Publish to Newswire
Add an EventFrom the Open-Publishing Calendar
From the Open-Publishing Newswire
Indybay Feature
The Storm over "the Israel Lobby"
We wrote 'The Israel Lobby' in order to begin a discussion of a subject that had become difficult to address openly in the United States (London Review of Books, 23 March). We knew it was likely to generate a strong reaction, and we are not surprised that some of our critics have chosen to attack our characters or misrepresent our arguments. We have also been gratified by the many positive responses we have received, and by the thoughtful commentary that has begun to emerge in the media and the blogosphere. It is clear that many people--including Jews and Israelis--believe that it is time to have a candid discussion of the US relationship with Israel. It is in that spirit that we engage with the letters responding to our article. We confine ourselves here to the most salient points of dispute.
One of the most prominent charges against us is that we see the lobby as a well-organised Jewish conspiracy. Jeffrey Herf and Andrei Markovits, for example, begin by noting that 'accusations of powerful Jews behind the scenes are part of the most dangerous traditions of modern anti-semitism' (Letters, 6 April ). It is a tradition we deplore and that we explicitly rejected in our article. Instead, we described the lobby as a loose coalition of individuals and organisations without a central headquarters. It includes gentiles as well as Jews, and many Jewish-Americans do not endorse its positions on some or all issues. Most important, the Israel lobby is not a secret, clandestine cabal; on the contrary, it is openly engaged in interest-group politics and there is nothing conspiratorial or illicit about its behaviour. Thus, we can easily believe that Daniel Pipes has never 'taken orders' from the lobby, because the Leninist caricature of the lobby depicted in his letter is one that we clearly dismissed. Readers will also note that Pipes does not deny that his organisation, Campus Watch, was created in order to monitor what academics say, write and teach, so as to discourage them from engaging in open discourse about the Middle East.
Several writers chide us for making mono-causal arguments, accusing us of saying that Israel alone is responsible for anti-Americanism in the Arab and Islamic world (as one letter puts it, anti-Americanism 'would exist if Israel was not there') or suggesting that the lobby bears sole responsibility for the Bush administration's decision to invade Iraq. But that is not what we said. We emphasised that US support for Israeli policy in the Occupied Territories is a powerful source of anti-Americanism, the conclusion reached in several scholarly studies and US government commissions (including the 9/11 Commission). But we also pointed out that support for Israel is hardly the only reason America's standing in the Middle East is so low. Similarly, we clearly stated that Osama bin Laden had other grievances against the United States besides the Palestinian issue, but as the 9/11 Commission documents, this matter was a major concern for him. We also explicitly stated that the lobby, by itself, could not convince either the Clinton or the Bush administration to invade Iraq. Nevertheless, there is abundant evidence that the neo-conservatives and other groups within the lobby played a central role in making the case for war.
At least two of the letters complain that we 'catalogue Israel's moral flaws', while paying little attention to the shortcomings of other states. We focused on Israeli behaviour, not because we have any animus towards Israel, but because the United States gives it such high levels of material and diplomatic support. Our aim was to determine whether Israel merits this special treatment either because it is a unique strategic asset or because it behaves better than other countries do. We argued that neither argument is convincing: Israel's strategic value has declined since the end of the Cold War and Israel does not behave significantly better than most other states.
Herf and Markovits interpret us to be saying that Israel's 'continued survival' should be of little concern to the United States. We made no such argument. In fact, we emphasised that there is a powerful moral case for Israel's existence, and we firmly believe that the United States should take action to ensure its survival if it were in danger. Our criticism was directed at Israeli policy and America's special relationship with Israel, not Israel's existence.
Another recurring theme in the letters is that the lobby ultimately matters little because Israel's 'values command genuine support among the American public'. Thus, Herf and Markovits maintain that there is substantial support for Israel in military and diplomatic circles within the United States. We agree that there is strong public support for Israel in America, in part because it is seen as compatible with America's Judaeo-Christian culture. But we believe this popularity is substantially due to the lobby's success at portraying Israel in a favourable light and effectively limiting public awareness and discussion of Israel's less savoury actions. Diplomats and military officers are also affected by this distorted public discourse, but many of them can see through the rhetoric. They keep silent, however, because they fear that groups like AIPAC will damage their careers if they speak out. The fact is that if there were no AIPAC, Americans would have a more critical view of Israel and US policy in the Middle East would look different.
On a related point, Michael Szanto contrasts the US-Israeli relationship with the American military commitments to Western Europe, Japan and South Korea, to show that the United States has given substantial support to other states besides Israel (6 April). He does not mention, however, that these other relationships did not depend on strong domestic lobbies. The reason is simple: these countries did not need a lobby because close ties with each of them were in America's strategic interest. By contrast, as Israel has become a strategic burden for the US, its American backers have had to work even harder to preserve the 'special relationship'.
Other critics contend that we overstate the lobby's power because we overlook countervailing forces, such as 'paleo-conservatives, Arab and Islamic advocacy groups . . . and the diplomatic establishment'. Such countervailing forces do exist, but they are no match--either alone or in combination--for the lobby. There are Arab-American political groups, for example, but they are weak, divided, and wield far less influence than AIPAC and other organisations that present a strong, consistent message from the lobby.
Probably the most popular argument made about a countervailing force is Herf and Markovits's claim that the centrepiece of US Middle East policy is oil, not Israel. There is no question that access to that region's oil is a vital US strategic interest. Washington is also deeply committed to supporting Israel. Thus, the relevant question is, how does each of those interests affect US policy? We maintain that US policy in the Middle East is driven primarily by the commitment to Israel, not oil interests. If the oil companies or the oil-producing countries were driving policy, Washington would be tempted to favour the Palestinians instead of Israel. Moreover, the United States would almost certainly not have gone to war against Iraq in March 2003, and the Bush administration would not be threatening to use military force against Iran. Although many claim that the Iraq war was all about oil, there is hardly any evidence to support that supposition, and much evidence of the lobby's influence. Oil is clearly an important concern for US policymakers, but with the exception of episodes like the 1973 Opec oil embargo, the US commitment to Israel has yet to threaten access to oil. It does, however, contribute to America's terrorism problem, complicates its efforts to halt nuclear proliferation, and helped get the United States involved in wars like Iraq.
