The Israeli Lobby

In March 2006, Professors Mearsheimer (Harvard University) and Walt (University of Chicago) published a controversial paper on the Israeli lobby in the prestigious Harvard Faculty Research Working Papers. They defend that American Foreign Policy is highly influenced by the Israeli Lobby by efficiently convincing the American People that Israeli and American interests are perfectly aligned, if not identical.

Israel is the largest recipient of American foreign aid since the end of World War II receiving "total direct U.S. aid amounting to well over $140 billion in 2003 dollars. Israel receives about $3 billion in direct foreign assistance each year, which is roughly one‐fifth of America’s foreign aid budget. In per capita terms, the United States gives each Israeli a direct subsidy worth about $500 per year, apart from consistent diplomatic support". The article, a must read for anybody trying to understand American Foreign Policy, then moved on to explain the reasons why neither American strategic nor moral values go hand in hand with Israel's.

Both Professors were inmediately accused of anti-Semitism and there were questions surrounding Walt's stepping down as Academic Dean at the Kennedy School (which Walt defended as being coincidential). To understand the extent of such criticism, it is totally worth reading the article published by the Jewish Paper Forward.

We discussed this paper at Columbia, during our "Conceptual Foundations of International Relations". I found it to be a positive sign that this reading was presented under the "American Foreign Policy" class. Nevertheless, I was shocked to see that during the associated discussion session, not a single American student was willing to make a comment on what has become one of the most controversial articles since Huntington's "Clash of Civilisations". Even after recklessly pointing out outloud my confusion for such silence and reminding my classmates that their OWN taxes were paying for this support, none of them dared make a comment. Our Professor, Hisham Aidi, tried to, for at least ten good minutes, get a discussion going; without success.

I was therefore very excited when I found out last week that the authors were coming to Columbia to discuss the related book they are currently working on. In a closed-doors debate, a controversial discussion with famous scholars such as Richard Betts, Jack Snyder, Mahmood Mamdani, Kenneth Waltz, Scott Sagan, John Mearsheimer, Rasheed Khalidi and Robert Jervis took place and I was lucky enough to be in the room.

The discussion was not as heated as I was hoping for and unfortunately many comments on methodology (content unrelated) were made. Nevertheless some argued that the criticism should be rephrased under other titles as "strategic consideration" (Israel as a democracy and close ally) or "moral grounds" (from victim to victimizer) but not in terms of the "all-powerful lobby" or "domestic pressure".

Overall I was glad to see, as a European who favours a more balanced aproach in America's Middle Eastern foreign policy, that the debate is on and that once the book is out, discussion will slowly make its way to the 2008 American Presidential Elections and hopefully, to our discussion sessions!

Please read the article on the Israeli Lobby, you will start hearing a lot about it.