Mearsheimer On The Israel Lobby

Let me repeat myself up front in case any readers have missed this previously. John Mearsheimer, the eminent University of Chicago based student of international affairs in the realist school, is well known to readers here and all across the internet for his incisive critiques of the American Empire’s misguided and provocative policy with regarding Russia, dating back to the end of the Cold War. However, Mearsheimer is perhaps best known as the lead author (with Stephen Walt) of the 2007 book The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy. With the start of the Israeli war on Gaza, Mearsheimer has been much in demand for interviews—precisely because he has been for many years a close student of the US - Israel relationship. For that reason I believe his conversation with Andrew Napolitano a few days ago will be of great interest to readers. Below is a transcript of the “Israel Lobby” portion of that interview. It’s similar in content to a number of other recent interviews with Mearsheimer (such as the Diesen - Mercouris one). I’ll preface the transcript with the blurb from the book’s Amazon page to offer a handy intro to Mearsheimer’s perspective on the US - Israel relationship:

Originally published in 2007, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, by John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Stephen M. Walt of Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government, provoked both howls of outrage and cheers of gratitude for challenging what had been a taboo issue in America: the impact of the Israel lobby on U.S. foreign policy. A work of major importance, it remains as relevant today as it was in the immediate aftermath of the Israel-Lebanon war of 2006.

Mearsheimer and Walt describe in clear and bold terms the remarkable level of material and diplomatic support that the United States provides to Israel and argue that this support cannot be fully explained on either strategic or moral grounds. This exceptional relationship is due largely to the political influence of a loose coalition of individuals and organizations that actively work to shape U.S. foreign policy in a pro-Israel direction. They provocatively contend that the lobby has a far-reaching impact on America's posture throughout the Middle East―in Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, and toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict―and the policies it has encouraged are in neither America's national interest nor Israel's long-term interest. The lobby's influence also affects America's relationship with important allies and increases dangers that all states face from global jihadist terror.

The publication of The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy led to a sea change in how the U.S-Israel relationship was discussed, and continues to be one of the most talked-about books in foreign policy.

So let’s dive right in. Judge Nap leads this section off with a provocative question.

Prof. John J. Mearsheimer: Ukraine/Israel: How China benefits.

AN: Is the government of Israel committing war crimes?

JM: If you look at the Hamas attacks on Israel on October 7th almost everybody agrees that Hamas committed war crimes, of course, in killing those civilians. If you look at how the Israelis have reacted to what Hamas did, they are waging a punishment campaign in Gaza. They are punishing the civilian population. The IDF spokesman has made it clear that this is a campaign that is not aimed at precision targeting. The IDF spokesman made it clear that the Israelis are interested in causing a huge amount of destruction in Gaza, and in the process they are going to kill huge numbers of civilians. It's stunning how many civilians including children have been killed by the Israelis, and it seems to me that when you do that you're committing war crimes. If the Israelis were going to great lengths to target just Hamas and avoid civilian casualties, then you could make a coherent argument that this is not a case of them committing war crimes. But they're not doing that. They're purposely tearing the place apart—this is a massive punishment campaign. Furthermore, at the same time, they've cut off all food, water, and gas to Gaza, and this means that in effect they're going to end up starving out--or trying to starve out--the civilian population in Gaza. By my understanding of international law this too is a war crime.

AN: Right. I think that in this case Hamas clearly committed a war crime and at the same time the Israelis have committed a war crime. The Israelis are using military equipment and ammunition from the United States. The United States is not doing anything to stop them. It often puts strings on the equipment, and cash, and ammo that it gives away. Is the United States arguably complicit in the war crimes that the Israeli IDF is committing?

JM: I don't think the Americans are putting any strings on what the Israelis can do with the weaponry that we give them. Apparently, according to some reports, we're asking them to use smaller bombs when they attack targets in Gaza, but we're definitely complicit. I mean the United States and Israel are joined at the hip in this military campaign.

AN: I mean, the Israelis used, dropped, six 2,000 pound bombs on a refugee camp to kill one Hamas leader which they succeeded in killing along with a few hundred others. I mean that is an extraordinary amount of ordinance to go after one person, when he's surrounded by hopeless, helpless civilians.

