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Stephen Walt on US-Israel Relations

The International Relations Professor discusses US-Israeli relations. Points to enormous influence of Leon Uris's Exodus in promoting a very favourable image of Israel

So, we’re trying to understand how the US has come to identify so closely with Israel in recent decades, and your first book is The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy, which you wrote along with John Mearsheimer. Why is that at the top of your list?

 
The only way to understand the special relationship that now exists between the United States and Israel is to understand the critical role that a number of organisations have played in actively promoting that relationship over the last 60 years. The US has supported Israel since its founding in 1948, but it did not have the same sort of special relationship for the first 20 or so years after Israel’s creation. The US backed it in certain ways, but was also willing to put lots of pressure on it in other circumstances and didn’t provide a lot of economic or military assistance until after 1967. But today the US backs Israel no matter what it does and American politicians are careful never to say anything that is very critical of Israel, even when it is acting in ways that are contrary to US interests and values. The key to understanding this ‘special relationship’ is the operation of various groups in the Israel lobby, and our book lays out in great detail how that works, and why it’s not good for the US or Israel.
 
So are you saying that this closeness can be entirely attributed to a staggeringly successful public relations campaign by various organisations and lobbying groups?
 
The existence of a special relationship – one of nearly unconditional and generous American support – is due almost entirely to the activities of the Israel lobby. The United States and Israel would probably be friendly and might even be de facto allies if there were no lobby, but they wouldn’t have nearly as profound a relationship were it not for the activities of AIPAC [the American Israel Public Affairs Committee], the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organisations, or the Anti-Defamation League, as well as the so-called ‘Christian Zionists’ and a number of other groups and individuals. There’s no other relationship like it in all of US foreign policy, and even in the entire history of American diplomacy.
 
But these organisations don’t like it when you make this claim – indeed, Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League wrote an entire book, The Deadliest Lies, refuting yours.
 
That’s another reason I chose our book. I’d normally be reluctant to include my own book on a list of this kind – it’s immodest. But our book did go a long way toward breaking the taboo about even talking about this subject in mainstream foreign policy circles. Prior to our writing our original article in the London Review of Books and the subsequent book, the Israel lobby was a phenomenon that many people understood but nobody really wanted to talk about, because they understood they’d get in trouble if they did.
 
Do you feel it’s no longer taboo or do you feel slightly isolated as a result of having written your book?
 
I think the taboo has been substantially weakened. For people who want to have significant foreign policy careers, it’s certainly still an issue they don’t want to get too close to. Inside the Beltway, in Washington DC, you still get a lot of self-censorship and dishonest discourse. But I think the subject is now much more out in the open than it was before, which is all to the good.

Your next choice is Leon Uris’s blockbuster, Exodus. Why is that on your list of books to understand US-Israel relations?

 
 
Exodus is a book that had a profound impact on how many Americans thought about Israel. It was originally published in 1958, and was soon made into a hit movie starring Paul Newman and a number of other stars that had a far-reaching cultural impact. I even remember learning the Exodus theme song in my childhood piano lessons. People who didn’t know anything about Middle Eastern history or the creation of Israel took Uris’s story to be an accurate depiction of what had really happened in the years just before Israel’s founding. And, of course, it is, as we would say in the US, a rattling good yarn: an engaging story with lots of interesting characters that adds up to a wonderful page-turner. But it’s a terrible version of history: one in which virtually all of the Zionists/Israelis are noble and heroic and all of their supporters, whether Jewish or not, are equally praiseworthy. At the same time, all of those who oppose them, and especially the Arabs, are dirty, conniving and vicious. Due to its popularity, this book helped shape a certain image of Israel in the minds of many Americans, particularly Americans who otherwise weren’t engaged by this issue. So it played a key role in fostering a favourable image of Israel, based on a very inaccurate depiction of what really happened in 1947-8. I don’t think one can overstate the book’s importance in contributing to a broadly sympathetic portrait of Israel in mainstream America.

Your next choice is The Holocaust in American Life. Has the Holocaust always been a big part of American-Jewish life?

 
 
The basic argument that Peter Novick, a historian at the University of Chicago, makes, is that the prominence of the Holocaust as a central feature in American Jewish identity increased significantly in the late 1960s and afterwards.

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About Stephen Walt

Stephen Walt is the Robert and Rene Belfer Professor of International Relations and formerly academic dean of Harvard University’s John F Kennedy School of Government. He is the author of a number of books and articles on US foreign policy and international relations and these days also writes an influential blog for Foreign Policy magazine. His book on one of the most controversial aspects of US-Israel relations, The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy, written with John Mearsheimer, appeared in 2007.

Stephen Walt's Blog at Foreign Policy
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Stephen Walt’s Recommendations

The Israel Lobby and American Foreign Policy

by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt

Buy

“ Mearsheimer and Walt are scholars of great repute, not conspiracy theorists or racists. In this book they argue that the remarkable American financial, military and political support for Israel is motivated primarily by the workings of a powerful right-wing Zionist lobby. This acts against American interests and even against Israel’s long-term security.”

Exodus

by Leon Uris

Buy

“ This is a potboiler which romanticises the birth of the State of Israel. Leon Uris had more writing power than Dan Brown. He was a yarn spinner writing in the shadow of the Holocaust. It was a time, particularly in the West, when people thought that Israel was the least that could be done for the Jews after the horrors of the Holocaust.”

The Holocaust in American Life

by Peter Novick

Buy

“Novick shows, I think quite convincingly, that efforts to use the Holocaust as a common thread linking Jews together and, in particular, cementing a connection between American Jews and Israel were consciously constructed, or consciously manipulated by American Jewish organisations. In other words, the growing emphasis on the Holocaust and the increased focus on Israel was not...”

Peace Process

by William Quandt

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“ This book is a careful, detailed, systematic and objective look at American involvement in the Israeli-Arab peace process from the 1960s onwards. So if someone is looking for a comprehensive history of America’s efforts to try and bring peace to the Middle East, this is about the best one I know. Quandt does not have an axe to grind; he’s not writing it from a perspective...”

On the Road to Armageddon

by Timothy P Weber

Buy

“ The other key to understanding US-Israeli relations is the role played by so-called Christian Zionists. These are Christian evangelicals who have particular theological beliefs that not only lead them to be very supportive of Israel, but supportive of a territorially expansionist Israel, based on a theology known as dispensationalism.”
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Books by Stephen Walt

Revolution and War

by Stephen Walt

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Taming American Power

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