Henry Siegman

Why is it that the most important advances in American understanding of the Middle East can only appear in papers that spell neighbor "neighbour"? Lately it was Tony Judt in the London Review of Books. Before that the LRB gave us Walt and Mearsheimer. And now it's the Financial Times, publishing the great Henry Siegman on the choice Israel faces, to live with its Arab neighbors or to depend on the United States.

If Israel indeed rejects this opportunity for dialogue with a Hamas prepared to end violence and accept Israel's pre-1967 borders, its problem is not finding a Palestinian peace partner, but its rejection of any such partner in favour of reliance on the IDF to impose Israel's will by force on its Arab neighbours. Such a decision, and Israel's continued identification with Mr Bush's misguided crusade against "Islamo-fascism", will allow the hatred that surrounds Israel to undermine its existence in a part of the world that for the Jewish state would turn - sooner or later - into "the heart of darkness".

Siegman's argument is that Israel's close affinity to the United States has hurt its own interests in the region. As our implication in the apartheid policies of the occupied West Bank have damaged our interests in the Arab world.

This is hardly a new point. I've been reading the history of Zionism, and one of the main points that Hannah Arendt made more than 50 years ago, or Avi Shlaim 15 years back, or Simha Flapan 20 years ago (read Prophets Outcast, the marvelous collection edited by the Nation's Adam Shatz) is that Israel's strategic decision to ally itself with a superpower in defiance of local opinion was a recipe for local disaster. Hey, all politics is local. The point is made in former Israeli foreign minister Shlomo Ben-Ami's recent book, Scars of War, Wounds of Peace:

What was to become a pillar of Ben-Gurion's strategic thinking as the prime minister of the future state of Israel [was] never to operate without the support of a Western superpower... Most of the leaders of the Yishuv [Zionist settlement in Palestine] knew very little of Arab civilisation and despised what they saw.... The future Jewish state was to be for all of them an offshoot of Western civilization in the stagnant and despotic East.

Ben-Ami's book was published earlier this year by Oxford University, by the way. Thus, civilisation.

The spelling speaks to the larger problem. Israel has become so dependent upon American power that it cares little about the opinion of its neighbors and everything about our opinion; and the organized Jewish community here has done all it can to limit questioning in this country of that policy, lest Israel is cast to the dogs—its neighbors. In a sense the Israel lobby here was born of Israeli policy: we must grapple the U.S. to us with hoops of steel. Thankfully for all, those hoops seem at last to be losing their grip. In the wake of the Iraq and Lebanon debacles, which have demonstrated the folly of militarism as a way of healing the Arab world, and of the continued overtures for peace from Israel's Arab neighbors, Americans are beginning to question the wisdom of the alliance. For now they are expressing themselves in England. Soon that will change.

I got some great comment on a post I did on the taboo liberal journalists experience when tempted to talk about Israel. Anonymous grapples smartly (if casuistically) on to the point that the lobby has actually worked against Israel's best interests by hamstringing the independence of U.S. policymakers:

If the Lobby is bad for Israel, and bad for America, and not so good for American Jews, who is it good for, who does it work for? We have here a strange lobby, apparently without a constituency, a lobby that mobilizes quite extraordinary resources to the benefit of nobody -- less an Israel Lobby, more a Nihilist Lobby.

Mike responds, per Walt and Mearsheimer, that it serves "conservative Jews with direct links to the Likud party. AIPAC."

It's a fascinating question. Mike Massing got at it in his searching NYRB piece on the lobby. If American Jews are statistically for a two-state solution in Israel/Palestine and against the Iraq war, then how come hawks who press for more settlements/colonies are driving the train? Jewish opinion is misrepresented by the lobbyists.

My answer is that there's an old guard that controls the thrust of the lobby and that, like the gun lobby, the great tapestry of Jewish opinion simply gives way passively to that Old Guard. Lets them handle it. Says these issues are too complex and they know them. I did this for years myself, when I did nothing to challenge Eric Breindel, a neoconservative I knew, saying to myself, He knows this stuff, and cares the most, let him have the issue.

The key to understanding the Old Guard is that it's highly neurotic. It is swept by fears. This is what Henry Siegman was telling the Washington Post two weeks ago—

"There's a certain dynamic to organized Jewish life as to all so-called defense organizations created to protect a supposedly vulnerable group...It creates a culture of victimhood, and it often attracts people who feel like they're victims as well."

It is the same thing that Texas A&M prof Michael Desch says in his new paper on the Holocaust: that we have allowed people to use the fears generated by the Holocaust, and the west's alleged abandonment of the Jews to the Nazis, to manipulate policymakers re Israel.

One of my commenters makes the point himself:

No the risk is that too many of us learned our lessons from WWII and the abandonment of Czechoslovakia and the Jews of Europe. Never again actually means something to those of us not devoted to Marx and the class war.

