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Their paper, "The Israeli Lobby and US Foreign Policy," cited the organizational prowess of pro-Israel groups in marrying the media, think tanks, and numerous politicians into a unified front that muzzles criticism of the Jewish State. However, in the vitriol exchanged by supporters and detractors of the paper, an illuminating section is overlooked. Mearsheimer and Walt, in comparing the existence of the Israeli lobby to the likelihood of the existence of a similar Muslim or Arab grouping, say "pro-Arab interest groups, in so far as they exist at all, are weak, which makes the Israeli lobby's task even easier." Although there is no national consensus data on the number of Muslims in the United States, estimates put the figure between six and seven million, equal to the number of Jews in the country. Each religious group accounts for two percent of the US population. While the global population of Jews is some 15 million, there are nearly 1.2 billion Muslims in the world.
If the logic of strength in numbers is applied, why then is there no Muslim lobby to balance the strong influence of other lobby groups? There are multiple answers to this question, often directly mirroring the status quo in Arab and Muslim countries, but chief among them is the lack of a unified socio-political platform. Diverse Muslim Groups Muslims in the United States are primarily derivative of an immigrant community and belong to a number of diverse ethnic groups. From a religious and sectarian point of view, American Muslims comprise Sunni, Shiite, Ismaili, and Ahmadi sects, to name a few. Most sects do not see eye to eye and often do not intermingle. The Ahmadi sect, for example, is considered an apostate group by mainstream Islamic theologians, while other sects have complained of repression in their home nations at the hands of other Muslim sects. As'ad AbuKhalil, professor of political science at California State University at Stanislaus, says Arabs and Muslims in the United States are far from being united and are in a state of disagreement over many issues. "Just as the Turkish lobby acts on behalf of one Turkish government, the Arab or Muslim lobbies can't mirror a single agenda that represents the interests of all Arab or Muslim governments," AbuKhalil says. "Arab and Muslim governments often conspire against one another, and their rivalries, especially in the 1970s and 1980s, were mirrored in the competition and rivalries between Arab and Muslim organizations in the United States," he adds. The deep divisions in the Arab world (along sectarian and ethnic lines) only impair the effectiveness of those groups. "In the case of the Arab and Muslim lobbies, there is a plethora of often competing groups and organizations, which do not seem to adhere to the same agenda," AbuKhalil remarks. AIPAC's Shadow
Mearsheimer and Walt's paper points to the Jewish Americans' skillfulness in setting up an impressive array of influential organizations, of which the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) is the most powerful and best known. AIPAC operates in near unison with several think tanks, such as the Washington Institute, the Heritage Foundation, Project for a New American Century (PNAC), and others who share a common denominator: pro-Israel policies. They produce monthly reports culled from "experts" in Israel as well as journalists on the ground. These are then used in a unified assault on the US Congress to influence policy to tilt in favor of Israel. Similar media exercises from Muslim groups are minimal to none. Fawaz A. Gerges, who holds the Christian Johnson Chair in International Affairs and Middle Eastern Studies at Sarah Lawrence University in New York, and is a senior analyst for ABC Television News, says the Israeli lobby is well-organized, well-endowed, and well-recognized as a powerful influence by friend and foe. "It is taken seriously by the foreign policy establishment," he asserts. On the other hand, "[T]he Muslim community does not possess the political, institutional, and financial prerequisites to make a difference in the American political arena. It takes time, organization, and institutional building to do so." Coining the Term If no effective organization resembling an influential lobby represents Muslim or Arab interests in the United States, where did the term Muslim lobby originate? In researching the above question, the author of this article came across several references to the term specifically in news journals, publications, and blogs with a clear pro-Israel, anti-Muslim slant. In fact, the term Muslim lobby is an artificial construct, with the word lobby being rather misleading. "References to Arab or Muslim lobbies occur only in the Arab and Muslim press, or in the propaganda of pro-Israeli groups," says Abukhalil.