JM: There's no question about this. If you're interested in preventing war crimes this is absolutely something you shouldn't do. There's no question about this but, you know, if you look at the Israeli case the Israelis are behaving a lot like we behaved after 911. You remember all the torturing that we did in the wake of 911. We were to some extent unhinged by what happened on 911. We were shocked after that event, the way the Israelis were shocked after October 7th, and I think we lashed out in the wake of 911 and the Israelis are lashing out. It's understandable why they're lashing out, given the severity of the attack, and the shocking effect it had on the civilian population. If the Americans were smart, what they would have done was told the Israelis to, in effect, step back and think long and hard about how you're going to respond. We should have encouraged the Israelis to restrain, to employ a smarter strategy for dealing with Gaza. Instead, we basically gave them a free pass.

AN: If we extrapolate this to domestic Israeli politics, president or prime minister Netanyahu, who was suffering tremendous daily, day after day 100,000 person strong demonstrations against his government, and whose approval ratings were lower than Joe Biden's here. Now he has succeeded in uniting the Israeli public behind him. Now I don't know how long this will last. I don't know if he can stay in office once he leaves, but he certainly has an incentive to keep the war going, doesn't he?

JM: Well, first of all I don't think that he united the Israeli public behind him. I think Hamas did.

AN: Nicely put. You're more accurate than I am.

JM: And I think, given that he was the commander-in-chief, so to speak, when Hamas struck Israel on October 7th, I think the Israelis had no choice but to stick with him, at least for a short period of time. I mean, what his fate looks like over the next you know few weeks or months is difficult to say, as almost everybody says, and I've said this, I believe, on your show in the past. I think once the dust settles his goose is cooked and he'll be pushed out of office, but for the time being I think that he'll probably remain in power.

AN: I'm going to play a tape for you from 1992. You'll recognize both people in this tape and we will use it as a springboard for discussing professor Mearsheimer's views of the unique relationship between Israel and the United States [Ted Koppel and Richard Nixon]:

TK: You make the observation in your book, and you say that you have said it many times when you were president of the United States, that no president is ever going to desert Israel, right?

RN: Correct. I put it more bluntly. I said, as I told, Congressional leaders during the 1973 Yom Kippur War, no American president will let Israel go down the tube, Democrat or Republican, and it's not an issue.

TK: That is stated fairly categorically, and yet in your book you make it clear at the same time that Israel really is not of any enormous strategic value to the United States anymore.

RN: That's correct.

TK: So why, then, would the United States continue to burden itself with huge loans--in some cases outright grants--to the Israelis, jeopardize possibly young American fighting men, when there is no strategic value involved, or little strategic value.

RN: Because the United States is concerned by more than strategic values. That may be a weakness, but it's the way we are. And there are moral issues involved here. We don't have an alliance with Israel, as you know. They're not an ally of the United States in a technical sense, but we have a bond to Israel that's much stronger. It's a moral commitment, because of what happened during the Holocaust, and a moral commitment because it is a democracy--the only democracy in that area.

It’s worth noting, before the transcript continues, that after the Yom Kippur War the US, in fact, did offer Israel a formal alliance. Israel turned that offer down, because they were concerned such an arrangement could limit their freedom of action in the region. Further, why bother when you consider the effectiveness of the Israel Lobby?

AN: I'm sure that brings back memories.

JM: Yeah, well, Steve Walt and I, as you know wrote a book called The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy that dealt explicitly with this issue. Of course, Nixon is correct that Israel is not a significant strategic asset to the United States. There have been times when it has been something of a strategic asset, but not much of a strategic asset. You can't make the argument that the special relationship between the United States and Israel, which has no parallel in history, it is very important to understand that the relationship between the United States and Israel is unprecedented in world history in its closeness. We support the Israelis almost no matter what, so you can't make a strategic argument for that relationship, and I also think you cannot make a moral relationship. You can make a moral argument but you have to qualify it in large part because of how Israel has treated the Palestinians. It's hard to see--given the [Israeli] occupation--a moral argument that could possibly explain this incredibly tight relationship. Steve and I in the book make the argument that it's largely due to [US] domestic politics, it's largely due to the fact that you have a powerful Lobby--and, by the way, there's absolutely nothing illegal or immoral or unethical about this Lobby; the United States political system is set up in ways that allow lobbies to have great influence. We all know about the National Rifle Association.

Judge Nap quickly takes issue with Mearsheimer’s glib assertion that the Israel Lobby does nothing illegal. Rather, he rightly responds, the Israel Lobby gets special treatment. Further, Judge Nap notes that there’s a world of difference between a domestic political lobby and an organization that lobbies on behalf of a foreign power—that difference is precisely the reason why FARA exists.

AN: Right, right, right, right, right. Of course, lobbying for a foreign country requires you to register as a foreign agent under FARA, unless you're lobbying for Israel.

