06/03/08 – Jim Lobe – The Scott Horton Show

All right, my friends, welcome back to Anti-War Radio, it's Chaos 92.7 FM in Austin, Texas.
I'm Scott Horton, thanks for tuning in, and our guest today is the great Jim Loeb.
I'm honored to invite him, welcome him back to the show.
He is the Washington Bureau Chief for Interpress Service, that's IPS News.
You can read most everything he writes at antiwar.com slash loeb, and at the antiwar.com blog, where we get benefit of the best of his own blog, Loeb blog.
And Jim has been writing about that particular set of so-called conservatives, the neoconservatives, for about a generation now, and is our country's top expert on the matter by pretty much any measure.
Welcome back to the show, Jim, how are you?
Hi, how are you?
I'm doing great, glad you could join us today.
Sure, it's a pleasure.
Okay, so basically I guess I just want to start with a pretty general question, you can go whichever direction you want with it.
It's pretty clear that as all the politicians are racing to go and give speeches to the American-Israeli Public Affairs Committee this week, that this group and perhaps the Israel lobby in general play a pretty significant role in American foreign policy.
And I just wonder if you could sort of give us your thumbnail sketch view of exactly how much influence the Israel lobby plays in the United States, and to good or ill.
Well, I should say first of all that the conference is now finished.
It just finished about half an hour ago.
The last speaker was Hillary Clinton, and Senator Obama spoke just before her.
Now the delegates, of which there are about 5,000 to 7,000, are heading out to Capitol Hill to lobby their representatives and senators on their agenda.
Well, AIPAC itself, in their press materials, noted that Forbes or Fortune, I can't remember which, rated itself, AIPAC, as the most effective foreign policy lobby in Washington.
I don't see any reason to disagree with that.
I can't imagine which interests would be more powerful than, or which lobby would be more powerful than AIPAC in the foreign policy sphere.
Well, they say overall even that I guess only the AARP, the American Association of Retired People, even rivals their power in D.C.
Is that about right?
Well, I think the National Rifle Association does pretty well.
I think the National Association of Manufacturers is taken quite seriously as well.
But they lobby mainly, all of those obviously lobby primarily on domestic issues, not foreign policy.
Right.
So the Israel lobby, I guess the best I understand it, AIPAC really doesn't represent, quote unquote, Israel so much as a very right-wing view, what they call the Likud party over there in Israel.
Theirs is the view represented by the American branch of the lobby there.
Well, I think it's more complicated than that.
I mean, AIPAC, by its own articles of incorporation, its own charter, are supposed to kind of represent the views of the sitting Israeli government, whether it's Labor, Kadima or Likud.
There's been a lot of tension, particularly between Labor governments and AIPAC over that.
That was certainly true under Prime Minister Rabin.
And there's been some tension between the Olmert government, the Kadima government, and AIPAC because the Israeli government under Olmert has taken somewhat more dovish positions, particularly with relation to Palestinians, than AIPAC has.
AIPAC does represent a lot of different Jewish organizations, and ideologically those organizations span a tremendous spectrum from pro-settler groups and Likud.
They're not necessarily the same, but they overlap on the right, to quite liberal dovish groups such as Americans for Peace Now and Israel Peace Forum on the left.
The issue is more that the most important people on the executive committee, and who are often also the most important donors, tend to be much more sympathetic to Likud than they do to people who are more to the left of them.
And in some cases they're very sympathetic even to the settler movement.
So what you kind of get if you take AIPAC overall in kind of a conference like this, is instead of the spectrum of major speakers ranging from far right to, let's say, center left, which is what the membership of AIPAC consists of, the dominant speakers, aside from elected officials like Obama or McCain or Pelosi, the kind of experts that they present for discussion of substantive issues range from kind of the far right, the right wing of Likud, to Kadima.
Let's call it the center right centrist in Israeli terms.
So AIPAC overall, I would say, is to the right of its membership.
Yeah, it seems like overall in some opinion polls, and I guess I should have pulled up a few to reference here offhand, but off the top of my head I think I remember seeing some opinion polls where most American Jews favor land for peace, most American Jews oppose war with Iran, want withdrawal from Iraq.
These aren't the kinds of views that we see from AIPAC and the Israel lobby in D.C. at all, is it?
Well, AIPAC's been pretty quiet on the Iraq question.
On Iran, they're very hawkish, much more hawkish than the Jewish community at large.
On Palestinians, they're a bit more hawkish, but you find actually surprisingly, whereas a significant majority of American Jews favor a two-state solution, according to the polls by the American Jewish Committee, which are kind of the most consistent every year, they've also become more hawkish and more distrustful of Palestinians, according to those same polls.
So there's more skepticism that Palestinians are willing to have a two-state solution, or that they would be satisfied with that.
So there is quite a lot of skepticism in the Jewish community as a whole.
