Pillar of Defence? More Like A Pillar Built on Sand

In response to a recent upsurge in tit for tat strikes between Israel and the Palestinians in Gaza, Israel decided to ratchet up the violence even further by assassinating Hamas’s military chief, Ahmad Jabari. Hamas, which had been playing a minor role in these exchanges and even appears to have been interested in working out a long-term ceasefire, predictably responded by launching hundreds of rockets into Israel, a few even landing near Tel Aviv. Not surprisingly, the Israelis have threatened a wider conflict, to include a possible invasion of Gaza to topple Hamas and eliminate the rocket threat.

There is some chance that Operation ‘Pillar of Defence’, as the Israelis are calling their current campaign, might become a full-scale war. But even if it does, it will not put an end to Israel’s troubles in Gaza. After all, Israel launched a devastating war against Hamas in the winter of 2008-9 – Operation Cast Lead – and Hamas is still in power and still firing rockets at Israel. In the summer of 2006 Israel went to war against Hizbullah in order to eliminate its missiles and weaken its political position in Lebanon. That offensive failed as well: Hizbullah has far more missiles today than it had in 2006 and its influence in Lebanon is arguably greater than it was in 2006. Pillar of Defence is likely to share a similar fate.

Israel can use force against Hamas in three distinct ways. First, it can try to cripple the organisation by assassinating its leaders, as it did when it killed Jabari two days ago. Decapitation will not work, however, because there is no shortage of subordinates to replace the dead leaders, and sometimes the new ones are more capable and dangerous than their predecessors. The Israelis found this out in Lebanon in 1992 when they assassinated Hizbullah’s leader, Abbas Musawi, only to find that his replacement, Hassan Nasrallah, was an even more formidable adversary.

Second, the Israelis can invade Gaza and take it over. The IDF could do this fairly easily, topple Hamas and put an end to the rocket fire from Gaza. But they would then have to occupy Gaza for years to come, since if they left Hamas would come back to power, the rocket attacks would resume, and Israel would be back where it started.

An occupation of Gaza would trigger bitter and bloody resistance, as the Israelis learned in southern Lebanon between 1982 and 2000. After 18 years of occupation they conceded defeat and withdrew all their forces. This experience is the reason the IDF did not try to invade and conquer southern Lebanon in 2006 or Gaza in 2008-9. Nothing has changed since then to make a full-scale invasion of Gaza a viable alternative today. Occupying Gaza would also place another 1.5 million Palestinians under formal Israel control, thereby worsening the so-called ‘demographic threat’. Ariel Sharon withdrew Israeli settlers from Gaza in 2005 to reduce the number of Palestinians living under the Israeli flag; going back now would be a huge strategic reversal.

The final, preferred option is aerial bombardment with aircraft, artillery, missiles, mortars and rockets. The problem, however, is that the strategy does not work as advertised. Israel used it against Hizbullah in 2006 and Hamas in 2008-9, but both groups are still in power and armed to the teeth with rockets and missiles. It is hard to believe that any serious defence analyst in Israel thinks another campaign of sustained bombardment against Gaza will topple Hamas and end the rocket fire permanently.

So what is going on here? At the most basic level, Israel’s actions in Gaza are inextricably bound up with its efforts to create a Greater Israel that stretches from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. Despite the endless palaver about a two-state solution, the Palestinians are not going to get their own state, not least because the Netanyahu government is firmly opposed to it. The prime minister and his political allies are deeply committed to making the Occupied Territories a permanent part of Israel. To pull this off, the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza will be forced to live in impoverished enclaves similar to the Bantustans in white-ruled South Africa. Israeli Jews understand this quite well: arecent survey found that 58 per cent of them believe Israel already practises apartheid against the Palestinians.

Creating a Greater Israel will produce even bigger problems, however. In addition to doing enormous damage to Israel’s reputation around the world, the quest for a Greater Israel will not break the will of the Palestinians. They remain adamantly opposed not only to the Occupation, but also to the idea of living in an apartheid state. They will continue to resist Israel’s efforts to deny them self-determination. What is happening in Gaza is one dimension of that resistance. Another is Mahmoud Abbas’s plan to ask the UN General Assembly on 29 November to recognise Palestine as a non-member state. This move worries Israel’s leaders, because it could eventually allow the Palestinians to file charges against Israel before the International Criminal Court. Thus, the dream of a Greater Israel forces Tel Aviv to find ways to keep the Palestinians at bay.

Israel’s leaders have a two-prong strategy for dealing with their Palestinian problem. First, they rely on the United States to provide diplomatic cover, especially in the United Nations. The key to keeping Washington on board is the Israel lobby, which pressures American leaders to side with Israel against the Palestinians and do hardly anything to stop the colonisation of the Occupied Territories.

The second prong is Ze’ev Jabotinsky’s concept of the ‘Iron Wall’: an approach that in essence calls for beating the Palestinians into submission. Jabotinsky understood that the Palestinians would resist the Zionists’ efforts to colonise their land and subjugate them in the process. Nonetheless, he maintained that the Zionists, and eventually Israel, could punish the Palestinians so severely that they would recognise that further resistance was futile.

Israel has employed this strategy since its founding in 1948, and both Cast Lead and Pillar of Defence are examples of it at work. In other words, Israel’s aim in bombing Gaza is not to topple Hamas or eliminate its rockets, both of which are unrealisable goals. Instead, the ongoing attacks in Gaza are part of a long-term strategy to coerce the Palestinians into giving up their pursuit of self-determination and submitting to Israeli rule in an apartheid state.

Israel’s commitment to the Iron Wall is reflected in the fact that its leaders have said many times since Cast Lead ended in January 2009 that the IDF would eventually have to return to Gaza and inflict another beating on the Palestinians. The Israelis were under no illusion that the 2008-9 conflict had defanged Hamas. The only question for them was when the next punishment campaign would start.

The timing of the present operation is easy to explain. For starters, President Obama has just won a second term despite Netanyahu’s transparent attempt to help Mitt Romney win the election. The prime minister’s mistake is likely to have hurt his personal relations with the president and might even threaten America’s ‘special relationship’ with Israel. A war in Gaza, however, is a good antidote for that problem, because Obama, who faces daunting economic and political challenges in the months ahead, has little choice but to back Israel to the hilt and blame the Palestinians.

The Israeli prime minter faces an election of his own in January and asMitchell Plitnick writes, ‘Netanyahu’s gambit of forming a joint ticket with the fascist Yisrael Beiteinu party has not yielded anything close to the polling results he had hoped for.’ A war over Gaza not only allows Netanyahu to show how tough he is when Israel’s security is at stake, but it is also likely to have a ‘rally round the flag’ effect, improving his chances of being re-elected.

