"Personally, I would be fascinated to read a serious defense of the proposition that making Israel by far the largest recipient of American foreign aid serves our national interests or else is dictated by considerations of abstract morality. Then we could debate!"

Try finishing the following sentence.

America gains from Israel's colonisation of East Jerusalem and the West Bank with hundreds of thousands of Jewish settlers because ... [Complete in 15 words or less, including costs and benefits].

It is the difficulty of completing this sentence in a convincing manner, given the combination, for the US, of zero benefits and massive negative externalities deriving from Israeli colonialism, that produces responses to M&W which avoid debate of the policy issue and settle for smears and irrelevancies.

It's much easier to complete this sentence, of course, if you think the US's utility function includes gains to Israeli nationalism. That's why the presence of policy-makers in the US who internalise the values of Israeli colonial nationalism, at least in part, helps explain US policy in this area. That's M&W's point.

There's an easy explanation here. Matt is only half-Jewish, so (like Adorno, who was also half Jewish) he's semi-anti-Semitic. His name is "Yglesias", after all, not "Sinagoga").

Thank you. We will now return to our regularly scheduled programming.

I agree that the US and Israel have common interests, and it is not to the advantage of the US to have Israel destroyed. Common interests change over time, and, in general, it is a truism that nations have common interests rather than true friendship and unwavering common cause. The US and UK have, without question, a special alliance. Even Canada, our largest trading partner, has a much more divergent foreign policy.

The US-Israel relationship was especially critical during the Cold War, as a source of intelligence on Soviet military technology. Much of the military cooperation has been driven by that, and may need reexamination. That issue is much less important today, when the Russians will sell military equipment, blueprints, and training to the US.

There certainly remains intelligence cooperation between the US and Israel, but, as demonstrated by the Pollard and other cases, if it's a marriage, there's infidelity. I don't doubt that the US spies on Israel as well. Still, the cooperation is beneficial overall.

Bush the Elder managed to hold the Desert Storm coalition together by keeping the Israelis out of direct combat. There was quite close cooperation, if at times heated argument. The "Hot Link" to the fUSSR, but it may not be as well known that there is an equivalent link between the heads of government, identified as HAMMER RICK.

It's an interesting question whether or not if there were a similar coalition today, Israel would respect it. A proposal had been floated in the Arab League to put peacekeepers into Iraq from Arab countries, countries that were not neighbors of Iraq. Might a renewed version support peace enforcers on the Israel-Palestine border? It's probably not feasible given the state of recognition of Israel, but it could be an interesting wild card in negotiations.

Hmmm...parting the Red Sea has its charms, and even more so the Persian Gulf. Dealing with Iran would be so much easier if its submarines and mines were stuck on the bottom, visible to air search.

Yes, there is a popular political reason for support. Popularity may not be the best reason for statecraft. Turning around a situation, US isolationism was popular in 1940, but not necessarily productive for US preparedness.

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

I think that it works the other way. He'd be a hemi-demi-semi-Semite, and 7/8 anti-Semite.

... because it allows us to enjoy kicking ass of the lesser people, however vicariously.

13 words.

American exceptionalism is a very popular idea (-ogy?) Caring what other people may think about us or about what we are doing? F..k them! We are number one! And we can do what we want to do. A major portion of the arguments of Marc Landy agains M&W is devoted to this idea, and how UNREALISTIC it is to think otherwise.

Now, freedom of doing whatever you want is not worth much if you do what other people like anyway. In some sense, if Israel did not exist, it would have to be invented. I would also note that when we try to enjoy some kicking on our own, s...t may happen, as in Vietnam before and in Iraq now.

I would also note that while anti-anti-Semitism is a non-brainer, easily elaborated as vigilance agaist Islamofascism and liberal fifth column (largely populated by Jews, by the way) and what not, attempts to diversify are not as succesful. The fear of illegal aliens is a bit hard, as we actually do not fear them. Loathing of the French was promising for a while, but it seems to fizzle.

I don't think that dichotomy is useful, however.

I think Chomsky in particular was disingenuous, or perhaps merely overreacting to the amount of interest the "Israel Lobby" stirred up, when he said the thesis was not very convincing, and then emphasized America's corporate interests - which just happens to be HIS favorite theory for everything (with some justification.)

I think it's quite clear that the US and Israel use each other to achieve their own goals, and that it is a constant struggle between them as to which one achieves the most of their goals without being overly worked by the other to achieve the other's goals.

And in the case of the neocons, many (but certainly not all, or perhaps even a majority) of them ARE Jewish and clearly have a pro-Israeli attitude not solely derived from their neoconservative views (or at most possibly because they view Israel as somehow representing an ideal neoconservative state.) Therefore, it's easy for them to side with Israel.

So it may well be a legitimate complaint that the Israel Lobby paper put too much emphasis on Israel and not enough on the oil companies or the military-industrial complex or whoever. But then, that was the focus of the paper. It's not clear to me that the authors viewed the Lobby as the SOLE influence.

Maybe they viewed it as the MAJOR influence. I don't think quibbling over that is useful. I think the important point is why is there ANY significant influence. That is what should be debated.

Massive US aid to Israel began in 1978, with the Camp David accords that led to the Israeli evacuation of Sinai and a formal peace treaty between Egypt and Israel. As a part of that deal, Carter promised and Congress passed aid packages to Egypt and Israel totalling $4.8 billion. That level of aid to both countries has continued for the past quarter-century. The budget for next year is $2.4 billion for Israel and $1.7 billion for Egypt. The high levels of aid are part of a continuing promise to both countries.

There is no way politically to cut the aid substantially for Israel without also cutting the aid to Egypt. And cutting the aid to Egypt would be a very foolish move.

In 2005, the US gave $274 million in aid to the Palestinian Authority. In 2006, it gave $150 million. The election of Hamas accounts for the reduction.

In 2003, Jordan received $1.5 billion in US foreign aid. In the years since then, the figure has been about $500 million.

Certainly the aid to Israel could be used in a carrot-and-stick fashion, to attempt to force changes in Israeli policy. However, given that this administration refuses to apply even diplomatic pressure, the idea that aid cut-offs are necessary or even likely to be more productive than simple discussion is untested.

The question that you pose, however, is not one that is worth debating, because it begs the question. You wonder whether "making Israel by far the largest recipient of American foreign aid serves our national interests or else is dictated by considerations of abstract morality." The real foreign aid problem is not that the amounts for Israel and Egypt are too high. It is that aid to other countries in desparate need is absurdly low. There is no single foreign aid pot, and if amounts to Israel were reduced, the difference would not be re-routed to Sudan.

The question is whether the levels of aid to Israel and Egypt make sense given the historical context and current US foreign policy goals - not whether they constitute some fraction or other of a category of the US budget that is arbitrarily labelled "foreign aid."

You seem to miss my point. Which is that "we Americans" like to do it, and we can enjoy Israel achievements (when you see them as such) vicariously (Webster: experienced or realized through imaginative or sympathetic participation
in the experience of another).

We do not have a chip on our shoulder, it is more that we are in a quest to get one. Just see how our religious right feels opressed by stringent secularists. We do not even kidnap them or send suicide bombers to their houses of worship. No matter.