The Arab_Israeli Conflict

by Jonathan Rynhold

  120 Edward H. Kaplan and Charles A. Small, “Anti-Israel Sentiment Predicts Anti-Semitism in Europe,” Journal of Conflict Resolution, 50, no. 4 (2006): 548–561.

  121 Rynhold and Spyer, “British Policy in the Arab-Israeli Arena”; José María Aznar, “Support Israel: If It Goes Down, We All Go Down,” Times (London), June 17, 2010; Natasha Mozgovaya, “Focus U.S.A. / Can the West Stay Strong If Israel Is Weakened?’ Haaretz, September 15, 2010.

  122 “Ideological Gaps over Israel on Both Sides of Atlantic,” Pew Research Global Attitudes Project. For similar results with regard to the UK and Spain, see Simon Sarkar, “British Public Divided over Middle East Conflict,” Gallup, May 14, 2002, http://www.gallup.com/poll/6013/British-Public-Divided-Over-Middle-East-Conflict.aspx; Casa Sefarad Israel, http://sefarad-israel.es/otros550125_inf_rev%207-9.pdf (no longer available).

  123 Colin Shindler, Israel and the European Left: Between Solidarity and Delegitimization (New York: Continuum, 2012); Robert S. Wistrich, ed., The Left against Zion: Communism, Israel and the Middle East (London: Vallentine Mitchell, 1979), 1–12; Ben Cohen, “The Persistence of Anti-Semitism on the British Left,” Jewish Political Studies Review 16, no. 3–4 (2004).

  124 Bashir Abu-Manneh, “Israel in the U.S. Empire,” in Elleke Boehmer and Stephen Morton, eds., Terror and the Postcolonial: A Concise Companion (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), 226–252; Noam Chomsky, “The Israel Lobby?” ZNet (March 28, 2006), http://www.zcomm.org/znetarticle/the-israel-lobby-by-noam-chomsky; Efraim Sicher, “The Image of Israel and Postcolonial Discourse in the Early 21st Century: A View from Britain,” Israel Studies 16, no. 1 (2011).

  125 Irfan Khawaja, “Essentialism, Consistency and Islam: A Critique of Edward Said’s Orientalism,” Israel Affairs 13, no. 4 (2007) Ronald Niezen, “Postcolonialism and the Utopian Imagination,” Israel Affairs 13, no. 4 (2007).

  126 Robert S. Wistrich, “Left-Wing Anti-Zionism in Western Societies,” in Robert S. Wistrich, ed., Anti-Zionism and Antisemitism in the Contemporary World (London: Macmillan, 1990), 48.

  127 Joel Schalit, Israel vs. Utopia (New York: Akashic Books, 2009), 29–31, 62–63; Ernest Sternberg, “Purifying the World: What the New Radical Ideology Stands For,” Orbis 54, no. 1 (2010): 61–86.

  128 For revealing comments on this issue, see an interview with Norman Finklestein, “Arguing the BDS Case,” Imperial College, London, February 9, 2012, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iggdO7C70P8, also at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7RWb24VKhA&feature=related.

  129 On the Far Left and the boycott movement in the UK, see Jonathan Rynhold, “The Meaning of the UK Campaign for an Academic Boycott of Israel,” MERIA Journal, 14, no. 2 (2010), http://www.gloria-center.org/2010/06/rynhold-2010-06-04/.

  130 Emanuele Ottolenghi, “Making Sense of European Anti-Semitism,” Human Rights Review 8, no. 2 (2007): 104–126; Alvin H. Rosenfeld, Anti-Zionism in Great Britain and Beyond: A “Respectable” Anti-Semitism? (New York: American Jewish Committee, 2004), 7–13; Robert S. Wistrich, “Cruel Britannia,” Azure 21 (Summer 2005); Mitchell Cohen, “Anti-Semitism and the Left That Doesn’t Learn,” Dissent, Winter 2008, http://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/?article=972.

  131 Winston Pickett, “Nasty or Nazi? The Use of Anti-Semitic Topoi by the Left-Liberal Media,” in Paul Iganski and Barry Kosmin, eds., A New Antisemitism? Debating Judeophobia in 21st-Century Britain (London: Profile Books, 2003).

  132 Paul Berman, “Bigotry in Print. Crowds Chant Murder. Something’s Changed,” Forward, May 24, 2002, http://www.chicagopeacenow.org/rr-22.html (no longer available).

  133 He also declared the Jewish nation as “the root of evil” while later speaking about Jewish control over the U.S. government. Herb Keinon, “Greece Repudiates Theodorakis’ Anti-Semitism,” Jerusalem Post, November 14, 2003; Ari Shavit, “The Jewish Problem, According to Theodorakis,” Haaretz, August 27, 2004.