Nevertheless, Pillar of Defence will not achieve its ultimate goal of getting the Palestinians to abandon their pursuit of self-determination and accept living under the heel of the Israelis. That is simply not achievable; the Palestinians are never going to accept being consigned to a handful of enclaves in an apartheid state. Regrettably, that means Pillar of Defence is unlikely to be the last time Israel bombards Gaza.

Over the long term, however, the bombing campaigns may come to an end, because it is not clear that Israel will be able to maintain itself as an apartheid state. As well as resistance from the Palestinians, Israel has to face the problem that world opinion is unlikely to back an apartheid state. Ehud Olmert said in November 2007, when he was prime minister, that if ‘the two-state solution collapses’ Israel will ‘face a South-African-style struggle’, and ‘as soon as that happens, the state of Israel is finished.’ One would think Israel’s leaders would appreciate where they are headed and allow the Palestinians to have a viable state of their own. But there is no sign that is happening; instead, Israel foolishly continues to rely on military campaigns like Pillar of Defence to break the Palestinians.

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Israel: A Suicidal, Apartheid State

John Mearsheimer
Israel's botched raid against the Gaza-bound humanitarian flotilla on May 31 is the latest sign that Israel is on a disastrous course that it seems incapable of reversing. The attack also highlights the extent to which Israel has become a strategic liability for the United States. This situation is likely to get worse over time, which will cause major problems for Americans who have a deep attachment to the Jewish state.

The bungled assault on the Mavi Marmara, the lead ship in the flotilla, shows once again that Israel is addicted to using military force yet unable to do so effectively. One would think that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) would improve over time from all the practice. Instead, it has become the gang that cannot shoot straight.

The IDF last scored a clear-cut victory in the Six Day War in 1967; the record since then is a litany of unsuccessful campaigns. The War of Attrition (1969-70) was at best a draw, and Israel fell victim to one of the great surprise attacks in military history in the October War of 1973. In 1982, the IDF invaded Lebanon and ended up in a protracted and bloody fight with Hezbollah. Eighteen years later, Israel conceded defeat and pulled out of the Lebanese quagmire. Israel tried to quell the First Intifada by force in the late 1980s, with Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin telling his troops to break the bones of the Palestinian demonstrators. But that strategy failed and Israel was forced to join the Oslo Peace Process instead, which was another failed endeavor.

The IDF has not become more competent in recent years. By almost all accounts - including the Israeli government's own commission of inquiry - it performed abysmally in the 2006 Lebanon war. The IDF then launched a new campaign against the people of Gaza in December 2008, in part to "restore Israel's deterrence" but also to weaken or topple Hamas. Although the mighty IDF was free to pummel Gaza at will, Hamas survived and Israel was widely condemned for the destruction and killing it wrought on Gaza's civilian population. Indeed, the Goldstone Report, written under UN auspices, accused Israel of war crimes and possible crimes against humanity. Earlier this year, the Mossad murdered a Hamas leader in Dubai, but the assassins were seen on multiple security cameras and were found to have used forged passports from Australia and a handful of European countries. The result was an embarrassing diplomatic row, with Australia, Ireland, and Britain each expelling an Israeli diplomat.

Given this history, it is not surprising that the IDF mishandled the operation against the Gaza flotilla, despite having weeks to plan it. The assault forces that landed on the Mavi Marmara were unprepared for serious resistance and responded by shooting nine activists, some at point-blank range. None of the activists had their own guns. The bloody operation was condemned around the world - except in the United States, of course. Even within Israel, the IDF was roundly criticized for this latest failure.

These ill-conceived operations have harmful consequences for Israel. Failures leave adversaries intact and make Israeli leaders worry that their deterrent reputation is being undermined. To rectify that, the IDF is turned loose again, but the result is usually another misadventure, which gives Israel new incentives to do it again, and so on. This spiral logic, coupled with Israel's intoxication with military force, helps explain why the Israeli press routinely carries articles predicting where Israel's next war will be.

Israel's recent debacles have also damaged its international reputation. Respondents to a 2010 worldwide opinion poll done for the BBC said that Israel, Iran, and Pakistan had the most negative influence in the world; even North Korea ranked better. More worrying for Israel is that its once close strategic relationship with Turkey has been badly damaged by the 2008-09 Gaza war and especially by the assault on the Mavi Marmara, a Turkish ship filled with Turkish nationals. But surely the most troubling development for Israel is the growing chorus of voices in the United States who say that Israel's behavior is threatening American interests around the world, to include endangering its soldiers. If that sentiment grows, it could seriously harm Israel's relationship with the United States.

Life as an Apartheid State

The flotilla tragedy highlights another way in which Israel is in deep trouble. Israel's response makes it obvious that its leaders are not interested in allowing the Palestinians to have a viable state in Gaza and the West Bank, but instead are bent on creating a "Greater Israel" in which the Palestinians are confined to a handful of impoverished enclaves.

Israel insists that its blockade is solely intended to keep weapons out of Gaza. Hardly anyone would criticize Israel if this were true, but it is not. The real aim of the blockade is to punish the people of Gaza for supporting Hamas and resisting Israel's efforts to maintain Gaza as a giant open-air prison. Of course, there was much evidence that this was the case before the debacle on the Mavi Marmara. When the blockade began in 2006, Dov Weisglass, a close aide to Prime Ministers Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert, said, "The idea is to put the Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger." And the Gaza onslaught 18 months ago was designed to punish the Gazans, not enforce a weapons embargo. The ships in the flotilla were transporting humanitarian aid, not weapons for Hamas, and Israel's willingness to use deadly force to prevent a humanitarian aid convoy from reaching Gaza makes it abundantly clear that Israel wants to humiliate and subdue the Palestinians, not live side-by-side with them in separate states.

Collective punishment of the Palestinians in Gaza is unlikely to end anytime soon. Israel's leaders have shown little interest in lifting the blockade or negotiating sincerely. The sad truth is that Israel has been brutalizing the Palestinians for so long that it is almost impossible to break the habit. It is hardly surprising that Jimmy Carter said last year, "the citizens of Palestine are treated more like animals than human beings." They are, and they will be for the foreseeable future.

Consequently, there is not going to be a two-state solution. Instead, Gaza and the West Bank will become part of a Greater Israel, which will be an apartheid state bearing a marked resemblance to white-ruled South Africa. Israelis and their American supporters invariably bristle at this comparison, but that is their future if they create a Greater Israel while denying full political rights to an Arab population that will soon outnumber the Jewish population in the entirety of the land. In fact, two former Israeli prime ministers - Ehud Olmert and Ehud Barak - have made this very point. Olmert went so far as to argue, "as soon as that happens, the state of Israel is finished."

