Solomon Weighs In On 'Israel Lobby' Debate

By: E&P Staff Creators Syndicate columnist Norman Solomon, in a Sunday piece published by The Sun of Baltimore, wrote about Israel's strong influence on U.S. foreign policy.

The piece by Solomon, who is Jewish, was a rare critical look at the "Israel Lobby" in America's mainstream press.

Solomon's column was sparked by the way many press commentators have pilloried John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Stephen Walt of Harvard University for their "Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy" paper published this spring by the London Review of Books.

"The first mainstream media reactions to the paper -- often with the customary name-calling -- were mostly efforts to shut down debate before it could begin," wrote Solomon. "Early venues for vituperative attacks on the paper included the Op-Ed pages of the Los Angeles Times ('nutty'), the Boston Herald (headline: 'Anti-Semitic Paranoia at Harvard'), and The Washington Post (headline: 'Yes, It's Anti-Semitic').

"But other voices have emerged, on the airwaves and in print, to bypass the facile attacks and address crucial issues. If this keeps up, the uproar over what Mr. Mearsheimer and Mr. Walt had to say could invigorate public discourse about Washington's policies toward a country that consistently has received a bigger U.S. aid package for a longer period than any other nation."

Solomon continued: "While their paper overstates the extent to which pro-Israel pressures determine U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East, a very powerful lobby for Israel clearly has enormous leverage in Washington. And the professors make a convincing case that the U.S. government has been much too closely aligned with Israel -- to the detriment of human rights, democracy, and other principles that are supposed to constitute American values.

"The failure to make a distinction between anti-Semitism and criticism of Israel routinely stifles public debate. When convenient, pro-Israel groups in the U.S. will concede that it's possible to oppose Israeli policies without being anti-Semitic. Yet many of Israel's boosters reflexively pull out the heavy artillery of charging anti-Semitism when their position is challenged."

Solomon also wrote that the Web site of the Israeli human-rights group B'Tselem reported that, since 2000, "the number of Israelis killed by Palestinians has totaled 998 and the number of Palestinians killed by Israelis has totaled 3,466." But the columnist added that, in America's news media, "the horrible killings of Israelis by Palestinian suicide bombers get front-page and prime-time coverage while the horrible killings of Palestinians by Israelis get relatively scant and dispassionate coverage."

And Solomon concluded: "As with all forms of bigotry, anti-Semitism should be condemned. At the same time, these days, America's biggest anti-Semitism problem has to do with the misuse of the label as a manipulative tactic to short-circuit debate about Washington's alliance with Israel."