  134 Eytan Gilboa, “Public Diplomacy: The Missing Component in Israel’s Diplomacy,” Israel Affairs 12, no. 4 (2006). More generally, in the first years of the second intifada, the Greek media regularly portrayed Israel as a “Nazi” state, in Dina Porat and Roni Stauber, eds., Antisemitism Worldwide 2003/4 (Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University, 2005), 7, http://www.tau.ac.il/Anti-Semitism/asw2003-4/general analysis.htm.

  135 “Working Definition of Antisemitism,” European Forum on Antisemitism, http://www.european-forum-on-antisemitism.org/working-definition-of-antisemitism/english/.

  136 Report of the All-Party Parliamentary Inquiry into Anti-Semitism, All-Party Parliamentary Group against Anti-Semitism, September 2006, http://antisemitism.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/All-Party-Parliamentary-Inquiry-into-Antisemitism-REPORT.pdf.

  137 This is independent research carried out by the author. In the UK there only five national broadsheet newspapers, so they are self-selecting. In the United States, the first four U.S. publications are generally regarded as the leading broadsheets. The Chicago Tribune was selected as the fifth source because it had a high circulation and a significant number of articles relating to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

  138 For supporting evidence see a comparison of the Guardian and the New York Times reports on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in Eric Heinze and Rosa Freedman, “Public Awareness of Human Rights: Distortions in the Mass Media,’ International Journal of Human Rights, 14, no. 4 (2010): 491–523; see also Colin Shindler, “Reading The Guardian: Jews, Israel-Palestine and the Origins of Irritation,” in Tudor Parfitt and Yulia Egorova, eds., Jews, Muslims, and Mass Media: Mediating the “Other” (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003), 157–177.

  139 Pascal Bruckner, The Tyranny of Guilt: An Essay on Western Masochism, trans. Steven Rendall (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010); Nick Cohen, What’s Left: How Liberals Lost Their Way (London: Fourth Estate, 2007); see also Bernard-Henri Lévy, “The Task of the Jews,” American Interest (September–October 2008).

  140 Even Sartre argued that he could not condemn Palestinian terrorist attacks against Israelis, as they were part of a struggle that was similar to that which the Algerian independence movement had been fighting against France; see Jonathan Judaken, “Sartre at 100: Revisiting His Interventions in the Arab-Israeli Conflict,” Antisemitism International 3–4 (2006). A more detailed survey of the differences between the liberal and postcolonial Left discourse is presented in chapter 3.

  141 Andrew Anthony, The Fall Out: How a Guilty Liberal Lost His Innocence (London: Jonathan Cape, 2007); Bruckner, The Tyranny of Guilt.

  142 “Unfavorable Views of Both Jews and Muslims on the Increase in Europe,” Pew Research Global Attitudes Project; “Muslim-Western Tensions Persist,” Pew Research Global Attitudes Project, July 21, 2011, http://www.pewglobal.org/files/2011/07/Pew-Global-Attitudes-Muslim-Western-Relations-FINAL-FOR-PRINT-July-21-2011.pdf.

  143 “Muslim Americans: Middle Class and Mostly Mainstream,” Pew Research Center, May 22, 2007, http://www.pewresearch.org/pubs/483/muslim-americans; “How Many Muslims Are in the U.S. and the Rest of the World?” Religious Tolerance.org, http://www.religioustolerance.org/isl_numb.htm.

  2. Republicans, conservatives, and the Right

  1 George Will, “The End of Our Holiday from History,” Washington Post, September 12, 2001, A27.

  2 Lydia Saad, “Support for Israel in U.S. at 63%, Near Record High,” Gallup, February 24, 2010, http://www.gallup.com/poll/126155/Support-Israel-Near-Record-High.aspx?CSTS=alert.

  3 Frank Newport and Joseph Carroll, “Republicans and Religious Americans Most Sympathetic to Israel,” Gallup, March 27, 2006; “Modest Backing for Israel in Gaza Crisis,” Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, January 13, 2009, http://people-press.org:80/report/482/israel-hamas-conflict.

  4 Lydia Saad, “Conservatives Continue to Outnumber Moderates in 2010,” Gallup, December 16, 2010, http://www.gallup.com/poll/145271/conservatives-continue-outnumber-moderates-2010.aspx.

  5 Saad, “Conservatives Continue to Outnumber Moderates in 2010.”

  6 “The 20
05 Political Typology,” Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, May 10, 2005, http://people-press.org/files/legacy-pdf/242.pdf.

  7 Saad, “Conservatives Continue to Outnumber Moderates in 2010.”

  8 “Independents Take Center Stage in Obama Era: Trends in Political Values and Core Attitudes: 1987–2009,” Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, May 21, 2009, http://people-press.org/2009/05/21/independents-take-center-stage-in-obama-era/.

