When vigilance undermines freedom of speech
By Mark Mazower
Published: April 3 2006
Financial Times
A recent analysis of the pro-Israel lobby in America has generated considerable criticism and debate. In their article, published last month in the London Review of Books, John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, two highly respected scholars, argued that it is the lobby’s success rather than any special convergence of national interests that explains the extent of American support for Israel. What is striking is less the substance of their argument than the outraged reaction: to all intents and purposes, discussing the US-Israel special relationship still remains taboo in the US media mainstream.
While leading newspapers have remained silent, the response elsewhere has been swift. Some critics have charged errors of fact. Others have condemned the authors for taking lobbyists’ boasts at face value, saying they exaggerate their strength, unity and impact. And as the authors themselves predicted, the incendiary accusation of anti-semitism has been lobbed their way too: the Anti-Defamation League, for example, has denounced what it terms a “classical [sic], conspiratorial anti-semitic analysis”. Whatever one thinks of the merits of the piece itself, it would seem all but impossible to have a sensible public discussion in the US today about the country’s relationship with Israel.
The reasons for, and high costs of, this problem warrant further consideration.
If fear of being tarred as an anti-semite – and there is no more toxic charge in American politics – blocks the way, what anti-semitism actually implies in today’s America is increasingly unclear. Over the past century, secularisation, wealth and prestige have bolstered the place of American Jewry in national life. Polls suggest that seriously anti-semitic views are now found only among a small minority of Americans. Yet, fear of anti-semitism has not vanished. Where once it was suspected – and often found – in the workplace and the domestic political arena, it is now expressed in terms of sensitivity towards criticism of the Jewish state. Often ambivalent about the methods of lobby groups such as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), American Jews generally share the committee’s ultimate goal of maintaining a high level of US support for Israel. As Earl Raab, the veteran commentator, has noted, there is a sense that if America abandons Israel, it also may be in some way abandoning American Jewry itself. In the process, the line between anti-semitism and criticism of Israeli policy has become blurred. Defending what Bernard Rosenblatt, the distinguished interwar Zionist, predicted would be “the Little America in the East” is seen by many as synonymous with defending Jews as a whole.
A striking illustration of this occurred in the run-up to the 2004 US presidential elections. At that time Congress passed the Global Anti-Semitism Awareness Act, in spite of strong objections from the State Department. The foreign service did not see why any one form of discrimination should be singled out for official US concern. It was equally troubled by the Act’s language, which asserts that “strong anti-Israel sentiment” or indeed “Muslim opposition to developments in Israel and the occupied territories” should count as evidence of anti-semitic attitudes.
At one level, Congress was connecting with a diplomatic strategy of the Sharon government that sought to highlight anti-semitism as a way of deflecting criticism of its policies in the occupied territories. But behind the lobbying lie deeper semantic shifts in mainstream American discourse. To be a Zionist is unproblematic in political terms, but to declare oneself an anti-Zionist is to become vulnerable to the charge of anti-semitism. I have even heard a student impute the same bias to a professor for referring to “Palestine” rather than Israel in a lecture on the eastern Mediterranean under Roman rule: it was as though any reference to Palestine, especially when not accompanied by a reference to Israel, was troubling.
Most sensible people of course recognise that opposition to Israeli policies is quite different from anti-semitism. For those who think they are linked, it has proved hard to fix the precise boundary between the two. The Global Anti-Semitism Act talks about a line separating the latter from “objective criticism” of Israel but does not spell out where this line lies. Lawrence Summers, former president of Harvard University, castigated “profoundly anti-Israel views” for being “anti-semitic in their effect if not their intent”. Others refer to “disproportionate” criticism and vilification. But none of these terms are self-evident in their application. Because the costs of stepping over the line are high, the result is that debate is put under surveillance and inhibited. I came to appreciate that this may cause serious damage to life in the classroom and to pedagogy as a whole when I served on a faculty committee looking into such matters last year.I
Intellectual discussion has thereby been constrained too. To take an extreme but pertinent example: any comparison of Israel and the Third Reich is generally denounced by the organisations that pronounce on these issues. It is not hard to see why. Offensive to many Jewish survivors of the camps, the comparison with the paradigmatic criminal state of the modern world is often made as a means of ruling out the Israeli state’s right to exist. Nevertheless, German and Jewish nationalists – like many others in the 20th century – sought to nationalise land through a combination of colonial settlement and conquest. It happens that the two shaped many of their colonisation policies in reaction to the very same historical experience – the earlier German anti-Polish land campaigns of the 1890s. They differed substantially in how they saw this precedent, of course, as in their policies and treatment of those already on the land. But precisely because comparisons can bring out these differences, there seems no reason to allow political correctness to trump scholarly enquiry.
