to the old historiography, Abdullah's [king of Transjordan] invasion of eastern Palestine was clearly designed to conquer territory for his kingdom—at the expense of the Palestinian Arabs—rather than to destroy the Jewish state. Indeed, the Arab Legion stuck meticulously, throughout the war, to its non-aggressive stance vis-a-vis the Yishuv and the Jewish state's territory ... It is not at all clear that Abdullah and Glubb [the British general who commanded Transjordan's Arab Legion] would have been happy to see the collapse in May 1948 of the fledgling Jewish republic. Certainly Abdullah was far more troubled by the prospects of the emergence of a Palestinian Arab state and of an expanded Syria and an expanded Egypt on his frontiers than by the emergence of a small Jewish state.19

And Abdullah, as Morris notes, was the only Arab leader who "committed the full weight" of his military power to attacking Israel, "indicating either inefficiency or, perhaps, a less than wholehearted seriousness about the declared aim of driving the Jews into the sea." Shlomo Ben-Ami, a noted historian and a former Israeli foreign minister, has a similar view of Arab goals in the 1948 war: "111 prepared and poorly co-ordinated, the Arab armies were dragged into the war by popular pressure in their home states, and because their leaders each had his own agenda of territorial expansion. Securing the establishment of a Palestinian state . . . was less of a motive for the Arab leaders who sent their armies to Palestine than establishing their own territorial claims or thwarting those of their rivals in the Arab coalition."20
   The myth of Israel as a victim is also reflected in the conventional wisdom about the 1967 war, which claims that Egypt and Syria are principally re
sponsible for starting it. In particular, the Arabs are said to have been preparing to attack Israel when the IDF beat them to the punch and scored a stunning victory.21 It is clear from the release of new documents about the war, however, that the Arabs did not intend to initiate a war against Israel in the late spring of 1967, much less try to destroy the Jewish state.22 Avi Shlaim, a distinguished Israeli "new historian," writes, "There is general agreement among commentators that [Egyptian President] Nasser neither wanted nor planned to go to war with Israel."23 In fact, Israel bears considerable responsibility for the outbreak of the war. Shlaim writes that "Israel's strategy of escalation on the Syrian front was probably the single most important factor in dragging the Middle East to war in June 1967, despite the conventional wisdom on the subject that singles out Syrian aggression as the principal cause of war."24 Ben-Ami goes even farther, writing that Yitzhak Rabin, the IDF chief of staff, "intentionally led Israel into a war with Syria. Rabin was determined to provoke a war with Syria . . . because he thought this was the only way to stop the Syrians from supporting Fatah attacks against Israel."25
   None of this is to deny that Egypt's decision in May 1967 to close the Straits of Tiran was a legitimate cause of concern to Israel. But it was not a harbinger of an imminent Egyptian attack, and that point was recognized by American policy makers and many Israeli leaders. Serious diplomatic efforts were also under way to solve the crisis peacefully. Yet Israel chose to attack anyway, because its leaders ultimately preferred war to a peaceful resolution of the crisis. In particular, Israel's military commanders wanted to inflict significant military defeats on their two main adversaries—Egypt and Syria— in order to strengthen Israeli deterrence over the long term.26 Some also had territorial ambitions. General Ezer Weizman, the IDF's chief of operations, reflected this sentiment when he said on the eve of the war, "We are on the brink of a second War of Independence, with all its accomplishments."27 In short, Israel was not preempting an impending attack when it struck the first blow on June 5, 1967. Instead, it was launching a preventive war—a war aimed at affecting the balance of power over time—or, as Menachem Begin put it, a "war of choice." In his words, "We must be honest with ourselves. We decided to attack him [Egyptian President Nasser]."28
   The Egyptians and the Syrians certainly did attack Israel in October 1973, but it is a well-established fact that both Arab armies were pursuing a limited aims strategy. The Egyptians hoped to conquer a slice of territory in the Sinai Peninsula and then bargain with Israel for the return of the rest of the Sinai, while the Syrians hoped to recapture the Golan Heights. Neither the Egyptians nor the Syrians intended to invade Israel, much less
threaten its existence. Not only did Israel have the most formidable army in the region, but it also had nuclear weapons, which would have made any attempt to conquer it suicidal. Benny Morris puts the point well: "Presidents Anwar Sadat of Egypt and Hafez Assad of Syria sought to regain the territories lost in 1967. Neither aimed to destroy Israel."29 In fact, key decision makers in both Cairo and Damascus recognized that they were pursuing an especially risky strategy by picking a fight with the mighty IDF. General Hassan el Badri, who helped plan the Egyptian attack, remarked that "it almost seemed that success would be impossible."30 And these doubters were correct, because the IDF, after recovering from the initial attack, routed both Arab armies.
   With the possible exception of Iran, it is hard to make the case today that Israel's neighbors are bent on destroying it. As noted, Israel has signed peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan, and, as will be discussed in Chapter 9, Israel walked away from a possible peace treaty with Syria in 2000. At an Arab summit in March 2002, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia attempted to defuse the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by putting forward a proposal calling for full recognition of Israel by virtually every Arab government and normalization of relations with the Jewish state. In return, Israel would have to withdraw from the Occupied Territories and work toward a fair solution to the Palestinian refugee problem. The initiative was unanimously endorsed by the Arab League. Even Saddam Hussein backed it.31 The proposal went nowhere at the time, but the Saudis resurrected it in early 2007. There is certainly no evidence that post-Saddam Iraq is interested in destroying Israel. While Hamas and Hezbollah may reject Israel's existence and inflict suffering, they do not, as noted, have the capability to pose a mortal danger. Iran would obviously be a serious threat to Israel if it acquired nuclear weapons, but as long as Israel has its own nuclear arsenal, Iran cannot attack it without being destroyed itself.

AIDING A FELLOW DEMOCRACY

A DWINDLING MORAL CASE

When George W. Bush spoke at the annual policy conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in May 2004, he invoked a set of moral themes to help explain U.S. support for Israel. The president began his speech by applauding AIPAC's efforts "to strengthen the ties that bind our nations—our shared values, our strong commitment to freedom." He went on to emphasize that Israel and the United States "have much in common. We're both . . . born of struggle and sacrifice. We're both founded by immigrants escaping religious persecution in other lands. We have both built vibrant democracies, built on the rule of law and market economies. And we're both countries founded on certain basic beliefs: that God watches over the affairs of men, and values every life. These ties have made us natural allies, and these ties will never be broken."
   Bush also noted one important difference and drew a moral conclusion from it. Whereas the United States was relatively safe in the past because of its geographical location, "Israel has faced a different situation as a small country in a tough neighborhood. The Israeli people have always had enemies at their borders and terrorists close at hand. Again and again, Israel has defended itself with skill and heroism. And as a result of the courage of the Israeli people, Israel has earned the respect of the American people."1
   Bush's remarks underscore the degree to which U.S. support for Israel is often justified not on strategic grounds but on the basis of essentially moral claims. The moral rationale for American support rests on several distinct lines of argument, and Israel's supporters often invoke one or more of these claims in order to justify the "special relationship." Specifically, Israel is said to deserve generous and nearly unconditional U.S. support because it is
weak and surrounded by enemies dedicated to destroying it; it is a democracy, which is a morally preferable form of government; the Jewish people have suffered greatly from past crimes; Israel's conduct has been morally superior to its adversaries' behavior, especially compared to the Palestinians; the Palestinians rejected the generous peace offer that Israel made at Camp David in July 2000 and opted for violence instead; and it is clear from the Bible that Israel's creation is God's will. Taken together, these arguments underpin the more general claim that Israel is the one country in the Middle East that shares American values and therefore enjoys broad support among the American people. Many U.S. policy makers accept these various arguments, but even if they did not, the American people supposedly want them to back Israel and certainly do not want them to put any pressure on the Jewish state.
   Upon close inspection, the moral rationale for unqualified U.S. support is not compelling. There is a strong moral case for supporting Israel's existence, but that fortunately is not in danger at present. Viewed objectively, Israel's past and present conduct offers little moral basis for privileging it over the Palestinians or for undertaking policies in the region that are not in America's strategic interest.
   The moral rationale relies heavily on a particular understanding of Israel's history that is widely held by many Americans (both Jews and gentiles). In that story, Jews in the Middle East have long been victims, just as they were in Europe. "The Jew," Elie Wiesel tells us, "has never been an executioner; he is almost always the victim."2 The Arabs, and especially the Palestinians, are the victimizers, bearing a marked similarity to the anti-Semites who persecuted Jews in Europe. This perspective is clearly evident in Leon Uris's famous novel Exodus (1958), which portrays the Jews as both victims and heroes and the Palestinians as villains and cowards. This book sold twenty million copies between 1958 and 1980 and was turned into a popular movie (1960). Scholars have shown that the Exodus narrative has had an enduring influence on how Americans think about the Arab-Israeli conflict.3
   The conventional wisdom about how Israel was created and how it has subsequently behaved toward the Palestinians as well as neighboring states is wrong. It is based on a set of myths about past events that Israeli scholars have systematically demolished over the past twenty years.4 While there is no question that Jews were frequently victims in Europe, in the past century they have often been the victimizers in the Middle East, and their main victims were and continue to be the Palestinians. Not only is the basic point
backed up by an abundance of evidence, but it is also intuitively plausible. After all, how could Jews coming to Palestine from Europe create a state of their own without taking harsh measures against the Arab population that already dwelt in the land they wanted for their new state? Just as the Europeans who created the United States and Canada could not do so without committing significant crimes against the native inhabitants, it was virtually impossible for the Zionists to carve out a Jewish state in Palestine without committing similar crimes against the local residents, who were bound to resent their encroachments and attempt to resist them. Unfortunately, this "new history," as it is called in Israel, has not been adequately acknowledged in the United States, which is one reason why the moral rationale still carries significant weight for many Americans.5
   Israel's more recent conduct is a different matter, however. With the global reach of the Internet and twenty-four-hour cable news networks, many Americans have seen considerable evidence of Israel's brutal treatment of its Palestinian subjects in the Occupied Territories. They have also seen the consequences of Israel's actions in the second Lebanon war (2006), in which the Israel Defense Forces pummeled civilian targets across Lebanon and then dumped several million deadly cluster bomblets in the towns and villages of southern Lebanon.6
   Although these actions have tarnished Israel's public image in the United States, its supporters remain undaunted and continue to make the moral case for sustaining the present relationship between those two countries. In fact, a good case can be made that current U.S. policy conflicts with basic American values and that if the United States were to choose sides on the basis of moral considerations alone, it would back the Palestinians, not Israel. After all, Israel is prosperous and has the most powerful military in the Middle East. No state would deliberately start a war with it today. Israel does have a serious terrorism problem, but that is mainly the consequence of colonizing the Occupied Territories. By contrast, the Palestinians are stateless, impoverished, and facing a deeply uncertain future. Even allowing for the Palestinians' various shortcomings, which group now has the stronger moral claim to U.S. sympathy?
   Getting to the bottom of this issue requires that we look in more detail at the particular arguments that make up the moral rationale. Our focus will be primarily on Israeli behavior, and no attempt will be made to compare it with the actions of other states in the region or in other parts of the world. We are not focusing on Israel's conduct because we have an animus toward the Jewish state, or because we believe that its behavior is particularly worthy of
censure. On the contrary, we recognize that virtually all states have committed serious crimes at one time or another in their history, and we are cognizant of the fact that state building is often a violent enterprise. We are also aware that some of Israel's Arab neighbors have at times acted with great brutality. We focus on Israel's actions because the United States provides it with a level of material and diplomatic support that is substantially greater than what it gives to other states, and it does so at the expense of its own interests. Our aim is to determine whether Israel deserves special treatment because it acts in an exceptionally virtuous manner, as many of its supporters claim. Does Israel behave significantly better than other states do? The historical record suggests that it does not.

BACKING THE UNDERDOG

A DUBIOUS ALLY

A final reason to question Israel's strategic value is that it sometimes does not act like a loyal ally. Like most states, Israel looks first and foremost to its own interests, and it has been willing to do things contrary to American interests when it believed (rightly or wrongly) that doing so would advance its own national goals. In the notorious "Lavon affair" in 1954, for example, Israeli agents tried to bomb several U.S. government offices in Egypt, in a bungled attempt to sow discord between Washington and Cairo. Israel sold military supplies to Iran while U.S. diplomats were being held hostage there in 1979—80, and it was one of Iran's main military suppliers during the Iran-Iraq War, even though the United States was worried about Iran and tacitly backing Iraq. Israel later purchased $36 million worth of Iranian oil in 1989 in an attempt to obtain the release of Israeli hostages in Lebanon. All of these acts made sense from Israel's point of view, but they were contrary to American policy and harmful to overall U.S. interests.90
   In addition to selling weapons to America's enemies, Israel has transferred American technology to third countries, including potential U.S. adversaries like China, actions that violated U.S. laws and threatened American inter
ests. In 1992, the State Department's inspector general reported that starting in 1983 there was evidence of a "systematic and growing pattern of unauthorized transfers" by Israel.91 At about the same time, the General Accounting Office officials looking into the "Dotan affair" (the embezzlement and illegal diversion of millions of dollars of U.S. military aid by the former head of Israeli Air Force procurement) made repeated efforts to meet with Israeli officials to discuss the matter. According to the GAO, "The Government of Israel declined to discuss the issues or allow [U.S.] investigators to question Israeli personnel."92
   Little has changed in recent years. Indeed, even Douglas Feith, the former undersecretary of defense and a consistent supporter of Israel, was reportedly angry when Israel agreed in 2004 to upgrade a killer drone it had sold to China in 1994.93 "Something is going badly wrong in the [U.S.-Israeli] military relationship," said another senior Bush administration official.94
   Amplifying these tensions is the extensive espionage that Israel engages in against the United States. According to the GAO, the Jewish state "conducts the most aggressive espionage operations against the United States of any ally."95 Stealing economic secrets gives Israeli firms important advantages over American businesses in the global marketplace and thus imposes additional costs on U.S. citizens.
   More worrying, however, are Israel's continued efforts to steal America's military secrets. This problem is highlighted by the infamous case of Jonathan Pollard, an American intelligence analyst who gave Israel large quantities of highly classified material between 1981 and 1985. After Pollard was caught, the Israelis refused to tell the United States what Pollard gave them.96 The Pollard case is but the most visible tip of a larger iceberg. Israeli agents tried to steal spy-camera technology from a U.S. firm in 1986, and an arbitration panel later accused Israel of "perfidious," "unlawful," and "surreptitious" conduct and ordered it to pay the firm, Recon/Optical Inc., some $3 million in damages. Israeli spies also gained access to confidential U.S. information about a Pentagon electronic intelligence program and tried unsuccessfully to recruit Noel Koch, a senior counterterrorism official in the Defense Department. The Wall Street Journal quoted John Davitt, former head of the Justice Department's internal security section, saying that "those of us who worked in the espionage area regarded Israel as being the second most active foreign intelligence service in the United States."97
   A new controversy erupted in 2004 when a key Pentagon official, Larry Franklin, was arrested on charges of passing classified information regarding U.S. policy toward Iran to an Israeli diplomat, allegedly with the assistance
of two senior AIPAC officials, Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman. Franklin eventually accepted a plea bargain and was sentenced to twelve years in prison for his role in the affair, and Rosen and Weissman are scheduled to go on trial in the fall of 2007.98
   Israel is of course not the only country that spies on the United States, and Washington conducts extensive espionage against both allies and adversaries as well. Such behavior is neither surprising nor particularly reprehensible, because international politics is a rough business and states often do unscrupulous things in their efforts to gain an edge over other countries. Nonetheless, the close relationship between Washington and Jerusalem has made it easier for Israel to steal American secrets, and it has not hesitated to do just that. At the very least, Israel's willingness to spy on its principal patron casts further doubt on its overall strategic value, especially now that the Cold War is over.

CONCLUSION

There is no question that Israel has derived substantial benefits from U.S. support, although one might also argue that this support has been used to pursue policies—such as settlement construction—that were not in Israel's long-term interest. It is also clear that the United States derived some strategic value from its aid to Israel, especially during the Cold War. Yet these benefits cannot fully justify or explain why the United States has been willing to give Israel such consistent support over such an extended period. Subsidizing and protecting Israel may have been a net plus for the United States at the height of the Cold War—though even this claim is not open and shut—but that rationale evaporated when the Soviet Union collapsed and the superpower competition in the Middle East ended. Today, America's intimate embrace of Israel—and especially its willingness to subsidize it no matter what its policies are—is not making Americans safer or more prosperous. To the contrary: unconditional support for Israel is undermining relations with other U.S. allies, casting doubt on America's wisdom and moral vision, helping inspire a generation of anti-American extremists, and complicating U.S. efforts to deal with a volatile but vital region. In short, the largely unconditional "special relationship" between the United States and Israel is no longer defensible on strategic grounds. If a convincing rationale is to be found, we must look elsewhere. In the next chapter, we examine the moral case for American support.