  9 Jeet Heer, “When Conservatives Loved the Palestinians,” Sans Everything (blog), February 25, 2008, http://sanseverything.wordpress.com/2008/02/25/when-conservatives-loved-the-palestinians/. On conservatives’ attitudes toward Israel prior to 1967, see also Jeet Heer, “Goldberg’s ‘Fascism’ and the Real Thing,” Sans Everything (blog), December 20, 2007, http://sanseverything.wordpress.com/2007/12/20/goldbergs-fascism-and-the-real-thing/; George Nash, “Forgotten Godfathers: Premature Jewish Conservatives and the Rise of National Review,” American Jewish History, 87, no. 2–3 (1999); Franklin Foer, “Once Again, America First,” New York Times, October 10, 2004.

  10 This is explained more fully below and in a later chapter on the mainline Protestant church.

  11 Joseph Scotchie, ed., The Paleoconservatives: New Voices of the Old Right (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1999); Paul Gottfried, “Paleoconservatism,” in Bruce Frohnen, Jeremy Beer, and Jeffrey O. Nelson, eds., American Conservatism: An Encyclopedia (Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2006).

  12 Pat Buchanan, “The Sun Could Be Setting on the American Empire,” San Jose Mercury News, February 17, 1999, 6B.

  13 Quoted in Justin Raimondo, “Now Entering Imperium,” American Conservative, October 7, 2002.

  14 Stephen M. Walt, “In the National Interest: A New Grand Strategy for American Foreign Policy,” Boston Review, February 1, 2005; Zbigniew Brzezinski and Brent Scowcroft, America and the World: Conversations on the Future of American Foreign Policy (New York: Basic Books, 2008), 351.

  15 James Mann, Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush’s War Cabinet (London: Penguin Books, 2004), 43–44, 53.

  16 Foer, “Once Again, America First.”

  17 Patrick J. Buchanan, “Islamo-fascism?”, Patrick J. Buchanan – Official Website, September 1, 2006, http://buchanan.org/blog/pjb-islamo-fascism-75; Pat Buchanan, syndicated column, September 19, 1989, quoted in “Patrick Buchanan, in His Own Words,” FAIR, February 26, 1996, http://www.fair.org/press-releace/pat-buchanan-in-his-own-words/.

  18 Quoted in James L. Baughman, Henry Luce and the Rise of the American News Media (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001), 135.

  19 Stephen M. Walt, Taming American Power: The Global Response to U.S. Primacy (New York: Norton, 2005); Patrick Buchanan, A Republic, Not an Empire: Reclaiming America’s Destiny (Washington, DC: Regnery, 1999).

  20 Libertarians and paleoconservatives were more isolationist than the Realists, as they advocated withdrawing from Europe and NATO altogether, unlike the Realists.

  21 Leon T. Hadar, “What Green Peril,” Foreign Affairs 72, no. 2 (Spring 1993).

  22 Pat Buchanan, “Let’s Make Iran Our New Friend,” San Jose Mercury News, January 14, 1998, 6B.

  23 Daniel Pipes, “Looking Back on the Middle East: James A. Baker III,” Middle East Quarterly (September 1994); Michael Desch, “Ominous Precedent,” American Conservative, May 5, 2003; Christopher Layne, “Balancing Act,” American Conservative, September 10, 2007.

  24 Brzezinski and Scowcroft, America and the World; Coalition for a Realistic Foreign Policy, “The Perils of Occupation”, statement, October 28, 2004, http://www.realisticforeignpolicy.org/downloads/perils_of_occupation_1004.pdf.

  25 Doug Bandow, “Israel’s Democracy Dilemma,” American Conservative, November 3 2003; John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt, The Israel Lobby: and U.S. Foreign Policy (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007), 86–87; Taki, “Not So Clean Break,” American Conservative, September 11, 2006; Patrick J. Buchanan, “The Persecution of the Palestinians,” American Conservative, June 5, 2006; George Szamuely, “Thomas Friedman, Dean of Liberal Imperialism,” American Conservative, December 2, 2002; John J. Mearsheimer, “Saving Israel from Itself,” American Conservative, May 18, 2009.

  26 “Ron Paul Courageously Speaks the Truth,” video, Fox News, May 16, 2007, available on YouTube, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7d_e9lrcZ8.

  27 Stephen M. Walt, “Taming American Power,” Foreign Affairs, 84, no. 5 (2005). Libertarians advocated a wholesale American military withdrawal from the region; see Leon T. Hadar, Quagmire: America in the Middle East (Washington, DC: Cato Institute, 1992); Leon Hadar, Sandstorm: Policy Failure in the Middle East (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005).

  28 Pat Buchanan, “Let’s Make Iran Our New Friend”; Brzezinski and Scowcroft, America and the World, 57–59, 77–78; Seth Colter Walls, “Bush 41 Adviser Scowcroft Says He’d Tell Israel to ‘Calm Down’ on Iran Strike,” Huffington Post, July 22, 2008, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/07/22/mccain-adviser-scowcroft_n_114379.html; “U.S. Presidential Hopeful Ron Paul: ‘Friendship’ Is Best Way to Deal with Iran,” Haaretz, November 6, 2011.

