Is the Israeli lobby that powerful? | Big Think

Is the Israeli lobby that powerful?

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Mearshimer and Walt’s book on the Israeli lobby has an ideologically-driven, rather than fact-based approach, says Ross.

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Dennis Ross:

Dennis Ross is an American diplomat and author. He has served as the Director of Policy Planning in the State Department under President George H. W. Bush, the special Middle East coordinator under President Bill Clinton, and is currently a special adviser for the Persian Gulf and Southwest Asia (that includes Iran) to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Ambassador Dennis Ross is The Washington Institute's counselor and Ziegler distinguished fellow. For more than twelve years, Ambassador Ross played a leading role in shaping U.S. involvement in the Middle East peace process and dealing directly with the parties in negotiations. A highly skilled diplomat, Ambassador Ross was U.S. point man on the peace process in both the George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton administrations. He was instrumental in assisting Israelis and Palestinians to reach the 1995 Interim Agreement; he also successfully brokered the 1997 Hebron Accord, facilitated the 1994 Israel-Jordan peace treaty, and intensively worked to bring Israel and Syria together.

A scholar and diplomat with more than two decades of experience in Soviet and Middle East policy, Ambassador Ross worked closely with Secretaries of State James Baker, Warren Christopher, and Madeleine Albright. Prior to his service as special Middle East coordinator under President Clinton, Ambassador Ross served as director of the State Department's Policy Planning Staff in the first Bush administration. In that capacity, he played a prominent role in U.S. policy toward the former Soviet Union, the unification of Germany and its integration into NATO, arms control negotiations, and the 1991 Gulf War coalition. During the Reagan administration, he served as director of Near East and South Asian affairs on the National Security Council staff and deputy director of the Pentagon's Office of Net Assessment. Ambassador Ross was awarded the Presidential Medal for Distinguished Federal Civilian Service by President Clinton, and Secretaries Baker and Albright presented him with the State Department's highest award.

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TRANSCRIPT:

Question: Mearsheimer and Walt: are they right about the Israel lobby?

Dennis Ross: You know at a certain level, there are so many claims they make that are so ludicrous, that are so divorced from reality that you almost tend to dismiss it. Because they create an illusion that they have based it on reality, but it’s totally divorced from reality. They don’t have a fact-based approach. They have an ideologically-driven approach. They may criticize the Bush administration, and I do as well for an ideologically-driven set of assessments and an ideologically-driven policy.

But theirs is an opposite policy that is also ideologically driven, and the facts and reality never intrude. They make a major case that it was the Israeli lobby that basically drove us into war – the prime decision that drove us into war in Iraq. Well the Israeli lobby was far more preoccupied with Iran than they were with Iraq. I mean if President [George W.] Bush isn’t president, we don’t go to war in Iraq. If Vice President Gore becomes president in the year 2000, even though he’s the one with a long history of very close ties to the “Israeli lobby”, we don’t go to war in Iraq.

So what’s decisive here? Was it the Israeli lobby, or who was president? They say it was the Israeli lobby that is . . . that’s the reason we never opposed the Israeli settlement activity. It’s just not true. I mean the fact of the matter is our approach on settlements could have been much harder than it was. Was it because of the Israeli lobby ________? No.

In our case in the [Bill] Clinton administration, I can tell you. We had Prime Minister Rabin say to us, “I’m going to change things on settlement activity, but I can’t go as far as you might want because the fact is I’m going to take big steps, and I need the political space to do it. And the political traffic won’t bear my taking on too much at one time.” So basically we cut him some slack on that. Now the fact that he was assassinated by someone who came out of the Religious National Settler Movement suggested that maybe he knew what he was talking about.

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