I AM A JEW (PART XIV - The Israeli Propaganda Machine v. The Alleged Power of the Arab Lobby)

As the title shows this is the 14th part (actually the 15^th, if you count the Special Bulletin) of the series. If you haven’t read the other parts I urge you to do so. They are, after all a continuum. Easy access to the others can be obtained by clicking on the parts.

Part I, Part II, Part III, Special Bulletin, Part IV, Part V, Part VI, Part VII, Part VIII, Part IX, Part X, Part XI, Part XII and Part XIII.

In response to my post: "I AM A JEW (PART XI - The Israeli Propaganda Machine)," Albert Nekimken of Vienna, Virginia, wrote:

I suggest that you read the articles entitled: “The Arab Lobby – The American Component”, by Mitchell Bard and "The Arab Lobby: The European Component" by Steven J. Rosen as counterbalance to your current campaign against the "Israeli propaganda machine."

I urge my readers to also do so, because one should always be willing to expose oneself to a counterbalance of any viewpoint. But as for me I find myself singularly unimpressed by the presentation set forth in these articles.

Of course all depends on the definition of a “lobby." Webster’s Dictionary on line defines lobby (noun) as “a group of persons engaged in lobbying especially as representatives of a particular interest group” and lobby (verb) “to try to influence government officials to make decisions for or against something” and “to try to get something you want by talking to the people who make decisions”

I agree with that definition and by that definition the article “The Arab Lobby – The American Component” fails to support its claim.

As early as the fourth paragraph of the article the author writes:

Thus, while Louis Brandeis may have lobbied Woodrow Wilson for U.S. support for the Balfour declaration, the president's closest advisor, "Colonel" Edward House, vigorously opposed it. Harry Truman's friend Eddie Jacobson asked for the president's support for Israel but his secretary of state, George Marshall, threatened to vote against Truman if he recognized the newly established state.

Thus the author almost immediately reveals a misunderstanding, or worse a deliberate distortion, of what a lobby is and what lobbying constitutes. Let us look at the definition of a lobby, “a group of persons engaged in lobbying” and the definition of lobby (verb) is ““to try to influence government officials”.

But when we look at the paragraph quoted above we see that the author is not talking about outsiders trying to influence government officials, he is talking about government officials exercising their duties to advise the President as to what they believe is in the interests of the US. That is their duty! That is their responsibility! The fact that they believed that certain policies were in the best interests of the US, which favored one country or another, or one policy over another, does not make their behavior lobbying, or turn public officials into lobbyists. George Marshall, as Secretary of State felt strongly about what was in the best interests of the US, and expressed it in no uncertain terms.

It was Truman who was politically conscious when he said, according to the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs as well as Information Clearing House:

I'm sorry, gentlemen, but I have to answer to hundreds of thousands who are anxious for the success of Zionism: I do not have hundreds of thousands of Arabs among my constituents.

I personally think Truman made the right decision, but to denigrate the many in the State Department who felt that in International Affairs, certain policies, which Bard disapproves of, were both in the interests of the US and fairer than the alternative, is a blatant distortion.

Allow me to quote further from the Washington Report:

 Forty-four years after these events, [Clark] Clifford, Truman's principal domestic advisor, has produced his memoir…

The article goes on to quote Clifford as follows: 

Marshall firmly opposed American recognition of the new Jewish state; I did not. Marshall's opposition was shared by almost every member of the brilliant and now legendary group of presidential advisers, later referred to as the Wise Men, who were then in the process of creating a post-war foreign policy that would endure for more than 40 years. The opposition included the respected Under Secretary of State Robert Lovett; his predecessor, Dean Acheson; the No. 3 man in the State Department, Charles Bohlen; the brilliant chief of the Policy Planning Staff George Kennan; (Navy Secretary James V.) Forrestal; and ... Dean Rusk, then the director of the Office of United Nations Affairs... 

To call these dedicated public servants lobbyists is the height of Chutzpa.

There were many reasons for their views. There were far more Arabs in the world than Jews. But at least as important they felt that the partition was imminently unfair for it: 

awarded 56 percent of Palestine to its 650,000 Jewish inhabitants, and 44 percent to its 1,300,000 Muslim and Christian Arab inhabitants.

If there was any lobbying at the time (or since) it was by the “Jewish” lobby. Quoting again from the Washington Report:

"Lovett began by criticizing what he termed signs of growing 'assertiveness' by the Jewish Agency ... Marshall interrupted Lovett. He was strongly opposed to the behavior of the Jewish Agency, he said.

And where does the article go from trying to label public servants and even the Secretary of State lobbyists, It argues that American foreign policy has unwisely catered to the Saudis. This may or may not be sound policy, but it is difficult to see what it has to do with an Arab lobby.

The author writes:

Arab states have benefited in the United States from the support of oil companies, defense contractors, and, perhaps most of all, from Arabists within the State Department.

Oil companies and defense contractors pursue their own interests – if that interest happens to coincide with those of certain countries, that does not make them a lobby for them. As for so-called Arabists in the State Department, they are doing their job, and work for what they believe to be in the best interest of their country, the USA. They are public officials, not lobbyists.

The rest of the article is essentially a polemic criticizing American foreign policy in the Middle East, but this has little if anything to do with proving the existence of an Arab lobby in the United States.

But the author, possibly inadvertently, shows beyond a shadow of a doubt that there is no Arab lobby in the US, and in fact why it is impossible for one to exist, when he writes:

… limiting …their influence are the divisions among Arabs and Muslims, which carry over to their expatriates and their descendants in the United States. According to the 2000 U.S. census, 1.2 million Americans were of Arab descent. Unlike the Israel lobby, which can stand up for the strengthening of America's relationship with a single nation, it is difficult, if not impossible for Arab Americans to represent all Arabs because Americans of Arab descent come from no fewer than twenty-one countries with conflicting interests and which are often feuding among themselves. As Jawad George, the executive secretary of the Palestine Congress of North America said, "The same things that divide the Arab world divide the Arab-American world.”

The author goes on to undermine his own argument by admitting that:

Over the last two decades, …(they) have had no discernible impact on policy.

Now when we come to Rosen’s article, we find that he defeats his argument about an effective Arab lobby in relation to US policy toward Israel at the outset, for he writes about: “A Petrodollar Lobby” but then says:

Yet it is difficult to see significant evidence of the impact of the petrodollar lobby in the Arab-Israeli sphere or any major effort on their part to interfere in the bilateral relationship between the United States and Israel.

Having found no effective Arab lobby anywhere, he like Bard, tries to turn government officials into lobbyists, in this case European ones.

The strongest external force pressuring the U.S. government to distance itself from Israel is not the Arab-American organizations, the Arab embassies, the oil companies, or the petrodollar lobby. Rather, it is the Europeans, especially the British, French, and Germans, that are the most influential Arab lobby to the U.S. government.

But governments are not lobbyists. Governmental officials argue for the policies they believe are in the best interests of their countries. By no stretch of the imagination will the argument that public servants are lobbyists stand up to any kind of objective scrutiny.

I welcome comments, but will not publish any, unless they have a unique relevance to the segment under discussion, until this series is complete.