Report by Carol Moore

On April 24, 2006 the DC Antiwar Network presented a fascinating debate on “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy,” a controversial working paper published on the Harvard University web site. The paper asserts that America's "Israel Lobby" actually pressures the U.S. congress, president and media to pursue policies that benefit Israel at the expense of America's best diplomatic, economic and military interests.  Written by John J. Mearsheimer, a professor of political science and a co-director of the Program on International Security Policy at the University of Chicago, and Stephen M. Walt, academic dean of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, the paper makes claims like: “the U.S. has a terrorism problem in good part because it is so closely allied with Israel....”

Introduced by DC Antiwar Network and Palestine Solidarity member David Kirshbaum, our three speakers presented comments and critiques, followed by a lively question and answer period.

KEVIN ZEESE, Director of DemocracyRising.US which works to rapidly and responsibly end the Iraq War and Occupation, served as Ralph Nader's Press Secretary in 2004 and currently is running for U.S. Senator from Maryland, bringing together the Green, Populist and Libertarian Parties. See http://www.ZeeseForSenate.org

Photo by William Hughes.  See his video above.
Zeese clearly differentiated between the “Hawkish Pro-Israel Lobby” and a majority of American Jews who opposed the Iraq, and now Iran, war.  As evidence that the hawkish pro-Israel lobby wants the U.S. to attack Iran, he displayed an American Jewish Congress full page advertisement calling for sanctions, etc. against Iran. He discussed statements by other pro-Israel groups like Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, American Israel Political Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies.  The latter published the 1996 “Clean Break” paper calling for the US and Israel to pursue unilateral action against the Palestinians and Arab states.

Zeese mentioned important Walt and Mearsheimer paper points like Israel’s centrality to U.S. middle east policy, that US terrorism problems (especially 9-11) largely are related to support for Israel, that the U.S. and its citizens effectively are co-conspirators to Israel’s crimes against the Palestinian people, and that the Iraq and Iran wars are in great part about increasing Israeli, not American, security.   He quoted the authors’ comment on Israel promoting an Iran war, including: "...Iran’s nuclear ambitions do not pose an existential threat to the United States.  If Washington could live with a nuclear Soviet Union, a nuclear China, or even a nuclear North Korea, then it can live with a nuclear Iran.  And that is why the Lobby must keep constant pressure on U.S. politicians to confront Tehran.”  Zeese criticized Iran’s President Ahmadinejad for inflammatory language against Israel.

Zeese also assailed the Israel Lobby’s aggressive campaigns to defeat politicians who don’t support Israel through media campaigns and funding their opponents.  He lambasted the lobby’s constantly charging “anti-Semitism” of people who merely criticize the state of Israel’s policies, stating such tactics stifle debate on U.S. middle east policies and thereby undermine democracy.  If the Harvard paper opens up debate it can help stop war on Iran.

As for the issue of whether Israel, the tail, wags the U.S., the dog, Zeese holds that the tail may not wag the dog, but the dog certainly is compliant.  However, Zeese firmly criticized U.S.  military and economic world dominance as being a dangerous force.

* SIMIN ROYANIAN is an economist and a thirty-seven year veteran of peace and justice movements in Iran and in the US. She co-founded Women for Peace and Justice in Iran. http://women4peace.org/

Royanian started by explaining Iran President Ahmadinejad’s comments about “smashing Zionism” (which she later corrected to quote him more accurately as saying “A World Without Zionism”.)  She said that he meant eliminating the racist and separatist Zionist ideology, not the state of Israel or the Jewish people. She also claimed he did not deny the Nazi Holocaust against Jews but only asserted that the Germans and Europeans, not the Arabs and Muslims, should have given up land for a Jewish state.  She asserted that “Holocaust denial” – attempts to deny that millions of Jews were purposely killed – is really more a European and American issue.  Arabs and Muslims have no reason to deny the Holocaust since they had nothing to do with it and many states offered safe harbor to Jewish people who escaped to the Middle East. Royanian added after the speech for this report: Some have said that Ahmadi Nejad (sic) called the Holocaust a myth. The correct Persian translation is that the Holocaust has been raised to Mythical proportions.  Her goal was not to defend the current Iranian regime, but to show that on these issues anyway it reflects most Iranians’ thinking.