The answer to this commenter is that we have to see human history as larger than the Holocaust, and not see a rocket attack as an existentialist threat to a state that possesses nuclear weapons. History contains many present terrors, including the destruction of great Arab cities, allegedly to save them. I think there's a new guard of Jewish opinion that may actually help defang the pro-Israel lobby, as it understands that the Holocaust was 60 years ago, and manages to emerge from the victim-neurosis and see that we are singularly privileged in America. Privilege should translate into largeness, not selfishness.

An article in this week's Observer about the unanimity among New York politicians in supporting Israel's bombing of Lebanon (surprise) contains an important statement by Rep. Jerrold Nadler (who was a brave opponent of the Iraq war):

[Nadler] equated support for Israel at this moment with support for the country's right to exist at all..."This reminds me very much of the first week of June 1967, and I'm very worried about it. That was the week before the Six Day War broke out.."

Is that a realistic attitude? No. Look how much has changed since '67. Egypt and Jordan have signed peace agreements with Israel. Israel's existence may have been at risk through the '73 war (we can argue about that), but who can say that now? It is a regional hegemon. Syria and Israel have been very close to peace; and Syria is so poor Israel could walk into Damascus tomorrow. Saudi Arabia has said approving things of Israel's attacks on Lebanon. Though yes Israel has an enemy in Iran, Iran—which by the way, used to be on the U.S. side in the war on terror, right up thru Afghanistan—is being faced down by the world. This latest fighting would seem to truly endanger the existence of Lebanon, not Israel.

Nadler's emotional statements underscore what Henry Siegman told the Washington Post Magazine the other day:

"There's a certain dynamic to organized Jewish life as to all so-called defense organizations created to protect a supposedly vulnerable group," says Henry Siegman, who once served as executive director of the American Jewish Congress and now directs the U.S./Middle East project at the Council of Foreign Relations. "It creates a culture of victimhood, and it often attracts people who feel like they're victims as well."

As Michael Desch's article on the "myth of abandonment" fostered by the Holocaust suggests, citing "existential" fears for Israel is an unconscious way of invoking the Holocaust to justify anything Israel does. The Jews of the Warsaw ghetto had no nuclear weapons.

This is about the power of ideas. The neocons were on the outs for a long time after Reagan left office. To their credit, they lived quietly in their cells exchanging crazily logical ideas about the Middle East—and were well paid to do so. They won over a lot of Democrats. Then through a concatenation of events, Cheney, 9/11, they were suddenly sitting in the Oval Office.

That's over, of course. The proof of which is all the noise they are making in the neoconservative press, from the Sun to the Weekly Standard, about taking on Iran and Syria.

Meanwhile, the left is on the outs, but all the talk about the Israel lobby is of course fueling the left's response to the neocons, and to Democratic hawks. On Sunday the Washington Post magazine published its brave cover on the Israel lobby and author Glenn Frankel included a fabulous psychological insight from Henry Siegman:

While American Jews may have become powerful, they don't feel powerful. A new set of pogroms or a new Holocaust? It could happen, even in America. "There's a certain dynamic to organized Jewish life as to all so-called defense organizations created to protect a supposedly vulnerable group," says Henry Siegman, who once served as executive director of the American Jewish Congress and now directs the U.S./Middle East project at the Council of Foreign Relations. "It creates a culture of victimhood, and it often attracts people who feel like they're victims as well."

Juan Williams obviously read that article before he went on Fox News Sunday, where he struck out at Bill Kristol in a way that drew on Siegman's analysis.

You just want war, war, war, and you want us in more war. You wanted us in Iraq. Now you want us in Iran. Now you want us to get into the Middle East, where I think there's a real interesting dynamic at play. I think it's psychological on the part of Israel and many of its supporters, and I'll throw you in here. Somehow you see Israel as weak, and you see Ehud Olmert as weak. And the defense minister as weak. Everybody is weak in the aftermath of Sharon, and so everybody has to prove what a man they are in the Middle East, including -- you're saying, why doesn't the United States take this hard, unforgiving line? Well, the hard and unforgiving line has been, we don't talk to anybody. We don't talk to Hamas. We don't talk to Hezbollah. We're not going to talk to Iran. Where has it gotten us, Bill?

Apparently Kristol threw up his hands and didn't answer. As if to say, Antisemitism! While Williams must have felt indemnified by Siegman's Jewishness in saying what he did.

The Washington Post today today has the courage to run a cover article in its magazine with the question, "Does the Israel Lobby Have Too Much Power?" Hats off to the Post! It has done what real journalists should have been doing for the last 20 years, and confronted the question head on. The achievement of course is not fully the Post's: the newspaper can tee up the question only because of the bravery of Walt and Mearsheimer in publishing their bombshell paper. Which they did overseas of course, three months ago. In London. After it was killed here. The refugee issue is finally being allowed to visit. Not to move home, though.

