Israel is capable of debating sensitive national
security issues dealing with a variety of Israeli-Arab
issues, but this does not appear to be possible
in the United States. During the presidential
campaign last fall, Barack Obama told a Jewish
gathering in Cleveland that he was "struck"
while visiting Israel by "how much more
open the debate was around these issues in Israel
than they are sometimes here in the United States."
And now that he is president, Obama has learned
that the Israeli lobby in the United States
can successfully block a distinguished appointee.
Retired Ambassador Charles W. Freeman Jr., who
had been selected to fill an important position
in the intelligence community, was forced to
withdraw from consideration after a storm of
criticism organized by the Israel lobby. Freeman
was a regular lecturer at the National War College
between 1986 and 2004, when I served on the
faculty there.
He was asked to return time and time again
because of his independent, somewhat contrarian,
unbiased, and trenchant views on policy and
intelligence issues. Freeman had the skills
and experience required of the chairman of the
National Intelligence Council, which is responsible
for providing independent, unbiased, and trenchant
National Intelligence Estimates to the president
of the United States and key decision-makers.
Like others before him, Freeman has criticized
Israel’s use of force against Lebanon
in 1982 and 2006 as well as in Gaza in 2008;
these actions have not strengthened Israel’s
national security, and they deserved criticism.
The leaders of several Israeli lobbying organizations,
particularly the powerful American Israel Public
Affairs Committee (AIPAC), have disingenuously
claimed that they did not take a formal position
on Freeman’s selection and did not lobby
Congress to oppose it.
But it is well known that the congressional
switchboards lit up with calls from these lobbies;
it is also clear that Sen. Joseph Lieberman
(I-CT) and Rep. Steve Israel (D-NY) were prepared
to make life miserable for the director of National
Intelligence, Dennis Blair, who chose Freeman
for the position. Freeman is not the first U.S.
official targeted by the Israeli lobby. In the
1980s, AIPAC targeted two Republicans from Illinois,
Sen. Charles Percy and Rep. Paul Findley, who
favored a more even-handed approach toward the
Israeli-Arab peace process and were sympathetic
to the plight of the Palestinians.
More recently, two African-American Democrats,
Rep. Cynthia McKinney from Georgia and Rep.
Earl Hilliard from Alabama, were defeated in
part due to the negative campaigning of the
Israeli lobby. Governor William Scranton, who
had presidential aspirations, saw his political
career ended, simply because the Israel lobby
resented his call for a more even-handed U.S.
policy in the Middle East. In his drive for
the presidency in 1972, Senator George McGovern
was denounced by the Israeli lobby for supporting
even-handed policies.
For the past four decades, the United States
has gone overboard in providing assistance and
support to Israel, often ignoring the legitimate
concerns of key Arab countries. Democratic and
Republican administrations alike have relied
on Jewish-Americans (Dennis Ross, Aaron Miller,
Dan Kurtzer, and Martin Indyck) to manage the
Arab-Israeli peace process; each of these individuals
took positions sympathetic to the Israel agenda
and often downplayed Arab concerns. Economic
aid to Israel finally ended in 2008, but Israel
continues to receive more military assistance
from the United States than any other nation—more
than $3 billion last year.
This aid is in addition to the supplemental
assistance that Israel has received over the
years for counter-terrorism activities, resettlement
of immigrants, and security needs. Although
Israel has overwhelming military superiority
over its neighbors and has often violated assistance
agreements with the United States by using weapons
against non-military targets in the Arab world,
there has never been a serious debate in the
United States on ending or even reducing this
aid. The Israelis have violated other agreements
with the United States, for example, sharing
highly sophisticated U.S. military equipment
with China.
The United States over the past twenty years
has gone too far in creating security ties with
Israel. The turning point took place in 1988,
when President Ronald Reagan agreed to a Joint
Memorandum on Strategic Cooperation with Israel
and designated the state a “major non-NATO
ally.” This gave the Israelis preferential
treatment in bidding for U.S. defense contracts
and access to sophisticated weapons systems
at reduced prices.
Unlike all other U.S assistance agreements,
Israel gets its aid money up-front in the calendar
year and can earn interest on the money until
it is drawn down. Reagan’s “strategic
relationship” with the United States also
permitted the pre-positioning of U.S. military
equipment in Israel as well as the conduct of
joint military exercises. During the Reagan
administration, Israel became a key player in
U.S. covert activities to sell arms to the Iranian
government, to support the Christian parties
in Lebanon, and to fund the contra rebels in
Nicaragua. Iran-Contra, a conspiracy that involved
virtually every major national security player
in the Reagan administration, revolved around
the illegal sale of arms to Iran, with the administration
trying to circumvent a U.S. arms embargo by
providing U.S. weapons from Israeli inventories.
President Obama deserves a great deal of credit
for trying to position himself to broker an
Israeli-Palestinian agreement. His inauguration
address specifically told that Arab community
that “we seek a new way forward, based
on mutual interest and respect,” and,
in introducing George Mitchell as the point
man in the peace process, he emphasized that
a “future without hope for the Palestinians
is intolerable.” Unfortunately, the lobby’s
actions against Freeman demonstrate how difficult
Obama’s task will be. By caving in to
the Israel lobby, moreover, the Obama administration
demonstrates that it is not prepared to fight
for its policy positions.
Since we do not mindlessly support U.S. national
security policies that are counterproductive,
it makes no sense to mindlessly support Israeli
national security policies that work against
their interests. Some of this censorship of
the debate on Israel in the United States is
due to self-censorship and the fear of being
branded as an anti-Semite for criticizing Israel.
The mainstream media bears a certain responsibility
for the lack of debate because of the one-sided
support given to Israeli interests.
It is particularly unfortunate to see these
trends once again, because it is difficult to
imagine that Israel will soon have a better
negotiating partner than the current president
of the Palestinian Authority, Mamoud Abbas.
Ultimately, it will be up to the Obama administration
to hold the feet of a new Israeli prime minister
to the fire on negotiations with the Palestinians
or another opportunity will have been lost.
Melvin A. Goodman is senior fellow at the
Center for International Policy and adjunct
professor of government at Johns Hopkins University.
He spent more than 42 years in the U.S. Army,
the Central Intelligence Agency, and the Department
of Defense. His most recent book is “Failure
of Intelligence: The Decline and Fall of the
CIA.”
Copyright 2009 The Public
Record