  29 Brendan O’Neill, “Burdening Israel,” American Conservative, March 9, 2009; Philip Weiss, “Mondoweiss, Chapter One,” American Conservative, June 4, 2007; Philip Weiss, “Freeman’s Fight,” American Conservative, March 23, 2009; Philip Weiss, “Looking into the Lobby,” American Conservative, June 30, 2008; Philip Weiss, “The Long Fuse to the Iraq War,” American Conservative January 28, 2008; Philip Weiss, “Honest Broker,” American Conservative, February 26, 2007.

  30 Brzezinski and Scowcroft, America and the World, 87 (emphasis added); Mearsheimer and Walt, The Israel Lobby.

  31 Scott McConnell, “America’s New Nationalism,” American Conservative, March 14, 2005; Leon Hadar, “Bad For You Too?” American Conservative, November 7, 2005; Patrick J. Buchanan, “Whose War?” American Conservative, March 24, 2003; Layne, “Balancing Act.”

  32 Dennis Ross and David Makovsky, Myths, Illusions and Peace: Finding a New Direction for America in the Middle East (New York: Viking, 2009).

  33 For example, Patrick J. Buchanan, “Foreign Aid: Ever with Us,” Patrick J. Buchanan – Official Website, December 21, 1994, http://buchanan.org/blog/foreign-aid-ever-with-us-166; Ivan Eland, “Israel and the United States,” in Srdja Trifkovic, ed., Peace in the Promised Land: A Realist Scenario (Rockford IL: Chronicles Press, 2006). Andrew Sullivan, “Giving Up on Israel?” Atlantic, http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2010/12/giving-up-on-israel.html; Leon T. Hadar, “Let the Locals Fix the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict,” Cato Institute, June 21, 2001, http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/let-locals-fix-israelipalestinian-conflict.

  34 Steven L. Spiegel, The Other Arab-Israeli Conflict: Making America’s Middle East Policy, from Truman to Reagan (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), 16–49.

  35 Abraham Ben-Zvi, Decade of Transition: Eisenhower, Kennedy, and the Origins of the American-Israeli Alliance (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), 28, 45–53.

  36 Mearsheimer and Walt, The Israel Lobby, 58–77.

  37 Caspar Weinberger, “Let a Muslim Army Occupy Iraq,’ Middle East Quarterly 6, no. 3 (September 1999), 73–81; Brent Scowcroft, “The Tools for Peace,” Washington Post, May 17, 2002, A29; Coalition for a Realistic Foreign Policy, “Ending the Israeli-Palestinian Stalemate,” January 1, 2005, http://www.realisticforeignpolicy.org/archives/2005/01/ending_the_isra.php; Patrick J. Buchanan, “Israel’s Isolation … and Ours.” Patrick J. Buchanan – Official Website, March 29, 2004, http://buchanan.org/blog/pjb-israels-isolation-and-ours-589; Brent Scowcroft, “Beyond Lebanon: This Is the Time for a U.S.-Led Comprehensive Settlement,” Washington Post, July 30, 2006; B07; James Baker et al., The Iraq Study Group Report (New York: Vintage Books, 2006), 7; Brzezinski and Scowcroft, America and the World, pp, 64, 87, 104; Mearsheimer and Walt, The Israel Lobby, 58–77, 335–255.

  38 Brzezinski and Scowcroft, America a
nd the World, 85.

  39 Mearsheimer and Walt, The Israel Lobby, 226, 381 note 38.

  40 Brzezinski and Scowcroft, America and the World, 19, 80–92; Mearsheimer and Walt, The Israel Lobby; Patrick J. Buchanan, “The Prisoner of Sharon,” Patrick J. Buchanan – Official Website, April 5, 2002, http://buchanan.org/blog/pjb-the-prisoner-of-sharon-438.

  41 Hadar, “Let the Locals Fix the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict”; Leon Hadar, “The Real Lesson of the Oslo Accord: ‘Localize’ the Arab-Israeli Conflict,” Foreign Policy Briefing, No. 31, Cato Institute, May 9, 1994, http://www.cato.org/publications/foreign-policy-briefing/real-lesson-oslo-accord-localize-arabisraeli-conflict; Srdja Trifkovic, “An Exercise in Futility,” Chronicles, September 3, 2010.

  42 Mearsheimer and Walt, The Israel Lobby, 64–65.

  43 Scott McConnell, “Divided and Conquered,” American Conservative, July 3, 2006.

  44 CNN Capital Gang, transcript, CNN.com, November 24, 2001, http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0111/24/cg.00.html.