He's right, because Israel will not be able to maintain itself as an apartheid state. Like racist South Africa, it will eventually evolve into a democratic bi-national state whose politics will be dominated by the more numerous Palestinians. But that process will take many years, and during that time, Israel will continue to oppress the Palestinians. Its actions will be seen and condemned by growing numbers of people and more and more governments around the world. Israel is unwittingly destroying its own future as a Jewish state, and doing so with tacit U.S. support.

America's Albatross

The combination of Israel's strategic incompetence and its gradual transformation into an apartheid state creates significant problems for the United States. There is growing recognition in both countries that their interests are diverging; indeed this perspective is even garnering attention inside the American Jewish community. Jewish Week, for example, recently published an article entitled "The Gaza Blockade: What Do You Do When U.S. and Israeli Interests Aren't in Synch?" Leaders in both countries are now saying that Israeli policy toward the Palestinians is undermining U.S. security. Vice President Biden and Gen. David Petraeus, the head of Central Command, both made this point recently, and the head of the Mossad, Meir Dagan, told the Knesset in June, "Israel is gradually turning from an asset to the United States to a burden."

It is easy to see why. Because the United States gives Israel so much support and U.S. politicians routinely laud the "special relationship" in the most lavish terms, people around the globe naturally associate the United States with Israel's actions. Unfortunately, this makes huge numbers of people in the Arab and Islamic world furious with the United States for supporting Israel's cruel treatment of the Palestinians. That anger in turn helps fuel terrorism against America. Remember that the 9/11 Commission Report, which describes Khalid Sheik Muhammad as the "principal architect of the 9/11 attacks," concludes that his "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." Osama bin Laden's hostility toward the United States was fuelled in part by this same concern.

Popular anger toward the United States also threatens the rulers of Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia, key U.S. allies who are frequently seen as America's lackeys. The collapse of any of these regimes would be a big blow to the U.S. position in the region; however, Washington's unyielding support for Israel makes these governments weaker, not stronger. More importantly, the rupture in Israel's relationship with Turkey will surely damage America's otherwise close relationship with Turkey, a NATO member and a key U.S. ally in Europe and the Middle East.

Finally, there is the danger that Israel might attack Iran's nuclear facilities, which could have terrible consequences for the United States. The last thing America needs is another war with an Islamic country, especially one that could easily interfere in its ongoing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. This is why the Pentagon opposes striking Iran, whether with Israeli or U.S. forces. But Netanyahu might do it anyway if he thinks it would be good for Israel, even if it were bad for the United States.

Dark Days Ahead for the Lobby

Israel's troubled trajectory is also causing major headaches for its American supporters. First, there is the matter of choosing between Israel and the United States. This is sometimes referred to as the issue of dual loyalty, but that term is a misnomer. Americans are allowed to have dual citizenship - and in effect, dual loyalty - and this is no problem as long as the interests of the other country are in synch with America's interests. For decades, Israel's supporters have striven to shape public discourse in the United States so that most Americans believe the two countries' interests are identical. That situation is changing, however. Not only is there now open talk about clashing interests, but knowledgeable people are openly asking whether Israel's actions are detrimental to U.S. security.

The lobby has been scrambling to discredit this new discourse, either by reasserting the standard argument that Israel's interests are synonymous with America's or by claiming that Israel - to quote a recent statement by Mortimer Zuckerman, a key figure in the lobby - "has been an ally that has paid dividends exceeding its costs." A more sophisticated approach, which is reflected in an AIPAC-sponsored letter that 337 congresspersons sent to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in March, acknowledges that there will be differences between the two countries, but argues that "such differences are best resolved quietly, in trust and confidence." In other words, keep the differences behind closed doors and away from the American public. It is too late, however, to quell the public debate about whether Israel's actions are damaging U.S. interests. In fact, it is likely to grow louder and more contentious with time.

This changing discourse creates a daunting problem for Israel's supporters, because they will have to side either with Israel or the United States when the two countries' interests clash. Thus far, most of the key individuals and institutions in the lobby have sided with Israel when there was a dispute. For example, President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu have had two big public fights over settlements. Both times the lobby sided with Netanyahu and helped him thwart Obama. It seems clear that individuals like Abraham Foxman, who heads the Anti-Defamation League, and organizations like AIPAC are primarily concerned about Israel's interests, not America's.

This situation is very dangerous for the lobby. The real problem is not dual loyalty but choosing between the two loyalties and ultimately putting the interests of Israel ahead of those of America. The lobby's unstinting commitment to defending Israel, which sometimes means shortchanging U.S. interests, is likely to become more apparent to more Americans in the future, and that could lead to a wicked backlash against Israel's supporters as well as Israel.

The lobby faces yet another challenge: defending an apartheid state in the liberal West is not going to be easy. Once it is widely recognized that the two-state solution is dead and Israel has become like white-ruled South Africa - and that day is not far off - support for Israel inside the American Jewish community is likely to diminish significantly. The main reason is that apartheid is a despicable political system that is fundamentally at odds with basic American values as well as core Jewish values. For sure there will be some Jews who will defend Israel no matter what kind of political system it has. But their numbers will shrink over time, in large part because survey data shows that younger American Jews feel less attachment to Israel than their elders, which makes them less inclined to defend Israel blindly.

The bottom line is that Israel will not be able to maintain itself as an apartheid state over the long term because it will not be able to depend on the American Jewish community to defend such a reprehensible political order.

Assisted Suicide

Israel is facing a bleak future, yet there is no reason to think that it will change course anytime soon. The political center of gravity in Israel has shifted sharply to the right and there is no sizable pro-peace political party or movement. Moreover, it remains firmly committed to the belief that what cannot be solved by force can be solved with greater force, and many Israelis view the Palestinians with contempt if not hatred. Neither the Palestinians nor any of Israel's immediate neighbors are powerful enough to deter it, and the lobby will remain influential enough over the next decade to protect Israel from meaningful U.S. pressure.

Remarkably, the lobby is helping Israel commit national suicide while also doing serious damage to American security interests. Voices challenging this tragic situation have grown slightly more numerous in recent years, but the majority of political commentators and virtually all U.S. politicians seem blissfully ignorant of where this is headed, or unwilling to risk their careers by speaking out.