A DWINDLING MORAL CASE

 CONFRONTING ROGUE STATES

The new strategic rationale also portrays Israel as an essential ally in the campaign against authoritarian rogue states that support terrorism and that seek to acquire WMD. Like the "partners against terror" argument, this familiar justification sounds convincing at first hearing. Isn't it obvious that dictatorships like Syria, Iran, or Saddam Hussein's Iraq are hostile both to Israel and the United States? Aren't such regimes likely to use WMD to blackmail the United States, or give WMD to terrorists? Given these dangers, doesn't it make sense to continue generous aid to Israel, both to protect it from these dangerous neighbors and to keep the pressure on them,
thereby hastening the day when these brutal regimes either collapse or change their ways?
   In fact, this rationale does not stand up to careful scrutiny either. Although the United States does have important disagreements with each of these regimes—most notably their support for certain terrorist organizations and their apparent interest in acquiring WMD—they are not a dire threat to vital American interests, apart from the U.S. commitment to Israel itself. America's main strategic interest in the Middle East is oil, and protecting access to this commodity mainly depends on preventing any single country from controlling the entire region. This concern could justify going after one of these states if it grew too strong or too aggressive—as the United States did when it expelled Iraq from Kuwait in 1990-91—but it does not justify going after Iran, Iraq, and Syria at the same time.
   The other features that are frequently invoked to explain why the United States should back Israel against these rogue states are even less compelling on strategic grounds. Does the fact that they are dictatorships justify relentless U.S. hostility? No, because the United States has allied itself with other dictatorships when doing so advanced its interests, and it still does so today. Is their support for terrorist groups a sufficient rationale? Not really, because these states and these terrorist groups have refrained from attacking the United States and because the United States has often turned a blind eye toward the promotion of terrorism in the past, including terrorism supported by these same states. Like most countries, the United States has been willing to cooperate with regimes it did not necessarily like when doing so advanced U.S. interests. Washington backed Saddam Hussein and Iraq during its war with Iran in the 1980s, for example, and it still backs Pakistan's military dictatorship despite that government's well-documented support for Islamic terrorism in Kashmir and elsewhere. U.S. leaders were also happy to accept Iran's help when dealing with the Taliban and pleased to get intelligence information about al Qaeda from Syria. These admittedly are limited instances of cooperation, but they do suggest that neither state is a mortal threat to vital U.S. interests.
   What about Syrian meddling in Lebanon or a potential Iranian challenge to U.S. allies in the Persian Gulf? These issues are not trivial, but they do not justify backing Israel as strongly as the United States does. Israel's own meddling in Lebanon has repeatedly complicated U.S. efforts there, and its own WMD arsenal and frequent willingness to use force have encouraged other Middle Eastern states to desire WMD of their own. As previously noted, Israel is not much of an asset when it comes to maintaining stability
in Lebanon or preserving a balance of power in the Gulf. As we discuss at length in Part II, Israel and the lobby have repeatedly frustrated U.S. efforts to deal more effectively with these admittedly problematic regimes.
   As a justification for helping Israel, in fact, this particular strategic argument is essentially circular. Israel is portrayed as a vital ally for dealing with its dangerous neighbors, but the commitment to Israel is an important reason why the United States sees these states as threats in the first place. Indeed, Washington might find it easier to address the various conflicts that it does have with these states were its policies not constrained by the prior commitment to Israel. In any case, these states are at present too weak to harm the United States significantly (though they can certainly make life much more difficult for certain U.S. actions, most notably in Iraq), and Israel has not been much of an asset when America has been forced to take steps against them.
   Even the threat posed by WMD does not provide a compelling reason to support Israel as strongly as the United States currently does. The United States has its own reasons to oppose the spread of WMD in the Middle East (and elsewhere), but it would not be a strategic disaster for the United States if some of these states in this region were eventually to acquire WMD despite our best efforts. Instead, U.S. concerns about Saddam's WMD programs or Iran's current nuclear ambitions derive largely from the threat they are said to pose to Israel. President Bush admitted as much in March 2006, saying, "The threat from Iran is, of course, their stated objective to destroy our strong ally Israel."83
   Yet given that both Israel and the United States have powerful nuclear forces of their own, this danger is overstated. Attacking the United States or Israel directly is out of the question, because Israel has several hundred weapons of its own and the United States has thousands. If either country were ever attacked, the perpetrator would immediately face a devastating retaliation. Neither country could be blackmailed by a nuclear-armed rogue state, because the blackmailer could not carry out the threat without facing the same fate. The Soviet Union had thousands of nuclear weapons during the Cold War, was committed to and guided by a revolutionary ideology, and was governed by ruthless men who placed little value on human life. Yet Moscow could not use its vast arsenal to "blackmail" the United States, and Stalin, Khrushchev, and Brezhnev never even tried. The reason is obvious: the United States had its own weapons and could (and would) retaliate in kind.
   The danger that a rogue state might decide to give one of its nuclear weapons to a terrorist group is equally remote, because the country's leaders could never be sure the transfer would remain undetected or that they would
not be blamed and punished afterward. Indeed, giving away the nuclear weapons that they had run grave risks to obtain is probably the last thing such regimes would ever do. They would no longer control how the weapons might be used and they could never be certain that the United States (or Israel) would not incinerate them if either country merely suspected that a particular "rogue state" had provided terrorists with the ability to carry out a WMD attack. If the United States could live with a nuclear Soviet Union or a nuclear China (whose former leaders were among the greatest mass murderers the world has ever known), and if it can tolerate a nuclear Pakistan and embrace a nuclear India, then it could live (however reluctantly) with a nuclear Iran as well.
   It is sometimes said that deterrence cannot work against these regimes, because their leaders (such as Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad) are irrational religious fanatics who would welcome martyrdom and thus could not be effectively deterred. In the words of the Washington Post's Charles Krauthammer, "Against millenarian fanaticism glorying in a cult of death, deterrence is a mere wish."84 Disproving such an assertion is impossible, of course, because one can never be 100 percent certain that some world leader might not succumb to suicidal madness. There are nonetheless good reasons to be skeptical of such frightening claims. None of these allegedly irrational leaders could launch a WMD attack by himself; mounting an actual strike would require the active assistance and assent of many other people, all of whom would have to willingly embrace martyrdom themselves. (In Iran, for instance, authority over the military is not even in President Ahmadinejad's hands.) Moreover, there is no evidence suggesting that any of these leaders has ever sought martyrdom (Saddam Hussein certainly didn't, until the noose was nearly around his neck).
   Finally, it is worth noting that such claims have been heard before and turned out to be wrong. U.S. hard-liners once argued that Soviet leaders were ideologically driven and contemptuous of human life and thus might not be deterrable, and other U.S. leaders feared China's acquisition of nuclear weapons because they thought Mao Zedong was an irrational leader who might be willing to risk tens of millions of people in a nuclear exchange. Secretary of State Dean Rusk once warned that "a country whose behavior is as violent, irascible, unyielding, and hostile as that of Communist China is led by leaders whose view of the world and of life itself is unreal," but Chinese nuclear conduct turned out to be quite prudent.85 U.S. leaders should not be complacent about the spread of WMD in the Middle East, but this problem is not a sufficient strategic justification for backing Israel as strongly as the United States currently does.
   Even if Syria or Iran does present challenges for the United States in places like Lebanon or Iraq, or if they either have or want WMD, the U.S. relationship with Israel actually makes it harder to deal effectively with them. Israel's nuclear arsenal is one reason why some of its neighbors want nuclear weapons, and threatening them with regime change has merely reinforced that desire. America's willingness to back Israel in spite of Israel's own nuclear arsenal and its refusal to sign the NPT also makes the United States look hypocritical when it tries to confront would-be proliferators about their own weapons programs. Yet Israel is not much of an asset when Washington contemplates using force against these regimes—as it has done twice in Iraq—because Israel cannot participate in the fight.
   Moreover, the combination of U.S. support for Israel and Israel's continued oppression of the Palestinians has also eroded America's standing in many other quarters and made it more difficult to obtain meaningful cooperation on important strategic issues like the war on terrorism or the related effort to democratize the Middle East. As noted in Chapter 1, foreign populations generally see the United States as "too supportive" of Israel, and many foreign elites think its tacit support for Israel's policies in the Occupied Territories is morally obtuse. In April 2004, for example, fifty-two former British diplomats sent Prime Minister Tony Blair a letter saying that the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians had "poisoned relations between the West and the Islamic and Arab worlds," and warning that the policies of Bush and Sharon were "one-sided and illegal" and will "cost yet more Israeli and Palestinian blood." Blair did not really need to be told, however, as he tried repeatedly (though unsuccessfully) to get the Bush administration to engage this issue more seriously. Not to be outdone, a group of eighty-eight former U.S. diplomats quickly followed suit with a similar letter to President Bush.86 Even prominent Israelis such as the veteran military correspondent Ze'ev Schiff understood that "the continuation of this conflict, including the Israeli occupation, will most certainly lead to new waves of terror; international terrorism, which the Americans fear so much, will spread."87
   The consequences of all this became clear in 2006, when U.S. efforts to forge a Sunni coalition to help deal with the deteriorating situation in Iraq and to balance a rising Iran were undermined by Sunni concerns that the United States had consistently taken Israel's side in its conflict with the Palestinians, and their awareness that it would be politically dangerous to get too close to the Americans. According to the Wall Street Journal, "Arab diplomats say countries such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates will find it difficult to publicly stand with the U.S. on
Iran and on broad regional stability unless Washington pressures Israel on a peace initiative." Or as one Arab diplomat put it, "The road to Baghdad runs through Jerusalem, and not the other way around."88 And that is why the bipartisan Iraq Study Group concluded in December 2006 that "the United States will not be able to achieve its goals in the Middle East unless the United States deals directly with the Arab-Israeli conflict."89
   In short, treating Israel as America's most important ally in the campaign against terrorism and against assorted Middle East dictatorships exaggerates Israel's ability to help on these issues, overlooks how the relationship contributes to these problems, and ignores the ways that Israel's policies make U.S. efforts to address them more difficult. Israel's strategic value has declined steadily since the end of the Cold War. Steadfast support for Israel can no longer be justified by the argument that it is helping us defeat a great power rival; instead, backing Israel unconditionally helps make the United States a target for radical extremists and makes America look callous and hypocritical in the eyes of many third parties, including European and Arab allies. The United States still benefits from various acts of strategic cooperation with Israel, but on balance, it is more of a liability than an asset.

A DUBIOUS ALLY

 The 9/11 Commission confirmed that bin Laden and other key al Qaeda members were motivated both by Israel's behavior toward the Palestinians and by U.S. support for Israel. A background study by the commission's staff notes that bin Laden tried to accelerate the date of the attack in the fall of 2000, after Israeli opposition party leader Ariel Sharon's provocative visit (accompanied by hundreds of Israeli riot police) to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, the site of al-Aqsa Mosque, one of the three holiest sites in Islam. According to the staff statement, "although bin Laden recognized that [Mo-hamed] Atta and the other pilots had only just arrived in the United States to begin their flight training, the al Qaeda leader wanted to punish the United States for supporting Israel."66 The following year, "when bin Laden learned from the media that Sharon would be visiting the White House in June or July 2001, he attempted once more to accelerate the operation."67 In addition to informing the timing of the 9/11 attacks, bin Laden's anger at the United States for backing Israel had implications for his preferred choice of targets. In the first meeting between Atta, the mission leader, and bin Laden in late 1999, the initial plans called for hitting the U.S. Capitol because it was "the perceived source of U.S. policy in support of Israel."68 In short, bin Laden and his deputies clearly see the issue of Palestine as central to their agenda.
   The 9/11 Commission also notes that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed— whom it described as "the principal architect of the 9/11 attacks"—was primarily motivated by the Palestinian issue. In the commission's words, "By his own account, KSM's animus toward the United States stemmed not from his experiences there as a student, but rather from his violent disagreement with U.S. foreign policy favoring Israel."69 It is hard to imagine more compelling evidence of the role that U.S. support for Israel played in inspiring the 9/11 attacks.
Even if bin Laden himself were not personally engaged by the Palestinian
issue, it still provides him with an effective recruiting tool. Arab and Islamic anger has grown markedly since the end of the Cold War, and especially since the outbreak of the Second Intifada in 2000, in part because the level of violence directed against the Palestinians has been both significantly greater and more visible.70 The First Intifada (1987-92) was much less violent, and there was relative calm in the Occupied Territories during the Oslo years (1993-2000). The development of the Internet and the emergence of alternative media outlets such as Al Jazeerah now provide round-the-clock coverage of the carnage. Not only is Israel inflicting more violence upon its Palestinian subjects, but Arabs and Muslims around the world can see it with their own eyes. And they can also see that it is being done with American-made weapons and with tacit U.S. consent. This situation provides potent ammunition for America's critics, which is why the deputy leader of Hezbollah, Sheik Nairn Qassem, told a Lebanese crowd in December 2006, "There is no longer a political place for America in Lebanon. Do you not recall that the weapons fired on Lebanon were American weapons?"71
   These policies help explain why many Arabs and Muslims are so angry with the United States that they regard al Qaeda with sympathy, and some are even willing to support it, either directly or tacitly. A 2004 survey of Moroccans reported that 8 percent had a "favorable" or "very favorable" image of President Bush, but the comparable figure for bin Laden was 45 percent. In Jordan, a key U.S. ally, the numbers were 3 percent for Bush and 55 percent for bin Laden, who beat Bush by a margin of 58 percent in Pakistan, whose government is also closely allied with the United States.72 The Pew Global Attitudes Survey reported in 2002—before the invasion of Iraq—that "public opinion about the United States in the Middle East/Conflict Area is overwhelmingly negative," and much of this unpopularity stems from the Palestinian issue.73 According to the Middle East expert Shibley Telhami, "No other issue resonates with the public in the Arab world, and many other parts of the Muslim world, more deeply than Palestine. No other issue shapes the regional perceptions of America more fundamentally than the issue of Palestine."74 Ussama Makdisi agrees, writing that "on no issue is Arab anger at the United States more widely and acutely felt than that of Palestine . . . For it is over Palestine that otherwise antithetical Arab secularist and Islamist interpretations of history converge in their common perception of an immense gulf separating official American avowals of support for freedom from actual American policies."75 U.S. support for Israel is not the only source of anti-Americanism, of course, but it is an important one, and it makes winning the war on terror and advancing other U.S. interests more difficult.
   Other government studies and numerous public opinion polls offer the same conclusion: Arab populations are deeply angered by America's support for Israel, which they regard as insensitive to Arab concerns and inconsistent with professed U.S. values. Although many Arabs have somewhat favorable views of U.S. science and technology, U.S. products, American movies and TV, and even surprisingly positive views of the American people and U.S. democracy, their views of American foreign policy—and especially U.S. support for Israel—are strongly negative.76 As a visiting Yemeni physicist remarked in 2001, "When you go there, you really love the United States . . . but when you go back home, you find the US applies justice and fairness to its own people, but not abroad."77 A 2004 report by the Pentagon's Defense Science Board concluded that "Muslims do not 'hate our freedom,' but rather they hate our policies," and the 9/11 Commission acknowledged that "it is simply a fact that American policy regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and American policy in Iraq are dominant staples of popular commentary across the Arab and Muslim world."78
   Similarly, when the respected polling firm Zogby International asked citizens of six Arab countries if their attitude toward America was shaped by their feelings about American values or by U.S. policies, "an overwhelming percentage of respondents indicated that policy played a more important role." When asked open-ended questions about their "first thought" when they think of America, the most common answer is "unfair foreign policy." And when asked what the United States could do to improve its image, the most frequent answers are "change Middle East policy" and "stop supporting Israel."79 Not surprisingly, after Congress directed the State Department to establish an "advisory group on public diplomacy for the Arab and Muslim World" in June 2003, the group's report found that "citizens in these countries are genuinely distressed at the plight of the Palestinians and at the role they perceive the United States to be playing."80
   Prominent Arab leaders and well-informed public commentators confirm that unconditional U.S. support for Israel has made the United States increasingly unpopular throughout the Middle East. UN Special Envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, whom the Bush administration enlisted to help form an interim Iraqi government in June 2004, said that "the great poison in the region is the Israeli policy of domination and the suffering imposed on the Palestinians," adding that people throughout the Middle East recognized the "injustice of this policy and the equally unjust support of the United States for this policy." In 2004, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak warned, "There exists a hatred [of America] never equaled in the region," in part be
cause Arabs "see [Israeli Prime Minister] Sharon act as he wants, without the Americans saying anything."81 King Abdullah II of Jordan offered a similar view in March 2007, telling a joint session of Congress that "the denial of justice and peace in Palestine ... is the core issue. And this core issue is not only producing severe consequences for our region, it is producing severe consequences for our world."82 Not surprisingly, these pro-American regimes want the United States to change a policy that reinforces popular discontent over their own ties to the United States.
   U.S. support for Israel is hardly the only source of anti-Americanism in the Arab and Islamic world, and making it more conditional would not remove all sources of friction between these countries and the United States. Examining the consequences of Israel's treatment of the Palestinians and tacit U.S. support of these policies is not to deny the presence of genuine anti-Semitism in various Arab countries or the fact that groups and governments in these societies sometimes fan these attitudes and use the Israel-Palestine conflict to divert attention from their own mistakes. Rather, our point is simply that the United States pays a substantial price for supporting Israel so consistently. This posture fuels hostility toward the United States in the Middle East, motivates anti-American extremists and aids their recruiting, gives authoritarian governments in the region an all-too-convenient scapegoat for their own failings, and makes it harder for Washington to convince potential supporters to confront extremists in their own countries.
   When it comes to fighting terrorism, in short, U.S. and Israeli interests are not identical. Backing Israel against the Palestinians makes winning the war on terror harder, not easier, and the "partner against terror" rationale does not provide a compelling justification for unconditional U.S. support.