Regrettably, some of our critics have tried to smear us by linking us with overt racists, thereby suggesting that we are racists or anti-semites ourselves. Michael Taylor, for example, notes that our article has been 'hailed' by Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke (6 April). Alan Dershowitz implies that some of our material was taken from neo-Nazi websites and other hate literature (20 April). We have no control over who likes or dislikes our article, but we regret that Duke used it to promote his racist agenda, which we utterly reject. Furthermore, nothing in our piece is drawn from racist sources of any kind, and Dershowitz offers no evidence to support this false claim. We provided a fully documented version of the paper so that readers could see for themselves that we used reputable sources.
Finally, a few critics claim that some of our facts, references or quotations are mistaken. For example, Dershowitz challenges our claim that Israel was 'explicitly founded as a Jewish state and citizenship is based on the principle of blood kinship'. Israel was founded as a Jewish state (a fact Dershowitz does not challenge), and our reference to citizenship was obviously to Israel's Jewish citizens, whose identity is ordinarily based on ancestry. We stated that Israel has a sizeable number of non-Jewish citizens (primarily Arabs), and our main point was that many of them are relegated to a second-class status in a predominantly Jewish society.
We also referred to Golda Meir's famous statement that 'there is no such thin g as a Palestinian,' and Jeremy Schreiber reads us as saying that Meir was denying the existence of those people rather than simply denying Palestinian nationhood (20 April). There is no disagreement here; we agree with Schreiber's interpretation and we quoted Meir in a discussion of Israel's prolonged effort 'to deny the Palestinians' national ambitions'.
Dershowitz challenges our claim that the Israelis did not offer the Palestinians a contiguous state at Camp David in July 2000. As support, he cites a s tatement by former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak and the memoirs of former US negotiator Dennis Ross. There are a number of competing accounts of what happened at Camp David, however, and many of them agree with our claim. Moreover, Barak himself acknowledges that 'the Palestinians were promised a continuous piece of sovereign territory except for a razor-thin Israeli wedge running from Jerusalem . . . to the Jordan River.' This wedge, which would bisect the West Bank, was essential to Israel's plan to retain control of the Jordan River Valley for another six to twenty years. Finally, and contrary to Dershowitz's claim, there was no 'second map' or map of a 'final proposal at Camp David'. Indeed, it is explicitly stated in a note beside the map published in Ross's memoirs that 'no map was presented during the final rounds at Camp David.' Given all this, it is not surprising that Barak's foreign minister, Shlomo Ben-Ami, who was a key participant at Camp David, later admitted: 'If I were a Palestinian I would have rejected Camp David as well.'
Dershowitz also claims that we quote David Ben-Gurion 'out of context' and thus misrepresented his views on the need to use force to build a Jewish state in all of Palestine. Dershowitz is wrong. As a number of Israeli historians have shown, Ben-Gurion made numerous statements about the need to use force (or the threat of overwhelming force) to create a Jewish state in all of Palestine. In October 1937, for example, he wrote to his son Amos that the future Jewish state would have an 'outstanding army . . . so I am certain that we won't be constrained from settling in the rest of the country, either by mutual agreement and understanding with our Arab neighbours, or by some other way' (emphasis added). Furthermore, common sense says that there was no other way to achieve that goal, because the Palestinians were hardly likely to give up their homeland voluntarily. Ben-Gurion was a consummate strategist and he understood that it would be unwise for the Zionists to talk openly about the need for 'brutal compulsion'. We quote a memorandum Ben-Gurion wrote prior to the Extraordinary Zionist Conference at the Biltmore Hotel in New York in May 1942. He wrote that 'it is impossible to imagine general evacuation' of the Arab population of Palestine 'without compulsion, and brutal compulsion'. Dershowitz claims that Ben-Gurion's subsequent statement--'we should in no way make it part of our programme'--shows that he opposed the transfer of the Arab population and the 'brutal compulsion' it would entail. But Ben-Gurion was not rejecting this policy: he was simply noting that the Zionists should not openly proclaim it. Indeed, he said that they should not 'discourage other people, British or American, who favour transfer from advocating this course, but we should in no way make it part of our programme'.
We close with a final comment about the controversy surrounding our article. Although we are not surprised by the hostility directed at us, we are still disappointed that more attention has not been paid to the substance of the piece. The fact remains that the United States is in deep trouble in the Middle East, and it will not be able to develop effective policies if it is impossible to have a civilised discussion about the role of Israel in American foreign policy.
John Mearsheimer & Stephen Walt University of Chicago & Harvard University.
This letter originally appeared in the London Review of Books.
http://counterpunch.org/walt05052006.html
Several writers chide us for making mono-causal arguments, accusing us of saying that Israel alone is responsible for anti-Americanism in the Arab and Islamic world (as one letter puts it, anti-Americanism 'would exist if Israel was not there') or suggesting that the lobby bears sole responsibility for the Bush administration's decision to invade Iraq. But that is not what we said. We emphasised that US support for Israeli policy in the Occupied Territories is a powerful source of anti-Americanism, the conclusion reached in several scholarly studies and US government commissions (including the 9/11 Commission). But we also pointed out that support for Israel is hardly the only reason America's standing in the Middle East is so low. Similarly, we clearly stated that Osama bin Laden had other grievances against the United States besides the Palestinian issue, but as the 9/11 Commission documents, this matter was a major concern for him. We also explicitly stated that the lobby, by itself, could not convince either the Clinton or the Bush administration to invade Iraq. Nevertheless, there is abundant evidence that the neo-conservatives and other groups within the lobby played a central role in making the case for war.
At least two of the letters complain that we 'catalogue Israel's moral flaws', while paying little attention to the shortcomings of other states. We focused on Israeli behaviour, not because we have any animus towards Israel, but because the United States gives it such high levels of material and diplomatic support. Our aim was to determine whether Israel merits this special treatment either because it is a unique strategic asset or because it behaves better than other countries do. We argued that neither argument is convincing: Israel's strategic value has declined since the end of the Cold War and Israel does not behave significantly better than most other states.
Herf and Markovits interpret us to be saying that Israel's 'continued survival' should be of little concern to the United States. We made no such argument. In fact, we emphasised that there is a powerful moral case for Israel's existence, and we firmly believe that the United States should take action to ensure its survival if it were in danger. Our criticism was directed at Israeli policy and America's special relationship with Israel, not Israel's existence.
