[Mb-civic] SHOULD READ: America takes side of Israel - Jeff Jacoby - Boston Globe Op-Ed

[William Swiggard]

  America takes side of Israel

By Jeff Jacoby  |  March 26, 2006 |  The Boston Globe

First of two columns

A GALLUP POLL released last month puts American support for Israel at 
near-record levels. When asked for their views on the Middle East, 59 
percent of Americans say they sympathize with the Israelis, while just 
15 percent favor the Palestinians. Pro-Israel sentiment rises with 
increased knowledge -- 66 percent of those who follow international 
affairs ''very closely" support Israel, compared with 52 percent of 
those who don't pay close attention to foreign news.

Other findings are comparable. More than two-thirds of Americans say 
their overall view of Israel is favorable. Only 11 percent, by contrast, 
have a favorable opinion of the Palestinian Authority. While 22 percent 
of the public wants Washington to conduct diplomatic relations with the 
Hamas-controlled Palestinian government even if it refuses to recognize 
Israel's right to exist as a sovereign state, 44 percent say recognition 
of Israel must be a precondition to relations with the United States. 
Another 25 percent -- one American in four -- oppose any US dealings 
with Hamas at all.

Staunch American support for Israel is nothing new. In February 2005, 
Gallup reported similarly lopsided findings -- 69 percent of the public 
viewed Israel favorably, 25 percent unfavorably. In 2004, when Israel 
was being denounced in Europe and the United Nations for its 
assassination of Sheik Ahmed Yassin, the leader of Hamas, 61 percent of 
Americans said Israel was justified in killing him. In 2002, when a CBS 
News poll asked whether Israel's actions against Yasser Arafat and his 
forces were equivalent to US actions against Osama bin Laden and Al 
Qaeda, 59 percent agreed that they were.

In short, 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.

Only someone far outside the American mainstream, then, would insist 
that ''Israel's past and present conduct offers no moral basis for 
privileging it over the Palestinians." Or that US policy is engineered 
through a Zionist ''stranglehold on Congress." Or that ''neither 
strategic nor moral arguments can account for America's support for 
Israel," leaving only one possible explanation: ''the unmatched power of 
the Israel Lobby."

Those aren't the words of American neo-Nazi David Duke -- though Duke 
has ringingly endorsed them. They aren't the words of Egypt's Muslim 
Brotherhood, the granddaddy of Islamist radicalism -- though a top 
Brotherhood official praises them. They aren't the words of the PLO -- 
though the PLO is actively distributing them.

The source of those words, and many more like them, is a bitter 
anti-Israel screed masquerading as academic scholarship. Co-authored by 
Stephen Walt, academic dean of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, 
and University of Chicago professor John Mearsheimer, ''The Israel Lobby 
and US Foreign Policy" was released last week as a ''working paper" on 
the Kennedy School website. But so slipshod is the paper's research and 
so extreme its bias that within days the Harvard and Kennedy School 
logos were stripped from the title page. ''It clearly does not meet the 
academic standards of a Kennedy School research paper," said Marvin 
Kalb, one of the school's best-known scholars.

The idea that the American public and US policy makers dance to a tune 
played by an all-powerful ''Israel Lobby" is an old canard. Neo-Nazis 
like Duke have long described Capitol Hill as part of the ZOG, or 
Zionist Occupation Government. Right-wing nativist Pat Buchanan 
notoriously charged ''the Israeli defense ministry and its 'amen corner' 
in the United States" with ''beating the drums for war" in 1990.

If the truth be told, it isn't hard to understand why America's ardent 
support for Israel might strike some people as odd, or even suspicious. 
In so much of the world -- Europe, the Middle East, the UN General 
Assembly -- Israel is despised. Even if Americans don't share the 
anti-Semitism that is rife in other lands, wouldn't it be more practical 
for them to stop taking Israel's side? After all, there are 500 million 
Arabs in the world, and they control one-third of the world's oil 
supply. Why should Americans alienate them by continuing to support 
Israel, a country with no oil and just 6 million people?

As a matter of plain economic common sense, the United States has every 
reason to turn against the Jewish state. What accounts for its refusal 
to do so? If it isn't an ''Israel Lobby" pulling hidden strings, what on 
earth can it be?

Something more powerful than economics: the kinship of common values.

Next: An ''America" in the Middle East

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2006/03/26/america_takes_side_of_israel/
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www.islandlists.com/pipermail/mb-civic/attachments/20060326/fdab0449/attachment.htm