CONFRONTING ROGUE STATES

"PARTNERS AGAINST TERROR": THE NEW RATIONALE

In the aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks, the main strategic justification behind U.S. support for Israel became the claim that the two states were now "partners against terror." This new rationale depicts the United States and Israel as threatened by the same terrorist groups and by a set of rogue states that back these groups and seek to acquire WMD. Their hostility to Israel and the United States is said to be due to a fundamental antipathy to the West's Judeo-Christian values, its culture, and its democratic institutions. In other words, they hate Americans for "what we are," not for "what we do." In the same way, they hate Israel because it is also Western, modern, and democratic, and not because it has occupied Arab land, including important Islamic holy sites, and oppressed an Arab population.
   The implications of the new rationale are obvious: support for Israel plays no role in America's terrorism problem or the growing anti-Americanism in the Arab and Islamic world, and ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or making U.S. support for Israel more selective or conditional would not help. Washington should therefore give Israel a free hand in dealing with the Palestinians and groups like Hezbollah. In addition, Washington should not press Israel to make concessions (such as dismantling settlements in the
Occupied Territories) until all Palestinian terrorists are imprisoned, repentant, or dead. Instead, the United States should continue to provide Israel with extensive support and use its own power and resources to go after countries like the Islamic Republic of Iran, Saddam Hussein's Iraq, Bashar al-Assad's Syria, and other countries believed to be supporting terrorists.
   Instead of seeing Israel as a major source of America's troubled relationship with the Arab and Islamic world, this new rationale portrays Israel as a key ally in the global "war on terror." Why? Because its enemies are said to be America's enemies. As Ariel Sharon put it during a visit to the United States in late 2001, after the horrific attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon: "You in America are in a war against terror. We in Israel are in a war against terror. It's the same war." According to a senior official in the first Bush administration, "Sharon played the president like a violin: 'I'm fighting your war, terrorism is terrorism' and so on."43 Former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the U.S. Senate in 2002, "If we do not immediately shut down the terror factories where Arafat is producing human bombs, it is only a matter of time before suicide bombers will terrorize your cities. If not destroyed, this madness will strike in your buses, in your supermarkets, in your pizza parlors, in your cafes." Netanyahu also published an op-ed in the Chicago Sun-Times declaring, "No grievance, real or imagined, can ever justify terror . . . American power topples the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, and the al-Qaida network there crumbles on its own. The United States must now act similarly against the other terror regimes—Iran, Iraq, Yasser Arafat's dictatorship, Syria, and a few others."44 His successor, Ehud Barak, repeated this theme in an op-ed in the Times of London, declaring, "The world's governments know exactly who the terrorists are and exactly which rogue states support and promote their activity. Countries like Iran, Iraq, Libya, Sudan and North Korea have a proven track-record of sponsoring terrorism, while no one needs reminding of the carnage wrought by the terrorist thugs of Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, and even Yassir Arafat's own PLO."45 Prime Minister Ehud Olmert struck the same note in his own address to Congress in 2006, declaring, "Our countries do not just share the experience and pain of terrorism. We share the commitment and resolve to confront the brutal terrorists that took these innocent people from us."46
   Israel's American supporters offer essentially the same justification. In October 2001, WINEP's executive director, Robert Satloff, explained why the United States should continue to back Israel after September 11: "The answer should be clear, given the democratic values we share and the common enemies we face . . . No country has suffered more from the same sort
of terrorism that hit the World Trade Center and the Pentagon than Israel."47 Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) declared in December 2001 that "the PLO is the same as the Taliban, which aids, abets and provides safe haven for terrorists. And Israel is like America, simply trying to protect its homefront . . . Arafat is to Israel as Mullah Mohammed [Omar] is to America."48 In April and May 2002, Congress passed by overwhelming margins (352-21 in the House, 94-2 in the Senate) two nearly identical resolutions declaring that "the United States and Israel are now engaged in a common struggle against terrorism."49 The official theme of the 2002 AIPAC annual conference was "America and Israel Standing Against Terror," and the conference presentations emphasized the shared threat from Yasser Arafat, Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, the Taliban, Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, and Syria.50 PNAC made the same point in an open letter to President Bush in April 2002, signed by William Kristol, Richard Perle, William Bennett, Daniel Pipes, James Woolsey, Eliot Cohen, Norman Podhoretz, and twenty-eight others, most of them prominent neoconservatives. It declared, "No one should doubt that the United States and Israel share a common enemy. We are both targets of what you [Bush] have correctly called an 'Axis of Evil' ... As Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld has pointed out, Iran, Iraq, and Syria are all engaged in 'inspiring and financing a culture of political murder and suicide bombing' against Israel, just as they have aided campaigns of terrorism against the United States . . . You have declared war on international terrorism, Mr. President. Israel is fighting the same war."51
   This new justification has a certain prima facie plausibility, and it is not surprising that many Americans equate what happened on September 11 with attacks on Israelis. Upon further inspection, however, the "partners against terror" rationale unravels almost completely, especially as a justification for unconditional U.S. support. Viewed objectively, Israel is a liability in both the "war on terror" and in the broader effort to deal with so-called rogue states.
   To begin with, the new strategic rationale depicts "terrorism" as a single, unified phenomenon, thereby suggesting that Palestinian suicide bombers are as much a threat to the United States as they are to Israel itself, and that the terrorists who attacked America on September 11 are part of a well-organized global movement that is also targeting Israel. But this claim rests on a fundamental misconception of what terrorism is. Terrorism is not an organization or a movement or even an "enemy" that one can declare war on; terrorism is simply the tactic of indiscriminately attacking enemy targets— especially civilians—in order to sow fear, undermine morale, and provoke
counterproductive reactions from one's adversary. It is a tactic that many different groups sometimes employ, usually when they are much weaker than their adversaries and have no other good option for fighting against superior military forces. Zionists used terrorism when they were trying to drive the British out of Palestine and establish their own state—for example, by bombing the King David Hotel in Jerusalem in 1946 and assassinating UN mediator Folke Bernadotte in 1948, among other acts—and the United States has backed a number of "terrorist" organizations in the past (including the Nicaraguan contras and the UNITA guerrillas in Angola). American presidents have also welcomed a number of former terrorists to the White House (including PLO chairman Yasser Arafat, and Israeli Prime Ministers Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir, who played key roles in the main Zionist terror organizations), which merely underscores the fact that terrorism is a tactic and not a unified movement. Clarifying this issue in no way justifies attacks on innocent people—which is always morally reprehensible—but it reminds us that groups that employ this method of struggle do not always threaten vital U.S. interests and that the United States has sometimes actively supported such groups.
   In contrast to al Qaeda, in fact, the terrorist organizations that threaten Israel (such as Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Hezbollah) do not attack the United States and do not pose a mortal threat to America's core security interests. With respect to Hezbollah, for example, the Hebrew University historian Moshe Maoz observes that it "is mostly a threat against Israel. They did attack U.S. targets when there were American troops in Lebanon, but they killed to oust foreign forces from Lebanon. I doubt very much whether Hezbollah will go out of its way to attack America." The Middle East expert Patrick Seale agrees: "Hezbollah is a purely local phenomenon directed purely at the Israelis," and the terrorism experts Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon echo this view with respect to Hamas, noting, "Thus far, Hamas has not targeted Americans."52 We may believe that all terrorist acts are morally wrong, but from the perspective of U.S. strategic interests, not all terrorists are alike.
   There is no convincing evidence linking Osama bin Laden and his inner circle to the various Palestinian terrorist groups, and most Palestinian terrorists do not share al Qaeda's desire to launch a global Islamic restoration or restore the caliphate. In fact, the PLO was secular and nationalist—not Islamist—and it is only in the last decade or so, as the occupation has ground on, that many Palestinians have become more attracted to Islamist ideas. Nor are their activities—however heinous and deplorable—simply random violence directed against Israel or the West. Instead, Palestinian terrorism has
always been directed solely at their perceived grievances against Israel, beginning with resistance to the original Zionist influx and continuing after the expulsion of much of the Palestinian population in the 1948 war. Today, these actions are largely a response to Israel's prolonged campaign to colonize the West Bank and Gaza Strip and a reflection of the Palestinians' own weakness. These territories contained few Jews when Israel captured them in 1967, but Israel spent the next forty years colonizing them with settlements, road networks, and military bases, while brutally suppressing Palestinian attempts to resist these encroachments.53 Not surprisingly, Palestinian resistance has frequently employed terrorism, which is usually how subject populations strike back at powerful occupiers.54 And while groups like Hamas have yet to publicly accept Israel's existence, we should not forget that Yasser Arafat and the rest of the PLO did, and that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has reiterated that commitment on numerous occasions.
   More important, claiming that Israel and the United States are united by a shared terrorist threat has the causal relationship backward. The United States did not form an alliance with Israel because it suddenly realized that it faced a serious danger from "global terrorism" and urgently needed Israel's help to defeat it. In fact, the United States has a terrorism problem in good part because it has long been so supportive of Israel. It is hardly headline news to observe that U.S. backing for Israel is unpopular elsewhere in the Middle East—that has been true for several decades—but many people may not realize how much America's one-sided policies have cost it over the years. Not only have these policies helped inspire al Qaeda, but they have also facilitated its recruitment efforts and contributed to growing anti-Americanism throughout the region.
   Of course, those who believe that Israel is still a valuable strategic asset often deny that there was any connection between U.S. support for Israel and the terrorism problem, and especially not the September 11 attacks. They claim that Osama bin Laden seized on the plight of the Palestinians only recently, and only because he realized it was good for recruiting purposes. Thus, WINEP's Robert Satloff claims that bin Laden's identification with Palestine is "a recent—and almost surely opportunistic—phenomenon," and Alan Der-showitz declares, "Prior to September 11, Israel was barely on bin Laden's radar screen." Dennis Ross suggests that bin Laden was merely "trying to gain legitimacy by implying that his attack on America was about the plight of the Palestinians," and Martin Kramer says he knows of no "unbiased terrorism expert" who believes that "American support for Israel is the source of popular resentment, propelling recruits to al Qaeda." The former Commentary editor
Norman Podhoretz likewise argues that "if Israel had never come into existence, or if it were magically to disappear, the United States would still stand as an embodiment of everything that most of these Arabs consider evil."55
   It is not surprising that some of Israel's defenders offer such claims, because acknowledging that U.S. support for Israel has fueled anti-American terrorism and encouraged growing anti-Americanism would require them to admit that unconditional support for Israel does in fact impose significant costs on the United States. Such an admission would cast doubt on Israel's net strategic value and imply that Washington should make its support conditional on Israel adopting a different approach toward the Palestinians.
   Contrary to these claims, there is in fact abundant evidence that U.S. support for Israel encourages anti-Americanism throughout the Arab and Islamic world and has fueled the rage of anti-American terrorists. It is not their only grievance, of course, but it is a central one.56 While some Islamic radicals are genuinely upset by what they regard as the West's materialism and venality, its alleged "theft" of Arab oil, its support for corrupt Arab monarchies, its repeated military interventions in the region, etc., they are also angered by U.S. support for Israel and Israel's harsh treatment of the Palestinians. Thus, Sayyid Qutb, the Egyptian dissident whose writings have been an important inspiration for contemporary Islamic fundamentalists, was hostile to the United States both because he saw it as a corrupt and licentious society and also because of U.S. support for Israel.57 Or as Sayyid Muhammed Husayn Fadlallah, spiritual leader of Hezbollah, put it in 2002, "I believe that America bears responsibility for all of Israel, both in its occupation of the lands of [19]48 or in all its settlement policies [in the lands occupied since 1967], despite the occasional utterance of a few timid and embarrassed words which disapprove of the settlements . . . America is a hypocritical nation ... for it gives solid support and lethal weapons to the Israelis, but gives the Arabs and the Palestinians [only] words."58 One need not agree with such sentiments to recognize the potency of these arguments in the minds of many Arabs and to realize how unquestioned support for Israel has fueled anger and resentment against the United States.
   An even clearer demonstration of the connection between U.S. support for Israel and anti-American terrorism is the case of Ramzi Yousef, who masterminded the first attack on the World Trade Center in 1993 and is now serving a life sentence in a U.S. prison. Not only did Yousef mail letters to several New York newspapers, taking credit for the attack and demanding that the United States terminate aid to Israel, he also told the agents who flew him back to the United States following his arrest in Pakistan in 1995 that he felt guilty about
causing U.S. deaths. But as Steve Coll recounts in his prizewinning book Ghost Wars, Yousef s remorse was "overridden by the strength of his desire to stop the killing of Arabs by Israeli troops" and by his belief that "bombing American targets was the 'only way to cause change.'" Yousef reportedly also said that "he truly believed his actions had been rational and logical in pursuit of a change in U.S. policy toward Israel." According to Coll, Yousef "mentioned no other motivation during the flight and no other issue in American foreign policy that concerned him." Further corroboration comes from Yousef's associate Abdul Rahman Yasin, who told the CBS news correspondent Lesley Stahl that Yousef had recruited him by telling him that acts of terrorism would be "revenge for my Palestinian brothers and my brothers in Saudi Arabia," adding that Yousef "talked to me a lot about this."59
   Or consider the most obvious case: Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda. Contrary to the declarations of Satloff, Dershowitz, Kramer, and others, considerable evidence confirms that bin Laden has been deeply sympathetic to the Palestinian cause ever since he was a young man and that he has long been angry at the United States for backing Israel so strongly. According to Michael Scheuer, who directed the CIA's intelligence unit on al Qaeda and its founder, the young bin Laden was for the most part gentle and well behaved, but "an exception to Osama's well-mannered, nonconfrontational demeanor was his support for the Palestinians and negative attitude towards the United States and Israel."60 After September 11, bin Laden's mother told an interviewer that "in his teenage years he was the same nice kid . . . but he was more concerned, sad, and frustrated about the situation in Palestine in particular, and the Arab and Muslim world in general."61
   Moreover, bin Laden's first public statement intended for a wider audience—released December 29, 1994—directly addressed the Palestinian issue. As Bruce Lawrence, compiler of bin Laden's public statements, explains, "The letter makes it plain that Palestine, far from being a late addition to bin Laden's agenda, was at the centre of it from the start."62
   Bin Laden also condemned the United States on several occasions prior to September 11 for its support of Israel against the Palestinians and called for jihad against America on this basis. According to Benjamin and Simon, the "most prominent grievance" in bin Laden's 1996 fatwa (titled "Declaration of War Against the Americans Occupying the Land of the Two Holy Places") is "bin Laden's hallmark: the 'Zionist-Crusader alliance."' Bin Laden refers explicitly to Muslim blood being spilled "in Palestine and Iraq" and blames it all on the "American-Israeli conspiracy."63 When the CNN reporter Peter Arnett asked him in March 1997 why he had declared jihad
against the United States, bin Laden replied, "We declared jihad against the US government, because the US government is unjust, criminal, and tyrannical. It has committed acts that are extremely unjust, hideous, and criminal, whether directly or through its support of the Israeli occupation of the Land of the Prophet's Night Journey [Palestine]. And we believe the US is directly responsible for those who were killed in Palestine, Lebanon, and Iraq."64 These comments are hardly anomalous. As Max Rodenbeck, Mideast correspondent for the Economist, writes in a prominent review of two important books about bin Laden, "Of all these themes, the notion of payback for injustices suffered by the Palestinians is perhaps the most powerfully recurrent in bin Laden's speeches."65
   The 9/11 Commission confirmed that bin Laden and other key al Qaeda members were motivated both by Israel's behavior toward the Palestinians and by U.S. support for Israel.

FROM THE COLD WAR TO 9/11

Even if Israel was a valuable ally during the Cold War, that justification ended when the Soviet Union collapsed. According to the Middle East historian Bernard Lewis (himself a prominent supporter of Israel), "Whatever value Israel might have had as a strategic asset during the Cold War, that value obviously ended when the Cold War itself came to a close." The political scientist Bernard Reich of George Washington University, the author of several books on U.S.-Israeli relations, drew a similar conclusion in 1995, noting that "Israel is of limited military or economic importance to the United States ... It is not a strategically vital state." The Brandeis University defense expert Robert Art made the same point in 2003, noting that "Israel has little strategic value to the United States and is in many ways a strategic liability."35 As the Cold War receded into history, Israel's declining strategic value became hard to miss.
   In fact, the Gulf War in 1991 provided evidence that Israel was becoming a strategic burden. The United States and its allies eventually assembled more than four hundred thousand troops to liberate Kuwait, but they could not use Israeli bases or allow the IDF to participate without jeopardizing the fragile coalition against Iraq. And when Saddam fired Scud missiles into Israel in the hope of provoking an Israeli response that would fracture the coalition, Washington had to divert resources (such as Patriot missile batteries) to defend Israel and to keep it on the sidelines. Israel was not to blame for this situation, of course, but it illustrates the extent to which it was becoming a liability rather than an asset. As William Waldegrave, minister of state in the British Foreign Office, told the House of Commons, the United States might now be learning that a strategic alliance with Israel "was not particularly useful if it cannot be used in a crisis such as this." This point was not lost on Bernard Lewis, either, who wrote, "The change [in Israel's strategic value] was clearly manifested in the Gulf War . . . when what the United States most desired from Israel was to keep out of the conflict—to be silent, inactive, and, as far as possible, invisible . . . Israel was not an asset, but an irrelevance—some even said a nuisance."36
   One might think that the shared threat from international terrorism provided a powerful rationale for United States-Israel cooperation in the immediate aftermath of the Cold War, but this is not the case. The Oslo peace process was under way during most of the 1990s, and Palestinian terrorist attacks against Israel were declining, from 67 killed and 167 injured in 1994 to only 1 dead and only 12 injured in 2000. (Israeli casualties rose again after Oslo collapsed, with 110 Israelis killed and 918 injured in 2001 and 320 killed and 1,498 injured in 2002.)37 U.S. policy makers were becoming more concerned about Islamic terrorism—including al Qaeda—especially after the failed attempt to blow up the World Trade Center in 1993, the attacks on the Khobar Towers housing complex in Saudi Arabia in 1996, the bombing of American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, and the attack on the USS Cole in Yemen in 1999. A number of new initiatives to deal with the problem were under way, but terrorism was still not widely perceived as a mortal threat and the U.S. "global war on terror" did not begin in earnest until after September 11, 2001.38
   Similarly, although both Israel and the United States were worried about "rogue states" such as Iraq, Iran, Libya, and Syria during this period, these states were too weak to pose a serious threat to the United States itself. Consider that the combined population of these four states in 2000 was less than 40 percent of America's; their combined GDP was barely more than 5 percent of U.S. GDP, and their combined military spending equaled a scant 3 percent of the U.S. defense budget.39 Iraq was subject to a punishing UN embargo, weapons inspectors were busy dismantling its WMD programs, and Iran's own WMD efforts were not far advanced. Syria, Iran, and Iraq were often at odds with each other, which made containing these states even easier and reduced the need to try to overthrow them.
   Instead, the United States adopted a policy of "dual containment" toward Iran and Iraq and made a serious but unsuccessful attempt to broker a final peace treaty between Syria and Israel.40 It also engaged in a protracted and ultimately successful effort to persuade Libya to give up its WMD programs and compensate the families of the victims of the Pan Am Flight 103 bombing, a campaign waged through economic sanctions and patient multilateral diplomacy.41 Israel's capabilities were not needed to accomplish these objectives, because the United States could deal with these states by itself.
   In other words, Israel was not seen as a prized ally because U.S. policy makers believed its help was essential for dealing with these so-called rogue states. Rather, Washington worried about these states in good part because
it was already committed to protecting Israel. With respect to Iran, for example, the main points of contention between Tehran and Washington were Iran's opposition to the Camp David peace process, its support for Hezbollah, and its efforts to develop WMD. The importance of these issues was magnified substantially by the existing U.S. relationship with Israel.42 Washington did have interests in the region that were unrelated to Israel, of course—such as its desire to prevent any single state from dominating the Gulf and thereby ensure access to oil—and its pursuit of these interests occasionally led to friction with some states in the region. In particular, the United States would have undoubtedly opposed Iran's WMD efforts even if Israel had never existed. But the U.S. commitment to Israel made these issues seem even more urgent, without making them easier to address.
   Until September 11, 2001, the danger from terrorism and problems posed by these various rogue states did not provide a compelling strategic rationale for unconditional U.S. support of the Jewish state. These concerns explain why Israel wanted help from the United States but cannot account for America's willingness to provide that help as generously as it did.

