In
the slow evolution of US relations with Israel since 1948, as the latter mutated
from a strategic liability to a strategic asset, Israel and its Jewish allies in
the United States have always occupied the driver's seat.
President
Truman had shepherded the creation of Israel in 1947 not because the American
establishment saw it as a strategic asset; this much is clear. "No one," writes
Cheryl Rubenberg, "not even the Israelis themselves, argues that the United
States supported the creation of the Jewish state for reasons of security or
national interest."(1) Domestic politics, in an election year, was the primary
force behind President Truman's decision to support the creation of Israel. In
addition, the damage to US interests due to the creation of Israel - although
massive - was not immediate. This was expected to unfold slowly: and its first
blows would be borne by the British who were still the paramount power in the
region.
Nevertheless,
soon after he had helped to create Israel, President Truman moved decisively to appear
to distance the United States from the new state. Instead of committing American
troops to protect Israel, when it fought against five Arab armies, he imposed an
even-handed arms embargo on both sides in the conflict. Had Israel been
dismantled [at birth], President Truman would have urged steps to protect the
Jewish colonists in Palestine, but he would have accepted a premature end to the
Zionist state as fait accompli.
Zionist pressures failed to persuade President Truman to lift the arms embargo.
Ironically, military deliveries from Czechoslovakia may have saved the day for
Israel.
Once
Israel had defeated the armies of Arab proto-states and expelled the
Palestinians to emerge as an exclusively Jewish colonial-settler state in 1949,
these brute facts would work in its favor. Led by the United States, the Western
powers would recognize Israel, aware that they would have to defend this
liability. At the same time, the humiliation of defeat had given an impetus to
Arab nationalists across the region, who directed their anger against Israel and
its Western sponsors.
This
placed Israel in a strong position to accelerate its transformation into a
strategic asset. In tandem with the Jewish lobby in the United States, Israel
sought to maximize the assistance it could receive from the West through
policies that stoked Arab nationalism; and as Israel's military superiority grew
this emboldened it to increase its aggressive posture towards the Arabs. Israel
had the power to set in motion a vicious circle that would soon create the Arab
threat against which it would defend the West. As a result, at various points
during the 1950s, France, the United States, and Britain began to regard Israel
as a strategic asset.
America's
embrace of Israel did not begin in 1967. Israel's victory in the June War only
accelerated a process that had been underway since its creation - even before
its creation. Indeed, the Zionists had decided in 1939 to pursue the United
States as their new mother country; they knew that they could use the very large
and influential population of American Jews to win official US backing for their
goals.
This
paid off handsomely in 1948; but thereafter, the United States sought to contain
the damage that would flow from the creation of Israel. However, these efforts
would be self-defeating; the die had been cast. Israel - not the United States -
was in the driver's seat; and Israel would seek to maximize the negative
fallout from its creation. As Israel succeeded in augmenting - within limits -
the Arab threat to itself and the United States, the Jewish lobby would regain
confidence; it would re-organize to reinforce Israel's claim that it was now a
strategic asset.
We
have here another vicious circle - virtuous, for Israel. The Jewish lobby would
gain strength as the Arab-cum-Soviet threat to the Middle East grew. When Israel
scaled back the Arab threat in 1967, the Jewish lobby would step in to spend the
political capital the Jewish state had garnered in the United States. The
Israeli capture of Jerusalem in 1967 also energized the Christian Zionists, who,
with encouragement from Jewish Zionists, would organize, enter into Republican
politics, and soon become a major ally of the Jewish lobby. The sky was now the
limit for Israel and the Zionists in the United States. The special relationship
would become more special under every new presidency.
Several
writers on the American left have pooh-poohed the charge that the Jewish lobby
has been a leading force shaping America's Middle East policy. They argue that
the United States has supported Israel because of the convergence of their
interests in the region. (2) Oil, primarily
Saudi Arabian oil, they maintain correctly, is "a stupendous source of strategic
power, and one of the greatest material prizes in world history."(3)
Incorrectly, however, they insist that this is what has driven US policy towards
the Middle East.
