While this book makes every effort to play an even hand and provide neutral commentary the authors commit a cardinal Sin in my view by attempting to exonnerate the Israel lobby of the crime of conspiracy. In their attempt to clarify the difference between conspiracy and lobbying they in fact incriminate the lobby by ignoring the fact that conspiracy does not per se have to be secretive.
When the lobby puts its full force behind the invasion of Iraq, it misleads the general public concerning its aims to reprganise the middle east as part of a neoliberal empire building exercise, claiming rather that the removal of Saddam Hussein is necessary because of the threat of WMDs. Although this lobbying occurs in the open, the misleading and lying to the public it entails involves a considerable amount of coordination and activity beyond the view of the public. In addition one cannot simply ignore the extent of influence exercised outside public control by organisations like AIPAC. Those who claim the invasion of Iraq and many other interferences all over the world are evidence of conspiracy are therefore very much correct, even if they are not well informed of the precise mechanisms by which policy is determined.
In addition the authors commit another naive error by referring to lobbying as a legitimate activity within democracies, and ignoring the many insidious ways that such activity actually undermines public control. In my view they do this to avoid accusations of antisemitism that might otherwise be leveled at them for accusingbthe lobby of questionable if not illegal activity, but the point is tgat lobbying corrupts democratic decisionmaking in ways that are profoundly unethical, and therefore highly problematic.
A further cardinal error, in my view, is the authors failure to discuss neoliberalism as the main driving force behind US and Israeli policy. While correctly identifying neocons within the Israel lobby, and the joint US Israeli neocon scheme to literally redraw the geopolitical map of the mideast, the authors fail to explore the wider motive for this, this making it seem as if the Iraq, Syria and Iran regime change plans are entirely motivated by Israeli paranoia rather than a broader ‘conspiracy’ to disempower popular movements in the region from actualising democratic reform from within. These policies may indeed reflect fear amongst neocons of real democratic movements: create an external enemy, identify a scapegoat, go to war, divide and rule! In other words, this oversight is perhaps the most serious error of the book making the long litany of errors in mid east policy entirely inexplicable and thus depriving readers of the possibility to make up their own minds on whether these policies do in fact ‘amount to a conspiracy’ when considered a ‘hidden agenda’.
This brings us back to the question whether the term conspiracy needs to be updated to reflect the realpolitikal world as it actually manifests itself in this day and age, which is to say that there is every justification for calling political processes that take place outside the view of the people and beyond public control ‘conspiracy’ regardless whether those involved are deliberately, wittingly, conspiring and collaborating toward any specific goal.
The problem is that this leaves readers with precious little understanding of how US policy on the middle east fits with other interests and policies that have an equally important role at home. These are the issues from racism to corruption pollution and wages, healthcare etc. all of which determine voting pattherns and political consciousness and willingness to act.
These problems are evident in the authors call in the final conclusions where they suggest the US can still legitimately play a role as nuclear watchdog in the ME! No it cannot! US policy in the region as elsewhere has lost all credibility precisely because it is entirely untethered from any democratic process at home. The US needs to remove all traces of its interference anywhere outside its own borders and fix its democracy problems at home! That might make it a credible partner for peace.
All of which is thoroughly depressing. The authors reading suggests in fact that politics is entirely something that takes place outside the scope of publi control. But as Zygmunt Bauman argues real power ultimately rests with the people. It is ordinary people who foot the bill for US donations of money to Israel, who give their lives for the false hope and lie of democracy, and who lose the opportunity to have good schools and hospitals because the country’s respurces are being diverted.
The authors recommendations are predictably useless: treat Israel as any other state’ may be good advice but it does not account for tge way in which US policy foreign and domestic is actually made. It ignores tge very real gap between people and power and within public consciousness, themselves the consequences of centuries of injustice and imposed ignorance. Although the authors hold that policy is ultimately a democratic product this by no means explains the extent of polarisation in public debate and policymaking that deprives us of real choice at the polling booth.
US foreign policy is in other words a consequence of the lack of real democracy at home, a fact tge authors seem to ignore entirely. Thus when they argue that the lobby’s influence on policy has not made Israel safer they fail to recognise that Israeli leaders ppwer to pursue policies tgat are not in their own best interests represents another discrepancy between the interests of those in power and the common people.
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