Worldnetdaily.com, a website that has featured commentary by writer Joseph Farah urging the killing of 100 non-combatant Palestinian adults for every slain Israeli, regularly uses the term Islamic or Muslim lobby to refer to advocacy groups trying to combat Islamophobia through education and awareness campaigns. One such advocacy group, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), has been sufficiently targeted by journalists and pro-Israel groups. When CAIR contacted FOX network to raise the issue of negative stereotyping of Muslims on the popular TV thriller "24," journalist Cliff Kincaid accused it of being a "lobby" attempting to intimidate the media. CAIR says its mission is to enhance understanding of Islam, encourage dialogue, protect civil liberties, empower American Muslims, and build coalitions that promote justice and mutual understanding. It does not lobby senators and congressmen to affect pro-Muslim tilt in US foreign policy. Compare that to AIPAC's mission statement as follows: Through more than 2,000 meetings with members of Congress — at home and in Washington — AIPAC activists help pass more than 100 pro-Israel legislative initiatives a year. From procuring nearly $3 billion in aid critical to Israel's security, to funding joint US-Israeli efforts to build a defense against unconventional weapons, AIPAC members are involved in the most crucial issues facing Israel. Consequently, labeling CAIR and other advocacy groups as "lobbies" is an exercise in journalistic inequity and willful disinformation. Yet, both John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt have been accused by Ami Isseroff, executive secretary of MidEastWeb for Coexistence, of being part of an Arab US lobby. "The Arab and Muslim lobby and the lobbies of Arab and Muslim countries, and the lobby of US oil interests in those countries are together certainly far more powerful than the 'Israel Lobby,'" she recently wrote. Fueling Islamophobia In his book Infiltration: How Muslim Spies and Subversives have Penetrated Washington, journalist Paul Sperry uses the term Muslim lobby to refer to an "Islamic terrorist" conspiracy to infiltrate the US leadership and influence policy. Sperry links what he terms Muslim lobby groups, faith-based charities, and a wide network of mosques throughout the United States as a unified subversive front. He stipulates that this grand lobby of Muslim interests is connected to foreign groups like Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood organization, the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas, and Al-Qaeda. "It's a syndicate, a Muslim mafia, and law enforcement is only starting to get their arms around it. The base of their operations is in Northern Virginia, where I live — right in the shadow of the nation's capital. I call it The Wahhabi Corridor," he said in an interview with Frontpage Magazine in April 2005. Given that the term Muslim lobby is so loosely used by pundits to elicit Islamophobia and wax paranoid of a misconceived and undue influence of Arab and Muslim interests in US policy-making, the term should be abolished from the Arab and Muslim lexicon. Not doing so would cater to a demonization of all Arab- and Muslim-American political participation, a right that is enshrined in the US Constitution. To Build a Lobby While no real unified Arab or Muslim lobbying platform can be considered to be functional in the United States, the need remains for such a group to be formed. In late October 2001, former US ambassador to Egypt and Israel Edward Walker urged Arab governments to set up measures to counter Israel's influence in America's policy-making. "But you, the Arabs, can no longer afford to just ignore Washington. Arab governments and institutions should start considering how to affect public opinion in the US," he told a political discussion forum hosted by the University of Jordan. However, 5 years later, Walker's advice may have fallen on deaf ears. What scant lobbying there is usually depends on the behest of individual Muslim governments. "One can say that there never was a serious attempt to create an Arab or Muslim lobby, and that whatever organizations that exist today under that umbrella of a name have only succeeded in effectively representing the interests of ruling Arab dynasties," AbuKhalil says of Saudi Arabian initiatives to influence US foreign policy regarding the Kingdom. "But those dynasties don't even rely on those loyal groups and organizations when they wish to advance a particular issue: Instead, they hire 'purely' American public relations and lobbying firms in order not to allow the Arab or Muslim stigma to hurt their lobbying efforts." With individual Middle Eastern nations opting to choose public relations firms to represent their interests in Washington, the prospect of a Muslim lobby ever consolidating its efforts in the future remains murky. Gerges says that while an Arab and Muslim lobby in the United States does not exist, Arab and Muslim voices are laboring hard to be heard and recognized. And those are steps in the right direction, say many Arab and Muslim Americans. "It has taken the Israeli lobby half a century to arrive at this historical juncture," Gerges said. "It will likely take the Muslim community as long, if and when the community decides to organize itself politically and institutionally." "The key word is institutional building, which is in its infancy." | |||||
Monday, April 30, 2007
Is There a Muslim Lobby in the US
Sunday, March 25, 2007
Terrorized by 'War on Terror' : Zbigniew Brzezinski
By Zbigniew Brzezinski
Sunday, March 25, 2007; B01
The "war on terror" has created a culture of fear in America. The Bush administration's elevation of these three words into a national mantra since the horrific events of 9/11 has had a pernicious impact on American democracy, on America's psyche and on U.S. standing in the world. Using this phrase has actually undermined our ability to effectively confront the real challenges we face from fanatics who may use terrorism against us.