Vigilance can be carried too far. Having denounced American academics for supposedly making anti-semitic statements, the Anti-Defamation League last year levelled a similar charge at faculty in the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. There is something peculiarly Kafkaesque about the idea of an American Jewish watchdog monitoring Israel for anti-semitism, yet once the mechanism and mindset exist, this is where the logic of vigilance leads: anti-semitism may be found anywhere. In fact, the intellectual climate in Israel is tougher-minded than in the US and the authorities at the Hebrew University simply took no notice.
But brandishing the big stick of anti-semitism against all and sundry helps no one: it lumps together serious critique with crackpot ravings, does a signal disservice to those who really suffered from it in the past and stifles a badly needed debate within the US.
There is no reason why the partnership between the US and Israel should not be susceptible to the same kind of cost-benefit analysis as any other area of policy. After all, no special relationship lasts forever: ask the Brits.
The writer is professor of history at Columbia University and author of Salonica, City of Ghosts: Christians, Muslims and Jews, 1430-1950 (Knopf)
Only a leftist could have written this. I’ll go farther. Could he also be an antisemite? Oops. There I go again, levelling the hated charge.
This essentially is a pleaa to have open and scholarly debate on matters dealing with Israel and thus to legitimate The Irael Lobby as legitimate debate.
“What is striking is less the substance of their argument than the outraged reaction: to all intents and purposes, discussing the US-Israel special relationship still remains taboo in the US media mainstream.”
On the contrary what is striking is the content and not the “outraged” reaction. “Discussing the US-Israel special relation” is something we all do all the time.
Yes, when someone declares himself to be “anti-Zionist” he becomes “vulnerable” to being labelled an antisemite and so he should be. That doesn’t mean he is. It is quite possible and legitimate to be anti-zionist and not be antisemitic.
Supporters of Israel are quite able to distinguish between legitimate critisism and antisemitic criticism. It seems the author makes no such distinction.
He has changed the issue from whether The Israel Lobby is antisemitic to whether there is a prohibition against discussing it.
Comment by Ted Belman
— April 4, 2006 @ 8:07 am
The commentary of Professor Mark Marzower of Columbia, author of “Salonika” a history of the “ghost” of a large bustling Sephardic, Christian and Muslim city in Macedonia under the Ottoman turks is problematic. The Sephardic Jewish community was virtually destroyed in less than four months during the Shoah by the Nazis. Marzower was conspicuous by his absence during the “Columbia Unbecoming” kerfuflle at my alma mater on Morningside Heights concerning the patently antisemitic canards of his colleagues in the Columbia MEALAC faculty that fueled months of roiling before the controversial tenure appointment of Professor Joseph Massad. Marzower chooses in this commentary to take on the Global Antisemitism Report Act and somehow connecting the Anti-Defamation league to its enactment. He should his research and find out that a revered Holocaust survivor amd Human rights champion in the House, Rep. Tom Lantos (D-CA) and a bi-partisan groups of Congressman were behind this pioneering legislation.
Perhaps, as a good historian he should check his facts.
Comment by Jerry Gordon
— April 4, 2006 @ 8:08 am
This article is either disengenuous or ignorant.
The charge that debate of the subject is “taboo” is nonsense.
The criticism of the document is not because of the subject matter but because of the
LIES and FALSIFICATION.
Even a University professor should be able to discern a difference between criticism and slander.
The author of this piece takes the
Comment by ATimeToSpeak
— April 4, 2006 @ 9:23 am
If one eliminates from Mark Mazower’s article, his specific reference to John Mearsheimer’s and Stephen Walt’s article and what he describes as the angrey reaction to it, all Mr. Mazower is really saying in a sophisticated and scholarly, but general way, is that speaking about or analyzing Israel’s or Israel’s supporters relationships with America per se and coming to some negative conclusions in that regard that reflects poorly on Israel or its supporters should not draw knee jerk responses that the speaker or analyst is anti-Semitic.
I do not think anyone would disagree with that general point.
It is however what critics of Israel or the pro-Israel lobby specifically say and how they specifically say it that will lead reasonable people to conclude that the critics of Israel or Israel’s supporters including Israeli lobby groups has or has not engaged in anti-Semitism.
