March 1, 2009
Among those who, like myself, oppose Israel's ethnic cleansing of
Palestinians, there is an important debate about a fundamental question. The
debate is about how to explain the fact that the American government supports
Israel virtually unconditionally with more economic, military and diplomatic
aid than it gives to any other country.
One commonly believed explanation is that the "Israel Lobby"--consisting of
organizations like AIPAC and a host of other pro-Israel Jewish organizations
in the United States--has hijacked U.S. foreign policy by using its wealth and
control of the mass media to buy or intimidate Congressmen. According to this
view, the American government's pro-Israel foreign policy is harmful to the
interests of the non-Jewish American corporate upper class, and were it not
for the power of the Israel Lobby American foreign policy, reflecting as it
does the interests of the American upper class, would not be as pro-Israel as
it is today.
I call this the "The Lobby Makes Them Do It" view. I think it is just plain
factually wrong. The alternative view that I hold is that the Israel Lobby's
power comes from the (mostly non-Jewish) American ruling class.
The leading advocate of the "The Lobby Makes Them Do It" view is James Petras.
Petras
asserts that the Israel Lobby prevailed over America's Big Oil elite to
get the U.S. to invade Iraq for the benefit of Israel:
"The principal governmental architects of the war, the intellectual
promoters of the war, their publicly enunciated published strategies for the
war were all deeply attached to the
Israel lobby and
worked for the Israeli state.
Wolfowitz, number 2 in the Pentagon, Douglas Feith, number 3 in the
Pentagon, Richard Perle, head of the Defense Board, Elliot Abrams in charge
of Middle East affairs for the National Security Council, and dozens of
other key operatives in the government and ideologues in the mass media were
life-long fanatical activists in favor of Israel, some of whom had lost
security clearances in previous administrations for handing over documents
to the Israeli government...
"In fact the US-Middle East wars prejudice the oil interests in several
strategic senses.
The wars generate generalized hostility to oil companies with long-term
relations with Arab countries.
The wars result in undermining new contracts opening in Arab countries for
US oil investments.
US oil companies have been
much friendlier to peacefully resolving conflicts than
Israel and especially
its Lobbyists as any reading of the specialized oil industry journals and
spokespeople emphasize.
"
Just on the facts, Petras is wrong. Far from opposing the Israel Lobby, Big
Oil uses that lobby. As Juan Cole
writes:
"Neoconservative Jews in the US like Richard Perle, Frederick Kagan and
Michael Rubin at the American Enterprise Institute who vocally support the
Iraq War (and have gotten rich off it) are a minority of a minority, and
even are at odds with the Israeli security establishment! Moreover, the
American Enterprise Institute, which crafted the Iraq War, gets funding from
Exxon Mobil, and last I checked it was run by white Protestants. The
vice chair of AEI is Lee Raymond, former CEO of Exxon Mobil and surely Dick
Cheney's old golf partner in the Dallas years. That is, the Kagans and the
Rubins, who identify with the Revisionist Zionist movement on the Israeli
Right, are useful idiots for Big Oil, not movers and shakers in their own
right."
The American corporate upper class, the American ruling class, is pro-Israel
because they (or at least their sophisticated advisors, like Henry Kissinger,
Condoleeza Rice, General James Jones, etc.)
know that Israeli ethnic cleansing of Palestinians performs a strategically
crucial service for the American ruling class. The ethnic cleansing polarizes
the Middle East along non-class lines, fomenting an ethnic war pitting Jews
against non-Jews. The American ruling class uses this ethnic war to strengthen
its domestic control over ordinary Americans, and to strengthen the control of
Middle Eastern ruling elites (kings, mullahs, dictators) over ordinary people
in their respective nations. These are the most important strategic objectives
of the American ruling class: social control to prevent the spread of
pro-democratic, pro-working class, pro-solidarity movements from overthrowing
elite rule anywhere in the world.
Regarding domestic control of the American population, the key strategy of
elite social control has for many decades been to rely on Orwellian wars of
social control. The particular "foreign enemy" has changed over time, from
Teddy Roosevelt's Spain to Woodrow Wilson's "Huns" to FDR's Fascists to
Truman's Communists to Bush's and Obama's Terrorists. By ensuring that the
American mass media refrain from telling Americans the true reason (Israel's
ethnic cleansing) why Palestinians and Arabs and Muslims take up arms against
Israel, the American ruling class ensures that Americans will believe the lie
that Palestinians/Arabs/Muslims are hateful, irrational, anti-semitic
terrorists who kill decent Israelis "just like us" and would likewise kill
Americans if we fail to obey our upper class rulers who protect us from
terrorism.
Similarly, the oil-rich Middle East ruling classes, in countries like Saudi
Arabia and Iran, use their people's anger at Israel to strengthen their power
over them, as I discuss in some detail in
How Israel Helps Saudi Arabia’s Rulers Control their Working Class
and
How Israel Helps the
Islamic Republic of Iran Control the Iranian Working Class. James
Petras is naive to think that Big Oil's interests are prejudiced by the
pro-Israel U.S. foreign policy. If the Saudi royal family, for example, were
really opposed to U.S. support for Israel, then it would use its vast
wealth to support pro-Palestinian forces inside the United States, to counter
the Israel Lobby; but it doesn't.
By the same token, if any members of the American mostly non-Jewish ruling class, with
billions of dollars to throw around (Buffet gave away
$40
billion alone!), wanted to tell Americans the truth about Zionism (the
movement to create and protect a Jewish state), they could do so. They could
tell Americans how Zionism is all about ethnic cleansing, how Albert Einstein
(whom the Israeli government asked to be the President of Israel, and
declined) always opposed the Jewish state idea because it was morally wrong,
and how the Zionists betrayed European Jews during World War II by opposing
rescue efforts (so there would be more dead Jews to give them greater standing
at the post-war negotiations over who would "get" Palestine)--they could do
so; but they don't. If they did, they could turn the American public against
Zionism and against the Israel Lobby as quickly as they turn it against a
politician soliciting sex in a toilet stall.
So why don't they do it? It is not because Zionists control the mass media.
Sure, pro-Zionists do control the mass media, but billionaires could create
their own anti-Zionist media if they wanted to. After all, Rupert Murdoch owns
a large enough media network to do the job and at the time of his divorce in
1998 his personal fortune was only 3.3 billion pounds (less than $5 billion I
imagine.) The American ruling class chooses not to oppose the Israel Lobby
because they have no reason to. The Israel Lobby is an instrument ("useful
idiots" as Juan Cole puts it) of the American ruling class. The Lobby spreads
the lies that the pro-Israel foreign policy requires, and it keeps politicians
in line who might otherwise stray from the path. The Lobby is powerful because
it does the bidding of the powerful.
Very different organizing strategies against Zionism are appropriate,
depending on whether one agrees with "The Lobby Makes Them Do It" view of
James Petras or the view I advocate. If Petras is correct, then the natural
strategy to turn U.S. foreign policy around would be to side with the likes of
Big Oil against the Israel Lobby. But since Big Oil and the Israel Lobby are
in fact on the same team, this is a ridiculous strategy. Instead, the strategy
that makes sense is to mobilize the general public against the American ruling
class around not only opposition to Israeli ethnic cleansing but also
opposition to the entire anti-democratic, anti-equality agenda of the ruling
class. This is a revolutionary pro-working class strategy, and only it can
win.
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