Letters to the Editor
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just keeping things in focus
I'm just trying to establish some basic facts that american zionists often try to deny, or distract someone from by bringing up '67, '73, Egypt, Jordan, the Sudan, Hitler, the grand Mufti, the Balfour Accord, and anything else they can think of: the area now called Israel/Palestine was majority Arab until the zionists came and declared the state of Israel, destroying villages, forcing people into exile, etc. The only rationale for creating a "jewish state" in that particular area is obviously theological. Although there are certainly religious factions in Palestinian politics, the movement has for the most part been secular, and they don't need any religious fable to justify their political demands.
I'm not saying the jews that have been there now for a few generations have to go, but it's absurd to assert that Arabs aren't indigenous and therefore a state based on the fascist idea of jewish ethno-cultural purity is perfectly workable.
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Not a zionist
Actually, I am not a zionist. I would have, and would be happy with any agreement which limits Israel's borders. The facts are that Israel now has nuclear weapons and has had them for decades. No one is going to beat them militarily without getting nuked in the end. The alternative Arab plan, to outgrow them from within is not working. As the W+M article mentions, Israel is now an industrialized state, much like Korea or Taiwan. They have lots of factories that make pharmaceuticals, electronics ( Intel has been there since 1974 ) and computer software. They are successfully settling former Soviet refugees. In fact, the destabilizing factor now is that they are actually growing very fast.
As far as your statement :
Although there are certainly religious factions in Palestinian politics, the movement has for the most part been secular, and they don't need any religious fable to justify their political demands
The stumbling point in the Clinton sponsered settlement was Western Wall and the Temple mount, containing Al Aksa Mosque. This whole mess came down to a few acres of land, and neither side could abandon their religious fairy tales .
Unless the dynamics of situation change, the big losers will be the Palestinian people. And I deeply resent the implication that George W. Bush is a puppet of the Jewish Lobby. He is much too much of a dimwit to be anyones puppet except Dick Cheney's
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Walt's and Mearsheimer's Academic Prospects
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Exceptionalism
Ms. Goldberg writes that "a strange, dim silence surrounds the Israel lobby, and the hushed atmosphere nurtures conspiracy theories about a power so great and so secret that you can't even talk about it in public."
That's rather odd. In the last year, I've seen two news/oped pieces on AIPAC - Ms. Goldberg's, and one by Vicki O'Hara of NPR. These were pieces connected not to any particularly important event (most of us would never have heard about Walt and Measham's article if it weren't for Ms. Goldberg's coverage) but apparently simply by a desire to discuss AIPAC's power and apparent damage to US interests.
But I haven't seen a single piece about any of Washington's other lobbies, including the NRA, PHRMA, or the Oil lobby - none of which are weak, defenseless, or morally pure.
Nor have I seen any articles about Arab lobbying of this or any other administration in Salon, NPR, or any other large, non-conservative media forum that focuses on politics. For instance, Prince Bandar ibn Sultan, the former Saudi ambassador to the United States, is a frequent visitor to the Bush family compound in Texas, and would often cook and barbecue for the young Bushes... but perhaps because Bandar is only a billionaire, party-throwing, gift-giving ambassador and not a political organization, his lobbying efforts can be safely ignored.
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Scholarship
Your review of the Walt and Mearsheimer paper seems to accept without question the scholarship of its critics as it goes overboard in condemning the scholarship of the authors. Here’s an example:
"Worse still is the way Walt and Mearsheimer sometimes subtly twist the historical record to make their case against Israel even more damning. Dershowitz catches them quoting David Ben-Gurion strikingly out of context: "Ben-Gurion is ... quoted by Mearsheimer and Walt as saying that 'it is impossible to imagine general evacuation [of the Arab population] without compulsion, and brutal compulsion,' making it seem as if Ben-Gurion was advocating a 'brutal compulsion.' But they omit what Ben-Gurion said after that: 'but we should in no way make it part of our programme.' By omitting Ben-Gurion's critical conclusions, they falsely suggest that Ben-Gurion was proposing the opposite of what he said."