Royanian then presented a critique of the paper’s “right wing” perspective.  She assailed the failure to define “national interest,” assuming it referred to the U.S. using its military might to continue to dominate the world.  She also criticized their labeling Iraqis as “terrorists” when they were trying to drive out U.S. imperialist forces.  Royanian also assailed the authors’ claiming that Iran was a threat to Israel, noting that Iran had not attacked another country in over 400 years. 

Royanian made it clear that the U.S. didn’t need Israeli urgings to attack progressive movements all over the world.  Asserting that the real problem was U.S. imperialism and American’s passive support for it, she noted that this nation is weak both economically and ideologically and inevitably will fail in its imperialist adventure.
 
However, Royanian did agree with the authors that the Israel Lobby has too much influence, asserting its greatest power was in influencing the American public through the media to support Israel and demonize the Palestinians and all Arabs and Muslims.  And she agreed it stifles debate about Israel and its oppression of the Palestinians, including in the peace movement.  

Agreeing with the writings of Jeff Blankfort, a Jewish critic of Israel and pro-Israel influences within the peace movement, Royanian asserted that while activists cannot change AIPAC’s mind, we can end the stifling of debate on Israel and Palestine within the peace movement.  She complained that pro-Zionist individuals in UFPJ and other groups also have been discouraging action against the coming attack on Iran. (It should be noted that since the April 2006 publication of the newest Seymour Hersh article about U.S. moves against Iran, including the nuclear option, UFPJ and other groups have taken up that cause, if not as assertively as they might.)  She said the best way peace activists can fight the Israel Lobby is to concentrate on the one in the peace movement.

ALEX PATICO is U.S. coordinator of the multi-country Campaign Against Sanctions and Military Intervention in Iran. He served in the Peace Corps in Iran, has been an advisor to Iranians for International Cooperation and co-founded the National Iranian American Council. See http://campaigniran.org/casmii Contact: casmiius@aol.com

Patico explored more of the psycho-social aspects of Bush and company’s desire to attack Iran.  However, he was adamant that there must be a change in Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians for terrorism to end against Israel and, where relevant, the U.S.  He noted that intimidation of Americans is not just the outright smear of anti-Semitism, but “intimidation light,” like speakers being asked to give a “balanced” presentation when talking about Israel-Palestine relations. (Which evidently means every time you talk about Israel’s 58 years of expulsions, land expropriations, denial of human rights, etc. one has to talk about the violent reaction by some Palestinians as being “terrorism”).  He calls these intimidation tactics “actions to stop thought and emotion.”

Emphasizing that the coming Iran war was the most serious crisis the U.S. had faced since 9-11, he noted that the we are “losing the war on terrorism” because it looks like the U.S. is imperialist, not really promoting freedom and democracy.  Reviewing the U.S. imperialist designs on Iran in the 20th century he noted that while the U.S. hostages held in 1980 did come home alive, those workers at the Iran nuclear facility Natanz will die when the U.S. bombs it. 

Patico ended on a note of optimism that peace activists are finally organizing against an attack on Iran and speaking out against war lobbies and that even some Republicans are calling for diplomacy. He mentioned that there is a congressional delegation visiting Iran shortly.

During the question and answer period the following points of interest were brought out by audience members and speakers: that the peace movement is too divided by “post-modern” diversity issues and needs to be more united; assertion the CNN commentator Wolfe Blitzer, who used to work for AIPAC and the Jerusalem Post in Israel, has dual citizenship with Israel, but never mentions this conflict of interest (if true, perhaps we should protest CNN until he admits it); that American Jews need to organize a progressive lobby to counter AIPAC, but none of the existing groups can yet do that; that Bush believes he was chosen by God to start Armageddon; that the Iranian people overwhelmingly support Ahmadinejad’s fight against U.S. imperialism and it is none of American’s business who Iranians elect as their president; that “Hands off Iran” should be our motto; that Americans and the U.S. government has a racist and imperialist supremacist complex.

The DC Antiwar Network and its Iran Working Group intend to continue oppose all the lobbies promoting war against Iraq, Iran and other nations and encourage other groups nationwide to do likewise.  DC area residents, mail iranworkinggroup(at)earthlink.net to get involved.  Or feel free to join DC Antiwar Network. http://dawndc.net for meeting information.