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Israel is in trouble

THE CHANGING FACE OF ISRAEL
By John Mearsheimer

Avraham Burg obviously believes that the occupation has had a deeply corrupting effect on Israel. But there is something else going on inside Israel that worries him greatly: the changing nature of that society. He says, for example, that "Israeli society is split to its core," and although he does not detail the specifics of that divide, it is apparent that it has a political and a religious dimension. He believes that the political center of gravity in Israel has shifted markedly to the right. Indeed, he believes that the left has "decreased in numbers and become marginal." He also sees the balance between secular and religious Israelis shifting in favor of the latter, which is why he writes that "the establishment of a state run by rabbis and generals is not an impossible nightmare."I would like to try to buttress Burg's analysis by pointing out some trends in Israeli society that are having and will continue to have a profound effect on the Jewish state over time, but which are hardly talked about in the mainstream media here in America. Specifically, I would like to focus on the growth of the ultra-Orthodox or Haredi in Israel, and emigration out of Israel, or what one might call "reverse Aliyah."



There were only a tiny number of ultra-Orthodox Jews in Israel when the state was founded in 1948. In fact, the Haredi were deeply opposed to Zionism, which they saw as an affront to Jewish tradition. However, their numbers have been growing by leaps and bounds in recent years, as has their share of the Israeli population. The reason is simple: on average, each Haredi woman has 7.6 children, which is roughly triple the rate for the overall Israeli Jewish population. Thus, the Forward reported in August 2007 that : "In the 15 years from 1992 to 2007, the proportion of Jewish children attending state-secular elementary schools dropped to 55% of the total from 67%; in 2012 it is projected to fall to 51%. The percentage attending Haredi schools, meanwhile, went from 12.4% in 1992 to 26.7% in 2007 and a projected 31% in 2012."



The rapid growth of the ultra-Orthodox community has significant consequences for Israel, because only 30 percent of Haredi men work and very few of them serve in the military. More generally, it means that they are likely to play a major role in running Israel in the decades ahead. It is worth noting that in the recent mayoral race in Jerusalem, the ultra-Orthodox candidate, Meir Porush, said that, "In another fifteen years there will not be a secular mayor in any city in Israel, except for perhaps in some far-flung village." He was exaggerating for sure, but his comment captures where Israel is headed, and why Burg worries about rabbis running the state.



The second trend is the large number of Israelis who have emigrated to North America and Europe, and are unlikely to return home. According to most estimates, there are roughly 5.3 million Israeli Jews and 5.2 million Palestinians living in Greater Israel. There are also about 300,000 individuals living in Israel who the Central Bureau of Statistics defines as "others." Most are family members of Jewish immigrants or individuals who have Jewish ancestors, but not a Jewish mother, and therefore are not categorized as Jews by the Israeli government. If one counts these "others" as Jews, then there are 5.6 million Israeli Jews, not 5.3 million. Let's do that, which means that there are 5.6 million Israeli Jews and 5.2 million Palestinians. However, not all of those Jews live in Israel anymore. It is difficult to get firm numbers on how many Israelis live abroad, because the government stopped publishing those numbers in the early 1970s. Based on various articles on the subject and conversations I had when I was in Israel this past June, it seems safe to assume that at least 750,000 Israelis live outside its borders. This means that there are now fewer Jews than Palestinians living in Greater Israel, even if you count the 300,000 "others" as Jews.



Furthermore, there is considerable evidence that a substantial number of Israeli Jews would like to leave Israel if they could. In an article that just appeared in the National Interest, John Mueller and Ian Lustick report that "a recent survey indicates that only 69 percent of Jewish Israelis say they want to stay in the country, and a 2007 poll finds that one-quarter of Israelis are considering leaving, including almost half of all young people. They go on to report that, "in another survey, 44 percent of Israelis say they would be ready to leave if they could find a better standard of living elsewhere. Over 100,000 Israelis have acquired European passports."* I would bet that most of those Israelis who have opted to live in the Diaspora are secular and politically moderate, at least in the Israeli context. It is also worth noting that there has been limited immigration into Israel since the early 1990s, and in some years, the emigrants outnumber the immigrants.



This data seems to confirm Burg's point that Israeli society is becoming more religious and less secular, and that the political center of gravity is much further to the right than it used to be. I can think of five possible implications of this evolving situation.



First, these trends will surely make it less likely that Israel will leave the West Bank and allow the Palestinians to have a viable state of their own. Greater Israel is going to be a fact of life, if it already isn't.



Second, it seems clear that the Jews are going to badly outnumbered by the Palestinians in Greater Israel. The one key demographic fact that I did not include above is that the average Palestinian woman has approximately 4.6 children, while the Israeli figure is about 2.6 children. Greater Israel will be an apartheid state.



Third, young Israelis who think like Burg are likely to become increasingly uncomfortable living in Israel, and find the idea of living in Europe or North America increasingly attractive. And Europe, which will be facing wicked demographic problems down the road, is likely to welcome - if not try to attract - those Israelis who want to immigrate there.



Fourth, it is likely to be increasingly difficult for pro-Israel forces in the United States to make the case that Washington should maintain its "special relationship" with Israel, because the two countries have "common values." There is not much similarity in terms of core values between the emerging Israel and contemporary America.



Fifth, it also seems apparent that it is going to be increasingly difficult for American Jews, especially younger ones, to identify with Israel and feel a deep attachment to it, which is essential for maintaining the special relationship.



In sum, Israel is in trouble, which is why Americans of all persuasions - especially those who purport to be Israel's friends - should read Burg's important book and start talking about it.

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Please tell me, where is Israel headed?

In a guest post on Stephen Walt’s Foreign Policy blog John Mearsheimer argues that unless the US government stands up to the lobby, there are only two possible outcomes in Palestine: ethnic cleansing or apartheid. Personally, I favour the third, even if its a novel one: one person, one vote. Otherwise we will have to endure longer the racist state in our midst.

Benjamin Netanyahu is in the final stages of putting together Israel’s next government, which will be opposed to a two-state solution. Most importantly, the new prime minister and his Likud Party are firmly against a Palestinian state. The Labor Party, which will be part of the governing coalition and which has been identified with the two-state solution for the past two decades, did not insist that Likud support that policy as a condition for joining the government. Its leader, Ehud Barak, merely asked for and got a vague statement saying that Israel was committed to promoting regional peace. Avigdor Lieberman, who heads Yisrael Beiteinu, the other major party in the ruling coalition, is not likely to push to give the Palestinians a viable state of their own. His main concern is “transferring” the Palestinians out of Israel so that it can be an almost purely Jewish state.

