The Usual Suspect

Jeffrey Goldberg, The New Republic
Published: Monday, October 08, 2007
(Cited in David Brooks' NYT column of 12/28)

Jeffrey Goldberg is a national correspondent for The Atlantic and the author of Prisoners: A Muslim and a Jew Across the Middle East Divide (Knopf).

The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy
By John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt
(Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 484 pp., $26)

In October 2002, Osama bin Laden issued a statement in which he analyzed America's inexhaustible number of sins and prescribed ways of repenting for many of them. The statement was, by the standards of bin Laden's cave encyclicals, unusually coherent. (Unlike, say, his most recent video, released in early September, which ranged across the sub-prime mortgage crisis, America's high rate of taxation, and the work of Noam Chomsky--the latter treated sympathetically, of course.) The 2002 letter laid out in a somewhat deliberate fashion bin Laden's main complaints, and it helped to answer a question that Americans often ask: Do they hate us for who we are, or for what we do?

Bin Laden's answer was, why choose? In his epistle to America, bin Laden asked Americans to submit to Islam, which he called "the religion of showing kindness to others." He excoriated us for our immorality: "We call you to be a people of manners, principles, honor and purity; to reject the immoral acts of fornication, homosexuality, intoxicants [and] gambling." He condemned us for manufacturing AIDS, which is a "Satanic American Invention." He also declared himself in opposition to the pervasive practice of incest in America, "in the face of which neither your sense of honor nor your laws object." He plangently concluded that "it is saddening to tell you that you are the worst civilization witnessed by the history of mankind." We are the worst because we "invent" our own laws to govern ourselves, rather than embrace God's law, or more precisely, his God's law, sharia; and because we mandate the separation of religion from politics; and because we allow usury.

The American addiction to usury is most upsetting to bin Laden. As is well known, the charging of interest--at usurious rates or otherwise--is banned by Islam. The institutions of "Islamic banking" were developed to find a way to conform to Islamic law and still prosper. Bin Laden's view of usury, and of Western banking practices, is characteristically unsophisticated. And he has a theory about its historical origins: Western banking is Jewish banking. "As a result of [usury], in all their different forms and guises, the Jews have taken control of your economy, through which they have then taken control of your media, and now control all aspects of your life, making you their servants and achieving their aims at your expense."

The Jews, of course, are a preoccupation of bin Laden's. They are an important source of immorality, and, in their union with Christianity--the "Zionist-Crusader alliance" of which he often speaks-- they have for centuries propagated falsehood and heresy. In conjunction with the Christians, the Jews also advocate policies that undermine the interests of Islam. It is not merely American financial and political support for Israel that frustrates bin Laden, but, crucially, America's role in perpetuating the idea that Palestine was once a Jewish homeland, and that the Jews of today are, in fact, proper Jews at all: "It brings us both laughter and tears to see that you have not yet tired of repeating your fabricated lies that the Jews have a historical right to Palestine, as it was promised to them in the Torah."

(Continued here. Below the story, you will find a comment by TM:)

What a surprise! Another pro-Israel article in TNR, and like most of them, it equates skepticism about Israel -- a state -- with anti-semitism, hatred of an ethnic group. And no, there is no such thing as an Israel Lobby -- in caps -- although TNR lends whatever credibility Marty Peretz left it, to lobbying religiously for Israel's cause, right or wrong. More settlements for Peace!

And BTW, when speaking of the Israel Lobby, be sure to include the tens of millions of Zionist Christians, lead by John Hagee, Pat Robertson and other telehucksters, who think Israel has to occupy its "historical" Biblical lands before they can be raptured off into the ether. But no, the Neocons are not mostly Jews and didn't really lead us into Iraq.

Here's Seymour Hersh on the subject: "How did they do it? How did eight or nine neoconservatives redirect the government and rearrange long-standing American priorities and policies with so much ease? How did they overcome the bureaucracy, intimidate the press, mislead the Congress, and dominate the military [to engineer the attack on Iraq]? Is our democracy that fragile?"

As Karen DeYoung notes in her recent bio of Colin Powell, he referred to the Neocons as "the JINSA crowd." Indeed, Dick Cheney and Doug Feith were board directors of JINSA (The Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs). Does that have any significance? Probably not in Goldberg's view of things. They just happened to advocate an invasion of Iraq because it was right for America.

Except that the Neocons have long advocated that the U.S. attack Israel's enemies. They frequently camouflage their story, as Paul Wolfowitz did in his 1992 memo, by asserting that the U.S. should knock over Saddam because we need bases in the Middle East and assured access to oil. And as an afterthought, to protect Israel. In other words, a century after the era of colonialism was dead, Wolfowitz was advocating that we take over Iraq and steal its oil. Oh, yes...and protect Israel, just in case Saddam was building nukes. Then we should consider attacking Lebanon, Iran, Syria, and maybe Saudi Arabia.

The "Clean Break" memo written by Perle in 1996 was more of the same, as was the PNAC memo to Clinton in 1998. Saddam was an imminent threat to the U.S., went the argument, when the real message was, he was a potential threat to Israel -- particularly if he put his nuke program underground as a result of Israel's 1981 airstrike.

Wes Clark's recent book reports that the Neocons in the Pentagon, following 9/11, planned to knock over 7 countries in 5 years. A principal line of defense for this line of argumentation has always been that anyone who doesn't favor declaring war on the Arab world must be anti-semitic.

In the 2006 election, a modified version was used by Joe Lieberman, who claimed that anyone who didn't support Israel was a disloyal American. Has anyone looked at the amount of aid the U.S. has given Israel? In the 70s, it averaged almost $1,500 per year, for every Israeli. In total, it is over $250 billion. Why? Because Israel is vital to our interests? A simple thought experiment will show how the Cold War, the oil embargo and much of world history would be different if Israel never existed. The U.S. would have been far better off, internationally and in terms of 'human capital' if it had brought all the Jews to the U.S.

I have had considerable experience dealing both with Israel and with AIPAC. In the late '90s, I was invited by AIPAC to a dinner for Barak, then Prime Minister. They also expected at least 90 U.S. Senators. One U.S. Senator I worked for in the '80s received 70% of all campaign contributions from pro-Israel groups. But an Israel Lobby? Nah, no way.