"PARTNERS AGAINST TERROR": THE NEW RATIONALE

HELPING CONTAIN THE SOVIET BEAR

When Israel was founded in 1948, U.S. policy makers did not consider it a strategic asset. The new state was regarded as weak and potentially vulnerable, and American policy makers recognized that embracing Israel too closely would undermine the U.S. position elsewhere in the Middle East. President Truman's decision to support the UN partition plan and to recognize Israel was based not on strategic imperatives but on his genuine sympathy for Jewish suffering, a certain religious conviction that permitting Jews to return to their ancient homeland was desirable, and an awareness that recognition was strongly backed by many American Jews and would therefore yield domestic political benefits.8 At the same time, several of Truman's key advisers—including Secretary of State George Marshall and policy-planning head George Kennan—opposed the decision because they believed it would jeopardize U.S. relations with the Arab world and facilitate Soviet penetration of the region. As Kennan noted in an internal memorandum in 1948, "Supporting the extreme objectives of political Zionism" would be "to the detriment of overall U.S. security objectives" in the Middle East. Specifically, he argued it would increase opportunities for the Soviet Union, endanger oil concessions, and jeopardize U.S. basing rights in the region.9
   This view had eroded by the early 1960s, and the Kennedy administration concluded that Israel deserved more support in light of growing Soviet aid to Egypt, Syria, and Iraq.10 Israeli leaders repeatedly emphasized their potential value as an ally, and their stunning victory in the Six-Day War in 1967 strengthened these claims by offering a vivid demonstration of Israel's military prowess. As discussed in the previous chapter, Nixon and Kissinger saw increased support for Israel as an effective way to counter Soviet influence throughout the region.11 The image of Israel as a "strategic asset" took root in the 1970s and became an article of faith by the mid-1980s.
   The case for Israel's strategic value from 1967 to 1989 is straightforward. By serving as America's proxy in the Middle East, Israel helped the United States contain Soviet expansion in that important region and occasionally helped the United States handle other regional crises.12 By inflicting humiliating military defeats on Soviet clients like Egypt and Syria in the 1967 Six-
Day War and 1973 October War, Israel also damaged Moscow's reputation as an ally while enhancing U.S. prestige. This was a key element of Nixon and Kissinger's Cold War strategy: backing Israel to the hilt would make it impossible for Egypt or Syria to regain the territory lost in 1967 and thus demonstrate the limited value of Soviet support. This strategy bore fruit in the 1970s, when Egyptian President Anwar Sadat severed ties with Moscow and realigned with the United States, a breakthrough that paved the way to the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty in 1979. Israel's repeated victories also forced the Soviets to expend precious resources rearming their clients after each defeat, a task that the overstretched Soviet economy could ill afford.
   By providing the United States with intelligence about Soviet capabilities, Soviet client states, and the Middle East more generally, Israel also facilitated the broader American campaign against the Soviet Union. In 1956, for example, an Israeli spy obtained a copy of Soviet Premier Nikita S. Khrushchev's "secret speech" denouncing Stalin, which Israel promptly passed on to the United States. In the 1960s, Israel gave U.S. defense experts access to a Soviet MiG-21 aircraft obtained from an Iraqi defector and provided similar access to Soviet equipment captured in the 1967 and 1973 wars.13 Finally, the United States benefited from access to Israeli training facilities, advanced technology developed by Israeli defense companies, and consultations with Israeli experts on counterterrorism and other security problems.
   This justification for supporting Israel is factually correct, and Israel may well have been a net strategic asset during this period. Yet the case is not as open and shut as Israel's advocates maintain and was questioned by some U.S. experts at the time.14 Why? Because in addition to the direct economic burden, the growing partnership with Israel imposed significant costs on the United States, and because Israel's capacity to help its vastly more powerful partner was inherently limited.
   First, although Israel's military did help check Soviet client states like Egypt, Syria, and Iraq, America's commitment to Israel played a significant role in pushing those states into Moscow's arms in the first place. Egypt and Syria had been engaged in a bitter conflict with Israel since the late 1940s, and they were unable to get help from Washington despite several requests. American support for Israel was nowhere near as generous as it is today, but the United States was still committed to Israel's survival and was not going to do anything to undermine its security—in particular, the United States was unwilling to provide either Egypt or Syria with weapons that might be used against the Jewish state. As a result, when an Israeli attack on an Egyptian army base in Gaza in February 1955 killed thirty-seven Egyptian soldiers and
wounded another thirty-one, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser was forced to turn to the Soviet Union for arms instead. Nasser repeatedly referred to the Gaza raid as a "turning point," precipitating the first major Arab arms deal with Moscow, which made the Soviet Union a major player in Middle East affairs virtually overnight. The raid also led Nasser to shut down a secret negotiating channel with the Israeli government and to shift from modest efforts to limit Arab infiltration to active support for it.15 Given their continuing conflict with Israel and America's reluctance to provide them with arms, Israel's main Arab adversaries had little choice but to seek help from the Soviets, despite their own misgivings about moving closer to Moscow.16
   Second, although U.S. support for Israel put more pressure on the Soviet Union, it also fueled the Arab-Israeli conflict and inhibited progress toward a settlement, a result that continues to haunt both Israel and the United States. The Nixon/Kissinger strategy eventually succeeded in pulling Egypt out of the Soviet orbit, but the tendency to view Middle East issues primarily through the prism of the Cold War (and thus to back Israel no matter what) also led the United States to overlook several promising opportunities for peace, most notably Egyptian President Anwar Sadat's repeated signals that he was prepared to cut a deal in 1971-72.17 Speaking to a private group in 1975, Kissinger recalled that Secretary of State William Rogers's efforts to reach an interim agreement in 1971 had broken down "over whether or not 1,000 Egyptian soldiers would be permitted across the Canal. That agreement would have prevented the 1973 War. I must say now that I am sorry that I did not support the Rogers effort more than I did."18
   Third, the expansion and deepening of U.S.-Israeli relations in the 1960s and 1970s also contributed to the rise of anti-Americanism across the Arab and Islamic world. "At the time of World War I," notes the Rice University historian Ussama Makdisi, "the image of the United States in the Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire was generally positive; those Arabs who knew of the country saw it as a great power that was not imperialist as Britain, France, and Russia were."19 Even after Israel was founded, Arab resentment was limited by U.S. efforts to play an evenhanded role in the Middle East and by the fact that France, not the United States, was Israel's main arms supplier until 1967. What conflicts there were with "progressive" Arab states such as Nasser's Egypt partly reflected disagreements about Israel but also stemmed from U.S. support for conservative Middle Eastern monarchies (the shah of Iran, King Hussein of Jordan, the House of Saud), who were all deeply hostile to Nasser as well. Unfortunately for the United States, its support for these regimes (which Washington saw as "moderate"
and its opponents deemed "reactionary") and for Israel fueled a growing tendency for many Arabs to see it as the heir to Britain's former imperial role.20
   Arab animosity increased as U.S. support for Israel grew and was compounded by Israel's occupation of the West Bank, Sinai, Gaza, and the Golan Heights in 1967 and by its subsequent repression of the Palestinian Arabs living in what came to be known as the Occupied Territories. During the Cold War, this situation made some Middle Eastern regimes more interested in close ties with the Soviet Union and further reduced U.S. influence. It also contributed to the rise of Arab and Islamic extremism, as some prescient analysts had predicted two decades ago. Writing in 1985-86, for example, Harry Shaw, former head of the Office of Management and Budget's Military Assistance Branch, warned that "Israel's settlement policy on the West Bank is at cross-purposes with U.S. interests and contrary to U.S. policy. The lack of progress toward a peace settlement—for which Israel and its Arab neighbors share responsibility—undercuts Arabs who are willing to live in peace and strengthens the influence of Islamic fundamentalists and other Arabs who have no interest in the kind of stable Middle East that would be compatible with U.S. interests and Israel's security."21 America's relations with the Arab and Islamic world would hardly have been perfect were Israel not a U.S. ally, but a more evenhanded approach would have smoothed one important source of friction. This basic fact was not lost on the Israeli military leader and politician Moshe Dayan, whose memoirs contain a revealing account of a talk he had with Kissinger at the time of the 1973 October War. "Though I happened to remark that the United States was the only country that was ready to stand by us," wrote Dayan, "my silent reflection was that the United States would really rather support the Arabs."22
   Support for Israel imposed additional costs on the United States, such as the Arab oil embargo and production decrease during the October War. The decision to use the "oil weapon" was a direct response to Nixon's decision to provide Israel with $2.2 billion of emergency military assistance during the war, and it ultimately did significant damage to the U.S. economy. The embargo and production decrease cost the United States some $48.5 billion in 1974 alone (equal to roughly $140 billion in 2000 dollars), due to higher petroleum costs and an estimated 2 percent reduction in GDP. The oil crisis also led to serious strains in America's relations with key allies in Europe and Asia.23 Helping Israel defeat two Soviet clients may have been a positive development in terms of America's broader Cold War concerns, but the United States paid a high price for the victory.
Israel's other Cold War contributions were useful, but their strategic
value should not be overstated. Israel did indeed provide the United States with helpful intelligence, for instance, but there is no evidence that Jerusalem gave Washington information that decisively altered the course of the superpower competition or enabled America to inflict a decisive blow against its Communist adversary. The primary benefit seems to have been access to captured Soviet weapons and to data regarding their battlefield performance, as well as debriefings from Soviet Jews who had immigrated to Israel. The United States used this information to help develop weapons and tactics that would have been valuable had the superpowers ever come to blows, and this information has undoubtedly helped the United States when it has fought former Soviet clients such as Iraq. But Iraq was a third-rate military power and the United States scarcely needed much help to defeat Saddam in 1991 or to oust him in 2003. Access to Israeli training facilities and consultations with Israeli experts were also useful and appreciated, but these arrangements were never essential to the development of American military power or to its ultimate triumph over the Soviet Union.
   In fact, Israeli "assistance" was sometimes of dubious value. One former CIA official reports being "appalled at the lack of quality of the [Israeli] political intelligence on the Arab world . . . Their tactical military intelligence was first-rate. But they didn't know their enemy. I saw this political intelligence and it was lousy, laughably bad ... It was gossip stuff mostly."24 Israel also provided the United States with faulty or misleading intelligence on several occasions, probably in order to encourage the United States to take actions that Israel wanted. Prior to the Six-Day War, for example, Israeli intelligence assessments painted a grim and frightening picture of Egyptian capabilities and intentions, which American intelligence officials believed was both incorrect and politically motivated. As National Security Adviser W. W. Rostow told President Johnson, "We do not believe that the Israeli appreciation presented . . . was a serious estimate of the sort they would submit to their own high officials. We think it is probably a gambit intended to influence the US to do one or more of the following: (a) provide military supplies, (b) make more public commitments to Israel, (c) approve Israeli military initiatives, and (d) put more pressure on Nasser."25 As we discuss in greater detail in Chapter 8, Israel also supplied the United States with alarmist reports about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs prior to the 2003 invasion, thereby contributing to U.S. miscalculations about the actual danger that Saddam Hussein presented.26
   Nor has Israel been a reliable proxy safeguarding other U.S. interests in the region. When Martin Kramer claims that "American support for Is
rael. . . underpins the pax Americana in the Eastern Mediterranean" and has been a "low cost way of keeping order in part of the Middle East," he both exaggerates the benefits of this relationship and understates the costs.27 Stability in the eastern Mediterranean is desirable, but the region is not a vital U.S. strategic interest, in sharp contrast to the oil-rich Persian Gulf. And if Israel's strategic value derives from its role enforcing the "pax Americana" in this region, then it has not been doing a particularly good job. Its invasion of Lebanon in 1982 made the region less stable and led directly to the formation of Hezbollah, the militant group that many believe is responsible for the devastating attacks on the U.S. embassy and marine barracks that cost more than 250 American lives. The suicide bombers are to blame for these deaths, but the loss of life was part of the price the United States had to pay in order to clean up the situation that Israel had created. Israel's prolonged campaign to colonize the West Bank and Gaza (indirectly subsidized by U.S. aid and undertaken in part with U.S.-made weapons) has also produced two major uprisings in which thousands of Palestinians and Israelis have been killed. Thus, Kramer seriously overstates Israel's value as a low-cost "regional stabilizer."
   Israel's limited strategic value is further underscored by its inability to contribute to an undeniable U.S. interest: access to Persian Gulf oil. Despite Israel's vaunted military prowess, the United States could not count on its help during the Cold War to deter a direct Soviet assault on Western oil supplies or to protect them in the event of a regional war. As Harry Shaw noted in the mid-1980s, "Some Israeli officials explicitly reject Israeli engagement of Soviet ground forces beyond their country's immediate defense . . . These Israelis acknowledge as far-fetched the notion that Israeli divisions would advance beyond Israel's borders to meet a Soviet thrust toward the Persian Gulf."28 According to a former Pentagon official, "Israel's strategic value to the United States was always grotesquely exaggerated. When we were drafting contingency plans for the Middle East in the 1980s, we found that the Israelis were of little value to us in 95 percent of the cases."29
   As a result, when the shah of Iran fell in 1979, raising concerns about a possible Soviet invasion, the United States had to create its own Rapid Deployment Force (RDF) to counter that threat and arrange for basing rights and preposition war materiel in various Arab countries. The Pentagon could not count on Israel to deter the Soviet Union by itself and could not use Israel as a forward base—Israeli offers notwithstanding—because doing so would have caused political problems in the Arab world and made it even harder to keep the Soviets out of the region. As Shaw remarked in 1986, "The notion of using Israel as a platform for projecting U.S. forces into Arab
states ... is not widely supported outside Israel. Arab analysts argue that an Arab regime that accepted American help funneled through Israel would be discredited with its own people and therefore would be more likely to fall. . . U.S. officials also are skeptical of the feasibility of using Israeli bases. The Israeli offers may be designed primarily to entice the United States into closer relations and to enhance the rationale for more U.S. aid without requirements for specific Israeli commitments."30 Israel's limited capacity to help in the Gulf was revealed in the late 1980s, when the Iran-Iraq War jeopardized the safety of oil shipments in the Persian Gulf. The United States and several of its European allies reinforced their naval forces in the region, began escorting oil tankers, and eventually attacked some Iranian patrol boats, but Israel had no part to play in these operations.31
   Ultimately, although a limited case can be made for Israel's strategic value during the Cold War, it does not fully explain why the United States provided it with so much economic, military, and diplomatic support. It is easy to understand why the United States devoted billions to defending its NATO allies—Europe was a key center of industrial power that had to be kept out of Soviet hands—and equally easy to grasp the strategic motivation behind U.S. support for oil-rich countries like Saudi Arabia, despite sharply contrasting political values. In Israel's case, however, this sort of obvious strategic imperative was never as clear. Henry Kissinger may have used U.S. aid to Israel as a way to drive a wedge between Moscow and Cairo, but he admitted privately that "Israeli strength does not prevent the spread of communism in the Arab world ... So it is difficult to claim that a strong Israel serves American interests because it prevents the spread of communism in the Arab world. It does not. It provides for the survival of Israel."32 Ronald Reagan may have called Israel a "strategic asset" when he was campaigning for president in 1980, but he did not mention Israel's strategic value in his memoirs and referred instead to various moral considerations to explain his support for the Jewish state.33
   Thoughtful Israeli analysts have long recognized this basic reality. As the Israeli strategic expert Shai Feldman, former head of Tel Aviv University's Jaffe Center for Strategic Studies, noted in his own study of U.S.-Israeli security cooperation, "The strategic dimension of America's motivation for supporting Israel never comprised the core of these relations. Rather, this dimension received growing emphasis in the 1980s as Israel's American supporters sought to base U.S.-Israel relations on grounds that would be more appealing to Republican administrations. Yet, the significance of U.S.Israel strategic cooperation and the extent to which Israel is perceived as a
strategic asset to the United States never approached that of the other elements in the U.S.-Israel relationship.'' Those "other elements," according to Feldman, were post-Holocaust sympathy, shared political values, Israel's underdog image, common cultural linkages, and "the role of the Jewish community in American politics."34

FROM THE COLD WAR TO 9/11

 ISRAEL: STRATEGIC ASSET OR LIABILITY?

America's willingness to give Israel extensive economic, military, and diplomatic support would be easy to understand if it advanced America's overall strategic interests. Generous aid to Israel might be justified, for example, if it were a cost-effective way for the United States to deal with countries that Washington had previously identified as hostile. Steadfast U.S. support might also make sense if the United States received substantial benefits in return, and if the value of these benefits exceeded the economic and political costs of U.S. support. If Israel possessed vital natural resources (such as oil or natural gas), or if it occupied a critical geographic location, then the United States might want to provide support in order to maintain good relations and keep it out of unfriendly hands. In short, aid to Israel would be easy to explain if it helped make Americans more secure or more prosperous. Israel's strategic value to the United States would be further enhanced if backing it won America additional friends around the world and did not undermine U.S. relations with other strategically important countries.
   Not surprisingly, those who favor generous U.S. support for Israel routinely make these sorts of arguments. In the 1980s, for example, scholars such as Steven Spiegel and A.F.K. Organski argued that Israel had become a major strategic asset in the Cold War and claimed that generous U.S. aid was a bargain given the benefits it produced for the United States.1 As Hyman Bookbinder, Washington representative of the American Jewish Committee, put it in 1984, "We bend over backward to help people understand that help for Israel is also in America's strategic interests."2 Today, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the most influential pro-Israel lobbying organization, declares that the United States and Israel have a "deep strategic partner
ship aimed at confronting the common threats to both nations" and says that United States-Israel cooperation in defense and homeland security "has proven to be of paramount and ever-increasing importance."3 The neoconser-vative Project for the New American Century (PNAC) calls Israel "America's staunchest ally against international terrorism," and the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA) says, "U.S.-Israel strategic cooperation is a vital component in the global security equation for the United States."4 According to Martin Kramer, a research fellow at Israel's Shalem Center and at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), the United States backs Israel not because of "Holocaust guilt or shared democratic values," but because aid to Israel "underpins the pax Americana in the Eastern Mediterranean" and provides a "low-cost way of keeping order in part of the Middle East."5 The Israeli strategist Efraim Inbar agrees, declaring that "the case for the continued US support of Israel as an important strategic ally due to its strategic location and political stability, as well as its technological and military assets, is very strong."6
   The strategic rationale for extensive U.S. support of the Jewish state portrays this policy not as an act of charity or as a moral obligation, and certainly not as a consequence of domestic lobbying.7 Instead, steadfast support for Israel is said to be a reflection of America's overarching strategic interests: the United States backs Israel because doing so supposedly makes all Americans safer.
   In this chapter, we show that this view is at best outdated and at worst simply wrong. Backing Israel may have yielded strategic benefits in the past, but the benefits have declined sharply in recent years while the economic and diplomatic costs have increased. Instead of being a strategic asset, in fact, Israel has become a strategic liability for the United States. Backing Israel so strongly is making Americans more vulnerable—not less—and making it harder for the United States to achieve important and urgent foreign policy goals. Although there are compelling reasons for the United States to support Israel's existence and to remain committed to its survival, the current level of U.S. support and its largely unconditional nature cannot be justified on strategic grounds.
   We begin by evaluating Israel's role during the Cold War, because the claim that Israel was a strategic asset is most convincing during this period. We then consider the argument that was invoked after the Soviet Union disappeared—specifically, the claim that support for Israel is justified by a common threat from international terrorism and a set of hostile "rogue
states"—and we show that this claim does not provide a credible strategic rationale for unconditional U.S. support either.