Another recurring theme in the letters is that the lobby ultimately matters little because Israel's 'values command genuine support among the American public'. Thus, Herf and Markovits maintain that there is substantial support for Israel in military and diplomatic circles within the United States. We agree that there is strong public support for Israel in America, in part because it is seen as compatible with America's Judaeo-Christian culture. But we believe this popularity is substantially due to the lobby's success at portraying Israel in a favourable light and effectively limiting public awareness and discussion of Israel's less savoury actions. Diplomats and military officers are also affected by this distorted public discourse, but many of them can see through the rhetoric. They keep silent, however, because they fear that groups like AIPAC will damage their careers if they speak out. The fact is that if there were no AIPAC, Americans would have a more critical view of Israel and US policy in the Middle East would look different.
On a related point, Michael Szanto contrasts the US-Israeli relationship with the American military commitments to Western Europe, Japan and South Korea, to show that the United States has given substantial support to other states besides Israel (6 April). He does not mention, however, that these other relationships did not depend on strong domestic lobbies. The reason is simple: these countries did not need a lobby because close ties with each of them were in America's strategic interest. By contrast, as Israel has become a strategic burden for the US, its American backers have had to work even harder to preserve the 'special relationship'.
Other critics contend that we overstate the lobby's power because we overlook countervailing forces, such as 'paleo-conservatives, Arab and Islamic advocacy groups . . . and the diplomatic establishment'. Such countervailing forces do exist, but they are no match--either alone or in combination--for the lobby. There are Arab-American political groups, for example, but they are weak, divided, and wield far less influence than AIPAC and other organisations that present a strong, consistent message from the lobby.
Probably the most popular argument made about a countervailing force is Herf and Markovits's claim that the centrepiece of US Middle East policy is oil, not Israel. There is no question that access to that region's oil is a vital US strategic interest. Washington is also deeply committed to supporting Israel. Thus, the relevant question is, how does each of those interests affect US policy? We maintain that US policy in the Middle East is driven primarily by the commitment to Israel, not oil interests. If the oil companies or the oil-producing countries were driving policy, Washington would be tempted to favour the Palestinians instead of Israel. Moreover, the United States would almost certainly not have gone to war against Iraq in March 2003, and the Bush administration would not be threatening to use military force against Iran. Although many claim that the Iraq war was all about oil, there is hardly any evidence to support that supposition, and much evidence of the lobby's influence. Oil is clearly an important concern for US policymakers, but with the exception of episodes like the 1973 Opec oil embargo, the US commitment to Israel has yet to threaten access to oil. It does, however, contribute to America's terrorism problem, complicates its efforts to halt nuclear proliferation, and helped get the United States involved in wars like Iraq.
Regrettably, some of our critics have tried to smear us by linking us with overt racists, thereby suggesting that we are racists or anti-semites ourselves. Michael Taylor, for example, notes that our article has been 'hailed' by Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke (6 April). Alan Dershowitz implies that some of our material was taken from neo-Nazi websites and other hate literature (20 April). We have no control over who likes or dislikes our article, but we regret that Duke used it to promote his racist agenda, which we utterly reject. Furthermore, nothing in our piece is drawn from racist sources of any kind, and Dershowitz offers no evidence to support this false claim. We provided a fully documented version of the paper so that readers could see for themselves that we used reputable sources.
Finally, a few critics claim that some of our facts, references or quotations are mistaken. For example, Dershowitz challenges our claim that Israel was 'explicitly founded as a Jewish state and citizenship is based on the principle of blood kinship'. Israel was founded as a Jewish state (a fact Dershowitz does not challenge), and our reference to citizenship was obviously to Israel's Jewish citizens, whose identity is ordinarily based on ancestry. We stated that Israel has a sizeable number of non-Jewish citizens (primarily Arabs), and our main point was that many of them are relegated to a second-class status in a predominantly Jewish society.
We also referred to Golda Meir's famous statement that 'there is no such thin g as a Palestinian,' and Jeremy Schreiber reads us as saying that Meir was denying the existence of those people rather than simply denying Palestinian nationhood (20 April). There is no disagreement here; we agree with Schreiber's interpretation and we quoted Meir in a discussion of Israel's prolonged effort 'to deny the Palestinians' national ambitions'.
Dershowitz challenges our claim that the Israelis did not offer the Palestinians a contiguous state at Camp David in July 2000. As support, he cites a s tatement by former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak and the memoirs of former US negotiator Dennis Ross. There are a number of competing accounts of what happened at Camp David, however, and many of them agree with our claim. Moreover, Barak himself acknowledges that 'the Palestinians were promised a continuous piece of sovereign territory except for a razor-thin Israeli wedge running from Jerusalem . . . to the Jordan River.' This wedge, which would bisect the West Bank, was essential to Israel's plan to retain control of the Jordan River Valley for another six to twenty years. Finally, and contrary to Dershowitz's claim, there was no 'second map' or map of a 'final proposal at Camp David'. Indeed, it is explicitly stated in a note beside the map published in Ross's memoirs that 'no map was presented during the final rounds at Camp David.' Given all this, it is not surprising that Barak's foreign minister, Shlomo Ben-Ami, who was a key participant at Camp David, later admitted: 'If I were a Palestinian I would have rejected Camp David as well.'
Dershowitz also claims that we quote David Ben-Gurion 'out of context' and thus misrepresented his views on the need to use force to build a Jewish state in all of Palestine. Dershowitz is wrong. As a number of Israeli historians have shown, Ben-Gurion made numerous statements about the need to use force (or the threat of overwhelming force) to create a Jewish state in all of Palestine. In October 1937, for example, he wrote to his son Amos that the future Jewish state would have an 'outstanding army . . . so I am certain that we won't be constrained from settling in the rest of the country, either by mutual agreement and understanding with our Arab neighbours, or by some other way' (emphasis added). Furthermore, common sense says that there was no other way to achieve that goal, because the Palestinians were hardly likely to give up their homeland voluntarily. Ben-Gurion was a consummate strategist and he understood that it would be unwise for the Zionists to talk openly about the need for 'brutal compulsion'. We quote a memorandum Ben-Gurion wrote prior to the Extraordinary Zionist Conference at the Biltmore Hotel in New York in May 1942. He wrote that 'it is impossible to imagine general evacuation' of the Arab population of Palestine 'without compulsion, and brutal compulsion'. Dershowitz claims that Ben-Gurion's subsequent statement--'we should in no way make it part of our programme'--shows that he opposed the transfer of the Arab population and the 'brutal compulsion' it would entail. But Ben-Gurion was not rejecting this policy: he was simply noting that the Zionists should not openly proclaim it. Indeed, he said that they should not 'discourage other people, British or American, who favour transfer from advocating this course, but we should in no way make it part of our programme'.