But I think what's important here is that on the one hand you have American Jews, of whom there are about three million, and who generally hold quite liberal views on most issues, quite progressive views on most issues, even to some extent on Israel, or to a great extent in some cases on Israel.
And then you have kind of the organized Jewish community, and already the difference between American Jews writ large and the organized Jewish community will take you a bit to the right.
So I guess there are a variety of, I don't know how to describe it, but it's like an onion, it depends.
The most organized part of American Jewry is represented by something like AIPAC.
And you will then see that it's considerably to the right of where most American Jews are.
Well, you know, it's funny because that's the same thing, it seems like the same thing as American Christians, where the more organized they are, the more right wing they tend to be, and the rest are sort of the masses out there, the unorganized opposition to some of their extremist policies.
Yeah, I don't think that used to be so much like in the 60s and the 70s, when you had mainstream churches who were really quite active in civic affairs, quite progressive in their outlook, particularly with respect to foreign policy.
Well, 60s, early 70s.
But then you had these new groups like Institute for Religion and Democracy, Ethics and Public Policy Center, which were funded by far right foundations, and kind of were intellectually driven by neoconservatives, who really, these groups really set out to diminish the influence of the progressive leadership of the mainstream churches.
And one would have to say that they were really quite successful in doing that.
So you just don't hear from the progressive leadership of mainstream churches nearly as much as you did, say, 20 or 30 years ago.
And now I want to play this clip for you here, Jim.
It's shocking, but it's short.
This is a clip of the Reverend John Hagee, who is, I don't know if he's the leader, but at least is a big part of Christians United for Israel, and a minister from Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, and I believe the keynote speaker at last year's AIPAC conference.
And this is for Max Blumenthal.
First, he has fierce features.
The Antichrist is going to make Hitler look like a choir boy.
When he first comes to power, he's going to slaughter one-third of the earth's population.
He will become a blasphemer and a homosexual.
This phrase that I'm using in scripture, the God of his fathers, is a phrase in scripture used solely to identify the Jewish people.
I suggest that this man is at least going to be partially Jewish, as was Adolf Hitler, as was Karl Marx.
Fourth Reich, led by the Antichrist, it's coming.
I believe the Antichrist will come out of Germany.
I don't have any Bible proof for that, but I know that history has a strange way of repeating itself.
Senator Joseph Lieberman received by far the best reception.
I want to take the liberty of describing Pastor Davey in the words that the Torah uses to describe Moses.
He is in each fellow king a man of God.
All right, so that's Reverend John Hagee from the Cornerstone Church, who counts himself as one of Israel's best friends in the world, and his good friend Joseph Lieberman describing him as a man of God.
Would you agree, Jim, that John Hagee and his brand of dispensationalist Christianity provides a good alliance for American Jews or Israeli Jews?
Well, I mean, speaking as an American Jew, I find his ideas utterly repulsive.
But there's been a long-standing debate dating back to the late 70s about how American Jews, particularly those who were most concerned about Israel's security or who supported the Israel Settlement Project, how they should relate to the Christian right, and particularly to Christian Zionists like Jerry Falwell or Pastor Hagee, who actually began, I think, his Israel-oriented ministry in 1982.
And I would say those within the community associated with commentary magazine, people like Irving Kristol and so on, basically said, yeah, they are a strategic ally of Israel's, and therefore we should forge a strategic alliance with people like that as objectionable as we may find the theology that they espouse.
And there are other more liberal Jews who felt that that was not a good idea at all, and that many believed that at the heart of Hagee's and Falwell's beliefs were, yes, a philo-Semitism insofar as it related to Israel, but an anti-Semitism insofar as it related to Jews at large.
I don't know whether Pastor Hagee is anti-Semitic in the way, say, that Jerry Falwell disclosed from time to time or Pat Robertson has shown from time to time.
Rabbis who've worked with him in San Antonio insist that they don't think he actually is.
A sentiment like the ones that you just aired, I don't know how they can be interpreted in any other way myself.
So I think it's a terrible alliance.
Ultimately, the plan is, Jim, I believe the plan ultimately is to, from Hagee's point of view, to use Israel, I guess to create a greater Israel all the way to the Tigers or something, and at that point that will force, I don't know, the Russians and the Arabs and everybody to invade, and then Jesus will come back and kill everybody, including the Jews.
That's the plan, right?
Well, I think under dispensationalist theology, some 30,000 or 40,000 Jews who accept Jesus as their Lord would be saved in a situation like that.
I think it's laid out in more detail in the Mahe and Jenkins' Left Behind series.
A couple of ten thousands out of millions, huh?
I guess.
I guess that's the idea.
The point is that it's a very instrumentalist vision of the use of Jews or Judaism in the world, designed primarily to bring about the return of the Messiah, the end of the world, through the apocalypse and so on and so forth.
But Irving Kristol, I mean, I can quote him, I think verbatim in a letter he wrote about this, published in Commentary magazine back in 1982, the same time that Hagee was getting going on his ministry, which was, it's their theology, but it's our Israel.