HELPING CONTAIN THE SOVIET BEAR

Even though U.S. officials—including President Reagan himself—were upset by Israel's conduct during the war, they did not try to punish Israel for its actions. Reagan did send Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin a sharply worded letter on June 9, calling on him to accept a proposed ceasefire with Syria, but the IDF's objectives vis-a-vis Syria had been accomplished by that time and it involved no great sacrifice for Israel to agree.112
"Despite verbal protestations and other gestures and occasional genuine irritation," notes the historian and diplomat Itamar Rabinovich, the United States "lent Israel the political support that enabled it to proceed with the war for an unusually long time."113
   Indeed, instead of sanctioning Israel for invading a neighboring country, Congress voted to give Israel an additional $250 million in military assistance in December 1982, over the strong objections of both President Reagan and his new secretary of state, George P. Shultz. As Shultz later recalled:

In early December [1982] ... I got word that a supplement was moving through the lame-duck session of Congress to provide a $250 million increase in the amount of U.S. military assistance granted to Israel: this in the face of Israel's invasion of Lebanon, its use of cluster bombs, and its complicity in the Sabra and Shatila massacres! We fought the supplement and fought it hard. President Reagan and I weighed in personally, making numerous calls to senators and congressmen. On December 9, I added a formal letter of opposition saying that the supplement appeared "to endorse and reward Israel's policies." Foreign Minister Shamir called President Reagan's opposition "an unfriendly act" and said that "it endangers the peace process." The supplement sailed right by us and was approved by Congress as though President Reagan and I had not even been there. I was astonished and disheartened. This brought home to me vividly Israel's leverage in our Congress. I saw that I must work carefully with the Israelis if I was to have any handle on congressional action that might affect Israel and if I was to maintain congressional support for my efforts to make progress in the Middle East.114

Yet Shultz and Reagan soon followed Congress's lead: the 1981 MOU on strategic cooperation (suspended after Israel's annexation of the Golan Heights) was reinstated in November 1983, because key U.S. officials believed that close cooperation with Israel was the only way to influence Israel's behavior.115
   America's tendency to side with Israel extends to peace negotiations as well. The United States played a key role in the abortive peace efforts that followed the Six-Day War, as well as the talks that ended the War of Attrition in 1970. The United States agreed to consult with Israel before launching further peace initiatives in 1972, and Kissinger was never able to bring much pressure to bear on Israel during his conduct of the "step-by-step"
diplomacy that followed the October War. Kissinger complained at one point during the negotiations, "I ask Rabin to make concessions, and he says he can't because Israel is weak. So I give him more arms, and then he says he doesn't need to make concessions because Israel is strong."116 As discussed above, the disengagement agreements between Egypt and Israel were produced primarily through pledges of additional U.S. aid and by an American commitment to station civilian monitors in the Sinai.
   The same pattern can be seen in the Clinton administration's handling of the negotiations that produced the 1993 Oslo Accords and the unsuccessful attempt to reach a final status agreement in 1999-2000. There was occasional friction between Clinton administration officials and their Israeli counterparts, but the United States coordinated its positions closely with Israel and generally backed Israel's approach to the peace process, even when U.S. representatives had serious reservations about Israel's strategy.117 According to one Israeli negotiator, Ron Pundak, a key representative in the negotiations leading to Oslo and one of the architects of the subsequent framework agreement for the final status talks at Camp David in 2000, "The traditional approach of the [U.S.] State Department. . . was to adopt the position of the Israeli Prime Minister. This was demonstrated most extremely during the Netanyahu government, when the American government seemed sometimes to be working jbr the Israeli Prime Minister, as it tried to convince (and pressure) the Palestinian side to accept Israeli offers. This American tendency was also evident during Barak's tenure."118
   U.S. participants in the peace process have offered similar judgments. According to Robert Malley, special assistant for Arab-Israeli affairs under President Clinton and another key Camp David participant, "The [Israeli] ideas put forward at Camp David were never stated in writing . . . They generally were presented as U.S. concepts, not Israeli ones." This practice underscores the degree to which the United States was providing Israel with diplomatic help even when supposedly acting as a neutral mediator. U.S. negotiators were also constrained by the "no-surprise rule," which Malley describes as "the American commitment, if not to clear, at least to share in advance, each of its ideas with Israel. Because Barak's strategy precluded early exposure of his bottom lines to anyone (the President included), he would invoke the 'no-surprise rule' to argue against US substantive proposals he felt went too far. The US ended up (often unwittingly) presenting Israeli negotiating positions and couching them as rock-bottom red lines beyond which Israel could not go."119 As Aaron David Miller, an adviser to six different secretaries of state on Middle East and Arab-Israeli affairs and another key player in the Clinton ad
ministration's peace effort, put it during a 2005 postmortem on the failed negotiations: "Far too often, we functioned ... as Israel's lawyer."120

CONCLUSION

Since Israel's founding in 1948, many important elements of America's Middle East policy have come to center around its commitment to the Jewish state. As we shall discuss in detail in Part II, this tendency has become even more pronounced with the passage of time. To note one final sign of Israel's privileged position among U.S. allies: since 1976, six Israeli leaders have addressed joint sessions of Congress, a higher total than for any other country.121 A trivial indicator, perhaps, but it is still striking given that these six leaders represented a country whose 2007 population was less than that of New York City.
   Yitzhak Rabin was right: America's generosity toward Israel is "beyond compare in modern history." It has grown from modest beginnings to a "special relationship" that has no equal. As Mitchell Bard and Daniel Pipes put it, "From a comparative perspective, the United States and Israel may well have the most extraordinary tie in international politics."122
   This support has accomplished one positive end: it has helped Israel prosper. For many people, that fact alone might justify all of the support that the United States has provided over the years. Given this record, it is no surprise that a June 2003 Pew poll found that in twenty out of twenty-one countries surveyed—including close U.S. allies like Britain, France, Canada, and Australia—either a majority or plurality of the population believes that U.S. Middle East policy "favors Israel too much." What is more surprising, perhaps, is that a plurality of Israelis (47 percent) agreed.123
   Although the United States has derived a number of benefits from its support for Israel and from Israel's undeniable achievements, it has given far more than it has gained. This generosity would be understandable if Israel were a vital strategic asset for the United States—that is, if Israel's existence and continued growth made the United States substantially safer. It would also be easy to explain if there were a compelling moral rationale for maintaining such high levels of material aid and diplomatic backing. But this is not the case. In the next two chapters, we show that neither strategic interests nor moral imperatives can explain why the United States continues to give Israel such generous and unconstrained support.

ISRAEL: STRATEGIC ASSET OR LIABILITY?

DIPLOMATIC PROTECTION AND WARTIME SUPPORT

In addition to these tangible forms of economic and military aid, the United States provides Israel with consistent diplomatic support. Between 1972 and 2006, Washington vetoed forty-two UN Security Council resolutions that were critical of Israel. That number is greater than the combined total of all the vetoes cast by all the other Security Council members for the same period and amounts to slightly more than half of all American vetoes during these years.88 There were also numerous resolutions focusing on Israel that never reached a vote in the Security Council due to the threat of an American veto. In 2002, U.S. Ambassador to the UN John Negroponte reportedly told a closed meeting of the Security Council that the United States would henceforth veto any resolutions condemning Israel that did not simultaneously condemn terrorism in general and specifically mention Islamic Jihad, Hamas, and the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade by name.89 The United States has voted to censure Israel on a few occasions, but only after particularly egregious Israeli actions, when the resolution in question offered only mild criticisms, or when Washington wanted to communicate a degree of displeasure with Israeli intransigence.90
   Outside the Security Council, the United States routinely backs Israel whenever the UN General Assembly passes one of the many resolutions condemning Israeli behavior or calling for action on behalf of the Palestini
ans. Although these resolutions are nonbinding and largely symbolic, Washington's stance often puts it at odds with most of its allies and in the company of a tiny handful of other states. To take a typical example, UN General Assembly Resolution 59/124, on "Israeli Practices Affecting the Human Rights of the Palestinian People," passed by a vote of 149-7 (with 22 abstaining and 13 nonvoting) on December 10, 2004. Among the many nations supporting the resolution were Japan, Germany, France, China, and Great Britain. The six countries that joined with the United States to oppose the resolution were Israel, Australia, the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, and Palau.91
   Similarly, when Arab countries have tried to raise the issue of Israel's undeclared nuclear arsenal within the International Atomic Energy Agency, Washington has stepped in to prevent the organization from placing the matter on its agenda. As Israeli foreign ministry spokesman Jonathan Peled told the Jewish newspaper Forward in 2003, "The Arabs do this every year, but in order to have a comprehensive debate amid a consensus on a resolution against Israel, you need the okay of the board of governors [of the IAEA] and you don't have it" due to Washington's influence on the board.92
   America's willingness to take Israel's side in diplomacy and war has increased significantly over time. During the 1950s, as previously noted, the Eisenhower administration forced Israel to withdraw from the territory it had seized during the Suez War, and they successfully halted unilateral Israeli attempts to divert key water resources. Since the early 1960s, however, the United States has become more committed to protecting Israel's interests during major confrontations and in the subsequent negotiations. Washington has not given Jerusalem everything it wanted, but U.S. support has been consistent and considerable.
   When an escalating series of clashes between Israel and Syria in 1966-67 led Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser to order troops back into the Sinai in May, alarming Israel's leaders and raising the danger of a wider war, the Johnson administration was nonetheless convinced that Israel was militarily superior to its Arab adversaries and exaggerating the danger of an Arab attack.93 General Earle Wheeler, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, informed Johnson, "Our best estimate was that if there were a war, that the Israelis would win it in five to seven days," and Johnson himself told Israel Foreign Minister Abba Eban that if Egypt attacked, "you will whip hell out of them."94 Key Israeli leaders privately agreed with this assessment but continued to send Washington alarming reports as part of a deliberate campaign to elicit sympathy and support.95
   Based on its own appraisals, the United States tried to prevent the outbreak of war by convincing the Israeli government to refrain from using force and to pursue a diplomatic solution.96 President Johnson called Egypt's decision to close the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping on May 26 "illegal" and was sympathetic to Israel's concerns, but he did not want to commit U.S. forces in light of American involvement in Vietnam and refused to make a blanket pledge to come to Israel's aid. His efforts to restrain Israel gradually softened, however, and by the first week of June, Johnson and several of his advisers were hinting to Israeli officials that the United States would not object if Israel acted, cautioning that they should not expect U.S. help if things went badly. Secretary of State Dean Rusk told a journalist that "I don't think it is our business to restrain anyone," and Michael Brecher reports that by June 3, "the perceived [Israeli] impression was that, if Israel took the initiative . . . the United States would not take an unfriendly view." In effect, Johnson gave the Israelis what one expert later called a "yellow light" for an attack.97 The reasons for Johnson's shift remain obscure, although pressure from several pro-Israel friends and advisers, a letter-writing campaign organized by the Israeli embassy, and the growing sense that Israel was going to strike anyway may all have played a role.98
   The United States did not put significant pressure on Israel to halt the fighting until it had emerged victorious and did not criticize Israel's action after the war. Indeed, when the Soviet Union threatened to intervene following Israel's occupation of the Golan Heights (which threatened Syria, the Soviets' ally), the president ordered the U.S. Sixth Fleet to move closer to Israel in order to deter Soviet interference. In sharp contrast with the 1956 Suez War, the Johnson administration made it clear there would be no American pressure for an Israeli withdrawal except in the context of a broader peace agreement.99 Nor did the United States insist on a full and complete accounting of the tragic attack on the reconnaissance ship USS Liberty by Israeli naval and air forces on June 8, an event whose origins remain contested.100 The United States may not have given Israel the diplomatic and military protection it originally sought at the onset of the crisis, but there was no doubt where America's sympathies lay.
   The United States tilted even more strongly toward Israel during the 1969-70 War of Attrition. Aid to Israel increased during the fighting, consistent with Nixon and Kissinger's belief that steadfast support for Israel would reveal the limited value of Soviet aid and eventually convince Moscow's Arab clients to realign with the United States. Although the Nixon administration did not give Israel all the weapons it asked for, which occasionally led
to sharp exchanges between the two governments, the United States did provide increased arms supplies while doing relatively little to encourage Israeli concessions in the various peace talks that occurred during this period. When the escalating violence raised new fears of a possible superpower confrontation, however, Washington took the lead in arranging a cease-fire and persuaded Israel to accept it by promising significant aid increases.101 A memorandum of understanding in 1972 committed the United States to provide planes and tanks on a long-term basis, and Nixon and Kissinger pledged to consult Israel before offering any new peace proposals. By doing so, one of the world's two superpowers had in effect given a small country a quasi veto over subsequent diplomatic initiatives. By the early 1970s, writes William Quandt, "United States Middle East policy consisted of little more than open support for Israel," and Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban later termed this period the "golden age" in U.S. arms supplies.102
   U.S. support was even more dramatic during the October War in 1973. Nixon and Kissinger were initially confident that Israel would win a quick victory and believed that America's postwar leverage would be maximized if its support for Israel was not too overt and Israel did not win too decisively. As Kissinger recounts in his memoirs, "If Israel won overwhelmingly—as we first expected—we had to avoid becoming the focal point of all Arab resentments. We had to keep the Soviet Union from emerging as the Arabs' savior .. . If the unexpected happened and Israel was in difficulty, we would have to do what was necessary to save it."103 Given these expectations and strategic objectives, the United States responded slowly to Israel's initial requests for help. When Israel encountered unexpected difficulties and began running short of critical military supplies, however, Nixon and Kissinger ordered a full-scale airlift of vital military equipment, paid for with a $2.2 billion grant of supplemental military aid.104 Although the tide of battle had already turned before significant U.S. aid arrived, the assistance boosted Israel's morale and helped seal its victory.105 Unfortunately for the United States, the resupply effort also triggered an Arab oil embargo and production decrease that quickly sent world oil prices soaring and imposed significant economic costs on the United States and its allies.
   Within certain limits, U.S. diplomacy during the war favored Israel: the United States helped convince King Hussein of Jordan to remain on the sidelines, and Kissinger handled the cease-fire negotiations (most notably his talks with Soviet leaders in Moscow on October 21) with an eye toward preserving Israel's freedom of action until the final stages of the war. Nixon had instructed Kissinger to tell Soviet General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev that
the United States "wanted to use the war to impose a comprehensive peace in the Middle East," but in Moscow Kissinger successfully pressed for a simple cease-fire that would leave Israel with the upper hand and facilitate subsequent efforts to exclude the Soviet Union from the peace process. According to the historian Kenneth Stein, "The American-compiled minutes of the three meetings that Kissinger attended with Brezhnev unequivocally show that he accurately and repeatedly represented Israeli interests to Moscow, almost totally contrary to Nixon's preferences." Israel's leaders resented what they saw as Soviet-American collusion to author a cease-fire, but as Stein notes, "Kissinger, while not representing Israel to the Kremlin, certainly presented Israel's concerns."106
   When the Security Council passed a cease-fire resolution on October 22, calling for an end to all fighting within twelve hours, Kissinger permitted Israel to violate it in order to consolidate its military position. He had previously told Israeli Ambassador Simcha Dinitz that Israel would be "well-advised" to use the time afforded by his trip to Moscow to complete its military operations, and according to the National Security Archive, a Washington-based research group that specializes in declassified U.S. sources, "Kissinger secretly gave Israeli authorities a green light to breach [the] ceasefire agreement" in order to "buy time for Israeli military advances despite the impending ceasefire deadline."107 When the cease-fire broke down completely and the IDF surrounded Egypt's Third Army, prompting a blunt Soviet threat to intervene with its own troops, Nixon and Kissinger ordered a worldwide military alert, issued a sharp warning to Moscow to stay out, and told the Israelis it was now time to stop the fighting.
   Although there was considerable hard bargaining during the subsequent "step-by-step" diplomacy leading to the 1975 Sinai II disengagement agreement, the United States still worked to protect Israel's interests. In addition to giving Israel increased military aid, the United States pledged to "concert action" with Israel when preparing for a subsequent peace conference and gave Israel a de facto veto over PLO participation in any future peace talks. Indeed, Kissinger promised that the United States would not "recognize or negotiate" with the PLO so long as it did not recognize Israel's right to exist or accept UN Resolutions 242 and 338 (the cease-fire resolutions that ended the 1967 and 1973 wars, respectively, and called for Israel's withdrawal from occupied territories along with acknowledgment of its sovereignty and independence), a pledge that Congress codified into law in 1984.108 According to the Israeli historian Avi Shlaim, "[Israeli Prime Minister] Rabin made it clear to Kissinger that the cabinet would not ratify the Sinai II [disengagement] agreement unless it
was accompanied by an American-Israeli agreement." Shlaim terms the resulting arrangements "an alliance with America in all but name."109
   The United States came to Israel's aid once again following its ill-conceived invasion of Lebanon in 1982. Amid escalating violence between Israel and PLO forces in southern Lebanon, Israeli Defense Minister Ariel Sharon sought American approval for a military response intended to drive the PLO from Lebanon, eliminate Syrian influence, and bring the leader of the Lebanese Christians, Bashir Gemayel, to power. U.S. Secretary of State Alexander Haig appeared to give conditional approval for the scheme in his talks with Israeli officials—saying at one point that a hypothetical Israeli response should be swift, "like a lobotomy"—though he probably did not know the full extent of Israel's ambitions and cautioned that Israel should act only if there were, as Haig put it, an "internationally recognized provocation."110 Israel eventually invaded in June 1982 (even though Haig's criterion had not been met), but its ambitious plan to reorder Lebanese internal politics soon went awry. Although the IDF quickly routed the PLO and Syrian forces, the PLO remnants took refuge in Beirut and the IDF could not remove them without suffering extensive casualties and causing massive harm to Lebanese civilians. U.S. Special Envoy Philip Habib eventually negotiated a deal to end the siege and permit the PLO to withdraw, and several thousand U.S. marines were subsequently dispatched to Lebanon as part of a multinational peacekeeping force.
   Gemayel's assassination in September thwarted Israel's hope of creating a pro-Israel government in Lebanon, and the IDF then allowed Christian militias to enter the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps, where they proceeded to slaughter a large number of Palestinian and Lebanese civilians, with estimated death tolls ranging from roughly seven hundred to more than two thousand.111 Repeated efforts to end Lebanon's internal struggles and foreign occupation failed, and U.S. personnel were gradually drawn into the intensifying Lebanese maelstrom. A suicide bomber struck the American embassy in April 1983, killing sixty-three people, and a truck bomb attack on the marine barracks in October left 241 marines dead and paved the way for a complete U.S. withdrawal the following year.
   Even though U.S. officials—including President Reagan himself—were upset by Israel's conduct during the war, they did not try to punish Israel for its actions.

