Sure, Let's Talk About the Israel Lobby Again

It's probably better than root canal, right?

Photo by Shalev Cohen on Unsplash

The day after I published a newsletter noting, among other things, Israel’s apparent role in nudging the Trump administration towards launching Gulf War Three, I received an email from a Tufts colleague who is very concerned about anti-Semitism on campus. That professor pushed back on my empirical claim, arguing that Trump’s denial of any Israeli role definitively falsified my newsletter, and that “it is far, far more likely that Israel decided to join the United States in launching this strike at this time” rather than vice versa. Full disclosure: I found this completely unpersuasive. But my colleague added the following:

The wording that you used makes it seems like Israel pushed the US to do this furthers the perception that Israel (and therefore Jews) controls US politicians. This is certainly not what was meant by you, but it is exactly what Tucker Carlson and others meant when they say the same thing. As Carlson said this week: “The United States didn’t make the decision here. Benjamin Netanyahu did.”

This echoes sentiments I have seen from some commentators about the dangers of discussing Israel’s role in influencing U.S. foreign policy. For example, earlier this month MSNOW’s Michael Cohen wrote the following:

Make no mistake, there are certainly appropriate grounds on which to criticize Israel and, in particular, Netanyahu for pushing the U.S. to join it in attacking Iran. Criticism of Israel’s policies is not inherently antisemitic, but when that criticism promotes, even unintentionally, anti-Jewish tropes, it is a much more serious problem.

Those in the public sphere, whether they are the secretary of state, a senator or even political pundits with large platforms, need to better understand how their criticisms of Israel resonate with those who are antisemitic and play into antisemitic conspiracy theories.

Moreover, when Jews raise concerns about this kind of rhetoric, they should be listened to, not shouted down. When it comes to antisemitism and the horrible consequences of such toxic beliefs, we know of where we speak.

As someone who is Jewish, I’m willing to listen — but am finding it hard to be persuaded to not foster further conversation about this issue. Beyond the Times coverage, the Wall Street Journal, Time¹ and Bloomberg also reported on the role that Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu played in coaxing Trump to attack Iran rather than vice versa. Empirically, it is impossible to properly discuss why Trump decided to attack Iran without discussing Netanyahu.

[More generally, I find the line of argument “you must be careful of the argument you’re making because someone objectionable is also making it” somewhat wanting.² Twenty years ago this week, when I characterized Mearsheimner and Walt’s “Israel Lobby” argument as “piss-poor, monocausal social science,” I also rejected the notion that their argument was anti-Semitic because of who endorsed it: “just about any argument out there is endorsed by one crackpot or another, so that does not mean the argument itself is automatically invalidated.” I am decidedly not a fan of the logic that if someone makes an argument and an Objectionable Person agrees with the argument, that renders the argument itself objectionable.]

That said, as time has passed I am beginning to appreciate their concerns. For example, the Israel lobby discourse resurfaced last week after National Counter-Terrorism Center Director Joe Kent resigned with a doozy of a letter, claiming that, “it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby,” He further decried a “misinformation campaign” by “high-ranking Israeli officials and influential members of the American media.”

Sounds damning! The thing is, Kent is also a bigoted conspiracy buff who never should have been appointed to NCTC head also claimed that Israel was responsible for drawing the U.S. into invading Iraq in 2003, which is indicative of Kent’s conspiratorial and not-entirely-grounded-in-reality worldview. Kent’s letter is a data point supporting Cohen’s argument that debates about Israel’s influence over American foreign policy are easy to devolve into anti-Semitic conspiracy theorizing.

The New York Times’ Michelle Goldberg offered a nuanced response to Kent’s letter:

Some Jewish leaders, alarmed by the backlash against the war, are trying to rule any discussion of Israel’s role in instigating it out of bounds. In a speech on Monday, Jonathan Greenblatt, the head of the Anti-Defamation League, denounced those who “pointed fingers at the Israelis who — they claimed — whispered a few too many times in President Trump’s ear.”

Greenblatt’s heavy-handed attempt to police the discourse is bound to fail, because it’s asking people to overlook provable facts….

