Chomsky on The Israel Lobby
Noam Chomsky, in ZNet, faults the reasoning of John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, the two academics who wrote the recent report on The Israel Lobby I mentioned last week:
But recognizing that M-W took a courageous stand, which merits praise, we still have to ask how convincing their thesis is. Not very, in my opinion. I’ve reviewed elsewhere what the record (historical and documentary) seems to me to show about the main sources of US ME policy, in books and articles for the past 40 years, and can’t try to repeat here. M-W make as good a case as one can, I suppose, for the power of the Lobby, but I don’t think it provides any reason to modify what has always seemed to me a more plausible interpretation. Notice incidentally that what is at stake is a rather subtle matter: weighing the impact of several factors which (all agree) interact in determining state policy: in particular, (A) strategic-economic interests of concentrations of domestic power in the tight state-corporate linkage, and (B) the Lobby.
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The thesis M-W propose does however have plenty of appeal. The reason, I think, is that it leaves the US government untouched on its high pinnacle of nobility, “Wilsonian idealism,” etc., merely in the grip of an all-powerful force that it cannot escape. It’s rather like attributing the crimes of the past 60 years to “exaggerated Cold War illusions,” etc. Convenient, but not too convincing. In either case.
It’s always hard to argue with Chomsky’s impressive mastery of details and analysis is impressive, but his two-state position on Israel/Palestine, which he justifies on pragmatic grounds, has been blasted as inconsistent with his more general affinity for anarchism and his critique of imperialism elsewhere.
Ironically, whereas Chomsky’s political views more typically are condemned by the right and applauded by the left, his disagreement with Mearsheimer and Walt is likely to be picked up by Israel’s supporters. After ignoring the article for a couple of weeks, the mainstream US press is finally getting to it. The article in today’s Boston Globe, though, focused not on the article itself but on the reaction to it, including its endorsement by the KKK’s David Duke. It didn’t mention Chomsky, but it’s only a matter of time.