 The most singular feature of U.S. support for Israel is its increasingly unconditional nature. President Eisenhower could credibly threaten to withhold aid after the Suez War (though even he faced significant congressional opposition when he did), but those days are long past. Since the mid-1960s, Israel has continued receiving generous support even when it took actions American leaders thought were unwise and contrary to U.S. interests. Israel gets its aid despite its refusal to sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty and its various WMD programs. It gets its aid when it builds settlements in the Occupied Territories (losing only a small amount through reductions in loan guarantees), even though the U.S. government opposes this policy. It also gets its aid when it annexes territory it has conquered (as it did on the Golan Heights and in Jerusalem), sells U.S. military technology to potential enemies like China, conducts espionage operations on U.S. soil, or uses U.S. weapons in ways that violate U.S. law (such as the use of cluster munitions in civilian areas in Lebanon). It gets additional aid when it makes concessions for peace, but it rarely loses American support when it takes actions that make peace more elusive. And it gets its aid even when Israeli leaders renege on pledges made to U.S. presidents. Menachem Begin promised Ronald Reagan that he would not lobby against the proposed sale of AWACS aircraft to Saudi Arabia in 1981, for example, but Begin then went up to Capitol Hill and told a Senate panel that he opposed the deal.72
   One might think that U.S. generosity would give Washington considerable leverage over Israel's conduct, but this has not been the case. When dealing with Israel, in fact, U.S. leaders can usually elicit cooperation only by offering additional carrots (increased assistance) rather than employing sticks (threats to withhold aid). For example, the Israeli Cabinet agreed to publicly endorse UN Resolution 242—which, originally passed in November 1967, called for Israel's withdrawal from territories seized in the Six-Day War—only after President Richard Nixon gave private assurances that Israel would receive additional U.S. aircraft.73 Moreover, its acceptance of the cease-fire agreement that ended the so-called War of Attrition with Egypt (a protracted series of air, artillery, and infantry clashes that began along the Suez Canal in March 1969 and continued until July 1970) was bought by a U.S. pledge to accelerate aircraft deliveries to Israel, to provide advanced electronic countermeasures against Egypt's Soviet-supplied antiaircraft missiles, and, more generally, to "maintain the balance of power."74 According to Shimon Peres (who served as Minister without Portfolio during this period), "As to the question of U.S. pressure on
us to accept their programme, I would say they handled us more with a carrot than with a stick; in any event they never threatened us with sanctions."75
   This pattern continued through the 1970s, with Presidents Nixon, Ford, and Carter pledging ever-larger sums of aid in the course of the disengagement talks with Egypt and during the negotiations that led to the 1978 Camp David Accords and the 1979 Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty. Specifically, U.S. aid to Israel increased from $1.9 billion in 1975 to $6.29 billion in 1976 (following completion of the Sinai II agreement) and from $4.4 billion in 1978 to $10.9 billion in 1979 (following the final peace treaty with Egypt).76 As discussed below, the United States also made a number of other commitments to Israel in order to persuade it to sign. In much the same way, the Clinton administration gave Israel increased assistance as part of the peace treaty with Jordan in 1994, and Clinton's efforts to advance the Oslo peace process led him to pledge an additional $1.2 billion in military aid to Israel to win Israel's acceptance of the 1998 Wye Agreement. Prime Minister Netanyahu suspended the Wye Agreement shortly after it was signed, however, following a violent confrontation between a Palestinian crowd and two Israeli citizens.77 According to U.S. negotiator Dennis Ross, "It was hard to escape the conclusion that Bibi [Netanyahu] . . . was seizing on this incident to avoid further implementation. This was unfortunate, because the Palestinians were working diligently to carry out most of their commitments under Wye, particularly in the area of making arrests and fighting terror."78 Yet as the Israeli scholar Abraham Ben-Zvi observes, "The Clinton administration's frustration with Netanyahu's style was rarely translated into policy that harmed the American-Israeli special relationship."79
   Indeed, attempts to use America's potential leverage face significant obstacles and are rarely attempted, even when U.S. officials are deeply upset by Israeli actions. When President Gerald Ford and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger grew impatient with Israeli intransigence during the disengagement negotiations with Egypt in 1975, a threat to curtail aid and conduct a far-reaching reassessment of U.S. policy was derailed when seventy-six senators signed a letter sponsored by AIPAC demanding that Ford remain "responsive" to Israel's economic and military needs. With their ability to reduce U.S. aid effectively blocked, Ford and Kissinger had little choice but to resume "step-by-step" diplomacy and try to gain Israeli concessions by offering additional inducements.80
   President Jimmy Carter was similarly upset by Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begins failure to implement the full terms of the 1978 Camp David Accords (the breakthrough agreement that created the framework for
the subsequent peace treaty between Egypt and Israel), but he never tried to link U.S. assistance to Israeli compliance.81 Clinton administration officials were equally frustrated when Prime Ministers Netanyahu and Barak did not live up to all of Israel's commitments in the Oslo agreements, and Clinton was reportedly "furious" when Barak reneged on a commitment to transfer three Jerusalem villages to Palestinian control, declaring that Barak was making him a "false prophet" in the eyes of another foreign leader, Yasser Arafat. Clinton also erupted when Barak tried to shift ground during the 2000 Camp David Summit, telling him, "I can't go see Arafat with a retrenchment! You can sell it; there is no way I can. This is not real. This is not serious."82 Yet Clinton did not react to these maneuvers by threatening to withhold support.
   To be sure, America has occasionally withheld aid temporarily in order to express displeasure over particular Israeli actions, but such gestures are usually symbolic and short-lived, and have little lasting effect on Israeli conduct. In 1977, for example, Israel used U.S. armored personnel carriers to intervene in southern Lebanon (a step that violated both the Arms Export Control Act requirement that U.S. arms be used only for "legitimate self defense" and Prime Minister Menachem Begin's pledge to take no action in Lebanon without first consulting Washington) and then denied having done so. After sophisticated intelligence information exposed Israel's deception, the Carter administration threatened to terminate future military shipments and Begin ordered that the equipment be withdrawn.83
   A similar example is the Reagan administration's decision to suspend the 1981 memorandum of understanding on strategic cooperation following Israel's de facto annexation of the Golan Heights, but Reagan later implemented the key provisions of the agreement even though Israel never reversed the annexation. The United States also halted shipments of cluster munitions after Israel violated prior agreements regarding their use during the 1982 invasion of Lebanon, but began supplying them again in 1988.84 U.S. pressure also helped persuade Israel not to conduct a full-fledged assault on the PLO forces that had taken refuge in Beirut after Israel's 1982 invasion, but Israel's leaders were themselves reluctant to take this step and thus did not need much convincing.85
   In 1991, the first Bush administration pressured the Shamir government to stop building settlements and to attend a planned peace conference by withholding the $10 billion loan guarantee, but the suspension lasted only a few months and the guarantees were approved once Yitzhak Rabin replaced Shamir as prime minister.86 Israel agreed to halt construction of new settlements but continued to expand the existing blocs, and the number of set
tiers in the Occupied Territories increased by 8,000 (14.7 percent) in 1991, by 6,900 (10.3 percent) in 1993, by 6,900 (9.7 percent) in 1994, and by 7,300 (9.1 percent) in 1996, rates significantly higher than Israel's overall population growth during these years.87
   A similar episode occurred in 2003, when the second Bush administration tried to signal its opposition to Israel's "security wall" in the West Bank by making a token reduction in U.S. loan guarantees to Israel. Withholding the entire guarantee or reducing direct foreign aid might have had an effect, but Bush merely withheld a portion of the loan guarantee equivalent to the estimated costs of those portions of the wall that were encroaching on Palestinian lands. Israel simply had to pay a higher interest rate on a small portion of its loan, a penalty amounting to a few million dollars. When compared to the billions of dollars of U.S. aid that Israel already gets (and expects to get in the future), this was barely a slap on the wrist. It had no discernible effect on Israel's behavior.

DIPLOMATIC PROTECTION AND WARTIME SUPPORT

MILITARY ASSISTANCE

These various forms of economic assistance have been and remain important to Israel, but the bulk of U.S. support is now committed to preserving Israel's military supremacy in the Middle East.45 Not only does Israel receive access to top-drawer U.S. weaponry (F-15 and F-16 aircraft, Blackhawk helicopters, cluster munitions, "smart bombs," etc.), it has also become linked to the U.S. defense and intelligence establishments through a diverse array of formal agreements and informal links. According to the Congressional Research
Service, "U.S. military aid has helped transform Israel's armed forces into one of the most technologically sophisticated militaries in the world."46
   Moreover, according to the Wall Street Journal, Israel "enjoys unusually wide latitude in spending the [military assistance] funds."47 The Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA) handles almost all the purchasing and monitors U.S. aid for all other military aid recipients, but Israel deals directly with military contractors for virtually all of its purchases and then gets reimbursed from its aid account.48 Israel is also the only country where contracts for less than $500,000 are exempt from prior U.S. review.49
   The potential risks inherent in these comparatively lax oversight arrangements were revealed in the early 1990s, when the head of Israeli Air Force procurement, Brigadier General Rami Dotan, was found to have embezzled and illegally diverted millions of dollars of U.S. aid. According to the Wall Street Journal, Dotan (who eventually pleaded guilty in Israel and received a lengthy jail sentence) reportedly "parceled out work orders to stay under the $500,000 threshold." Nonetheless, the head of DSCA's predecessor, the Defense Security Assistance Agency, Lieutenant General Teddy Allen, subsequently told a congressional subcommittee that the Department of Defense inspector general's recommendation that the aid program for Israel be "revamped" had been rejected because it might cause "turbulence in our relations" with Israel.50
   In addition to the economic and military aid already described, the United States has provided Israel with nearly $3 billion to develop weapons like the Lavi aircraft, the Merkava tank, and the Arrow missile.51 These projects were funded through the U.S. Department of Defense and often portrayed as joint research and development efforts, but the United States did not need these weapons and never intended to purchase them for its own use. The Lavi project was eventually canceled on cost-effectiveness grounds (with much of the cancellation cost being borne by the United States), but the other weapons went into Israel's arsenal at Uncle Sam's expense.52 The FY2004 U.S. defense budget included a $136 million request for the Arrow, for example, with $66 million allocated for additional improvements to the system and $70 million authorized for the production of additional units. Thus, the money that Washington pays to help Israel's defense industry develop or produce these "joint weapons projects" is in reality another form of subsidy.53 The United States sometimes benefits from the technology that Israeli firms develop, but America would benefit even more if these funds were used to support high-tech industries in the United States.
Military ties between the United States and Israel were upgraded in the
1980s, as part of the Reagan administration's effort to build an anti-Soviet "strategic consensus" in the Middle East. Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger and Israeli Minister of Defense Ariel Sharon signed a memorandum of understanding in 1981 establishing a "framework for continued consultation and cooperation to enhance their national security."54 This agreement led to the creation of a Joint Security Assistance Planning Group (JSAP) and Joint Political Military Group, which meet regularly to review Israel's aid requests and to coordinate military plans, joint exercises, and logistical arrangements. Although Israeli leaders had hoped for a formal treaty of alliance and were disappointed by the limited nature of the framework agreement, it was a more formal expression of a U.S. commitment than earlier presidential statements, such as Kennedy's private remarks to Golda Meirin 1962.
   Despite tensions over a wide array of issues—U.S. arms sales to Saudi Arabia, the 1981 bombing of Iraq's nuclear reactor, Israel's annexation of the Golan Heights in December 1981, its invasion of Lebanon in 1982, and its abrupt rejection of the "Reagan Plan" for peace in September 1982—security cooperation between Israel and the United States increased steadily in the Reagan years. Joint military exercises began in 1984, and in 1986 Israel became one of three foreign countries invited to participate in the U.S. Strategic Defense Initiative (aka "Star Wars"). Finally, in 1988, a new memorandum of agreement reaffirmed the "close partnership between Israel and the United States" and designated Israel a "Major Non-NATO Ally," along with Australia, Egypt, Japan, and South Korea. States enjoying this status are eligible to purchase a wider array of U.S. weapons at lower prices, get priority delivery on war surplus materiel, and participate in joint research and development projects and U.S. counterterrorism initiatives. Commercial firms from these states also get preferential treatment when bidding for U.S. defense contracts.55
   Security links between the two countries have expanded ever since. The United States began prepositioning military supplies in Israel in 1989, and Congress voted in 2006 to increase the stockpile from roughly $ 100 million to $400 million by 2008.56 This policy has been justified as a way to enhance the Pentagon's ability to respond quickly to a regional crisis, but prepositioning U.S. supplies in Israel is actually an inefficient way to prepare for this contingency and the Pentagon has never been enthusiastic about this policy. According to Shai Feldman, former head of Tel Aviv University's Jaffe Institute of Strategic Studies, "Present arrangements permit the storage only of materiel that could also be used in an emergency by Israeli forces. In the
view of Pentagon planners, this implies that the United States cannot be absolutely certain that arms and ammunition stored in Israel would be available in a crisis situation. Moreover, this 'dual use' arrangement means that instead of storing weapons and ordnance for pre-designated U.S. units, weapons would have to be distributed from general stocks under crisis conditions and then integrated into different combat units, creating a logistical nightmare."57 The real purpose of the stockpile program is to enhance Israel's materiel reserves, and it is hardly surprising that Ynetnews, a Web news service affiliated with the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth, reported in December 2006 that "a great portion of the American equipment stored in Israel . . . was used for combat in the summer [2006] war in Lebanon."58
   Building on the other working groups created during the 1980s, the United States and Israel established a Joint Anti-Terrorism Working Group in 1996 and set up an electronic "hotline" between the Pentagon and Israel's Ministry of Defense. Further cementing the links between the two states, Israel was given access to the U.S. satellite-based missile warning system in 1997. Then, in 2001, the two states established an annual "interagency strategic dialogue" to discuss "long-term issues." The latter forum was temporarily suspended during a dispute over Israeli sales of American military technology to China, but it reconvened in November 2005.59
   As one would expect, U.S.-Israeli security cooperation also extends to the realm of intelligence. Cooperation between U.S. and Israeli intelligence services dates back to the late 1950s, and by 1985 the two countries had reportedly signed some two dozen intelligence-sharing arrangements. Israel gave the United States access to captured Soviet weaponry and to reports from emigres from the Soviet bloc, while the United States provided Israel with satellite imagery during the 1973 October War and prior to the 1976 Entebbe hostage rescue, and reportedly helped finance several Israeli intelligence operations in Africa.60 In the early 1980s, the United States even gave Israel access to certain forms of intelligence that it denied its closest NATO allies. In particular, Israel reportedly received almost unlimited access to intelligence from the sophisticated KH-11 reconnaissance satellite ("not only the information, but the photos themselves," according to the head of Israeli military intelligence), while British access to the same source was much more limited.61 Access to this data was restricted following Israel's raid on Iraq's Osirak reactor in 1981, but the first President Bush is believed to have authorized the transfer of real-time satellite information about Iraq's Scud attacks during the 1991 Gulf War.62
In contrast to Washington's long-standing opposition to the spread of
weapons of mass destruction, the United States has tacitly supported Israel's effort to maintain regional military superiority by turning a blind eye toward its various clandestine WMD programs, including its possession of upward of two hundred nuclear weapons.63 The U.S. government has pressed dozens of states to sign the 1968 Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), but American leaders did little to pressure Israel to halt its nuclear program and sign the agreement. The Kennedy administration clearly wanted to restrain Israel's nuclear ambitions in the early 1960s, and it eventually persuaded Israel to permit U.S. scientists to tour Israel's nuclear research facility at Dimona to ascertain whether Israel was trying to produce a nuclear bomb. The Israeli government repeatedly denied that it had a weapons program, dragged its feet in scheduling visits, and imposed onerous restrictions on the inspectors' access when visits did occur. Thus, the first U.S. visit, on May 18, 1961, involved just two American scientists and lasted only four days, only one of them spent at the Dimona site. According to Warren Bass, "Israel's strategy was to permit a visit . . . but ensure that the inspectors did not find anything." Pressed to allow a follow-up visit a year later, the Israelis unexpectedly invited U.S. Atomic Energy Commission officials inspecting a different Israeli facility to make an impromptu tour of Dimona. As Bass notes, this visit "hardly merits the name 'inspection,'" but the Kennedy administration "did not seem eager to pick a fight."64
   Kennedy stepped up the pressure the following year, however, sending both Ben-Gurion and his successor, Levi Eshkol, several stern letters demanding biannual inspections "in accord with international standards" and warning that "this Government's commitment to and support of Israel could be seriously jeopardized" if the United States were unable to resolve its concerns about Israel's nuclear ambitions.65 Kennedy's threats convinced Israel's leaders to permit additional visits, but the concession did not lead to compliance. As Eshkol reportedly told his colleagues after receiving Kennedy's July 1963 demarche: "What am I frightened of? His man will come, and he will actually be told that he can visit [the Dimona site] and go anywhere he wishes, but when he wants a door opened at some place or another then [Emanuel] Prat [head of construction at Dimona] will tell him 'Not that.'"66 On other visits, inspectors were not permitted to bring in outside instruments or take samples.
   As the more recent cases of Iraq and North Korea remind us, such ob-fuscatory tactics are part of the standard playbook for all clandestine prolif-erators. U.S. officials remained suspicious about Jerusalem's nuclear plans, but Israel's deception worked because neither Kennedy nor his successor,
Lyndon Johnson, was willing to withhold U.S. support if Israel were not more forthcoming. As a result, notes Avner Cohen in his detailed history of Israel's nuclear program, "the Israelis were able to determine the rules of the [U.S.] visits and the Johnson administration chose not to confront Israel on the issue, fearing that Israel would end the arrangement . . . Kennedy threatened both Ben Gurion and [Levi] Eshkol that noncompliance . . . could jeopardize American commitment to Israel's security and well being,' but Johnson was unwilling to risk an American-Israeli crisis over the issue."67 "Instead of inspections every six months," writes Bass, "in practice Johnson settled for a quick visit once a year or so."68 And when CIA Director Richard Helms came to the White House in 1968 to inform Johnson that U.S. intelligence had concluded that Israel had in fact acquired a nuclear capability, Johnson told him to make sure that nobody else was shown the evidence, including Secretary of State Dean Rusk and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. According to the journalist Seymour Hersh, "Johnson's purpose in chasing Helms—and his intelligence—away was clear: he did not want to know what the CIA was trying to tell him, for once he accepted that information, he would have to act on it. By 1968, the President had no intention of doing anything to stop the Israeli bomb."69
   In addition to its nuclear arsenal, Israel maintains active chemical and biological weapons programs and has yet to ratify either the Chemical or Biological Weapons Convention.70 The irony is hard to miss: the United States has pressured many other states to join the NPT, imposed sanctions on countries that have defied U.S. wishes and acquired nuclear weapons anyway, gone to war in 2003 to prevent Iraq from pursuing WMD, and contemplated attacking Iran and North Korea for the same reason. Yet Washington has long subsidized an ally whose clandestine WMD activities are well-known and whose nuclear arsenal has given several of its neighbors a powerful incentive to seek WMD themselves.
   With the partial exception of Soviet support for Cuba, it is hard to think of another instance where one country has provided another with a similar level of material aid over such an extended period.71 America's willingness to provide some support to Israel is not surprising, of course, because U.S. leaders have long favored Israel's existence and understood that it faced a hostile threat environment. As discussed below and in Chapter 2, U.S. leaders also saw aid to Israel as a way to advance broader foreign policy goals. Nonetheless, the sheer magnitude of U.S. aid is remarkable. As we show in Chapter 3, Israel was stronger than its neighbors before significant American military aid commenced, and it is now a prosperous country. U.S. aid
has undoubtedly been useful for Israel, but it may not have been essential to its survival.
   The most singular feature of U.S. support for Israel is its increasingly unconditional nature.

