[R-G] Olmert's Claims Revive Spectre of "Israel Lobby"

[Anthony Fenton]

POLITICS-US:  Olmert's Claims Revive Spectre of "Israel Lobby"
By Daniel Luban
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=45401

WASHINGTON, Jan 13 (IPS) - The U.S. State Department fiercely denied  
claims made by Ehud Olmert about his influence over President George  
W. Bush, in an incident that has stirred up old debates about the role  
of the Israeli government and the so-called "Israel lobby" in  
formulating Middle East policy in Washington.

On Monday, Olmert claimed that he demanded and received an immediate  
conversation with President Bush, during which he convinced the  
president to overrule the wishes of Secretary of State Condoleezza  
Rice and abstain from a United Nations resolution calling for an  
immediate ceasefire in Gaza.

In response, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack on Tuesday  
called Olmert's claims "wholly inaccurate as to describing the  
situation, just 100-percent, totally, completely not true". The State  
Department did not respond to an IPS request for further elaboration.

Olmert's comments were made in Ashkelon, a southern Israeli city that  
has been the target of rocket attacks from the Gaza Strip.

According to Olmert, he called the White House upon hearing of the  
upcoming U.N. Security Council resolution. "I said, 'Get me President  
Bush on the phone'. They said he was in the middle of giving a speech  
in Philadelphia. I said I didn't care: 'I need to talk to him now'. He  
got off the podium and spoke to me," Olmert said, according to  
multiple media reports.

As a result of his conversation with President Bush, Olmert claimed,  
the president called Rice and forced her to abstain from voting on the  
measure, which she herself had helped author.

"He gave an order to the secretary of state and she did not vote in  
favour of it -- a resolution she cooked up, phrased, organised and  
maneuvered for. She was left pretty shamed and abstained on a  
resolution she arranged," Olmert said.

The Security Council resolution passed by a vote of 14 to 0, with the  
U.S. the only abstention.

The U.S. government was quick to counter Olmert's remarks. In addition  
to the State Department's rebuttal, a White House spokesman also  
denounced "inaccuracies" in the story.

Regardless of the truth of Olmert's claims, the story comes as an  
embarrassment to the Bush administration, which has faced criticism  
for its alleged unquestioning support for Israeli positions.

While most U.S. allies in Europe and elsewhere have called for an  
immediate ceasefire since the Israeli bombardment of Gaza began on  
Dec. 27, the Bush administration has been unwavering in its refusal to  
condemn the campaign or suggest a timeline for its conclusion.

The U.S Congress has also expressed its strong support for Israel's  
actions in Gaza. Last week, both the House and Senate overwhelmingly  
passed nonbinding resolutions in support of the military campaign.

But polls indicate that both members of Congress and the public at  
large may be more sceptical of the Israeli offensive than the official  
positions of the U.S. government would indicate.

An anonymous poll of 68 congressmen conducted by National Journal  
found that 39 percent of Democrats and 12 percent of Republicans felt  
that Israel had used "too much" force in Gaza. Nevertheless, over 90  
percent of representatives voted in favour of the House resolution,  
which placed all blame for civilian casualties in Gaza upon Hamas.

And in late December, a Rasmussen poll found that the U.S. populace as  
a whole supported the Israeli offensive by a narrow 44 to 41 percent  
margin. Among Democrats, 55 percent felt that Israel should have tried  
to find a diplomatic solution first.

The diplomatic spat over Olmert's comments, along with this alleged  
disparity between U.S. public opinion and policies on Israel- 
Palestine, have given new intensity to an old set of debates.

Charges of pro-Israel bias have not been unique to the Bush  
administration. Critics also accused the Bill Clinton administration,  
and particularly its top negotiator Dennis Ross, of giving priority to  
Israeli concerns during the peace negotiations of the late 1990s.

Ross, who is rumoured to be in line to become President-Elect Barack  
Obama's top Middle East envoy, was accused by U.S. and Arab  
negotiators of not being "an honest broker" in the peace process,  
according to a book by Ross's former colleague Dan Kurtzer.

And in 2005, former U.S. peace negotiator Aaron David Miller  
complained that "many American officials involved in Arab-Israeli  
peacemaking, myself included, have acted as Israel's attorney,  
catering and coordinating with the Israelis at the expense of  
successful peace negotiations".

On the U.S. domestic scene, Congress's overwhelming backing of the  
Gaza offensive despite apparently lukewarm public support has been  
taken as further evidence for the existence of an "Israel lobby"  
skewing policy in a hawkish direction.

This claim was put forth by political scientists John Mearsheimer and  
Stephen Walt in a 2006 article in the London Review of Books entitled  
"The Israel Lobby", later turned into a 2007 book. They alleged that  
hawkish pro-Israel lobbying groups -- most notably the powerful  
American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) -- have for decades  
skewed foreign policy in a direction detrimental to U.S. interests.

The Mearsheimer/Walt thesis has been extremely controversial since its  
publication. To critics, the thesis was simply the latest  
manifestation of a long line of conspiracy theories alleging covert  
Jewish domination of politics.

Defenders countered that the idea of an Israel lobby was not meant to  
stand in for Jews as a whole -- both because the policies of groups  
like AIPAC were unrepresentative of the more dovish views of most U.S.  
Jews, and because the lobby was also made up of large numbers of  
evangelical Christians.

Regardless, the years since the publication of Mearsheimer and Walt's  
article have seen more open debate about the way that Israel policy is  
formulated in Washington. Relatively centrist commentators such as  
Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic and Joe Klein of TIME, while taking  
pains to distinguish their views from those of Mearsheimer and Walt,  
have suggested that hawkish Jewish groups in the U.S. political  
establishment are skewing Israel policy in an unhealthy direction.

As world debate over the Gaza war remains fierce, it seems unlikely  
that these controversies will die down in the near future.

Walt, for one, has taken recent developments as a further vindication  
of his views.

"[A]lthough most Americans support Israel's existence and have more  
sympathy for them than they have for the Palestinians," he wrote Jan.  
5 in response to the Rasmussen poll, "they are not demanding that U.S.  
leaders back Israel no matter what it does. But that's what American  
politicians reflexively do."

(END/2009)