So Israel will continue expanding its settlements in the West Bank. In fact, the Israeli press is reporting that Netanyahu and Lieberman agreed in their negotiations to form a government that Israel would build 3,000 housing units in an area between Jerusalem and Maale Adumim (a huge settlement bloc) known as E-1. Once that is accomplished, Israel will have effectively cut the West Bank in half, making it almost impossible to create a viable Palestinian state. This deal was supposed to be secret, because the United States is opposed to Israel building in the E-1 area.

The Palestinians, of course, will remain locked up in Gaza and a handful of enclaves on the West Bank. In essence, Netanyahu and his two key ministers — Ehud Barak (Defense) and Avigdor Lieberman (Foreign Affairs) — are committed to creating a Greater Israel, which will cover all of the territory that was once Mandate Palestine.

The Obama administration will surely try to push Netanyahu to change his thinking about a two-state solution and work to give the Palestinians a real state of their own. The Israel lobby, however, will adamantly defend Israel’s right to do whatever it wants in the Occupied Territories and make it impossible for the president to put significant pressure on Israel. Netanyahu, like all Israeli leaders, understands this basic fact of life. He knows that he will just have to say a few nice words about the “peace process” and blame the whole thing on the Palestinians, who he believes are a bunch of terrorists anyway, and he will be pretty much free to do whatever he wants in Gaza and the West Bank.

It seems clear to me and to many smart people I know that this story does not have a happy ending. Indeed, it looks like a disastrous ending. Greater Israel cannot be a democratic state, because there will soon be — if there aren’t already — more Palestinians between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea than there are Israeli Jews. So, if you give each person one vote, Israel becomes Palestine. That is not going to happen anytime soon, if ever, which leaves two possible outcomes: apartheid and expelling the Palestinians — and there are more than 5 million of them — from Greater Israel. Talk about repulsive options. It is worth remembering that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has said that if there is no two-state solution, Israel will end up in a South Africa-like situation and that will mean the end of the Jewish state. In effect, he is saying that Israel is turning itself into an apartheid state.

My bottom line is that Israel, with the backing of the lobby, is pursuing a remarkably foolish — Ehud Olmert would say suicidal — policy towards the Palestinians.

I would appreciate it greatly if Israel’s American backers would explain what I am missing here. They must think that there is a happy ending to this story that Olmert and I simply fail to see. Otherwise they would not be backing the Greater Israel enterprise. There is no need for Christian Zionists to respond, because I know what their happy ending is: the Battle of Armageddon and then the Second Coming of Christ. Israel’s Jewish backers do not buy this story, which, in fact, many consider anti-Semitic. But they must have an alternative explanation for how Greater Israel is good for the Jews. What is it?

http://pulsemedia.org

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Another War, Another Defeat

The Gaza offensive has succeeded in punishing the Palestinians but not in making Israel more secure.

By John J. Mearsheimer

Israelis and their American supporters claim that Israel learned its lessons well from the disastrous 2006 Lebanon war and has devised a winning strategy for the present war against Hamas. Of course, when a ceasefire comes, Israel will declare victory. Don’t believe it. Israel has foolishly started another war it cannot win.The campaign in Gaza is said to have two objectives: 1) to put an end to the rockets and mortars that Palestinians have been firing into southern Israel since it withdrew from Gaza in August 2005; 2) to restore Israel’s deterrent, which was said to be diminished by the Lebanon fiasco, by Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza, and by its inability to halt Iran’s nuclear program.

But these are not the real goals of Operation Cast Lead. The actual purpose is connected to Israel’s long-term vision of how it intends to live with millions of Palestinians in its midst. It is part of a broader strategic goal: the creation of a “Greater Israel.” Specifically, Israel’s leaders remain determined to control all of what used to be known as Mandate Palestine, which includes Gaza and the West Bank. The Palestinians would have limited autonomy in a handful of disconnected and economically crippled enclaves, one of which is Gaza. Israel would control the borders around them, movement between them, the air above and the water below them.

The key to achieving this is to inflict massive pain on the Palestinians so that they come to accept the fact that they are a defeated people and that Israel will be largely responsible for controlling their future. This strategy, which was first articulated by Ze’ev Jabotinsky in the 1920s and has heavily influenced Israeli policy since 1948, is commonly referred to as the “Iron Wall.”

What has been happening in Gaza is fully consistent with this strategy.

Let’s begin with Israel’s decision to withdraw from Gaza in 2005. The conventional wisdom is that Israel was serious about making peace with the Palestinians and that its leaders hoped the exit from Gaza would be a major step toward creating a viable Palestinian state. According to the New York Times’ Thomas L. Friedman, Israel was giving the Palestinians an opportunity to “build a decent mini-state there—a Dubai on the Mediterranean,” and if they did so, it would “fundamentally reshape the Israeli debate about whether the Palestinians can be handed most of the West Bank.”

This is pure fiction. Even before Hamas came to power, the Israelis intended to create an open-air prison for the Palestinians in Gaza and inflict great pain on them until they complied with Israel’s wishes. Dov Weisglass, Ariel Sharon’s closest adviser at the time, candidly stated that the disengagement from Gaza was aimed at halting the peace process, not encouraging it. He described the disengagement as “formaldehyde that’s necessary so that there will not be a political process with the Palestinians.” Moreover, he emphasized that the withdrawal “places the Palestinians under tremendous pressure. It forces them into a corner where they hate to be.”

Arnon Soffer, a prominent Israeli demographer who also advised Sharon, elaborated on what that pressure would look like. “When 2.5 million people live in a closed-off Gaza, it’s going to be a human catastrophe. Those people will become even bigger animals than they are today, with the aid of an insane fundamentalist Islam. The pressure at the border will be awful. It’s going to be a terrible war. So, if we want to remain alive, we will have to kill and kill and kill. All day, every day.”

In January 2006, five months after the Israelis pulled their settlers out of Gaza, Hamas won a decisive victory over Fatah in the Palestinian legislative elections. This meant trouble for Israel’s strategy because Hamas was democratically elected, well organized, not corrupt like Fatah, and unwilling to accept Israel’s existence. Israel responded by ratcheting up economic pressure on the Palestinians, but it did not work. In fact, the situation took another turn for the worse in March 2007, when Fatah and Hamas came together to form a national unity government. Hamas’s stature and political power were growing, and Israel’s divide-and-conquer strategy was unraveling.

To make matters worse, the national unity government began pushing for a long-term ceasefire. The Palestinians would end all missile attacks on Israel if the Israelis would stop arresting and assassinating Palestinians and end their economic stranglehold, opening the border crossings into Gaza.

