Silence Of The Poodles

By Former Rep. Paul Findley
July 6th, 2006

Words spoken years ago by George W. Ball, a distinguished diplomat, author and champion of human rights, have vivid, new currency: “When Israel’s interests are being considered, Members of Congress act like trained poodles. They jump dutifully through hoops held by Israel’s lobby.” In the same interview, Ball said, “The lobby’s most powerful instrument of intimidation is the reckless charge of anti-Semitism.” Sadly, his words ring true today, verified by my own experiences and those of many of my colleagues in the U.S. legislature.

Ball could have added that, except for exuberant praise of Israel, the poodles remain mute as they jump through the hoops, lest they lapse into free speech and say something that will spoil their chances for re-election.

The fear of being charged with anti-Semitism outranks all other worries that bedevil politicians, and the lobby has marketed it so efficiently that a wall of silence shields the American people from awareness of the lobby’s activities and U.S. complicity in Israel’s longstanding abuse of international law and Arab human rights, violations that the rest of the world follows with dismay and anger. Fear of the anti-Semitism stain is intensified these days, because the lobby has succeeded in redefining anti-Semitism to include any criticism of Israeli behavior, an inferred threat that prompts all major media to ignore or sanitize reports of Israeli violations.

My authority for making these statements comes from having been a close student of the lobby for over 30 years, the first 22 as a member of Congress. The lobby leaders chose me as their number one target because I met unashamedly with PLO leader Yasser Arafat and later demanded the suspension of U.S. aid to Israel for its unlawful use of U.S.-donated military supplies. In 1982, when the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the main center of Israeli lobbying in Washington, claimed credit for keeping me from election to a 12th term in the House of Representatives, I became the lobby’s prize trophy.

Two years later, Sen. Charles Percy (R-IL), who was also guilty of failing to toe the AIPAC line, joined me on the trophy shelf. Our fate has tended to focus the minds of other members of Congress, discouraging them from the temptation to speak out about Israel’s misbehavior.

Israel’s U.S. lobby is peerless among the hundreds of lobbies in our nation’s capital for one main reason: it alone is armed with the ultimate persuader, an ample supply of indictments for anti-Semitism.

The supply promotes automatic cooperation when legislation on behalf of Israel moves forward. It is the modern-day Sword of Damocles, a fearsome instrument that hangs over almost every head in our government. Until recently, it seemed to cow all of the nation’s prestigious scholars, except for a few hardy ones like Prof. Noam Chomsky of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Juan Cole of the University of Michigan.

“When Israel’s interests are being considered, Members of Congress act like trained poodles.”

In February, in a rare burst of academic candor, two other distinguished professors, John J. Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Stephen M. Walt of Harvard’s Kennedy School, broke the silence with the publication of their 81-page, heavily footnoted study titled, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy.

In the study, they conclude that the flagrant, longstanding pro-Israel bias in U.S. Middle East policy has enabled Israel to tilt U.S. policy in ways that benefit Israel to the disadvantage of U.S. national interests, luring America even into costly wars and a rising tide of ill fame worldwide. They pin much of the blame on the influence of Israel’s U.S. lobby. One of their most significant conclusions: “The U.S. has a terrorism problem in good part because it is so closely allied with Israel.”

Mearsheimer and Walt quickly discovered why most of their academic colleagues behave much like the political poodles on Capitol Hill. Their study instantly became controversial, the subject of a vigorous U.S. discussion over Israel’s role in U.S. foreign policy for the first time since the Jewish state came into being in 1948. A shorter version edited by the authors was published in the respected London Review of Books because no U.S. periodical was brave enough to give it a public audience.

The study provoked such strong trans-Atlantic shock waves, thanks mainly to the Internet, that the wielders of the modern Sword of Damocles have gone public with a barrage of full-throated epithets, charging Mearsheimer and Walt with “ignorant propaganda, academic garbage, anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist drivel.”

The Harvard Crimson quoted Harvard Prof. Alan Dershowitz as labeling the authors “liars” and “bigots.” Two other academics, in a letter to the London Review of Books, wrote ominously: “Accusations of powerful Jews behind the scenes are part of the most dangerous traditions of modern anti-Semitism.” They overlooked the fact that the lobby also includes powerful Christians.

In the New York Daily News, a less strident critic, Harvard Prof. David Gergen, rebuked the authors by declaring that “over the course of four tours in the White House I never once saw a decision in the Oval Office to tilt U.S. foreign policy in favor of Israel at the expense of America’s interest.” An experienced politician himself, Gergen must know that such tilts would never be recorded for anyone to see, even in the privacy of the Oval Office. In the column, Gergen mistakenly credited President Ronald Reagan with stopping Israel’s 1982 bloody assault on Lebanon.

To the contrary, as George W. Ball recorded in his book Error and Betrayal in Lebanon (p. 45), Israeli Prime Minister Begin was defiant, conveying his refusal in these words: “Nobody, nobody is going to bring Israel to her knees. You must have forgotten that the Jews kneel but to God.”

No matter what lies ahead, Mearsheimer and Walt have already well served the American public. Their initiative has broken through a dangerous wall of silence. Thanks to publicity arising from their study, many thousands of U.S. citizens are aware for the first time that a domestic lobby on behalf of Israel exerts a significant role in forming U.S. Middle East policy, even on decisions of war. They are also now aware that religious communities-minority elements of both Christianity and Judaism-are the main pillars of the lobby.

This knowledge maybe stir enough public curiosity for a civilized and edifying public debate to ensue. It is difficult to conceive of a topic more urgently worthy of public examination.

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Paul Findley (R-IL), who served in the U.S. Congress from 1961 to 1983, is the author of the bestseller, They Dare to Speak Out: People and Institutions Confront Israel’s Lobby, available from the AET Book Club. He and Mrs. Findley reside in Jacksonville, IL, where he can be reached via e-mail at : [email protected]