Unfortunately, the Post's article by Glenn Frankel is defensive and scattered, at times disgraceful. To its credit, it states that President George H.W. Bush lost his presidency in 1992 in part because of his opposition to the Israel lobby. And revisits some other scalps claimed by the lobby. Back when. It is always much easier to talk about power grabs of 15 years ago!  read more »

Jason Horowitz's fine piece on the Lieberman-Lamont race in this week's Observer contains a stretcher, or 2, from N.Y. Congressman Anthony Weiner:

'[T]he Palestinian position seems to be perfect for the Internet world of pithy back-and-forth and 30-second You Tube tapes, where the Zionist position is more at home in a seven-page New York Review of Books article," said Representative Anthony Weiner, a pro-Israel hawk who opposes the war in Iraq.

Well, first of all, Weiner voted for the war in Iraq when it mattered, October 2002. Changed his mind later, after all the bloodshed began.

And as for the New York Review of Books, it has been the most courageous voice in this country in questioning the U.S.'s blind support of Israel. Look at Tony Judt's now-famous stunner in 2003 calling for a binational state in Palestine, or Michael Massing's exploration of the power of AIPAC over Congress, which has been cited again and again by critics of the lobby, or Henry Siegman's call in April for U.S. pressure on Israel to negotiate with Hamas. Now that is pithy.

Last night on Charlie Rose, the great Henry Siegman said that he had met recently with Hamas leaders in Beirut. He related Hamas's aims.

Hamas is prepared to explicitly recognize the state of Israel. But it cannot do so without Israel recognizing the legitimacy of the Palestinians' aspirations. That means a recognition of the Palestinians' right to a "viable state" in Gaza and the West Bank, within the '67 borders, and a recognition of the legitimacy as a negotiating point of the desire by Palestinian refugees to return to lands lost in Israel, even if they never get to return there.

Siegman said the "heart" of the disagreement between Israel and Hamas remains the definition of the borders of the Palestinian state. "[Hamas is] convinced that the overriding strategic goal of [the ruling Kadema party] continues to be setting unilaterally a permanent border, resolving the issues without Palestinian involvement, and consequently they have despaired of returning to the peace process."

Siegman's points underscore the importance of a forceful and independent American role here to end this conflict. His points also underscore what Stephen Walt said about opposing the pro-Israel lobby on C-Span the other day, "[The Israel/Palestine conflict] is a national security priority for the United States, given the role that it plays in contributing to Islamic radicalism and anti-Americanism generally... The U.S. has never been willing to do anything to halt Israel's settlement policy. Many Israelis now regard [that policy] as a tragic mistake."

A couple weeks back I said that no American newspaper would print a piece by the great Henry Siegman, the former American Jewish Congress president who has become outspoken on the need for Israel to deal fairly with the Palestinians.

I was wrong. Yesterday's LA Times has a stunning article by Siegman saying that there is a moral equivalence between Palestinian suicide bombers and the Israeli rocket attacks that mistakenly kill innocent Palestinians. He argues that the Israeli attacks are a cynical effort to sustain the violence, thereby "shattering an entire people" and avoiding a just peace with the Palestinians, at the pre-1967 borders.

The vast disproportion between Palestinian civilian casualties from Israeli "mistakes" and Israeli casualties from Palestinian terrorist assaults also brings into question the distinction between the two. It suggests that the killing of Palestinian civilians is, at the very least, more a matter of Israeli indifference than a mistake. Not a single Israeli has been killed by a Kassam rocket since Israel's disengagement from Gaza last year, although during this period Palestinian civilians have been killed by Israeli artillery and airstrikes virtually on a daily basis. (According to B'Tselem, the Israeli human rights group, Israeli forces have killed about 3,400 Palestinians since the intifada started, and Palestinians have killed about 1,000 Israelis).

In today's Financial Times, Henry Siegman states that Israel is trying to annex large portions of the West Bank and thereby frustrate plans for a true Palestinian state. "The issue is not whether Hamas recognises Israel," Siegman says. It is whether Israel recognizes the right of Palestinians to statehood. Hamas, he points out, has in spite of its rhetoric not launched suicide bombers against Israel in over a year. Meanwhile, Israel continues to baffle and crush Palestinian hopes for a state.

Three points:

1. Once again, this bold statement, by an American, did not—could not— appear in an American newspaper. It had to appear in Europe. What does this mean? That Americans continue to maintain one-dimensional understanding of Israel. Americans' ideas of Israeli history and policy are "a fantasy built on a fantasy," Tony Kushner told me earlier this year. Reality requires frank discussion, including even Jews like Siegman and Kushner (whose honorary degree from Brandeis, recognizing his work as a playwright, became a rallying point for rightwing opposition!). Americans don't get frank discussion.

2. Siegman is a brave man. He headed the American Jewish Congress for 16 years. He is now the Council on Foreign Relations' leading expert on the Middle East. He speaks out again and again on these matters and has suffered god only knows how much threat and vituperation.

3. As the vision of a Palestinian state dissolves, the left will migrate slowly but inevitably toward another ideal: a one-state pluralistic solution.