The damage these three words have done -- a classic self-inflicted wound -- is infinitely greater than any wild dreams entertained by the fanatical perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks when they were plotting against us in distant Afghan caves. The phrase itself is meaningless. It defines neither a geographic context nor our presumed enemies. Terrorism is not an enemy but a technique of warfare -- political intimidation through the killing of unarmed non-combatants.
But the little secret here may be that the vagueness of the phrase was deliberately (or instinctively) calculated by its sponsors. Constant reference to a "war on terror" did accomplish one major objective: It stimulated the emergence of a culture of fear. Fear obscures reason, intensifies emotions and makes it easier for demagogic politicians to mobilize the public on behalf of the policies they want to pursue. The war of choice in Iraq could never have gained the congressional support it got without the psychological linkage between the shock of 9/11 and the postulated existence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. Support for President Bush in the 2004 elections was also mobilized in part by the notion that "a nation at war" does not change its commander in chief in midstream. The sense of a pervasive but otherwise imprecise danger was thus channeled in a politically expedient direction by the mobilizing appeal of being "at war."
To justify the "war on terror," the administration has lately crafted a false historical narrative that could even become a self-fulfilling prophecy. By claiming that its war is similar to earlier U.S. struggles against Nazism and then Stalinism (while ignoring the fact that both Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia were first-rate military powers, a status al-Qaeda neither has nor can achieve), the administration could be preparing the case for war with Iran. Such war would then plunge America into a protracted conflict spanning Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and perhaps also Pakistan.
The culture of fear is like a genie that has been let out of its bottle. It acquires a life of its own -- and can become demoralizing. America today is not the self-confident and determined nation that responded to Pearl Harbor; nor is it the America that heard from its leader, at another moment of crisis, the powerful words "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself"; nor is it the calm America that waged the Cold War with quiet persistence despite the knowledge that a real war could be initiated abruptly within minutes and prompt the death of 100 million Americans within just a few hours. We are now divided, uncertain and potentially very susceptible to panic in the event of another terrorist act in the United States itself.
That is the result of five years of almost continuous national brainwashing on the subject of terror, quite unlike the more muted reactions of several other nations (Britain, Spain, Italy, Germany, Japan, to mention just a few) that also have suffered painful terrorist acts. In his latest justification for his war in Iraq, President Bush even claims absurdly that he has to continue waging it lest al-Qaeda cross the Atlantic to launch a war of terror here in the United States.
Such fear-mongering, reinforced by security entrepreneurs, the mass media and the entertainment industry, generates its own momentum. The terror entrepreneurs, usually described as experts on terrorism, are necessarily engaged in competition to justify their existence. Hence their task is to convince the public that it faces new threats. That puts a premium on the presentation of credible scenarios of ever-more-horrifying acts of violence, sometimes even with blueprints for their implementation.