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A
priori, this is an odd position to
maintain, since Britain - up until 1948 - had managed quite well to maintain
complete control over Middle Eastern oil, a dominance the United States could
not sustain 'despite' the 'strategic support' of Israel. Successively,
they argue, Western control over oil came under threat from Arab nationalism and
militant Islamism. Israel has demonstrated its strategic value by holding in
check and, later, defeating, the Arab nationalist challenge. Since then, Israel
has fought the Islamist challenge to US hegemony over the region.
It
may be useful to examine Noam Chomsky's analysis of this relationship, since
he enjoys iconic status amongst both liberal and leftists in the United States.
Chomsky frames his analysis of 'causal factors' behind the special
relationship as essentially a choice between "domestic pressure groups" and "US
strategic interests." He finds two limitations in the argument that the "American
Jewish community" is the chief protagonist of the special relationship between
Israel and the United States.
First,
"it underestimates the scope of the "support for Israel," and second, it
overestimates the role of political pressure groups in decision-making." Chomsky
points out that the Israel lobby is "far broader" than the American Jewish
community; it embraces liberal opinion, labor leaders, Christian
fundamentalists, conservative hawks, and "fervent cold warriors of all stripes."(4)
While this broader definition of the Israel lobby is appropriate, and this is
what most users of the term have in mind, Chomsky thinks that the presence of
this "far broader" support for Israel diminishes the role that American Jews
play in this lobby.
Two
hidden assumptions underpin Chomsky's claim that a broader Israel lobby shifts
the locus of lobbying to non-Jewish groups. First, he fails to account for the
strong overlap - barring the Christian fundamentalists - between the American
Jewish community and the other domestic pressure groups he enumerates. In the
United States, this overlap has existed since the early decades of the twentieth
century, and increased considerably in the post-War period. It is scarcely to be
doubted that Jews hold - and deservedly so - a disproportionate share of the
leadership positions in corporations, the labor movement, and those professions
that shape public discourse. Starting in the 1980s, the ascendancy of Jewish
neoconservatives - together with their think tanks - gave American Jews an
equally influential voice in conservative circles. Certainly, the weight of
Jewish neoconservative opinion during the early years of President Bush - both
inside and outside his administration - has been second to that of none. The
substantial Jewish presence in the leadership circles of the other pressure
groups undermines Chomsky's contention that the pro-Israeli group is "far
broader" than the American Jewish community.
There
is a second problem with Chomsky's argument. Implicitly, he assumes that the
different pro-Israeli groups have existed, acted and evolved independently of
each other; alternatively, the impact of the lobbying efforts of these groups is
merely additive. This ignores the galvanizing role that Jewish organizations
have played in mobilizing Gentile opinion behind the Zionist project. The
activism of the American Jews - as individuals and groups - has operated at
several levels. Certainly, the leaders of the Zionist movement have directed a
large part of their energies to lobbying at the highest levels of official
decision-making. At the same time, they have created, and they orchestrate, a
layered network of Zionist organizations who have worked very hard to create
support for their aims in the broader American civil society.
American
Jews have worked through several channels to influence civil society. As growing
numbers of American Jews embraced Zionist goals during the 1940s, as their
commitment to Zionism deepened, this forced the largest Jewish organizations to
embrace Zionist goals. In addition, since their earliest days, the Zionists have
created the organizations, allies, networks and ideas that would translate into
media, congressional and presidential support for the Zionist project. In
addition, since Jewish Americans made up a growing fraction of the activists and
leaders in various branches of civil society - the labor, civil rights and
feminist movements - it was natural that the major organs of civil society came
to embrace Zionist aims. It makes little sense, then, to maintain that the
pro-Israeli positions of mainstream American organizations had emerged
independently of the activism of the American Jewish community.