We close with a final comment about the controversy surrounding our article. Although we are not surprised by the hostility directed at us, we are still disappointed that more attention has not been paid to the substance of the piece. The fact remains that the United States is in deep trouble in the Middle East, and it will not be able to develop effective policies if it is impossible to have a civilised discussion about the role of Israel in American foreign policy.
John Mearsheimer & Stephen Walt University of Chicago & Harvard University.
This letter originally appeared in the London Review of Books.
http://counterpunch.org/walt05052006.html
Add Your Comments
Comments
(Hide Comments)
The communists who saved the Jewish state
By Aryeh Dayan
A colorful flyer, prominently displaying the name and flag of the State of Israel in the middle, is now being handed out all over the Czech capital. It announces the opening of an exhibit at the Military Museum in Prague, which is under the auspices of the Czech ministry of defense. Anyone reading the Czech text on the flyer will discover that the exhibit, which opens at the end of this week, is about one of the most fascinating events in the history of relations between communist Eastern Europe and the State of Israel. Using old photos, copies of yellowing documents and worn models of weapons and uniforms, it will document the military assistance provided by Czechoslovakia in 1948 to the State of Israel, during the toughest stages of the war of independence that was being fought by the newborn state.
It was a brief, but very important episode in the history of that war. It lasted no more than a year, but David Ben-Gurion once stated that thanks to this assistance, which also included the famous Czech rifles as well as ten fighter planes, the IDF was able to win the war. Despite its considerable importance, it has still never received the public recognition it warrants, not in Israel or communist Czechoslovakia and not even in the post-communist Czech Republic. Only now, more than a decade and a half after the fall of Communism, has it started to spark some interest.
Advertisement
80-year-old pilots reminisce
The downplaying of this episode and the conscious ignoring of it for over half a century in both countries is a result of clear and understandable political reasons. The communist government in Prague had no reason to highlight the military assistance it provided the state that would later become what it saw as the undisputed agent of American imperialism in the Middle East. The pro-Western government established after the fall of Communism also had no reason to highlight this episode: Anyone looking into it will immediately discover that Czechoslovakia provided the assistance to Israel in the name of the Soviet Union and under its instruction. In Israel too, the episode caused political discomfort: Israeli administrations were uncomfortable recalling the fact that the weapons that saved the IDF in 1948 actually came from the Communist bloc and it was even more uncomfortable to acknowledge that the appeal to the Communist bloc came as a result of the arms embargo the United States imposed on Israel. "Even though I grew up in an air force family, until a few years ago I hardly knew anything about this chapter," says Shosh Dagan, the Israeli curator of the exhibit at the Czech Army Museum. "I remember only that people talked a little, vaguely, about some assistance that came from Czechoslovakia and about some flight training course that took place there once. It was not among the subjects that the air force was in the habit of highlighting." Dagan is the wife of Maj. Gen. (res.) Nehemiah Dagan, who was one of the leaders of the air force and served also as chief education officer. In her visits to the Czech Republic ahead of the exhibit, she found that such forgetfulness also characterized attitudes there regarding the assistance that had been provided.
During one visit, she met a group of former pilots in the Czechoslovakian air force, who in 1948 were instructors in a flight-training course that their air force organized for the Israeli cadets. The meeting with these people, all of them in their eighties, started off very hesitatingly. "I felt they were still afraid to talk," relates Dagan, "they were constantly looking off to the sides, checking if someone else was listening to the conversation. Only after some time, when they began recalling anecdotes from the course, did they loosen up a bit. Then it suddenly turned out that they remembered each and every detail, including the names of their Israeli trainees. I had the impression that they really admired, and still admire to this day, the Israeli air force. And nevertheless, I felt that they had some sort of hold on them, that they were not speaking freely." Dagan sensed that the elderly Czech pilots had a hard time talking about the episode, which for decades was deemed confidential in Czechoslovakia and of the kind that endangered anyone who talked about it.
The first arms deal with Czechoslovakia was signed in January 1948 - less than two months after the UN resolution creating Israel and four months before the state was actually established. Immediately after the Partition Plan was passed, Ben-Gurion began searching for sources to supply arms to the Israeli defense forces, but found that the legal sources in the United States and most European countries were closed off to the institutions of the Jewish state in formation. The only alternative seemed to be illegal arms acquisitions and an appeal to the Soviet bloc.
Representatives of the Jewish Agency signed the deal on behalf of the Israelis, with the approval of David Ben-Gurion and Moshe Sharet; and on the Czechoslovakian side, army leaders signed with the approval of Prime Minister Klement Gottwald and Defense Minister General Ludovic Swoboda, representatives of the Communist regime that had just been installed in their country. They, for their part, were acting with the knowledge of the Soviet Union, which supported the UN Partition Plan and continued to stand behind it, unlike the U.S. and Britain, even after it led to the start of armed conflict. Against this backdrop, Stalin's government tried to use the arms embargo imposed by the U.S. on the Middle East (but in effect, only on Israel) to bring the new Jewish state closer to him.
German planes and uniforms
As part of the deal signed in January, Czechoslovakia supplied some 50,000 rifles (that remained in use in the IDF for around 30 years), some 6,000 machine guns and around 90 million bullets. But the most important contracts were signed in late April and early May. They promised to supply 25 Messerschmitt fighter planes and arranged for the training - on Czech soil and in Czech military facilities - of Israeli pilots and technicians who would fly and maintain them. The planes, which were disassembled and flown to Israel on large transport planes, after their reassembly played a very important role in halting the Egypt Army's advance south of Ashdod, at a place now called the Ad Halom Junction.