A major distortion in Kent’s letter is that it presents Trump as a naïve victim of the Israelis rather than an eager collaborator. Trump has always been more hawkish than the isolationists in his orbit admit; he ordered more drone strikes in his first two years in office than Barack Obama launched in eight. It wasn’t Netanyahu who made Trump abduct the president of Venezuela — an operation that seems to have both whetted his appetite for foreign adventure and convinced him that war can be easy. This week he boasted that he could “take” Cuba and “do anything I want with it.” Long obsessed with military might and displays of masculine aggression, Trump was enamored of the idea that he could rid the world of the anti-American regimes that bedeviled his predecessors. He went to war in Iran for his ego, not for Israel.

Still, Israel clearly encouraged him and now threatens to prolong the war, since unlike Trump, it seems determined to destroy the Iranian state. “Israel doesn’t hate the chaos,” a White House official told Axios. “We do. We want stability. Netanyahu? Not so much, especially in Iran.” I think this official is telling the truth while previewing the spin we’re going to hear if Iran spirals out of control: It was Israel’s fault.³

Between Kent’s letter and Mearsheimer crowing about the influence of the Israel Lobby again, it’s clearly a tricky time to talk about this stuff again. But as much as I’d prefer not to talk about it, that’s exactly why the hard-working staff here at Drezner’s World feels compelled to sort through it.

So here’s my take about all of this: the more reporting about what motivated Trump’s decision to go to war, the clearer it is that this is less an Israel lobby story and more of a story in which a handful of elites — dare I say, neoroyalists, including Benjamin Netanyahu — had Trump’s ear and nudged him in the direction he wanted to go without any pushback from anyone in the current administration.

First, let’s dispense with the notion that Mearsheimer and Walt’s (and Kent’s) version of the Israel Lobby had much of anything to do with Trump’s decision to attack Iran. The most obvious problem is that a lot of the elements that they identified back in the day — like most neoconservatives — are never-Trumpers who have been harshly critical of Gulf War Three.⁴ Other elements, like AIPAC, have seen their clout diminished in recent years.

The other thing that has to be considered is that Netanyahu was not the only foreign leader who was advising Trump to attack Iran. The Washington Post reported that Saudi leader Mohammed bin Salman urged Trump to attack Iran prior to the launch of Operation Epic Fury; the New York Times reported that MbS told Trump to, “keep hitting Iran hard.”

Bloomberg’s Catherine Lucey and Nancy Cook report on other people who influenced — and chose not to influence — Trump:

Donald Trump’s decision to wage war on Iran was partly motivated by pressure from outside allies while his own White House team stayed more muted – underscoring how in his second term, guardrails have been traded for a green light.

Those privately pressing Trump to strike Iran included Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, media mogul Rupert Murdoch and some conservative commentators, according to people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations. The News Corp. founder communicated with Trump several times as he urged the president to take on Tehran, according to one person briefed on their interactions.

Meanwhile, some of Trump’s closest advisers were more muted about the prospect of an armed conflict, including Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, the people said.

Few, if any, told him directly it was an ill-conceived idea.

What emerges is not a story in which interest groups played much of a role. Mearsheimer and Walt’s Israel lobby is conceptually ill-defined — and yet, very little of it appears in this story. Instead, it’s about three things:

1. A handful of Trump-friendly leaders whispering in Trump’s ear;

2. Trump’s official national security advisors keeping their mouths shut;

3. Trump becoming more enamored with the use of force over time.

This fits a paradigm in which a few elites have privileged access to influence Trump. And Trump, of course, exercised agency to take a risky action that has played out quite badly.

So, to sum up: any decent conversation about Trump’s decision to launch a war in Iran has to acknowledge Netanyahu’s role. That is unavoidable. But the notion that this is the second coming of the Israel lobby is a misread of the drivers behind Trump’s foreign policy.

1. Indeed, Time also reported on Netanyahu persuading Trump to join in the June attacks last year.

2. The fact that many of the same people who decry any restriction on freedom of speech also start sounding awfully speech code-y about any discourse surrounding Israel doesn’t help.

3. Good call by Goldberg there.

4. There is also the awkward fact that a key causal mechanism of Mearsheimer and Walt’s logic — the Israel lobby influencing the debate over U.S. foreign policy — didn’t happen in this instance because there was no public debate.