That America has become insecure and more paranoid is hardly debatable. A recent study reported that in 2003, Congress identified 160 sites as potentially important national targets for would-be terrorists. With lobbyists weighing in, by the end of that year the list had grown to 1,849; by the end of 2004, to 28,360; by 2005, to 77,769. The national database of possible targets now has some 300,000 items in it, including the Sears Tower in Chicago and an Illinois Apple and Pork Festival.
Just last week, here in Washington, on my way to visit a journalistic office, I had to pass through one of the absurd "security checks" that have proliferated in almost all the privately owned office buildings in this capital -- and in New York City. A uniformed guard required me to fill out a form, show an I.D. and in this case explain in writing the purpose of my visit. Would a visiting terrorist indicate in writing that the purpose is "to blow up the building"? Would the guard be able to arrest such a self-confessing, would-be suicide bomber? To make matters more absurd, large department stores, with their crowds of shoppers, do not have any comparable procedures. Nor do concert halls or movie theaters. Yet such "security" procedures have become routine, wasting hundreds of millions of dollars and further contributing to a siege mentality.
Government at every level has stimulated the paranoia. Consider, for example, the electronic billboards over interstate highways urging motorists to "Report Suspicious Activity" (drivers in turbans?). Some mass media have made their own contribution. The cable channels and some print media have found that horror scenarios attract audiences, while terror "experts" as "consultants" provide authenticity for the apocalyptic visions fed to the American public. Hence the proliferation of programs with bearded "terrorists" as the central villains. Their general effect is to reinforce the sense of the unknown but lurking danger that is said to increasingly threaten the lives of all Americans.
The entertainment industry has also jumped into the act. Hence the TV serials and films in which the evil characters have recognizable Arab features, sometimes highlighted by religious gestures, that exploit public anxiety and stimulate Islamophobia. Arab facial stereotypes, particularly in newspaper cartoons, have at times been rendered in a manner sadly reminiscent of the Nazi anti-Semitic campaigns. Lately, even some college student organizations have become involved in such propagation, apparently oblivious to the menacing connection between the stimulation of racial and religious hatreds and the unleashing of the unprecedented crimes of the Holocaust.
The atmosphere generated by the "war on terror" has encouraged legal and political harassment of Arab Americans (generally loyal Americans) for conduct that has not been unique to them. A case in point is the reported harassment of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) for its attempts to emulate, not very successfully, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Some House Republicans recently described CAIR members as "terrorist apologists" who should not be allowed to use a Capitol meeting room for a panel discussion.
Social discrimination, for example toward Muslim air travelers, has also been its unintended byproduct. Not surprisingly, animus toward the United States even among Muslims otherwise not particularly concerned with the Middle East has intensified, while America's reputation as a leader in fostering constructive interracial and interreligious relations has suffered egregiously.
The record is even more troubling in the general area of civil rights. The culture of fear has bred intolerance, suspicion of foreigners and the adoption of legal procedures that undermine fundamental notions of justice. Innocent until proven guilty has been diluted if not undone, with some -- even U.S. citizens -- incarcerated for lengthy periods of time without effective and prompt access to due process. There is no known, hard evidence that such excess has prevented significant acts of terrorism, and convictions for would-be terrorists of any kind have been few and far between. Someday Americans will be as ashamed of this record as they now have become of the earlier instances in U.S. history of panic by the many prompting intolerance against the few.
In the meantime, the "war on terror" has gravely damaged the United States internationally. For Muslims, the similarity between the rough treatment of Iraqi civilians by the U.S. military and of the Palestinians by the Israelis has prompted a widespread sense of hostility toward the United States in general. It's not the "war on terror" that angers Muslims watching the news on television, it's the victimization of Arab civilians. And the resentment is not limited to Muslims. A recent BBC poll of 28,000 people in 27 countries that sought respondents' assessments of the role of states in international affairs resulted in Israel, Iran and the United States being rated (in that order) as the states with "the most negative influence on the world." Alas, for some that is the new axis of evil!