Israel rejected that offer and with American backing set out to foment a civil war between Fatah and Hamas that would wreck the national unity government and put Fatah in charge. The plan backfired when Hamas drove Fatah out of Gaza, leaving Hamas in charge there and the more pliant Fatah in control of the West Bank. Israel then tightened the screws on the blockade around Gaza, causing even greater hardship and suffering among the Palestinians living there.

Hamas responded by continuing to fire rockets and mortars into Israel, while emphasizing that they still sought a long-term ceasefire, perhaps lasting ten years or more. This was not a noble gesture on Hamas’s part: they sought a ceasefire because the balance of power heavily favored Israel. The Israelis had no interest in a ceasefire and merely intensified the economic pressure on Gaza. But in the late spring of 2008, pressure from Israelis living under the rocket attacks led the government to agree to a six-month ceasefire starting on June 19. That agreement, which formally ended on Dec. 19, immediately preceded the present war, which began on Dec. 27.

The official Israeli position blames Hamas for undermining the ceasefire. This view is widely accepted in the United States, but it is not true. Israeli leaders disliked the ceasefire from the start, and Defense Minister Ehud Barak instructed the IDF to begin preparing for the present war while the ceasefire was being negotiated in June 2008. Furthermore, Dan Gillerman, Israel’s former ambassador to the UN, reports that Jerusalem began to prepare the propaganda campaign to sell the present war months before the conflict began. For its part, Hamas drastically reduced the number of missile attacks during the first five months of the ceasefire. A total of two rockets were fired into Israel during September and October, none by Hamas.

How did Israel behave during this same period? It continued arresting and assassinating Palestinians on the West Bank, and it continued the deadly blockade that was slowly strangling Gaza. Then on Nov. 4, as Americans voted for a new president, Israel attacked a tunnel inside Gaza and killed six Palestinians. It was the first major violation of the ceasefire, and the Palestinians—who had been “careful to maintain the ceasefire,” according to Israel’s Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center—responded by resuming rocket attacks. The calm that had prevailed since June vanished as Israel ratcheted up the blockade and its attacks into Gaza and the Palestinians hurled more rockets at Israel. It is worth noting that not a single Israeli was killed by Palestinian missiles between Nov. 4 and the launching of the war on Dec. 27.

As the violence increased, Hamas made clear that it had no interest in extending the ceasefire beyond Dec. 19, which is hardly surprising, since it had not worked as intended. In mid-December, however, Hamas informed Israel that it was still willing to negotiate a long-term ceasefire if it included an end to the arrests and assassinations as well as the lifting of the blockade. But the Israelis, having used the ceasefire to prepare for war against Hamas, rejected this overture. The bombing of Gaza commenced eight days after the failed ceasefire formally ended.

If Israel wanted to stop missile attacks from Gaza, it could have done so by arranging a long-term ceasefire with Hamas. And if Israel were genuinely interested in creating a viable Palestinian state, it could have worked with the national unity government to implement a meaningful ceasefire and change Hamas’s thinking about a two-state solution. But Israel has a different agenda: it is determined to employ the Iron Wall strategy to get the Palestinians in Gaza to accept their fate as hapless subjects of a Greater Israel.

This brutal policy is clearly reflected in Israel’s conduct of the Gaza War. Israel and its supporters claim that the IDF is going to great lengths to avoid civilian casualties, in some cases taking risks that put Israeli soldiers in jeopardy. Hardly. One reason to doubt these claims is that Israel refuses to allow reporters into the war zone: it does not want the world to see what its soldiers and bombs are doing inside Gaza. At the same time, Israel has launched a massive propaganda campaign to put a positive spin on the horror stories that do emerge.

The best evidence, however, that Israel is deliberately seeking to punish the broader population in Gaza is the death and destruction the IDF has wrought on that small piece of real estate. Israel has killed over 1,000 Palestinians and wounded more than 4,000. Over half of the casualties are civilians, and many are children. The IDF’s opening salvo on Dec. 27 took place as children were leaving school, and one of its primary targets that day was a large group of graduating police cadets, who hardly qualified as terrorists. In what Ehud Barak called “an all-out war against Hamas,” Israel has targeted a university, schools, mosques, homes, apartment buildings, government offices, and even ambulances. A senior Israeli military official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, explained the logic behind Israel’s expansive target set: “There are many aspects of Hamas, and we are trying to hit the whole spectrum, because everything is connected and everything supports terrorism against Israel.” In other words, everyone is a terrorist and everything is a legitimate target.

Israelis tend to be blunt, and they occasionally say what they are really doing. After the IDF killed 40 Palestinian civilians in a UN school on Jan. 6, Ha’aretz reported that “senior officers admit that the IDF has been using enormous firepower.” One officer explained, “For us, being cautious means being aggressive. From the minute we entered, we’ve acted like we’re at war. That creates enormous damage on the ground … I just hope those who have fled the area of Gaza City in which we are operating will describe the shock.”

One might accept that Israel is waging “a cruel, all-out war against 1.5 million Palestinian civilians,” as Ha’aretz put it in an editorial, but argue that it will eventually achieve its war aims and the rest of the world will quickly forget the horrors inflicted on the people of Gaza.

This is wishful thinking. For starters, Israel is unlikely to stop the rocket fire for any appreciable period of time unless it agrees to open Gaza’s borders and stop arresting and killing Palestinians. Israelis talk about cutting off the supply of rockets and mortars into Gaza, but weapons will continue to come in via secret tunnels and ships that sneak through Israel’s naval blockade. It will also be impossible to police all of the goods sent into Gaza through legitimate channels.

Israel could try to conquer all of Gaza and lock the place down. That would probably stop the rocket attacks if Israel deployed a large enough force. But then the IDF would be bogged down in a costly occupation against a deeply hostile population. They would eventually have to leave, and the rocket fire would resume. And if Israel fails to stop the rocket fire and keep it stopped, as seems likely, its deterrent will be diminished, not strengthened.

More importantly, there is little reason to think that the Israelis can beat Hamas into submission and get the Palestinians to live quietly in a handful of Bantustans inside Greater Israel. Israel has been humiliating, torturing, and killing Palestinians in the Occupied Territories since 1967 and has not come close to cowing them. Indeed, Hamas’s reaction to Israel’s brutality seems to lend credence to Nietzsche’s remark that what does not kill you makes you stronger.

But even if the unexpected happens and the Palestinians cave, Israel would still lose because it will become an apartheid state. As Prime Minister Ehud Olmert recently said, Israel will “face a South African-style struggle” if the Palestinians do not get a viable state of their own. “As soon as that happens,” he argued, “the state of Israel is finished.” Yet Olmert has done nothing to stop settlement expansion and create a viable Palestinian state, relying instead on the Iron Wall strategy to deal with the Palestinians.