Without any specific reference to John Mearsheimer’s and Stephen Walt’s article, Mr. Mazower characterizes them as two highly respected scholars and thereby implies their article is fair and scholarly and deserving of respect.
Again, without any specific reference by name or otherwise to those who wrote or spoke out against John Mearsheimer’s and Stephen Walt’s article, condemning it as anti-Semitic, but characterizing those who reacted as angry, implies that theirs is an overreaction that unfairly condemns John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt.
Mr. Mazower has by praising John Mearsheimer’s and Stephen Walt’s respected scholarship without regard to their subject article has imbued their article with validity and by generally describing as angry, those who condemned that article as anti-semitic without regard to what those angered actually said of the subject article denigrates the validity of the critics of John Mearsheimer’s and Stephen Walt’s article.
Mr. Mazower’s defence of John Mearsheimer’s and Stephen Walt’s article and his denigrating those he have reacted against it, is for the foregoing reasons very unscholarly and fundamentally flawed.
Comment by Bill Narvey
— April 4, 2006 @ 10:04 am
The real elephant in the room is not Israel, it IS Anti-semitism. That’s the taboo subject that no one dare utter.
Think about it: A bloody war and 50 years of troop deployment to defend Korea - is it the Korean Lobby? Countless billions spent and soldiers put on the line for half a century defending Europe against the Soviets - a European “cabal”?
No, just America siding with democratic allies against a hostile ideology.
So, why the hysteria when we do the same for Israel? That’s the taboo subject we’re not supposed to mention (shhhhh…..anti-semitism).
It’s perfectly acceptable for Walt & Mearsheimer to slander the motives of good, decent Americans who simply have a different take on Israel…Calling them disloyal, unpatriotic; accusing them of emotionally putting Israel’s interests before America’s.
Well OK. But what about the emotional hatred of Jews and Israel - i.e. Anti-semitism. Are we supposed to believe that doesn’t exist. Are we supposed to pretend that all those nasty folks who emotionally obsess against Jews just got up and disappeared when Israel was born - only to be replaced by dispassionate “critics” of Israel? Of course not.
But we’re just not allowed to talk about it. You want a sacred cow, a taboo subject, a big fat Elephant in the room. Try discussing how emotional anti-semitism skews political conclusions. This “Harvard study” would be a case in point. But don’t hold your breath waiting for anyone to tackle that subject.
Oh, and by the way. Israel was attacked directly three times, but the US never sent in troops. Meanwhile Bush’s daddy sent in the army to liberate Panama from pock faced Noreiga. I guess the Panamanian Lobby in exile controls the media.
Comment by APS
— April 4, 2006 @ 1:19 pm
APS, my sentiments exactly. The point is that Israel is the only U.S. ally who’s relationship with us is open to question and debate. It is not unreasonable to assume anti-Semitism is the motivation behind it. It is a given that we are allied with England, Germany, Japan, Australia, Canada etc. because they are free countries which share our values. But for some reason critics of Israel don’t come to that same conclusion as a motive for our friendship with Israel, they see some sinister cabal behind it as though there could be no good reason why we would support Israel as opposed to her fascist enemies. It is their own hostility towards Jews that shapes their view of the Middle East, why else would they support regimes anethema to our own American values over Israel? We should not be afraid to call them on it.
Comment by Laura
— April 4, 2006 @ 1:45 pm
It’s a strange hypocrisy, Laura.
Critics of Israel never tire of whining about personal attacks and smear campaigns, and the oh so “malevolent” charge of anti-semitism. And yet they themselves never simply say that Aipac, Wolfowitz, Feith, Perle etc. are well intentioned but pursuing a wrongheaded policy. There’s always the charge of disloyalty, serving foreign interests, subversion, etc. Well, isn’t that a personal attack, a slander, a smear campaign against the motives of people they’ve probably never met? And yet somehow their own motives are strangely off limits.
In the early 1960s President John F. Kennedy stood in the middle of an embattled city, Berlin, and proudly said (in German) “Ich bin ein Berliner” (I am a Berliner). No one accused him of selling out America to German interests. No one questioned his loyalty to the US. In fact, it was one of his finest moments as President. He was broadly praised for standing by an embattled ally in an hour of darkness - even though it meant inciting the ire of nuclear armed Russia.
Now, flip to 2006. Can you imagine President Bush going to Tel-Aviv…or better yet Jerusalem…and proudly saying in Hebrew “I am an Israeli”. Gee, I wonder what Walt and Mearsheimer and the rest of the “great patriots” would make of that one.
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— April 4, 2006 @ 10:25 pm
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