The events of 9/11 could have resulted in a truly global solidarity against extremism and terrorism. A global alliance of moderates, including Muslim ones, engaged in a deliberate campaign both to extirpate the specific terrorist networks and to terminate the political conflicts that spawn terrorism would have been more productive than a demagogically proclaimed and largely solitary U.S. "war on terror" against "Islamo-fascism." Only a confidently determined and reasonable America can promote genuine international security which then leaves no political space for terrorism.
Where is the U.S. leader ready to say, "Enough of this hysteria, stop this paranoia"? Even in the face of future terrorist attacks, the likelihood of which cannot be denied, let us show some sense. Let us be true to our traditions.
Zbigniew Brzezinski, national security adviser to President Jimmy Carter, is the author most recently of "Second Chance: Three Presidents and the Crisis of American Superpower" (Basic Books).
Friday, March 16, 2007
Taming Leviathan
Lexington
Mar 15th 2007
From The Economist print edition
These are both the best of times and the worst of times for the American-Jewish lobby
THIS week saw yet another reminder of the awesome power of “the lobby”. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) brought more than 6,000 activists to Washington for its annual policy conference. And they proceeded to live up to their critics' darkest fears.
They heard from the four most powerful people on Capitol Hill—Nancy Pelosi and John Boehner from the House, Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell from the Senate—as well as the vice-president (who called his talk “The United States and Israel: United We Stand”) and sundry other power-brokers. Several first-division presidential candidates held receptions.
The display of muscle was almost equalled by the display of unnerving efficiency. There were booths for “congressional check-in”, booths for “delegate banquet troubleshooting”, and booths full of helpful young people. The only discordant note was sounded by a group of a dozen protesters—Orthodox Jews in beards, side-curls and heavy black coats—holding up signs saying “Stop AIPAC”, “Torah forbids Jews dictating foreign policy”, and “Judaism rejects the state of Israel”.
The lobbyists had every reason to feel proud of their work. Congress has more Jewish members than ever before: 30 in the House and a remarkable 13 in the Senate. (There are now more Jews in Congress than Episcopalians.) Both parties are competing with each other to be the “soundest” on Israel. About two-thirds of Americans hold a favourable view of the place.
Yet they have reason to feel a bit nervous, too. The Iraq debacle has produced a fierce backlash against pro-war hawks, of which AIPAC was certainly one. It has also encouraged serious people to ask awkward questions about America's alliance with Israel. And a growing number of people want to push against AIPAC. One pressure group, the Council for the National Interest—run by two retired congressmen, Paul Findley, a Republican, and James Abourezk, a Democrat—even bills itself as the anti-AIPAC. The Leviathan may be mightier than ever, but there are more and more Captain Ahabs trying to get their harpoons in.
Some of the most determined are Arab-Americans, who have been growing in numbers and influence for years—there are probably about 3.5m of them—and who have been in the eye of a political storm since September 11th 2001. They are a growing political force in northern Ohio and Michigan, and their institutions, such as the Arab American Institute and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), have plenty of access to Middle Eastern money.
But so far their performance has been unimpressive. James Zogby has been promising a breakthrough for his Arab American Institute for 20 years. CAIR remains marginal. Arab-Americans are badly split between Christians (63%) and Muslims (24%). They have also been late in taking to politics. Between 1990 and 2004 Arab-Americans donated $788,968 to candidates and parties, compared with $56.8m from pro-Israeli groups.
AIPAC's ace in the hole is the idea that it represents Jewish interests in a country that is generally philo-Semitic. But liberal Jewish groups retort that it represents only a sliver of Jewish opinion. A number of more liberal groups have started to use their political muscle—groups such as the Religious Action Centre of Reform Judaism, Americans for Peace Now and the Israel Policy Forum. These groups scored a significant victory over AIPAC by persuading Congress to water down a particularly uncompromising bit of legislation, the Palestinian Anti-terrorism Act, which would have prevented any American contact with the Palestinian leadership. This accomplishment led to a flurry of speculation that George Soros might try to institutionalise this successful alliance by creating a liberal version of AIPAC.
