refuting Walt and Mearsheimer

The most cogent critique of the anti-Israel professors’ paper “The Israel Lobby” appears in the Middle East Quarterly under the title “How Important Is the Israel Lobby?”

David Verbeeten concludes that the lobby is indeed powerful (read the whole thing: I can’t do it justice), but he notes something that others have missed: that Americans identify with Israelis:

AIPAC and other lobby groups have channeled this support in Congress but did not create it. Indeed, support for the State of Israel is articulated forcefully by demographic sectors such as evangelical Christians and Republican hawks which are otherwise not in line with the mainstream Jewish community on domestic political issues. Support for Israel is the expression of an emotional and ideological attachment to the Jewish state on the part of diverse segments of the American people. It is a reflection of “a widespread fund of goodwill toward Israel that is not restricted to the Jewish community.” In the words of scholar William Quandt:

The bond between the United States and Israel is unquestionably strengthened because of the congruence of values between the two nations. Americans can identify with Israel’s national style … in a way that has no parallel on the Arab side. Neither the ideal of the well-ordered Muslim community nor that of a modernizing autocracy evokes much sympathy among Americans. Consequently, a predisposition no doubt exists in American political culture that works to the advantage of the Israelis.

Indeed, repeated U.S. administrations came to power predisposed to associate with the Arab world and to disassociate from Israel. In the end, they all recognized that relations with the Arab states were not the inverse of those with Israel. Most came to acknowledge the worth of Israel as a steadfast ally in a volatile region. The irony is that Israel was and is such a reliable ally because of shared cultural, religious, and intellectual affinities, the very qualities that so many “realist” officials in Washington downplay with pride and on principle when making decisions and devising policy on the Middle East.

That Walt and Mearsheimer never take into account the natural sympathy of Americans with Israelis is one more piece of evidence against them: their bedrock belief is that Americans have been forced to sympathize with Israel by dark, powerful forces, and that without those powerful forces exerting undue pressure, it is obvious that Americans would sympathize instead with the Palestinians. Their premise itself is anti-Israeli, and worse.

However, continued American support for Israel in the wake of its war against Hezbollah is borne out by a new Quinnipac poll:

Quinnipiac’s every three-month survey asks Americans to rate 17 different countries on a “friend versus foe” 1-100 index, also known as a thermometer reading. The higher the number, the warmer each respondent feels toward each country.

Israel’s latest mean rating was 65.9, which placed it third among the nations tested. The highest was England at 78.3, while the lowest was Iran at 13.9.

In the previous Quinnipiac thermometer reading, taken in June before the war broke out, Israel had a mean rating of 62.9. The three-point jump was the largest of any country during the three-month period.

Their latest poll of 1,080 American adults was taken Aug. 17-23, shortly after a cease-fire in the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, a military/political movement in Lebanon that has called for Israel’s destruction.

Not all Americans are more pro-Israel, however. Look at the results for Democrats:

There was a pattern in the United States to the pro-Israeli, anti-Syria, Palestinian, Iran feeling.

Israel is given higher ratings by Republicans (70.9) and independents (68.1) than by Democrats (60). That might be surprising to some, since Jewish voters in the United States tend to vote Democratic by an almost 2-to1 margin.

It’s certainly not surprising to me, or to anyone who has been following the growing trend of anti-Semitism on the American left (too many links to add at this late hour).