Washington authorized a second round of loan guarantees in 2003, totaling nearly $9 billion, to help Israel prepare for the war with Iraq, deal with a protracted economic crisis, and cover the costs imposed by the Second
Palestinian Intifada. Because Israel is legally barred from using U.S. economic aid in the Occupied Territories, the actual amount allocated was eventually reduced by an amount equivalent to Israel's estimated expenditures on settlement construction. This reduction is not as severe as it may sound, however, as it involved no decrease in direct U.S. aid and merely forced Israel to pay a slightly higher interest rate on a small portion of the borrowed funds.
   In addition to government subsidized aid and loan guarantees, Israel receives an estimated $2 billion annually in private donations from American citizens, roughly half in direct payments and half via the purchase of State of Israel Bonds.28 These bonds receive favorable treatment in U.S. law; although the interest paid on them is not tax-exempt, Congress specifically exempted them from the provisions of the 1984 Deficit Reduction Act, which imposed additional tax penalties on other bonds with yields below the federal rate.29 Similarly, private donations to charities in most foreign countries are not tax deductible, but many private donations to Israel are, due to a special clause in the U.S.-Israel income tax treaty.30
   This flow of money to Israel has been a crucial boon to the general economy, but private contributions from U.S. citizens have also played an important strategic role, going back to the preindependence era.31 In his memoirs, Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres revealed that private contributions from wealthy diaspora Jews (including several Americans) had helped finance Israel's clandestine nuclear program in the 1950s and 1960s. According to the Israeli journalist Michael Karpin, a key coordinator of this fund-raising effort was Abraham Feinberg, a well-connected U.S. businessman, philanthropist, and political adviser, and contributors to the campaign reportedly included Canadian beverage magnate Samuel Bronfman and several members of the Rothschild family. Feinberg never divulged the names of the American donors, however, and his own role has never been officially confirmed.32 Today, groups like the Friends of Israel Defense Forces raise funds in the United States to "support social, educational, cultural and recreational programs and facilities for the young men and women soldiers of Israel who defend the Jewish homeland." One recent dinner in New York reportedly raised some $18 million in contributions, which are tax deductible under U.S. law.33
   Other private donations from U.S. citizens have also helped subsidize Israel's prolonged campaign to colonize the Occupied Territories. These contributions to settlements in the West Bank (including those made via U.S. charities or other "Friends of . . ." organizations) are not supposed to be tax
exempt in the United States, but such restrictions are inherently difficult to enforce and were loosely monitored in the past.34 For example, in order to safeguard the tax-exempt status of U.S. donations to the Jewish Agency for Israel (a quasi-governmental organization that helps settle new arrivals in Israel), the task of aiding settlements in the Occupied Territories was taken out of the agency's Settlement Department and assigned to a new "Settlement Division" within the World Zionist Organization (WZO). But as Ger-shom Gorenberg points out, "The Division was a shell that contracted all services from the Jewish Agency . . . The change kept the U.S. Jewish philanthropies clear of the occupied territories. On the ground, the same people continued the same efforts."35 This problem was underscored when an official Israeli government study directed by Talia Sasson, former chief criminal prosecutor, revealed that the Settlement Division of the WZO (which receives support from prominent Jewish organizations all over the world) was actively involved in the creation of unauthorized settlements in the Occupied Territories.36 More broadly, because Israeli charities operate beyond the reach of U.S. tax authorities, donations from Jewish and Christian evangelical organizations are hard to monitor once they are transferred to Israel. In practice, therefore, the U.S. government cannot easily determine the extent to which tax-exempt private donations are being diverted for unauthorized purposes.37
   All this largesse is especially striking when one realizes that Israel is not a poor or devastated country like Afghanistan, Niger, Burma, or Sierra Leone. On the contrary, Israel is now a modern industrial power. Its per capita income in 2006 was twenty-ninth in the world, according to the International Monetary Fund, and is nearly double that of Hungary and the Czech Republic, substantially higher than Portugal's, South Korea's, or Taiwan's, and far outstrips every country in Latin America and Africa.38 It ranks twenty-third in the United Nations' 2006 Human Development Report and thirty-eighth in the Economist Intelligence Unit's 2005 "quality of life" rankings.39 Yet this comparatively prosperous state is America's biggest aid recipient, each year receiving sums that dwarf U.S. support for impoverished states such as Bangladesh, Bolivia, and Liberia. This anomaly is even acknowledged by some of Israel's more fervent supporters in the United States. In 1997, for example, Mitchell Bard, the former editor of AIPAC's Near East Report, and Daniel Pipes, the hawkish founder of the pro-Israel Middle East Forum, wrote that "Israel has become an affluent country with a personal income rivaling Great Britain's, so the American willingness to provide aid to Israel is no longer based purely on need."40
   The United States has taken on other economic burdens for Israel's benefit, often as part of efforts to persuade Israel to accept or implement peace agreements with its neighbors. As part of the 1975 disengagement agreement between Egypt and Israel, for example, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) that committed the United States to guarantee Israel's oil needs in the event of a crisis and to finance and stock "a supplementary strategic reserve" for Israel, at an estimated cost of several hundred million dollars.41 The oil guarantee was reaffirmed during the final peace negotiations between Egypt and Israel in March 1979 and has been quietly renewed ever since.42
   Finally, the aid that the United States provides to several of Israel's neighbors is at least partly intended to benefit Israel as well. Egypt and Jordan are the number two and three recipients of U.S. foreign aid, but most of this money should be seen as a reward for good behavior—specifically, their willingness to sign peace treaties with Israel. Egypt received $71.7 million in U.S. aid in 1974, but it got $1,127 billion in 1975 and $1,320 billion in 1976 (in constant 2005 dollars) following completion of the Sinai II disengagement agreement. U.S. aid to Egypt reached $2.3 billion in 1978 and soared to a whopping $5.9 billion in 1979, the year the Egypt-Israeli peace treaty was signed. Cairo still gets about $2 billion annually.43 Similarly, Jordan received $76 million in direct aid in 1994 and only $57 million in 1995, but Congress rewarded King Hussein's decision to sign a peace treaty in 1994 by forgiving Jordan's $700 million debt to the United States and removing other restrictions on U.S. aid. Since 1997, U.S. aid to Jordan has averaged roughly $566 million annually.44 U.S. willingness to reward Egypt and Jordan in this way is yet another manifestation of Washington's generosity toward the Jewish state.

MILITARY ASSISTANCE

THE UNITED STATES, ISRAEL, AND THE LOBBY
THE GREAT BENEFACTOR

"We are more than thankful to you." Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was uncharacteristically effusive when he appeared before a joint session of Congress on July 26, 1994. Extending his remarks to the "wonderful people of America," Rabin emphasized that "no words can express our gratitude . . . for your generous support, understanding, and cooperation, which are beyond compare in modern history." Two years later, following Rabin's tragic assassination, one of his successors, Benjamin Netanyahu, stood in the same spot and offered similar words of appreciation: "The United States has given Israel—how can I tell it to this body? The United States has given Israel, apart from political and military support, munificent and magnificent assistance in the economic sphere. With America's help, Israel has grown to be a powerful, modern state." He told his audience, "I know that I speak for every Israeli and every Jew throughout the world when I say to you today, 'Thank you, people of America.'"1
   These statements—and others like them—are not merely the gracious rhetoric that one typically hears from visiting foreign dignitaries. Rabin's and Netanyahu's words are an accurate description of the remarkable backing that the United States has long provided to the Jewish state. American taxpayers' money has subsidized Israel's economic development and rescued it during periods of financial crisis. American military assistance has strengthened Israel in wartime and helped preserve its military dominance in the Middle East. Washington has given Israel extensive diplomatic support in war and peace, and has helped insulate it from some of the adverse consequences of its own actions. U.S. aid has also been a key ingredient in the protracted Arab-Israeli peace process, with agreements such as the Camp
David Accords or the peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan resting on explicit promises of increased American assistance. More than any other country, the United States has been Israel's great benefactor.

ECONOMIC AID

The most obvious indicator of Israel's favored position is the total amount of foreign aid it has received from America's taxpayers. As of 2005, direct U.S. economic and military assistance to Israel amounted to nearly $ 154 billion (in 2005 dollars), the bulk of it comprising direct grants rather than loans.2 As discussed below, the actual total is significantly higher, because direct U.S. aid is given under unusually favorable terms and the United States provides Israel with other forms of material assistance that are not included in the foreign assistance budget.
   Because this level of support is rarely questioned today, it is easy to forget that the "special relationship" that now exists did not emerge until several decades after Israel's founding. Prior to World War II, American leaders occasionally offered rhetorical support for the Zionist goal of a Jewish homeland, but no president exerted much effort to advance that objective. President Harry S. Truman did play a key role in supporting the establishment of a Jewish homeland when he decided to back the UN partition plan in 1947 and to recognize Israel immediately after its declaration of independence in May 1948. But both the Truman and Eisenhower administrations also realized that embracing Israel too closely would jeopardize relations with the Arab world and provide the Soviet Union with enticing opportunities to gain influence in the Middle East. Accordingly, the United States sought to steer a middle course between Israel and its Arab neighbors during the 1950s; economic aid to Israel was modest and the United States provided hardly any direct military assistance.3 Israeli requests to purchase American weaponry were politely rejected, as were requests for a U.S. security guarantee.4
   There were also several sharp diplomatic disagreements between Washington and Jerusalem during this period. When Israel ignored UN demands that it halt work on a canal to divert water from the Jordan River in September 1953, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles promptly announced that the United States was suspending foreign assistance. The threat worked: Israel agreed to stop the project on October 27 and U.S. aid was restored.5 Similar threats to halt American aid played a key role in convincing Israel to withdraw from the territory it had seized from Egypt in the 1956 Suez War.
Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion saw the war as an opportunity for territorial expansion, and he began the prewar discussions with Britain and France (the primary instigators of the attack on Egypt) by suggesting that Jordan be divided between Israel and Iraq and that Israel be given portions of Lebanon and control over the Straits of Tiran.6 Britain and France were preoccupied with Egypt and uninterested in this grand scheme. But Ben-Gurion made several statements following the conquest by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) of the Sinai Peninsula (including a speech in the Knesset on November 7) suggesting that the 1949 armistice agreements were void and that Israel intended to keep the lands it had just seized. When Eisenhower threatened to block all public and private aid to Israel, Ben-Gurion quickly backtracked, agreeing "in principle" to withdraw in exchange for adequate assurances of Israel's security. Israel then worked to rally support in the United States, a campaign that reduced Eisenhower's congressional support and led him to make a nationally televised speech justifying his actions. Israel finally withdrew from all the territories it had conquered in the spring of 1957, in exchange for assurances regarding border security in Gaza and freedom of navigation in the Straits of Tiran.7
   U.S.-Israeli relations had warmed by the late 1950s, but it was the Kennedy administration that made the first tangible U.S. commitment to Israel's military security.8 In December 1962, in fact, Kennedy told Israeli Foreign Minister Golda Meir that the United States "has a special relationship with Israel in the Middle East really comparable only to that which it has with Britain over a wide range of world affairs," adding that "I think it is quite clear that in case of an invasion the United States would come to the support of Israel. We have that capacity and it is growing."9 Kennedy soon thereafter authorized the first major sale of U.S. weaponry—Hawk antiaircraft missiles—to Israel in 1963. This shift reflected a number of strategic considerations—such as the desire to balance Soviet arms sales to Egypt, dampen Israel's nuclear ambitions, and encourage Israel's leaders to respond favorably to U.S. peace initiatives—but skillful Israeli diplomacy, the influence of several pro-Israel advisers, and Kennedy's understandable desire to maintain support from Jewish voters and donors played a role in his decision as well.10 The Hawk sale opened the door to several additional weapons deals, most notably the sale of more than two hundred M48A battle tanks in 1964. In an attempt to disguise American involvement and thereby limit repercussions in the Arab world, the tanks were shipped to Israel by West Germany, which in turn received replacements from the United States.11
In terms of the absolute amount of U.S. aid, however, the real sea change
took place following the Six-Day War in June 1967. After averaging roughly $63 million annually from 1949 to 1965 (more than 95 percent of which was economic assistance and food aid), average aid increased to $102 million per year from 1966 to 1970. Support soared to $634.5 million in 1971 (roughly 85 percent was military assistance) and more than quintupled after the Yom Kippur War in 1973. Israel became the largest annual recipient of U.S. foreign assistance in 1976, a position it has retained ever since. Support for Israel shifted from loans to direct grants during this period, with the bulk of U.S. aid consisting of military assistance rather than economic or technical support. According to Clyde Mark of the Congressional Research Service (CRS), the official research arm of the U.S. Congress, "Israel preferred that the aid be in the form of loans, rather than grants, to avoid having a U.S. military contingent in Israel to oversee a grant program. Since 1974, some or all of U.S. military aid to Israel has been in the form of loans for which repayment is waived. Technically, the assistance is called loans, but as a practical matter, the military aid is grant."12
   Israel now receives on average about $3 billion in direct foreign assistance each year, an amount that is roughly one-sixth of America's direct foreign assistance budget and equal to about 2 percent of Israel's GDR In recent years, about 75 percent of U.S. assistance has been military aid, with the remainder broken down into various forms of economic aid.13 In per capita terms, this level of direct foreign assistance amounts to a direct subsidy of more than $500 per year for each Israeli. By comparison, the number two recipient of American foreign aid, Egypt, receives only $20 per person, and impoverished countries such as Pakistan and Haiti receive roughly $5 per person and $27 per person, respectively.14 Jerusalem and Washington agreed to gradually phase out economic assistance beginning in 1997, and Congress has reduced economic aid to Israel by $ 120 million per year since FY1999. This step has been partly compensated for by a parallel U.S. commitment to increase its military aid by $60 million per year, and by congressional willingness to vote supplemental aid packages, such as the $1.2 billion provided to support implementation of the 1998 Wye Agreement (in which Israel agreed to withdraw forces from parts of the West Bank) and an additional $1 billion in foreign military financing (FMF) aid in 2003 to help Israel prepare for the war with Iraq.15
   Three billion dollars per year is generous, but it is hardly the whole story. As noted above, the canonical $3 billion figure omits a substantial number of other benefits and thus significantly understates the actual level of U.S. support. Indeed, in 1991, Representative Lee Hamilton (D-IN) told re
porters that Israel was one of three countries whose aid "substantially exceeds the popularly quoted figures" and said the annual figure was in fact more than $4.3 billion.16
   The discrepancy arises in part because Israel gets its aid under more favorable terms than most other recipients of U.S. assistance.17 Most recipients of American foreign aid get their money in quarterly installments, but since 1982, the annual foreign aid bill has included a special clause specifying that Israel is to receive its entire annual appropriation in the first thirty days of the fiscal year.18 This is akin to receiving your entire annual salary on January 1 and thus being able to earn interest on the unspent portion until you used it.
   Because the U.S. government normally runs budget deficits, transferring the aid all at once requires it to borrow the necessary amount of money up front, and the CRS estimates that it costs U.S. taxpayers "between $50 and $60 million per year to borrow funds for the early, lump-sum payment."19 Moreover, the U.S. government ends up paying Israel additional interest when Israel reinvests the unspent portion in U.S. treasury bills. According to the U.S. embassy in Israel, early transfer of FMF funds has enabled Israel to earn some $660 million in extra interest as of 2004.20 Israel has also received "excess defense articles" (surplus U.S. military equipment provided to friendly nations either free of charge or heavily discounted) beyond the normal limits imposed by the 1976 Arms Export Control Act. This limit was originally set at $250 million (excluding ships), but the appropriations bill of November 5, 1990, authorized a "one-time only" transfer to Israel of $700 million worth of surplus U.S. equipment in 1991.21
   Likewise, the FMF program normally requires recipients of U.S. military assistance to spend all of the money here in the United States, to help keep American defense workers employed. Congress grants Israel a special exemption in the annual appropriations bill, however, authorizing it to use about one out of every four U.S. military aid dollars to subsidize its own defense industry. "No other recipient of U.S. military assistance has been granted this benefit," notes a recent CRS report, and "the proceeds to Israeli defense firms from purchases with U.S. funds have allowed the Israeli defense industry to achieve necessary economies of scale and become highly sophisticated." By 2004, in fact, Israel, a comparatively small country, had become the world's eighth largest arms supplier.22
   Along with Egypt and Turkey, Israel is also permitted to apply its entire FMF funding to meet its current year obligations, rather than having to set aside portions to cover expected costs in subsequent years. According to the
U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO), this "cash flow" method of financing "permits a country to order more defense goods and services than it normally could because less money must be reserved when a contract is signed."23 Israel can make its payments as long as the United States continues to provide similar amounts of aid, a situation that makes it harder for the United States to reduce its support in the future. And in a further manipulation of the methods of financing, recipients of U.S. aid are normally expected to draw down FMF loans and grants at an equal rate, but Israel is allowed to draw down the grant (or waived) portions of its FMF allocation before it uses any loaned portions. By delaying the date on which the loan is activated, this procedure reduces the amount of interest that Israel owes Uncle Sam.24
   Remarkably, Israel is the only recipient of U.S. economic aid that does not have to account for how it is spent. Aid to other countries is allocated for specific development projects (HIV/AIDS prevention, counternarcotics programs, children's health, democracy promotion, improving education, etc.), but Israel receives a direct lump-sum cash transfer.25 This exemption makes it virtually impossible for the United States to prevent its subsidies from being used for purposes that it opposes, such as building settlements on the West Bank. According to the CRS's Clyde Mark, "Because U.S. economic aid is given to Israel as direct government-to-government budgetary authority without any specific project accounting, and money is fungible, there is no way to tell how Israel uses U.S. aid."26
   Another form of U.S. support is loan guarantees that permit Israel to borrow money from commercial banks at lower rates, thereby saving millions of dollars in interest payments. Israel requested and received approximately $ 10 billion in loan guarantees from the United States in the early 1990s in order to finance the costs of settling Soviet Jews immigrating to Israel. The U.S. government does not provide funds directly in a loan guarantee—it merely undertakes to reimburse private lenders in the event of a default— and advocates of these measures often claim that there is no real expenditure and thus no real cost to the U.S. taxpayer. Loan guarantees do have budgetary consequences, however, because Congress must appropriate funds to cover an estimate of what could be lost over the life of the loan based on its net present value. Estimates for the cost of the 1992 loan guarantee range from $100 million to $800 million.27
   Washington authorized a second round of loan guarantees in 2003, totaling nearly $9 billion,

THOSE WE LEARNED FROM

No author is an island, and we owe a considerable debt to other scholars and writers who examined these subjects before we did. To begin with, there is the extensive academic literature on interest groups that helped us understand how small but focused movements can exert influence far greater than their absolute numbers within the population might suggest.24 There is also a robust literature on the impact of ethnic groups on U.S. foreign policy, which confirms that the Israel lobby is not unique in its basic activities, only in its unusual level of influence.25
   A second body of literature addresses the lobby itself. A number of journalists, scholars, and former politicians have written about the lobby. Written from both critical and sympathetic perspectives, these works contain a considerable amount of useful information on the ways that the lobby has worked to influence U.S. foreign policy. We hope our account will extend the trail that these earlier writers blazed.26
   We have also learned a great deal from other studies, too numerous to list in toto, that deal with particular aspects of U.S. Middle East policy, U.S.-Israeli relations, or specific policy issues. Although some of these works— such as Steven Spiegel's The Other Arab-Israeli Conflict: Making America's Middle East Policy from Truman to Reagan and Warren Bass's Support Any Friend: Kennedy's Middle East and the Making of the U.S.-Israel Alliance— tend to downplay the lobby's influence, serious works of scholarship such as these nonetheless contain considerable evidence of the lobby's impact and especially its growing clout.27
   There is a final body of literature that has played an important role in helping us to think about Israel, the lobby, and America's relationship with the Jewish state. We refer to the so-called new history that has come out of Israel over the past twenty years. Using extensive archival research, Israeli scholars like Shlomo Ben-Ami, Simha Flapan, Baruch Kimmerling, Benny Morris, Ilan Pappe, Tom Segev, Avi Shlaim, and Zeev Sternhell have effectively overturned the conventional wisdom on Israel's founding and on its subsequent policies toward both the surrounding states and the Palestinians.28 Scholars from other countries have also contributed to setting the historical record straight.29 Together these individuals have undermined the original, highly romanticized version of the founding, in which the Jews are usually portrayed as the white hats and the Arabs as the black hats. Moreover, these works make clear that after Israel gained its independence, it behaved much more aggressively toward the Palestinians and other Arabs than is commonly recognized.
   There are various disputes among these historians, of course, and we do not agree with every point they make. Nevertheless, the story they collectively tell is not just a matter of academic interest. In fact, it has profound implications for how one thinks about the moral rationale for supporting Israel over the Palestinians. It also helps one understand why so many people in the Arab and Islamic world are deeply angry at the United States for supporting Israel so generously and unconditionally.
A NOTE ON SOURCES
A brief word about sources is in order before we proceed. Much of this study—especially Part II—deals with recent history, or with events whose ultimate outcome remains uncertain. Because official documents regarding contemporary events are normally unavailable to scholars, we have been forced to rely on other sources: newspapers, magazines, scholarly articles, books, reports from human rights organizations, radio and television transcripts, and personal interviews that we conducted. In a few instances, we had to work with an admittedly spotty record of events. Although we think it is unlikely, some parts of our story may look different once official records become available.
    In order to ensure that our various arguments are correct, we backed up virtually every significant point with multiple sources, which accounts for the extensive notes provided at the end of this book. We also relied heavily on Israeli sources like Ha'aretz and the Jerusalem Post, as well as the writings of Israeli scholars. Another indispensable source of information was American Jewish publications like the Forward and Jewish Week. Not only are these Israeli and Jewish-American sources filled with important information that is not found in the mainstream media in the United States, these newspapers were by and large not likely to be sympathetic to many of our arguments about the lobby. Our reliance on them should help make our conclusions even more reliable.