It has yet to materialise. And it is doubtful whether Mr Soros, a left-wing Democrat who has little sympathy with Israel, would be the best patron for such an organisation. But the growing activism of liberal Jewish groups underlines a worrying fact for AIPAC: most Jews are fairly left-wing. Fully 77% of them think that the Iraq war was a mistake compared with 52% of all Americans. Eighty-seven per cent of Jews voted for the Democrats in 2006, and all but four of the Jews in Congress are Democrats.
Dissenting voices
An even bigger threat to AIPAC comes from the general climate of opinion. It is suddenly becoming possible for serious people—politicians and policymakers as well as academics—to ask hard questions about America's relationship with Israel. Is America pursuing its own interests in the Middle East, or Israel's? Should America tie itself so closely to the Israeli government's policies or should it forge other alliances?
Zbigniew Brzezinski, a former national security adviser, worries that America is seen in the Middle East as “acting increasingly on behalf of Israel”. Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state, has compared the situation in Palestine to segregation, and argued that there could “be no greater legacy for America than to help bring into being a Palestinian state”. Philip Zelikow, her former counsellor, argues, in diplomatic language, that the only way to create a viable coalition against terrorists that includes Europeans, moderate Arabs and Israelis, is a “sense that Arab-Israeli issues are being addressed”.
The biggest challenge facing AIPAC is how to deal with this changing climate. Its members have been admirably honest about their mission in life. They boast about passing more than a hundred bits of pro-Israel legislation a year. But they are too willing to close down the debate with explosive charges of anti-Israel bias when people ask whether this is a good thing. America needs an open debate about its role in the Middle East—and AIPAC needs to take a positive role in that debate if it is to remain such a mighty force in American politics.
Related
Inside America's powerful Israel lobby: AIPAC's summit included fiery evangelical oratory, adoration for Dick Cheney
Aipac Judge Orders Open Arguments on Government Proposal:
The defendants, Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman, were indicted in 2005 on charges that, as lobbyists for Aipac, they passed classified information to an Israeli official and to reporters, violating American espionage law.
The attack on the USS Liberty
How to free the U.S. from AIPAC occupation?
Thursday, March 15, 2007
Neocons attack Muslim civil rights group
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Scrutiny Increases for a Group Advocating for Muslims in U.S.
With violence across the Middle East fixing Islam smack at the center of the American political debate, an organization partly financed by donors closely identified with wealthy Persian Gulf governments has emerged as the most vocal advocate for American Muslims — and an object of wide suspicion.
The group, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, defines its mission as spreading the understanding of Islam and protecting civil liberties. Its officers appear frequently on television and are often quoted in newspapers, and its director has met with President Bush. Some 500,000 people receive the group’s daily e-mail newsletter.
Yet a debate rages behind the scenes in Washington about the group, commonly known as CAIR, its financing and its motives. A small band of critics have made a determined but unsuccessful effort to link it to Hamas and Hezbollah, which have been designated as terrorist organizations by the State Department, and have gone so far as calling the group an American front for the two.
In the latest confrontation yesterday, CAIR held a panel discussion on Islam and the West in a Capitol meeting room despite demands by House Republicans that Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat, not allow the event. The Republicans called its members “terrorist apologists.”
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
Dual Loyalty and the “Israel Lobby”
From issue: November 2006
In late August, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) hosted an event in Washington, D.C. entitled “The Israel Lobby and the U.S. Response to the War in Lebanon.” It featured two political scientists, John J. Mearsheimer, a professor at the University of Chicago, and Stephen M. Walt, a professor at Harvard and former academic dean of the university’s Kennedy School of Government. Back in March, the two men, both of whom are identified with the “realist” school in foreign policy, had stirred an intense controversy with an article in the London Review of Books entitled “The Israel Lobby,” which they then also published as a “working paper” on the Kennedy School’s website.
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http://www.commentarymagazine.com/cm/main/printArticle.aip?article=com.commentarymagazine.content.Article::10136