The assistance to the air force continued to flow in during the second half of 1948 - when it consisted of 56 Spitfire fighter planes. These were flown to Israel, some of them by Israeli pilots. Among them were Mordechai Hod, who would become commander of the Israel Air Force, and Danny Shapira, who later became the Aviation Industries' first test pilot. One of these planes crashed in Yugoslavia en route to Israel and the Israeli pilot, Sam Pomeranz, was killed.
Other Israeli pilots, including also Ezer Weizman, did a training course in Czechoslovakia to learn how to fly the Messerschmitts. Most of the air force's first pilots, including Weizman, were veterans of the British Army and only knew how to fly planes used by the British air force during World War II; the Messerschmitt was actually used by the German army in that war. This may be another reason, albeit a psychological one and not a political one, for erasing the Czech assistance to Israel from memory: most of the military equipment provided through it was German made and manufactured in military industrial plants established by the Nazis on occupied Czech territory. Even the uniforms supplied to the Israelis during the training in Czechoslovakia were previously used by soldiers in the Nazi army. These uniforms are also featured in the exhibit opening this week in Prague.
The origin of this exhibit is a modest exhibit that took place four years ago in New York. Peter Gandelowitz, the Czech consul in New York, choose to deepen his country's ties with the Jewish community in the U.S. by means of a small exhibit documenting the military assistance it provided Israel. He approached Dr. Rafi Gimzu, who was the cultural attache at the Israeli consulate in New York, who referred the Czech consul to Shosh Dagan, who had worked for many years as a curator of exhibits at the Diaspora Museum and who was then in New York with her husband, who was working there for the United Jewish Appeal. Dagan curated an exhibit at the Czech consulate, which featured mostly pictures - that she had found in archives in Israel or received from air force veterans who had taken the courses in Czechoslovakia.
Around two years ago, after coming back to Israel, she heard that Ales Knizek, the director of the three museums operating under the auspices of the Czech defense ministry, was visiting Israel as a guest of the air force. Dagan met with him, showed him the pictures she had exhibited in the Czech consulate in New York and suggested organizing a similar exhibit in one of the museums he was in charge of. Six months ago, she was invited to come to Prague to curate the exhibit at the Czech Army Museum.
Downplaying the facts
The Czech exhibit in Prague will be larger and much more comprehensive than the one in New York. In addition to the photos Dagan collected in Israel, there will also be photos and copies of documents she located in Czech archives with the help of a Czech historian employed at the Military Museum. The photos show, among other things, the bases where the Israeli soldiers were trained, the building where the Israeli delegation stayed in Prague, out of which Israeli representatives oversaw the entire operation and also the Czech instructors who commanded the courses. Among the documents to be displayed (some in the Czech original and some translated into English) are versions of the agreements signed by the representatives of the two countries (Chief of Staff Bohumir Buzik and Consul Ehud Avriel), internal correspondence of the Czechoslovakian government relating to the logistic aspects of the aid and also a letter sent by the foreign ministry in Prague to the Ethiopian embassy in Paris.
It turns out that some of the arms shipments sent from Czechoslovakia to Israel were camouflaged as shipments destined for Ethiopia. In addition to the uniforms (formerly used by the Germans) worn by the Israelis, there will also be a sample of the famous Czech rifle. At one point, the organizers considered displaying an old Spitfire plane that is on display at the Czech air force museum, but later on this idea was dropped.
Dagan says the directors of the museum in Prague, who are all from the Czech defense ministry, gave her license to curate the exhibit as she wished and refrained from giving her instructions with regard to the political content. She adds, however, that they did make it clear to her that they planned to add a section to the exhibit that would be curated by museum employees and would focus on the period between the end of World War II and the signing of the deal with Israel. It will document Czechoslovakia's favorable treatment of Jewish Holocaust survivors who returned to live there.
It is obvious to Dagan that Czechoslovakia's decision to publicly display the military assistance it provided to Israel politically motivated, to nurture the pro-Western image it wants to project to the world. However, promoting this image required downplaying certain historical facts. And indeed, Dagan decided to downplay them, even though none of the exhibit's organizers asked her too. So, for example, the exhibit does not highlight the fact that the assistance to Israel came at the Soviet Union's behest, in an attempt to bypass the American embargo.
Soviet hopes and aspirations
"The Soviet Union hoped that the military assistance to Israel would promote its transformation into a pro-Soviet state," explains Dagan. "It's no wonder that in January 1949, immediately after the elections for the first Knesset, which Mapai won and the pro-Soviet parties lost, the Czechoslovakian assistance stopped completely." This fact will also not be mentioned in the exhibit along with the fact that among the Israelis involved in establishing contacts between the Jewish Agency and the Communist authorities in Eastern Europe there were also some of the leaders of the Israeli communist party. One of them, Eliahu Gojansky (whose son, Yoram, is married to former MK Tamar Gojansky), was killed in 1948 in a plane crash on the way back from Prague to Israel. According to the prevailing view in the Israel Communist Party in the 1950s, Gojansky's trip to Prague was part of the contacts to arrange the military assistance.
Dagan believes there is no need to mention all these facts in the exhibit because it is an exhibit that is intended, as far as she is concerned "primarily to do historical justice with the Czech people and express the state of Israel's appreciation for the support it gave to it on a personal and human level and not necessarily in the diplomatic sphere." She says it is most important for her "to express appreciation for the people, such as those elderly flight instructors I met in Czechoslovakia. The support they show to this day for Israel is in no way due to the order they received in 1948."
By Aryeh Dayan
A colorful flyer, prominently displaying the name and flag of the State of Israel in the middle, is now being handed out all over the Czech capital. It announces the opening of an exhibit at the Military Museum in Prague, which is under the auspices of the Czech ministry of defense. Anyone reading the Czech text on the flyer will discover that the exhibit, which opens at the end of this week, is about one of the most fascinating events in the history of relations between communist Eastern Europe and the State of Israel. Using old photos, copies of yellowing documents and worn models of weapons and uniforms, it will document the military assistance provided by Czechoslovakia in 1948 to the State of Israel, during the toughest stages of the war of independence that was being fought by the newborn state.
It was a brief, but very important episode in the history of that war. It lasted no more than a year, but David Ben-Gurion once stated that thanks to this assistance, which also included the famous Czech rifles as well as ten fighter planes, the IDF was able to win the war. Despite its considerable importance, it has still never received the public recognition it warrants, not in Israel or communist Czechoslovakia and not even in the post-communist Czech Republic. Only now, more than a decade and a half after the fall of Communism, has it started to spark some interest.