CONCLUSION

Our analysis begins by describing the material and diplomatic support that the United States provides to Israel. The fact that America gives considerable support to the Jewish state is hardly headline news, but readers may be surprised to learn just how extensive and varied this largesse actually is. Documenting that support is the subject of the next chapter.
PART I
    
  THE UNITED STATES, ISRAEL, AND THE LOBBY
THE GREAT BENEFACTOR

HOW WE MAKE OUR CASE

To make our case, we have to accomplish three tasks. Specifically, we have to convince readers that the United States provides Israel with extraordinary material aid and diplomatic support, the lobby is the principal reason for that support, and this uncritical and unconditional relationship is not in the American national interest. To do so, we proceed as follows.
   Chapter 1 ("The Great Benefactor") addresses the first issue directly, by describing the economic and military aid that the United States gives to Israel, as well as the diplomatic backing that Washington has provided in peace and in war. Subsequent chapters also discuss the different elements of U.S. Middle East policy that have been designed in whole or in part to benefit Israel vis-a-vis its various rivals.
   Chapters 2 and 3 assess the main arguments that are usually invoked to justify or explain the exceptional amount of support that Israel receives from the United States. This critical assessment is necessary for methodological reasons: in order to properly assess the impact of the Israel lobby, we have to examine other possible explanations that might account for the "special relationship" that now exists between the two countries.
   In Chapter 2 ("Israel: Strategic Asset or Liability?"), we examine the familiar argument that Israel deserves lavish support because it is a valuable strategic asset. We show that although Israel may have been an asset during the Cold War, it is now increasingly a strategic liability. Backing Israel so strongly helps fuel America's terrorism problem and makes it harder for the United States to address the other problems it faces in the Middle East. Unconditional support for Israel also complicates U.S. relations with a number of other countries around the world, thereby imposing additional costs on the United States. Yet even though the costs of backing Israel have risen while the benefits have declined, American support continues to increase. This situation suggests that something other than strategic imperatives is at work.
   Chapter 3 ("A Dwindling Moral Case") examines the different moral rationales that Israelis and their American supporters often use to explain U.S. support for the Jewish state. In particular, we consider the claim that the United States backs Israel because of shared "democratic values," because Israel is a weak and vulnerable David facing a powerful Arab Goliath, because its past and present conduct is more ethical than its adversaries' behavior, or because it has always sought peace while its neighbors always chose war. This assessment is necessary not because we have any animus toward Israel or because we think its conduct is worse than that of other states, but because these essentially moral claims are so frequently used to explain why the United States should give Israel exceptional levels of aid. We conclude that while there is a strong moral case for Israel's existence, the moral case for giving it such generous and largely unconditional support is not compelling. Once again, this juxtaposition of a dwindling moral case and ever-increasing U.S. backing suggests that something else must be at work.
Having established that neither strategic interests nor moral rationales
can fully explain U.S. support for Israel, we turn our attention to that "something else." Chapter 4 ("What Is the 'Israel Lobby'?") identifies the lobby's different components and describes how this loose coalition has evolved. We stress that it is not a single unified movement, that its different elements sometimes disagree on certain issues, and that it includes both Jews and non-Jews, including the so-called Christian Zionists. We also show how some of the most important organizations in the lobby have drifted right-ward over time and are increasingly unrepresentative of the larger populations on whose behalf they often claim to speak.
   This chapter also considers whether Arab-American groups, the so-called oil lobby, or wealthy Arab oil producers are either a significant counterweight to the Israel lobby or even the real driving forces behind U.S. Middle East policy. Many people seem to believe, for example, that the invasion of Iraq was mostly about oil and that corporate oil interests were the primary movers behind the U.S. decision to attack that country. This is not the case: although access to oil is obviously an important U.S. interest, there are good reasons why Arab Americans, oil companies, and the Saudi royal family wield far less influence on U.S. foreign policy than the Israel lobby does.
   In Chapter 5 ("Guiding the Policy Process") and Chapter 6 ("Dominating Public Discourse"), we describe the different strategies that groups in the lobby use in order to advance Israel's interests in the United States. In addition to direct lobbying on Capitol Hill, the lobby rewards or punishes politicians largely through an ability to guide the flow of campaign contributions. Organizations in the lobby also put pressure on the executive branch through a number of mechanisms, including working through government officials who are sympathetic to their views. Equally important, the lobby has gone to considerable lengths to shape public discourse about Israel by putting pressure on the media and academia and by establishing a tangible presence in influential foreign policy think tanks. Efforts to shape public perceptions often include charging critics of Israel with anti-Semitism, a tactic designed to discredit and marginalize anyone who challenges the current relationship.
   These tasks accomplished, Part II traces the lobby's role in shaping recent U.S. Middle East policy. Our argument, it should be emphasized, is not that the lobby is the only factor that influences U.S. decision making in these issues. It is not omnipotent, so it does not get its way on every issue. But it is very effective in shaping U.S. policy toward Israel and the surrounding region in ways that are intended to benefit Israel—and believed also to benefit the United States. Unfortunately, the policies it has successfully en
couraged have actually done considerable harm to U.S. interests and have been harmful to Israel as well.
   Following a brief introduction to set the stage, Chapter 7 ("The Lobby Versus the Palestinians") shows how the United States has consistently backed Israel's efforts to quell or limit the Palestinians' national aspirations. Even when American presidents put pressure on Israel to make concessions or try to distance the United States from Israel's policies—as President George W. Bush has attempted to do on several occasions since September 11—the lobby intervenes and brings them back into line. The result has been a worsening image for the United States, continued suffering on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian divide, and a growing radicalization among the Palestinians. None of these trends is in America's or Israel's interest.
   In Chapter 8 ("Iraq and Dreams of Transforming the Middle East"), we show how the lobby—and especially the neoconservatives within it—was the principal driving force behind the Bush administration's decision to invade Iraq in 2003. We emphasize that the lobby did not cause the war by itself. The September 11 attacks had a profound impact on the Bush administration's foreign policy and the decision to topple Saddam Hussein. But absent the lobby's influence, there almost certainly would not have been a war. The lobby was a necessary but not sufficient condition for a war that is a strategic disaster for the United States and a boon for Iran, Israel's most serious regional adversary.
   Chapter 9 ("Taking Aim at Syria") describes the evolution of America's difficult relationship with the Assad regime in Syria. We document how the lobby has pushed Washington to adopt confrontational policies toward Syria (including occasional threats of regime change) when doing so was what the Israeli government wanted. The United States and Syria would not be allies if key groups in the lobby were less influential, but the United States would have taken a much less confrontational approach and might even be cooperating with Syria in a number of limited but useful ways. Indeed, absent the lobby, there might already be a peace treaty between Israel and Syria, and Damascus might not be backing Hezbollah in Lebanon, which would be good for both Washington and Jerusalem.
   In Chapter 10 ("Iran in the Crosshairs"), we trace the lobby's role in U.S. policy toward Iran. Washington and Tehran have had difficult relations since the 1979 revolution that overthrew the shah, and Israel has come to see Iran as its most serious adversary, in light of its nuclear ambitions and its support for groups like Hezbollah. Accordingly, Israel and the lobby have repeatedly pushed the United States to go after Iran and have acted to derail several
earlier opportunities for detente. The result, unfortunately, is that Iran's nuclear ambitions have increased and more extreme elements (such as current President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad) have come to power, making a difficult situation worse.
   Lebanon is the subject of Chapter 11 ("The Lobby and the Second Lebanon War"), and the pattern is much the same. We argue that Israel's response to Hezbollah's unjustified provocation in the summer of 2006 was both strategically foolish and morally wrong, yet the lobby's influence made it hard for U.S. officials to do anything except strongly back Israel. This case offers yet another classic illustration of the lobby's regrettable influence on American and Israeli interests: by making it hard for U.S. policy makers to step back and give their Israeli counterparts honest and critical advice, the lobby facilitated a policy that further tarnished America's image, weakened the democratically elected regime in Beirut, and strengthened Hezbollah.
   The final chapter ("What Is to Be Done?") explores how this unfortunate situation might be improved. We begin by identifying America's core Middle East interests and then sketch the essential principles of a strategy—which we term offshore balancing—that could defend these interests more effectively. We do not call for abandoning the U.S. commitment to Israel—indeed, we explicitly endorse coming to Israel's aid if its survival were ever in jeopardy. But we argue that it is time to treat Israel like a normal country and to make U.S. aid conditional on an end to the occupation and on Israel's willingness to conform its policies to American interests. Accomplishing this shift requires addressing the political power of the lobby and its current policy agenda, and we offer several suggestions for how the power of the lobby might be modified to make its influence more beneficial for the United States and Israel alike.

THOSE WE LEARNED FROM

 WHY IS IT SO HARD TO TALK ABOUT THE ISRAEL LOBBY?

Because the United States is a pluralist democracy where freedom of speech and association are guaranteed, it was inevitable that interest groups would come to dominate the political process. For a nation of immigrants, it was equally inevitable that some of these interest groups would form along ethnic lines and that they would try to influence U.S. foreign policy in various ways.16 Cuban Americans have lobbied to maintain the embargo on Castro's regime, Armenian Americans have pushed Washington to acknowledge the 1915 genocide and, more recently, to limit U.S. relations with Azerbaijan, and Indian Americans have rallied to support the recent security treaty and nuclear cooperation agreements. Such activities have been a central feature of American political life since the founding of the country, and pointing them out is rarely controversial.17
   Yet it is clearly more difficult for Americans to talk openly about the Israel lobby. Part of the reason is the lobby itself, which is both eager to advertise its clout and quick to challenge anyone who suggests that its influence is too great or might be detrimental to U.S. interests. There are, however, other reasons why it is harder to have a candid discussion about the impact of the Israel lobby.
   To begin with, questioning the practices and ramifications of the Israel lobby may appear to some to be tantamount to questioning the legitimacy of Israel itself. Because some states still refuse to recognize Israel and some critics of Israel and the lobby do question its legitimacy, many of its supporters may see even well-intentioned criticism as an implicit challenge to Israel's existence. Given the strong feelings that many people have for Israel, and especially its important role as a safe haven for Jewish refugees from the Holocaust and as a central focus of contemporary Jewish identity, there is bound to be a hostile and defensive reaction when people think its legitimacy or its existence is under attack.
   But in fact, an examination of Israel's policies and the efforts of its American supporters does not imply an anti-Israel bias, just as an examination of the political activities of the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) does not imply bias against older citizens. We are not challenging
Israel's right to exist or questioning the legitimacy of the Jewish state. There are those who maintain that Israel should never have been created, or who want to see Israel transformed from a Jewish state into a binational democracy. We do not. On the contrary, we believe the history of the Jewish people and the norm of national self-determination provide ample justification for a Jewish state. We think the United States should stand willing to come to Israel's assistance if its survival were in jeopardy. And though our primary focus is on the Israel lobby's negative impact on U.S. foreign policy, we are also convinced that its influence has become harmful to Israel as well. In our view, both effects are regrettable.
   In addition, the claim that an interest group whose ranks are mostly Jewish has a powerful, not to mention negative, influence on U.S. foreign policy is sure to make some Americans deeply uncomfortable—and possibly fearful and angry—because it sounds like a charge lifted from the notorious Protocols of the Elders ofZion, that well-known anti-Semitic forgery that purported to reveal an all-powerful Jewish cabal exercising secret control over the world.
   Any discussion of Jewish political power takes place in the shadow of two thousand years of history, especially the centuries of very real anti-Semitism in Europe. Christians massacred thousands of Jews during the Crusades, expelled them en masse from Britain, France, Spain, Portugal, and other places between 1290 and 1497, and confined them to ghettos in other parts of Europe. Jews were violently oppressed during the Spanish Inquisition, murderous pogroms took place in Eastern Europe and Russia on numerous occasions, and other forms of anti-Semitic bigotry were widespread until recently. This shameful record culminated in the Nazi Holocaust, which killed nearly six million Jews. Jews were also oppressed in parts of the Arab world, though much less severely.18
   Given this long history of persecution, American Jews are understandably sensitive to any argument that sounds like someone is blaming them for policies gone awry. This sensitivity is compounded by the memory of bizarre conspiracy theories of the sort laid out in the Protocols. Dire warnings of secretive "Jewish influence" remain a staple of neo-Nazis and other extremists, such as the hate-mongering former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, which reinforces Jewish concerns even more.
   A key element of such anti-Semitic accusations is the claim that Jews exercise illegitimate influence by "controlling" banks, the media, and other key institutions. Thus, if someone says that press coverage in the United States tends to favor Israel over its opponents, this may sound to some like the old canard that "Jews control the media." Similarly, if someone points out that
American Jews have a rich tradition of giving money to both philanthropic and political causes, it sounds like they are suggesting that "Jewish money" is buying political influence in an underhanded or conspiratorial way. Of course, anyone who gives money to a political campaign does so in order to advance some political cause, and virtually all interest groups hope to mold public opinion and are interested in getting favorable media coverage. Evaluating the role of any interest group's campaign contributions, lobbying efforts, and other political activities ought to be a fairly uncontroversial exercise, but given past anti-Semitism, one can understand why it is easier to talk about these matters when discussing the impact of the pharmaceutical lobby, labor unions, arms manufacturers, Indian-American groups, etc., rather than the Israel lobby.
   Making this discussion of pro-Israel groups and individuals in the United States even more difficult is the age-old charge of "dual loyalty." According to this old canard, Jews in the diaspora were perpetual aliens who could never assimilate and be good patriots, because they were more loyal to each other than to the country in which they lived. The fear today is that Jews who support Israel will be seen as disloyal Americans. As Hyman Bookbinder, the former Washington representative of the American Jewish Committee, once commented, "Jews react viscerally to the suggestion that there is something unpatriotic" about their support for Israel.19
Let us be clear: we categorically reject all of these anti-Semitic claims.
   In our view, it is perfectly legitimate for any American to have a significant attachment to a foreign country. Indeed, Americans are permitted to hold dual citizenship and to serve in foreign armies, unless, of course, the other country is at war with the United States. As noted above, there are numerous examples of ethnic groups in America working hard to persuade the U.S. government, as well as their fellow citizens, to support the foreign country for which they feel a powerful bond. Foreign governments are usually aware of the activities of sympathetic ethnically based interest groups, and they have naturally sought to use them to influence the U.S. government and advance their own foreign policy goals. Jewish Americans are no different from their fellow citizens in this regard.20
   The Israel lobby is not a cabal or conspiracy or anything of the sort. It is engaged in good old-fashioned interest group politics, which is as American as apple pie. Pro-Israel groups in the United States are engaged in the same enterprise as other interest groups like the National Rifle Association (NRA) and the AARP, or professional associations like the American Petroleum Institute, all of which also work hard to influence congressional legislation and presidential priorities, and which, for the most part, operate in the open.
With a Few exceptions, to be discussed in subsequent chapters, the lobby's actions are thoroughly American and legitimate.
   We do not believe the lobby is all-powerful, or that it controls important institutions in the United States. As we will discuss in several subsequent chapters, there are a number of cases where the lobby did not get its way. Nevertheless, there is an abundance of evidence that the lobby wields impressive influence. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee, one of the most important pro-Israel groups, used to brag about its own power on its website, not only by listing its impressive achievements but also by displaying quotations from prominent politicians that attested to its ability to influence events in ways that benefit Israel. For example, its website used to include a statement from former House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt telling an AIPAC gathering, "Without your constant support. . . and all your fighting on a daily basis to strengthen [the U.S.-Israeli relationship], it would not be."21 Even the outspoken Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, who is often quick to brand Israel's critics as anti-Semites, wrote in a memoir that "my generation of Jews . . . became part of what is perhaps the most effective lobbying and fund-raising effort in the history of democracy. We did a truly great job, as far as we allowed ourselves, and were allowed, to go."22
   J. J. Goldberg, the editor of the Jewish weekly newspaper the Forward and the author of Jewish Power: Inside the American Jewish Establishment, nicely captures the difficulty of talking about the lobby: "It seems as though we're forced to choose between Jews holding vast and pernicious control or Jewish influence being non-existent." In fact, he notes, "somewhere in the middle is a reality that none wants to discuss, which is that there is an entity called the Jewish community made up of a group of organizations and public figures that's part of the political rough-and-tumble. There's nothing wrong with playing the game like everybody else."23 We agree completely. But we think it is fair and indeed necessary to examine the consequences that this "rough-and-tumble" interest group politics can have on America and the world.

HOW WE MAKE OUR CASE