Now this is indeed sloppy, and the authors should have found the original context and quoted it in its entirety. But wait. Are we now to understand that Ben Gurion was actually a champion of Palestinian property rights? That’s what I would assume from withering critique of Mr. Dershowitz, echoed by your reviewer. So how this square with the following quotes I found?
"A partial Jewish State is not the end, but only the beginning. I am certain that we can not be prevented from settling in the other parts of the country and the region."
David Ben Gurion, letter to his son.
"The boundaries of Zionist aspiration include southern Lebanon, southern Syria, today’s Jordan, all of Cis-Jordan [West Bank] and the Sinai."
David Ben Gurion, Report to the World Council of Poale Zion (the forerunner of the Labor Party), Tel Aviv, 1938. Cited by Israel Shahak, Journal of Palestine Studies, Spring 1981.
"We should prepare to go over to the offensive. Our aim is to smash Lebanon, Trans-Jordan, and Syria. The weak point is Lebanon, for the Moslem regime is artificial and easy for us to undermine. We shall establish a Christian state there, and then we will smash the Arab Legion, eliminate Trans-Jordan; Syria will fall to us. We then bomb and move on and take Port Said, Alexandria, and Sinai."
David Ben Gurion Michael Bar Zohar, Ben Gurion: A Biography (New York: Delacorte, 1978)
"In 1950 (Ben_Gurion’s) government imposed the Law of Abandoned Property. Thus at one stroke, many thousands of acres of agricultural land, large tracts of urban real estate, and thousands of houses, businesses and shops came under the control of the Custodian of Absentee Property, to be used for the benefit of the new Jewish immigrants."
Conor Cruise O’brien, The Siege, (Simon & Schuster,1986)
"When General Yigal Allon asked Ben Gurion, "What is to be done with the population of Lydda and Ramle?" – some 50,000 inhabitants – Ben Gurion, said, "Drive them out!"
Michael Bar Zohar, Ben Gurion: A Biography (New York: Delacorte, 1978).
In this light, Walt and Mearsheimer’s misquote of Ben Gurion doesn’t seem such a shocking violation of the truth.
You also quote Dershowitz on the matter of Israeli citizenship :
"Walt and Mearsheimer also confuse critical issues about Israeli citizenship, which they say is "based on the principal of blood kinship." That's simply not true -- as Dershowitz writes, "In reality, a person of any ethnicity or religion can become an Israeli citizen. In fact, approximately a quarter of Israel's citizens are not Jewish, a higher percentage of minority citizenry than in nearly any other country ... The paper's authors confuse Israel's law of return -- which was designed to grant asylum to those who were victims of anti-Semitism, including non-Jewish relatives of Jews -- with its law of citizenship."
This may be true, But is that the same thing as saying that Israeli society does not discriminate against the Arab minority? Are all of its citizens really equal? I have no first hand knowledge, but I did run across this statement recently, on wrmea.com:
"It would not occur to the average English peaking observer to object to translating [the Hebrew word] ezrahut as "nationality" because "citizenship" and "nationality" are interchangeable terms in the United States, as well as in most democratic societies. In Israel, however, they are two separate and very different statuses. Citizenship (ezrahut) may be held by Arabs as well as Jews while nationality (le’um), which bestows significantly greater rights than citizenship, may be claimed by Jews alone."
"No [one version of] Israeli nationality applies to all citizens, as does a US nationality in the United States or French nationality in France, for example. In Israel, there is only a Jewish nationality. That non-Jews cannot qualify for nationality rights in the state of Israel was affirmed by the Supreme Court in 1972 in a statement that there is no Israeli nation separate from the Jewish people."
Yes, scholars need to be held accountable for scholarship. But in these cases at least, the mistakes of Walt and Mearsheimer do not appear to have seriously undercut their argument.
Calvert