There is also little chance that people around the world who follow the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will soon forget the appalling punishment that Israel is meting out in Gaza. The destruction is just too obvious to miss, and too many people—especially in the Arab and Islamic world—care about the Palestinians’ fate. Moreover, discourse about this longstanding conflict has undergone a sea change in the West in recent years, and many of us who were once wholly sympathetic to Israel now see that the Israelis are the victimizers and the Palestinians are the victims. What is happening in Gaza will accelerate that changing picture of the conflict and long be seen as a dark stain on Israel’s reputation.

The bottom line is that no matter what happens on the battlefield, Israel cannot win its war in Gaza. In fact, it is pursuing a strategy—with lots of help from its so-called friends in the Diaspora—that is placing its long-term future at risk

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Invoking the Holocaust to Defend the Occupation

By John Mearsheimer

For American readers, the great virtue of Avraham Burg's important new
book is that he says things about Israel and the Jewish people that are
hardly ever heard in mainstream discourse in the United States. It is
hard to believe how stunted and biased the coverage of Israel is in the
American media, not to mention the extent to which our politicians have
perfected the art of pandering to the Jewish state. The situation got so
bad in the recent presidential campaign that journalists Jeffrey
Goldberg and Shmuel Rosner -- both staunch defenders of Israel -- wrote
pieces titled "Enough about Israel Already."

Let's hope that The Holocaust is Over is widely read and discussed,
because it makes arguments that need to be heard and considered by
Americans of all persuasions, but especially by those who feel a deep
attachment to Israel. The fact that Burg wrote this book also matters
greatly. He cannot be easily dismissed as a self-hating Jew or a crank,
as he comes from a prominent Israeli family and has been deeply involved
in mainstream Israeli politics for much of his adult life. Moreover, he
clearly loves Israel.

Burg makes many smart points in his book, but I would like to focus on
what I take to be his central arguments. His core message is that Israel
is in serious trouble at home and there is good reason to think that
things could go horribly wrong in the future. He emphasizes that Israel
has changed greatly since 1948. He quotes his mother on this point:
"This country is not the country that we built. We founded a different
country in 1948, but I don't know where it's disappeared." Israel today,
he writes, "is frighteningly similar to the countries we never wanted to
resemble." Talking about Israel's shift to the right over time, he makes
the eye-popping observation that "Jews and Israelis have become thugs."

Burg makes it clear that he is not equating Israel's past behavior with
what happened in Nazi Germany, but he does see disturbing similarities
between Israel and "the Germany that preceded Hitler." This raises the
obvious question: could Israel end up going on a murderous rampage
against the Palestinians? Burg thinks it is possible. He writes, "The
notion that this cannot happen to us because our history as persecuted
people makes us immune to hatred and racism is very dangerous. A look
inside Israel shows that the erosion has begun." He even raises the
possibility that there might be a civil war inside Israel, which "will
be not a war between members of the Jewish people of different shades of
beliefs, but an uncompromising struggle between good people and bad
people anywhere."

Burg is aware that many American Jews will dismiss his arguments because
they are so at odds with the picture of Israel that they have in their
heads. Accordingly, he reminds the reader: "I come from there, and my
friends and relatives are still there. I listen to their talk, know
their ambitions, and feel their heartbeats. I know where they are
headed." And where they might be headed worries him greatly. Again, he
fears that Israel will end up following in the footsteps of Germany,
where "slow processes altered the perception of reality to the degree
that insanity became the norm, and then we were exterminated. It
happened in the land of poets and philosophers. There it was possible,
and here too, in the land of the prophets. The establishment of a state
run by rabbis and generals is not an impossible nightmare. I know how
difficult this comparison is, but please open your ears, eyes, and hearts."

Many American Jews think that Israel is in trouble today because of
anti-Semitism or because it is surrounded by dangerous adversaries who
threaten Israel's very existence. Israelis themselves, Burg reminds us,
love to emphasize that "the entire world is against us." He dismisses
these wrongheaded beliefs: "Today we are armed to the teeth, better
equipped than any other generation in Jewish history. We have a
tremendous army, an obsession with security, and the safety net of the
United States ... Anti-Semitism seems ridiculous, even innocuous
compared with the strength of the Jewish people of today."

For Burg, Israel's troubles are self-inflicted. Specifically, he
maintains that the principal cause of Israel's problems is the legacy of
the Holocaust, which has become omnipresent in Israeli life. "Not a day
passes," he writes, "without a mention of the Shoah in the only
newspaper I read, Ha'aretz." Indeed, Israeli children are taught in
school that "we are all Shoah survivors." The result is that Israelis
(and most American Jews for that matter) cannot think straight about the
world around them. They think that everyone is out to get them, and that
the Palestinians are hardly any different than the Nazis. Given this
despairing perspective, Israelis believe that almost any means is
justified to counter their enemies. The implication of Burg's argument
is that if there was less emphasis on the Holocaust, Israelis would
change their thinking about "others" in fundamental ways and this would
allow them to reach a settlement with the Palestinians and lead a more
peaceful and decent life.

There is some truth in this defensive psychological argument, but Burg
also provides much evidence for a different interpretation of how the
Holocaust relates to Israeli life. In particular, he shows that Israeli
society is plagued with a host of serious problems that are threatening
to tear it apart and that the Holocaust is a "tool at the service of the
Jewish people," which they use to protect Israel from criticism and to
keep those centrifugal forces at bay. He identifies three basic
problems: 1) Israelis are badly divided among themselves; "the Jewish
world always had colossal disputes between colossal figures"; 2) the
grave danger that large numbers of Israelis will emigrate to Europe and
North America; and 3) the Occupation, which has had a corrupting effect
on Israeli society and has drawn criticism from all around the globe.
Playing the Holocaust card, Burg shows, is thought to be the best way to
deal with these problems. He quotes the Israeli writer, Boaz Evron, to
make this point: the Shoah "is our main asset nowadays. This is the only
thing by which we try to unify the Jews. This is the only way to scare
Israelis into not emigrating. This is the only thing by which they try
to silence the gentiles." Of course, there is another instrument that
Israel and its defenders frequently employ, which is the charge of
anti-Semitism.

To take my instrumentalist argument a step further, Burg provides
evidence that the main reason that Israelis and their supporters
constantly invoke the Holocaust is because of the Occupation, and the
horrible things that Israel has done and continues to do to the
Palestinians. The Shoah is the weapon that Israelis and their supporters
in the Diaspora use to fend off criticism and to allow Israel to
continue committing crimes against the Palestinians. Burg writes: "All
is compared to the Shoah, dwarfed by the Shoah, and therefore all is
allowed -- be it fences, sieges, crowns, curfews, food and water
deprivation, or unexplained killings. All is permitted because we have
been through the Shoah and you will not tell us how to behave."