JM: Well, that argument is made, and there's no question that organizations like AIPAC could conceivably be put under that rubric, but they're not and, anyway, given what the law is the Israel Lobby is doing nothing illegal, or immoral, or unethical. It's just a good old-fashioned Lobby like the National Rifle Association.

AN: Why does the United States veto UN Security Council resolutions calling for ceasefires or peace or pauses in the violence?

JM: Because Israel does not want those, and the United States is committed to supporting Israel. There's no way that Joe Biden or any other president could walk away from Israel in a situation like the one that we're now in. There's just no question about that. It's not peculiar to Joe Biden. I do think that Joe Biden has a very powerful attachment to Israel. He he would make the moral argument for supporting Israel down the line but, at the same time, he understands full well--as does Barack Obama and Jimmy Carter and George H. W. Bush--that if you cross the Israel Lobby you will pay a political price. I recently saw where Barack Obama was talking about how hard he tried to settle the Israel - Palestine conflict, and he said: 'You can see that from all the scars on my body.' He just recently said that. When I read it I said to myself, where do you think those scars came from? He tangled with the lobby, and the lobby is a formidable adversary. Again I'm not arguing that it's behaving in an illegal way, but any president who tangles with the Lobby is gonna have scars.

AN: Will the two-state solution come about in your lifetime or mine?

JM: I would be shocked. I hope I'm wrong, but I would truly be shocked if that were the case. I think that, first of all, after what's happened recently in the Middle East and here, we're talking about October 7th and subsequent events, the Israelis are so angry and so scared that it's almost impossible to imagine them anytime soon even countenancing a two-state solution. Furthermore, if you look at the politics inside Israel, the political center of gravity has moved far to the right since you and I were young and, if anything, it's going to move further to the right in the future. And there's just not going to be many people in Israel--independent of what happened on October 7th--who are going to be interested in the two-state solution.

AN: Does Netanyahu believe that he and he alone can decide who lives and dies in Gaza? Can he possibly make an argument--moral, legal, political, historical, philosophical--that slaughtering 10,000 Innocents somehow protects Israel and vindicates its sovereignty?

JM: What he's trying to do is he's trying to eliminate Hamas, and he's also trying to punish the Palestinians in ways so that they understand that rising up against the Israelis is not worth the price that they will have to pay. This is the Iron Wall, this is Ze'ev Jabotinsky's notion of an iron wall, the idea that you could beat the Palestinians into submission. There's no question that Netanyahu has a belief in that whole approach to dealing with the Palestinians. Again, he's also committed to defeating Hamas. He thinks that Hamas can be eradicated. And in both cases--whether you're talking about the Iron Wall or you're talking about defeating Hamas--you're saying, in effect, that you think there's a military solution to this problem. I don't think there's a military solution. I don't think that you can beat Hamas on the battlefield, and even if you do some other group will come to take their place, and I don't believe you can beat the Palestinians into submission. What you have to do is come up with a political solution, and I think that every American president since Jimmy Carter fully understood that the political solution was a two-state solution. But the Israelis have--except on one occasion--never been really interested in even trying to achieve a two-state solution. Just not much interest there. And the result is they've relied on the big stick.

The “Iron Wall” doctrine is basically what Alastair Crooke refers to as the Deterrence Myth—the idea that massively disproportionate retaliation can subdue the Arabs. From the very beginning of Israel this doctrine has included deliberate war crimes against civilians. Mearsheimer misses another important aspect to the Gaza situation, which is that Israel is clearly seeking to depopulate northern Gaza—to drive out the population and not allow it to return.

AN: What you have just said must be known and understood by Tony Blinken and his predecessors, Jake Sullivan and his predecessors, President Biden--assuming he understands these things--and his predecessors. So when they call for a two-state solution that's just political pap. They don't intend to push for it.

JM: I can't believe that they seriously think they're going to get a two-state solution. If you look at how the Biden Administration dealt with this issue before October 7th, I think a good case could be made that, of every Administration we've seen since the Jimmy Carter Administration, all of which have paid some attention to implementing a two-state solution, the Biden Administration has paid the least attention. They were not interested in really pushing hard to get a two-state solution. Barack Obama was, and of course that's why Barack Obama has the scars that I was just talking about. But the Biden Administration wasn't. And I think it's because they understood--Jake Sullivan, Tony Blinken, President Biden all understood--it just wasn't going to happen. The politics in Israel coupled with the power of the Lobby in the United States made it impossible for us to put pressure on Israel to move toward a two-state solution.