Freedom Socialist • Vol. 28, No. 4 • August-September 2007

SOAPBOX

What to make of Israel's pro-imperialist critics?
br> by Steven Strauss

Steven Strauss

As a child in religious school, I was taught that Israel is like a giant fallout shelter I could run to if the Nazis came back. I was told that Zionism is God's answer to the Jewish diaspora, and that anti-Zionism equals anti-Semitism.

But once on my own, I bristled when I learned about Israel's collaborations with Hitler's apartheid friends in South Africa and with misogynist Jerry Falwell, who preached that the anti-Christ is a Jew.

What was a good Jewish boy to do?

Quite simple. I rejected the equation of Judaism with Zionism.

This liberation in my thinking guides me to this day. It helped me understand that Israel was created not by God, but by capitalist design, and that a good Jew must oppose Zionism, because it commits terrible crimes in our name. Israel exists only by the dispossession of Palestinians and the grace of the Pentagon. It does not speak for me.

But not all critics of Israel speak for me either: certainly not the ones whose aim is to curb Zionist "excesses" lest they provoke full-fledged Arab revolution. This threat of revolt, after all, is the reason the imperialists back Israel in the first place.

Take the Council for the National Interest, which had a speaker in Washington, D.C., at a June 10 demonstration to end the Israeli occupation that I attended. Founded in 1989 by two conservatives, CNI's name says it all. Its goals: to "promote a U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East that is consistent with American values, protects our national interests, and contributes to a just solution of the Arab-Israeli conflict."

CNI, which believes the U.S. invaded Iraq to advance Israel's interests, blames Israel for rising anger at the U.S. It demands that Israel loosen its ritualistic preconditions for making some accommodation with the Palestinians. It warns that U.S. interests "are not the same as those of any party in the region, including Israel."

With his book Palestine Peace Not Apartheid, former president Jimmy Carter joins this newish breed of scolders of Israel. The book has been well-received by many on the Left.

But Carter has never been anything other than a defender of U.S. corporate interests in the Middle East. As head of state, his wide-open financial spigots enabled Israel to construct the very apartheid system he now condemns, including Jewish-only settlements and swimming pools.

While critical of Israel's racist practices against the Palestinians, his book upholds the line that "the world's awareness of the horrors of the Holocaust" showed "the need to acknowledge the Zionist movement and an Israeli state."

Professors John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt also see a need to "tame" Zionism. In an influential 2006 paper, they complain, like CNI, that "unwavering U.S. support for Israel ... has inflamed Arab and Islamic opinion and jeopardized U.S. security," a serious problem because "U.S. national interest should be the primary object of American foreign policy."

They believe, however, that "Israel's well-being" remains one of those interests. While they oppose the Israel lobby in Washington, they affirm a Jewish state in the Middle East.

Clearly, a minority of the establishment is questioning the strategy of unconditional support for Israel.
But make no mistake: should Israel's U.S.-created might be needed to put down serious uprising in the Arab world, all this criticism would evaporate. At the same time, should Israel get "out of hand" and become more of a liability than an asset, the U.S. will not hesitate to pull the monetary and military plug, and let Israel suffer the consequences.

The rulingclass debate over Israel isn't about Israel. It is about how best to protect U.S. imperialism.

Back to the dangerous confusion between Judaism and Zionism: it is also perpetuated by some on the Left. In analyzing Mearsheimer and Walt's treatise, the Socialist Workers Party writes in the Militant that it "promotes the false and reactionary theory that U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East is manipulated by a Jewish lobby." But Mearsheimer and Walt use the term "Israel lobby," not "Jewish lobby."

However, whatever the nomenclature (and its anti-Semitic aspects or lack thereof), the idea that this lobby directs U.S. foreign policy is wrong-headed. What about Halliburton, Chase Manhattan, and Microsoft?

Meanwhile, the threat of growing anti-Semitism is real. As capitalism falls apart, it cannot help but rely on time-honored scapegoats. Today, anti-Semites are active in currently more "respectable" campaigns of bigotry, such as the one targeting immigrants. The key to making the whole world a safe place for Jews is to link the struggles of Jews, Arabs, immigrants, people of color, women, gays, and all the "usual suspects" into one brave movement against their common enemy.

Baltimore neurologist and author Steven Strauss is active in the Howard County Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation and the fight to save quality public education.