Advertisement
80-year-old pilots reminisce
The downplaying of this episode and the conscious ignoring of it for over half a century in both countries is a result of clear and understandable political reasons. The communist government in Prague had no reason to highlight the military assistance it provided the state that would later become what it saw as the undisputed agent of American imperialism in the Middle East. The pro-Western government established after the fall of Communism also had no reason to highlight this episode: Anyone looking into it will immediately discover that Czechoslovakia provided the assistance to Israel in the name of the Soviet Union and under its instruction. In Israel too, the episode caused political discomfort: Israeli administrations were uncomfortable recalling the fact that the weapons that saved the IDF in 1948 actually came from the Communist bloc and it was even more uncomfortable to acknowledge that the appeal to the Communist bloc came as a result of the arms embargo the United States imposed on Israel. "Even though I grew up in an air force family, until a few years ago I hardly knew anything about this chapter," says Shosh Dagan, the Israeli curator of the exhibit at the Czech Army Museum. "I remember only that people talked a little, vaguely, about some assistance that came from Czechoslovakia and about some flight training course that took place there once. It was not among the subjects that the air force was in the habit of highlighting." Dagan is the wife of Maj. Gen. (res.) Nehemiah Dagan, who was one of the leaders of the air force and served also as chief education officer. In her visits to the Czech Republic ahead of the exhibit, she found that such forgetfulness also characterized attitudes there regarding the assistance that had been provided.
During one visit, she met a group of former pilots in the Czechoslovakian air force, who in 1948 were instructors in a flight-training course that their air force organized for the Israeli cadets. The meeting with these people, all of them in their eighties, started off very hesitatingly. "I felt they were still afraid to talk," relates Dagan, "they were constantly looking off to the sides, checking if someone else was listening to the conversation. Only after some time, when they began recalling anecdotes from the course, did they loosen up a bit. Then it suddenly turned out that they remembered each and every detail, including the names of their Israeli trainees. I had the impression that they really admired, and still admire to this day, the Israeli air force. And nevertheless, I felt that they had some sort of hold on them, that they were not speaking freely." Dagan sensed that the elderly Czech pilots had a hard time talking about the episode, which for decades was deemed confidential in Czechoslovakia and of the kind that endangered anyone who talked about it.
The first arms deal with Czechoslovakia was signed in January 1948 - less than two months after the UN resolution creating Israel and four months before the state was actually established. Immediately after the Partition Plan was passed, Ben-Gurion began searching for sources to supply arms to the Israeli defense forces, but found that the legal sources in the United States and most European countries were closed off to the institutions of the Jewish state in formation. The only alternative seemed to be illegal arms acquisitions and an appeal to the Soviet bloc.
Representatives of the Jewish Agency signed the deal on behalf of the Israelis, with the approval of David Ben-Gurion and Moshe Sharet; and on the Czechoslovakian side, army leaders signed with the approval of Prime Minister Klement Gottwald and Defense Minister General Ludovic Swoboda, representatives of the Communist regime that had just been installed in their country. They, for their part, were acting with the knowledge of the Soviet Union, which supported the UN Partition Plan and continued to stand behind it, unlike the U.S. and Britain, even after it led to the start of armed conflict. Against this backdrop, Stalin's government tried to use the arms embargo imposed by the U.S. on the Middle East (but in effect, only on Israel) to bring the new Jewish state closer to him.
German planes and uniforms
As part of the deal signed in January, Czechoslovakia supplied some 50,000 rifles (that remained in use in the IDF for around 30 years), some 6,000 machine guns and around 90 million bullets. But the most important contracts were signed in late April and early May. They promised to supply 25 Messerschmitt fighter planes and arranged for the training - on Czech soil and in Czech military facilities - of Israeli pilots and technicians who would fly and maintain them. The planes, which were disassembled and flown to Israel on large transport planes, after their reassembly played a very important role in halting the Egypt Army's advance south of Ashdod, at a place now called the Ad Halom Junction.
The assistance to the air force continued to flow in during the second half of 1948 - when it consisted of 56 Spitfire fighter planes. These were flown to Israel, some of them by Israeli pilots. Among them were Mordechai Hod, who would become commander of the Israel Air Force, and Danny Shapira, who later became the Aviation Industries' first test pilot. One of these planes crashed in Yugoslavia en route to Israel and the Israeli pilot, Sam Pomeranz, was killed.
Other Israeli pilots, including also Ezer Weizman, did a training course in Czechoslovakia to learn how to fly the Messerschmitts. Most of the air force's first pilots, including Weizman, were veterans of the British Army and only knew how to fly planes used by the British air force during World War II; the Messerschmitt was actually used by the German army in that war. This may be another reason, albeit a psychological one and not a political one, for erasing the Czech assistance to Israel from memory: most of the military equipment provided through it was German made and manufactured in military industrial plants established by the Nazis on occupied Czech territory. Even the uniforms supplied to the Israelis during the training in Czechoslovakia were previously used by soldiers in the Nazi army. These uniforms are also featured in the exhibit opening this week in Prague.
The origin of this exhibit is a modest exhibit that took place four years ago in New York. Peter Gandelowitz, the Czech consul in New York, choose to deepen his country's ties with the Jewish community in the U.S. by means of a small exhibit documenting the military assistance it provided Israel. He approached Dr. Rafi Gimzu, who was the cultural attache at the Israeli consulate in New York, who referred the Czech consul to Shosh Dagan, who had worked for many years as a curator of exhibits at the Diaspora Museum and who was then in New York with her husband, who was working there for the United Jewish Appeal. Dagan curated an exhibit at the Czech consulate, which featured mostly pictures - that she had found in archives in Israel or received from air force veterans who had taken the courses in Czechoslovakia.
Around two years ago, after coming back to Israel, she heard that Ales Knizek, the director of the three museums operating under the auspices of the Czech defense ministry, was visiting Israel as a guest of the air force. Dagan met with him, showed him the pictures she had exhibited in the Czech consulate in New York and suggested organizing a similar exhibit in one of the museums he was in charge of. Six months ago, she was invited to come to Prague to curate the exhibit at the Czech Army Museum.
