mideast policy,lobbyists, vulnerable to terrorism?

According to the two academics, the United States' "unwavering support" for Israel — including the $3 billion a year we give in direct assistance, as well as the decades of unequivocal military and diplomatic support we've provided — is justified by neither strategic nor moral imperatives.

Perhaps Israel was a strategic asset during the Cold War (oil embargo aside), but more recently it has inflamed Arab and Islamic public opinion and emboldened the world's Osama bin Ladens, they say.

It has made us more — not less — vulnerable to terrorism. What's more, Israel routinely ignores U.S. requests (to stop building settlements, say, or end "targeted assassinations"). Our acceptance of its nuclear arsenal makes us look hypocritical on proliferation issues.

Nor is our support of Israel morally justifiable, according to Walt and Mearsheimer. Despite the common view, Israel is, in fact, the Goliath in the Middle East, not the David. It is not a truly democratic country, but an avowedly Jewish state in which Arabs live as second-class citizens, a country that has committed crimes against its Palestinian neighbors with which the U.S. should be ashamed to be associated.

So, ask the authors, if neither shared strategic interests nor compelling moral imperatives explain U.S. support for Israel, what does? You guessed it: the "Israel Lobby."
Its most powerful arm is AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (the nation's second most powerful lobby behind AARP, they suggest), but it also includes Christian evangelicals (such as Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson), Jewish members of Congress (such as Democratic Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut), Christian Zionists in Congress (such as Rep. Tom DeLay, a Texas Republican) and media cheerleaders (such as the Weekly Standard's William Kristol and the entire Wall Street Journal editorial page).

It has its own think tanks, including the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. It has operatives like Martin Indyk — a former AIPAC official, former U.S. ambassador to Israel and now head of the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution.

Together, these groups give money, votes, endorsements and intellectual firepower to favored government officials. And enemies of Israel, beware! "The Lobby" can make or break candidates (as when it forced former Sen. Charles Percy of Illinois out of office in 1984) and policymakers (as when it persuaded President Carter not to appoint George Ball as secretary of State).

"The bottom line is that AIPAC, a de facto agent for a foreign government, has a stranglehold on Congress," Walt and Mearsheimer contend.

Most important these days, the lobby includes the hawkish neoconservative Zionists around President Bush — Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith and Elliott Abrams, to name three — who, the academics say, were the driving force behind the movement to topple Saddam Hussein for the benefit of Israel.

It seems silly to deny that a powerful lobby on behalf of Israel exists. The real question is how pernicious it is. Does it, in fact, persuade us to act counter to our national interest — or is it a positive thing? We report, you decide.