The best evidence that Israel's obsession with the Holocaust is linked
with the Occupation is found in Burg's discussion of the evolution of
Israeli thinking about the Holocaust itself. He shows clearly that
Israeli thinking about the Shoah has varied considerably over time. The
leaders of the Yishuv "did very little in response to the annihilation
of Europe's Jews" when it was happening. "They did not want to waste
emotional resources that could otherwise be channeled into building the
Jewish state." Moreover, Israelis did not focus much attention on the
Holocaust in the first decade or so after 1948 and they showed
surprisingly little sympathy for the survivors who came to Israel after
the war. But all that changed in the 1960s, starting with the Eichmann
trial, but picking up a head of steam after Israel conquered the West
Bank and Gaza in 1967 and began the Occupation. "To understand the wrong
turn we took," he writes, "we need to go back to the 1960s, the Eichmann
trial, the Six-Day War, and all that lies in between." He goes even
further and notes that the 1990s -- and remember that the First Intifada
broke out in December 1987 -- was the "decade of transition from the
mythology of the early state to the obsessive journeys to the scene of
the crime." The pattern seems clear: the Holocaust has been the main
weapon that Israelis (and their supporter abroad) have employed to
provide cover for the horrors Israel has inflicted on the Palestinians
in the Occupied Territories.

All of this is to say that the best way to rescue Israel from its plight
is not simply to get beyond the Holocaust, but to end the Occupation.
Then, the need to talk incessantly about the Holocaust will be greatly
reduced and Israel will be a much healthier and secure country. Sadly,
there is no end in sight to the Occupation, and thus we are likely to
hear more, not less, about the Holocaust in years ahead.

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Walt, Mearsheimer go to Israel

Walt, Mearsheimer go to Israel

Dina Kraft

In Israel for the first time since publication of their controversial,
critical book about the pro-Israel lobby in the United States, Profs.
Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer were met with praise and rebuke.

TEL AVIV (JTA) - American professors Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer,
authors of a critical book on the pro-Israel lobby, had just finished
their lecture Thursday in a packed, airless Tel Aviv hall when audience
members rushed the stage, engulfing the pair with a mix of accusation
and praise.

First up was a woman who shook Walt's hand and called him a hero. Then
came a student with a handheld video camera asking Walt how he felt that
the book, "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy," was on the Hamas
Web site and had been endorsed by David Duke.

As Walt and Mearsheimer made their way out of the hall and onto the
street below, the rapid-fire questions and comments continued on the
authors' first trip to Israel since publication last year of their
controversial book
<http://www.jta. org/cgi-bin/ iowa/news/ article/20070911 israellobby. html>
.

Assailed by the American Jewish establishment as having written a poorly
researched and reasoned book with an anti-Israel agenda that taps into
age-old, anti-Semitic stereotypes about Jewish power, Walt said he and
Mearsheimer had not encountered a markedly different reception in
Israel.

In addition to the Tel Aviv event, the two spoke at Jerusalem's Hebrew
University, and Walt spoke at Al-Quds University, an Arab school, in
eastern Jerusalem.

"Some people come who agree with us and some people come who don't agree
with us, and we have a lively conversation, " Walt, a professor of
international affairs at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at
Harvard University, told JTA. "I think some people who don't know Israel
very well would think it radical or brave or controversial to come to
Israel, but there is a vital discussion here in Israel and I don't find
it surprising that we've had a very interesting and enjoyable time."

In their talk in Tel Aviv, which was organized by the Israeli peace
group Gush Shalom, the two authors took turns defending the central
thesis of their book: that a coalition of pro-Israel groups succeed in
pushing through policies in the United States that often are at odds
with America's and even Israel's best interests. They cite the Iraq war
as one example, a claim critics have called patently untrue and poorly
argued.

Echoing that claim, the pair argued in Israel that the same forces are
now pushing the country into attacking Iran.

"There is only one country in the world that is putting any pressure on
the U.S. to attack Iran, and that is Israel," Mearsheimer told a packed
lecture hall at Hebrew University, according to the Jerusalem Post. "And
it is putting enormous pressure on the US."

He added, "Inside the United States, it is pro-Israel individuals and
groups who are almost wholly responsible for pressure being brought to
bear on Bush and Cheney to use military force on Iran. The idea that the
lobby and Israel don't put huge amounts of pressure on the U.S. is
contradictory to the evidence."

Walt said he believed Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad' s call for
Israel to be wiped off the map is not actually a call for genocide. "I
don't think he is inciting to genocide," Walt said in Jerusalem,
according to Ha'aretz.

The authors maintain the United States coddles Israel and reject
accusations that their work is unfair, poor scholarship or anti-Semitic.

As an example of his thesis, Mearsheimer, a political science professor
at the University of Chicago, talked in his Tel Aviv lecture about how
Israeli settlement building in the West Bank, though contrary to U.S.
policy, continues because no U.S. president has the temerity to stand up
to Israel and the pro-Israel lobby in Washington to stop it.

The head of Gush Shalom, Uri Avineri, who invited the two to Israel,
said, "We want to start a discussion in Israel about whether or not the
Israel lobby is good for us or not."

At both the Jerusalem and Tel Aviv talks, members of the pro-Israel
advocacy group Stand With Us passed out glossy booklets denouncing the
professors' book <http://www.standwit hus.org/pdfs/ flyers/WM_ Booklet.pdf>
, citing critical reviews and providing four pages of counterpoints to
the author's claims.

"They are very convincing in terms of presentation because they are very
articulate, but their argument that Israel has caused so much damage to
America does not stand up and is causing anti-Zionism around the world,"
Michael Dickson, director of the group's office in Israel, said. "They
used the academic freedom Israel provides to all to attack Israel and
those who support her. So we made sure we were there to speak up against
their lies."

The authors say they have learned to shake off such criticism.

"When you cannot attack someone's facts or evidence, you call them
names," Walt said.

A young Israeli who recently completely his service in the IDF's
strategic planning division talked to Walt after his lecture about
Israeli checkpoints in the West Bank, saying he regretted having to
restrict the free movement of Palestinians but for the time being
checkpoints are necessary security measures.

He walked away disappointed with Walt's response. "The Israel lobby is
successful and strong," he said Walt told him. "All I could think was:
It's not strong enough."

__,_._,___

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