Downplaying the facts
The Czech exhibit in Prague will be larger and much more comprehensive than the one in New York. In addition to the photos Dagan collected in Israel, there will also be photos and copies of documents she located in Czech archives with the help of a Czech historian employed at the Military Museum. The photos show, among other things, the bases where the Israeli soldiers were trained, the building where the Israeli delegation stayed in Prague, out of which Israeli representatives oversaw the entire operation and also the Czech instructors who commanded the courses. Among the documents to be displayed (some in the Czech original and some translated into English) are versions of the agreements signed by the representatives of the two countries (Chief of Staff Bohumir Buzik and Consul Ehud Avriel), internal correspondence of the Czechoslovakian government relating to the logistic aspects of the aid and also a letter sent by the foreign ministry in Prague to the Ethiopian embassy in Paris.
It turns out that some of the arms shipments sent from Czechoslovakia to Israel were camouflaged as shipments destined for Ethiopia. In addition to the uniforms (formerly used by the Germans) worn by the Israelis, there will also be a sample of the famous Czech rifle. At one point, the organizers considered displaying an old Spitfire plane that is on display at the Czech air force museum, but later on this idea was dropped.
Dagan says the directors of the museum in Prague, who are all from the Czech defense ministry, gave her license to curate the exhibit as she wished and refrained from giving her instructions with regard to the political content. She adds, however, that they did make it clear to her that they planned to add a section to the exhibit that would be curated by museum employees and would focus on the period between the end of World War II and the signing of the deal with Israel. It will document Czechoslovakia's favorable treatment of Jewish Holocaust survivors who returned to live there.
It is obvious to Dagan that Czechoslovakia's decision to publicly display the military assistance it provided to Israel politically motivated, to nurture the pro-Western image it wants to project to the world. However, promoting this image required downplaying certain historical facts. And indeed, Dagan decided to downplay them, even though none of the exhibit's organizers asked her too. So, for example, the exhibit does not highlight the fact that the assistance to Israel came at the Soviet Union's behest, in an attempt to bypass the American embargo.
Soviet hopes and aspirations
"The Soviet Union hoped that the military assistance to Israel would promote its transformation into a pro-Soviet state," explains Dagan. "It's no wonder that in January 1949, immediately after the elections for the first Knesset, which Mapai won and the pro-Soviet parties lost, the Czechoslovakian assistance stopped completely." This fact will also not be mentioned in the exhibit along with the fact that among the Israelis involved in establishing contacts between the Jewish Agency and the Communist authorities in Eastern Europe there were also some of the leaders of the Israeli communist party. One of them, Eliahu Gojansky (whose son, Yoram, is married to former MK Tamar Gojansky), was killed in 1948 in a plane crash on the way back from Prague to Israel. According to the prevailing view in the Israel Communist Party in the 1950s, Gojansky's trip to Prague was part of the contacts to arrange the military assistance.
Dagan believes there is no need to mention all these facts in the exhibit because it is an exhibit that is intended, as far as she is concerned "primarily to do historical justice with the Czech people and express the state of Israel's appreciation for the support it gave to it on a personal and human level and not necessarily in the diplomatic sphere." She says it is most important for her "to express appreciation for the people, such as those elderly flight instructors I met in Czechoslovakia. The support they show to this day for Israel is in no way due to the order they received in 1948."
The paper was described as a "wake-up call" by Daniel Levy, former advisor to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak. In a March 25 article for Haaretz, Levy wrote, "Their case is a potent one: that identification of American with Israeli interests can be principally explained via the impact of the Lobby in Washington, and in limiting the parameters of public debate, rather than by virtue of Israel being a vital strategic asset or having a uniquely compelling moral case for support".
...
Mark Mazower, a professor of history at Columbia University, wrote that it is not possible to openly debate the topic of the article: "What is striking is less the substance of their argument than the outraged reaction: to all intents and purposes, discussing the US-Israel special relationship still remains taboo in the US media mainstream. [...] Whatever one thinks of the merits of the piece itself, it would seem all but impossible to have a sensible public discussion in the US today about the country’s relationship with Israel."
Criticism of the paper has itself been called "moral blackmail" and "bullying" by an opinion piece in The Financial Times: "Moral blackmail - the fear that any criticism of Israeli policy and US support for it will lead to charges of anti-Semitism - is a powerful disincentive to publish dissenting views...Bullying Americans into a consensus on Israeli policy is bad for Israel and makes it impossible for America to articulate its own national interest." The editorial praised the paper, remarking that "They argue powerfully that extraordinarily effective lobbying in Washington has led to a political consensus that American and Israeli interests are inseparable and identical."
....
Richard Cohen responded in The Washington Post to Eliot A. Cohen's prior editorial in the same newspaper, denying that the working paper is anti-Semitic, and calling Eliot Cohen's piece "offensive": "To associate Mearsheimer and Walt with hate groups is rank guilt by association and does not in any way rebut the argument made in their paper on the Israel lobby." Richard Cohen found the paper unremarkable, calling its "basic point" "inarguable", but also finding it "a bit sloppy and one-sided (nothing here about the Arab oil lobby)".
...
Mearsheimer has stated, "[w]e fully recognised that the lobby would retaliate against us" and "[w]e expected the story we told in the piece would apply to us after it was published. We are not surprised that we've come under attack by the lobby." He also stated "we expected to be called anti-semites, even though both of us are philo-semites and strongly support the existence of Israel."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Israel_Lobby_and_U.S._Foreign_Policy
Wikipedia entries:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mearsheimer
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Walt
Publications by Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer:
http://mearsheimer.uchicago.edu/all-pubs.html
http://ksghome.harvard.edu/~swalt/walt%20site%20articles%20and%20papers.htm
...
Mark Mazower, a professor of history at Columbia University, wrote that it is not possible to openly debate the topic of the article: "What is striking is less the substance of their argument than the outraged reaction: to all intents and purposes, discussing the US-Israel special relationship still remains taboo in the US media mainstream. [...] Whatever one thinks of the merits of the piece itself, it would seem all but impossible to have a sensible public discussion in the US today about the country’s relationship with Israel."
