the special relationship between the U.S. and Israel

The other day, as a way of pre-empting the painful, embarrassing, and shameful accusations by bigoted and/or overheated critics that American Jews who have an interest in seeing Israel remain Jewish (not to mention secure and safe from existential threats) have dual loyalties—i.e., that they are traitors to America—I called for an open discussion of the role of the Israel lobby in U.S. foreign policy (and the role of all lobbies in American government policies).

Today the subject gets exposure in a wide-ranging and thorough going-over of the current relations between Israel and the U.S. in the New York Times, in a must-read piece by Steven Erlanger. (It’s too long to summarize, but it is rich and deep with information and subtext. Read it while the link is still active; I think you can get free access to the article for 7 days after publication.)

For those of you bird-dogging subtle shifts in the wind and the impact of the Walt and Mearsheimer paper, here are the relevant passages:

In September, Israel was abuzz over a speech by an American official that got little coverage in the American news media. Philip D. Zelikow, counselor to Ms. Rice, had addressed the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, considered sympathetic to Israel’s interests, on “Building Security in the Broader Middle East.”

Mr. Zelikow, in the last of 10 points, suggested that to build a coalition to deal with Iran, the United States needed to make progress on solving the Arab-Israeli dispute.

“For the Arab moderates and for the Europeans, some sense of progress and momentum on the Arab-Israeli dispute is just a sine qua non for their ability to cooperate actively with the United States on a lot of other things that we care about,” he said.

The message seemed perfectly clear to Israelis: the Bush administration would demand Israeli concessions on the Palestinian issue to hold together an American-led coalition on Iran. American officials were quick to insist that there was no change in American policy, and that Mr. Zelikow was speaking on his own.

But Mr. Zelikow’s close ties to Ms. Rice are well known, and the furor over his comments was amplified because they appeared to some to echo criticisms published in March in The London Review of Books by two American scholars, John J. Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Stephen M. Walt of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard.

They suggested that from the White House to Capitol Hill, Israel’s interests have been confused with America’s, that Israel is more of a security burden than an asset and that the “Israel lobby” in America, including Jewish policy makers, have an undue influence over American foreign policy. In late August, appearing in front of an Islamic group in Washington, Mr. Mearsheimer extended the argument to say that American support of the war in Lebanon had been another example of Israeli interests trumping American ones.

The essay argued that without the Israel lobby the United States would not have gone to war in Iraq and implied that the same forces could drag the United States into another military confrontation on Israel’s behalf, with Iran. It urged more American pressure to solve the Palestinian question as the best cure for regional instability.

Some Israelis worried that the implicit charge of dual loyalty would be underlined by the trial of two former officials of the prominent pro-Israel lobbying group, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, on charges of receiving classified information about Iran and other issues from a Defense Department official and passing it on to a journalist and an Israeli diplomat. The trial is scheduled to begin early next year.

Mr. Walt, in an interview, argued that the first President Bush had worked to restrain Israel, and that Mr. Clinton worked to attain diplomatic concessions to achieve a peace. But when this Bush administration took office, “they first had no use for the Mideast, then took a more balanced position, calling for a two-state solution, and then were completely won over by Israel’s argument that it is simply fighting terrorism.”

Former Israeli ambassadors to Washington like Mr. Rabinovich, Mr. Arens and Mr. Shoval all scoff at the Walt-Mearsheimer thesis, which echoes criticisms of Jewish influence as far back as the presidency of Harry S. Truman.

But given the intensifying debate in Washington about Iran, Mr. Rabinovich said, the essay is “disturbing,” as are the echoes of part of the argument in Mr. Zelikow’s speech. Mr. Arens said that 9/11 created “an objective reality” of an antiterrorism coalition, led by President Bush, in which Israel is a crucial member. Mr. Bush is seen here as less interested in being an honest broker than in supporting Israel as a crucial strategic partner in the region.

The Iran confrontation, Mr. Arens said, will bolster that partnership. “The president said that he sees a clear and present danger with Iran arming itself with nuclear weapons and it’s obvious that this is a clear and present danger for the state of Israel,” he said. “Although a small country, we are not a minor party. When people talk about the possibility of a military option, what are they talking about? The U.S. or maybe Israel to take that move, not the U.S. or Germany or France.”

He acknowledged, however, “That inevitably will lead people who are critical of the position of the president to be critical of Israel, because we are seen as a partner in this campaign, and it is not a very big step to say that Israel is leading the U.S., or misleading the U.S., by the nose in this thing.”

The piece is a two-parter. Tomorrow’s article promises to include the role of evangelical Christians in the “special relationship” (JFK’s term).

I’ll have more to say after I’ve read both.