Criticism of the paper has itself been called "moral blackmail" and "bullying" by an opinion piece in The Financial Times: "Moral blackmail - the fear that any criticism of Israeli policy and US support for it will lead to charges of anti-Semitism - is a powerful disincentive to publish dissenting views...Bullying Americans into a consensus on Israeli policy is bad for Israel and makes it impossible for America to articulate its own national interest." The editorial praised the paper, remarking that "They argue powerfully that extraordinarily effective lobbying in Washington has led to a political consensus that American and Israeli interests are inseparable and identical."
....
Richard Cohen responded in The Washington Post to Eliot A. Cohen's prior editorial in the same newspaper, denying that the working paper is anti-Semitic, and calling Eliot Cohen's piece "offensive": "To associate Mearsheimer and Walt with hate groups is rank guilt by association and does not in any way rebut the argument made in their paper on the Israel lobby." Richard Cohen found the paper unremarkable, calling its "basic point" "inarguable", but also finding it "a bit sloppy and one-sided (nothing here about the Arab oil lobby)".
...
Mearsheimer has stated, "[w]e fully recognised that the lobby would retaliate against us" and "[w]e expected the story we told in the piece would apply to us after it was published. We are not surprised that we've come under attack by the lobby." He also stated "we expected to be called anti-semites, even though both of us are philo-semites and strongly support the existence of Israel."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Israel_Lobby_and_U.S._Foreign_Policy
Wikipedia entries:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mearsheimer
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Walt
Publications by Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer:
http://mearsheimer.uchicago.edu/all-pubs.html
http://ksghome.harvard.edu/~swalt/walt%20site%20articles%20and%20papers.htm
The Saudis and Kuwaitis defintely have a major effect on US foreign policy and were the direct reasons for most of what happened in the first Gulf War. At the same time they seem to have little impact on political discussions in the US itself. The power of the Israeli Lobby in the US is also partly that it has some control over a voting base that the Democrats depend on and could thus act as a swing vote in elections, and the Saudis have no similar power.
But I think the broader point shuld be made that its not a struggle between two competing lobbys. The Saudis need the US to defend them militarilly (for now) but have enough power via oil to play a role on the world stage outside of US support whereas Israel has to hide behind the US in most UN votes. Its striking that most oil executives in the US are reasonably proIsrael even if they are also seem to be buddy buddy with Saudi Royals (you would almost have to guess that in most cases the Saudi Royal familly personally doesnt care either way about Israel and just has to give lipservice to the Palestinians to placate public outrage that could endanger the Saudi lack of democracy) Even more striking is the relative lack of response to racism against Arabs and Muslims in the US; the Saudis may have a lot of money but relatively little of it is spent to lobby the US public or protect Muslism and Arabs and most is used to maintain royal rule in Saudi Arabia. Jewish Loby groups in the US that overlap with Israeli lobby groups have much more control over the national discourse since there is a blurring between true fighting of antiSemitism and rhetorical tricks to prevent real discussion of Israel's role in the Middle East (effectively silence mainstream discussion of such as Israeli nukes in the context of Iranian nukes). While its hard to talk of such things without sounding conspiratorial and thus being accused of antiSemitism perhaps a parallel is the difficulty of discussing issues revolving around Catholic government officials in the UK (see http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/article363108.ece ); while in that case religion is much more tied into actual political belief (while in the Israeli case most of the major critics of Israel in the US also happen to be Jewish and some religiously so) hiding behind historical discrimination to justify a position that today should be able to be argued is what is at issue (no real discussion of US Israeli policy can take place in the US due to the constant accusations of antiSemitism and some real antiSemitism... and thuis is not unique since its such an easy rhetorical trick that one can see it in many othefr contexts.... just not in the case of the oil lobby where actual power is the main force used and there isnt the need for public support)
But I think the broader point shuld be made that its not a struggle between two competing lobbys. The Saudis need the US to defend them militarilly (for now) but have enough power via oil to play a role on the world stage outside of US support whereas Israel has to hide behind the US in most UN votes. Its striking that most oil executives in the US are reasonably proIsrael even if they are also seem to be buddy buddy with Saudi Royals (you would almost have to guess that in most cases the Saudi Royal familly personally doesnt care either way about Israel and just has to give lipservice to the Palestinians to placate public outrage that could endanger the Saudi lack of democracy) Even more striking is the relative lack of response to racism against Arabs and Muslims in the US; the Saudis may have a lot of money but relatively little of it is spent to lobby the US public or protect Muslism and Arabs and most is used to maintain royal rule in Saudi Arabia. Jewish Loby groups in the US that overlap with Israeli lobby groups have much more control over the national discourse since there is a blurring between true fighting of antiSemitism and rhetorical tricks to prevent real discussion of Israel's role in the Middle East (effectively silence mainstream discussion of such as Israeli nukes in the context of Iranian nukes). While its hard to talk of such things without sounding conspiratorial and thus being accused of antiSemitism perhaps a parallel is the difficulty of discussing issues revolving around Catholic government officials in the UK (see http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/article363108.ece ); while in that case religion is much more tied into actual political belief (while in the Israeli case most of the major critics of Israel in the US also happen to be Jewish and some religiously so) hiding behind historical discrimination to justify a position that today should be able to be argued is what is at issue (no real discussion of US Israeli policy can take place in the US due to the constant accusations of antiSemitism and some real antiSemitism... and thuis is not unique since its such an easy rhetorical trick that one can see it in many othefr contexts.... just not in the case of the oil lobby where actual power is the main force used and there isnt the need for public support)
Yeah, don't say but Israel and the US are allowed to have nukes!
The response: But they're not a crazy as Iran.
My response: Picture Dumbya Bush saying "Bring it on!", Picture "Shock and Awe" Even better yet: Picture hiroshima...and picture the zionist neocons dictating US foreign policy now. Connect the dots.
The response: But they're not a crazy as Iran.
My response: Picture Dumbya Bush saying "Bring it on!", Picture "Shock and Awe" Even better yet: Picture hiroshima...and picture the zionist neocons dictating US foreign policy now. Connect the dots.
We are 100% volunteer and depend on your participation to sustain our efforts!
Donate
$320.00 donated
in the past month
Get Involved
If you'd like to help with maintaining or developing the website, contact us.
Publish
Publish your stories and upcoming events on Indybay.
Topics
More
Search Indybay's Archives
Advanced Search
►
▼
IMC Network