That was his opinion.
I don't think that is a majority view, even by people who are strong Zionists.
I think a lot of people who are outside of the Likud or settler sphere feel very uncomfortable about that.
Well, you know, there are a lot of Americans who feel really uncomfortable, or I don't know how many, but some Americans, I know, feel pretty uncomfortable about Israel's role, or the American Israel lobby's role in determining American foreign policy.
And when we talk about a possible war with Iran, from here it seems, Jim, and I have an open mind and I'm willing to learn, but I can't really find any other interest in America other than Dick Cheney's warped mind that wants a war with Iran.
Last fall, the CIA and 15 other intelligence agencies said that they're not pursuing nuclear weapons, and yet, all week long, all the politicians are bowing and scraping at AIPAC, saying we will not let them continue to pursue nuclear weapons, all options are on the table, etc., etc.
Is it just the Israel lobby pushing for war with Iran?
Is there anybody else in America that's a member of this war party?
A, I think the so-called Israel lobby, and again, I think it's important not to define it too broadly.
I mean, when you consider organizations like Americans for Peace Now or Israel Policy Forum part of the Israel lobby, yes, they are a Zionist, in that they believe there should be an Israel that exists, that is a Jewish state, but they don't necessarily believe it should impinge on the territory of others, or should assert its sovereignty over Palestinians.
They think that it should be a fairly modestly sized Israel, and not necessarily control all of the West Bank, and so on.
Yeah, that's a great point.
I don't mean to brush with too broad a stroke.
And similarly, it seems that they certainly do not favor war with Iran.
And I would even go so far as to say that AIPAC itself does not favor war with Iran.
I think some leaders in AIPAC would favor an attack on Iran if all else fails, before Iran can achieve a nuclear weapon, or can obtain a nuclear weapon.
I think it's probably safe to say that.
But I think most members of AIPAC hope that somehow there will be a solution that's short of that.
But I would also say that those who feel that sabers need to be rattled as loudly as possible, definitely consist of right-wing sectors of the so-called Israel lobby, and including, judging from the applause lines, including some of the leadership of AIPAC.
When I talked to Andrew Coburn, he agreed that the word neoconservative is really a biographical definition like that.
But he said, the neoconservatives are where the Israel lobby meets the military-industrial complex lobby.
That that's who the neocons really are.
They're the amalgam of Northrop Grumman, Lockheed, and the Likud party.
Does that sound about right?
I mean, I think it's true to state that if you're looking for an economic base of the neoconservatives, of the neoconservative movement, you would find it in military contractors.
Yeah.
I think that is correct.
Of course, the same contractors have no hesitation about selling very, very large and sophisticated weapons to Arab states around Israel.
Against which AIPAC and the, quote, Israel lobby will lobby hard in Congress.
Right.
Yeah, I guess that's where they come up against the Saudi lobby, right?
For example, yeah.
Yeah.
All right.
Now, I'm sorry.
One thing I wanted to ask.
This doctrine that Iran must not be able to enrich any nuclear fuel whatsoever, that comes from Israel, right?
That's where that policy comes from, that for them to enrich anything, even within the guidelines of the nonproliferation treaty and the IAEA safeguards agreement, is tantamount to their being able to make a nuclear bomb.
That is what is not acceptable.
Yeah.
I mean, I think that's generally the case.
There is a nonproliferation lobby that exists independently of, let's call it the Israel lobby.
And that lobby is not marginal in Washington.
And they feel pretty strongly about the same kinds of things.
They want very, very rigorous international safeguards on any enrichment that's going on, and they much prefer that enrichment take place outside of countries or regions, even where there is substantial enmity among people.
So there's a pretty strong alliance between parts of the Israel lobby and that nonproliferation lobby who come together to support the American policy along those same lines.
Yeah.
I mean, I would say, you know, I mean, in all fairness, Iran's nuclear program dates back to the mid-'80s and the Iraq war.
And some of it was clearly carried out in secret, which is why the IAEA has taken such an interest in Iran's program, apart from pressure exerted by the United States or its allies.
Because, I mean, there is a fear that if one country in the region beyond Israel, which is not a signatory of the Nonproliferation Act, goes beyond outside that act or develops the capacity to go outside that act and actually develop nuclear weapons, you will have a chain reaction.
And that concern has existed for quite a long time.
Okay.
Just one more question, and I'll let you go, Jim.
What about the freedom of discussion?
I kind of get the feeling that if you weren't Jewish, that you couldn't really get away with writing the things that you write in your criticism of the right wing of the Israel lobby and the Israeli government, that you sort of have this cover, that it's okay for you to criticize and you won't be called an anti-Semite.
Is that right?
Well, there's a special word that I first ran across during a Democratic presidential year in 1976, which was self-hating Jew.
Right.
I've been called that from now and again.
Yeah.
And it's not a very complimentary expression.
That's part of the territory, I guess.
Sure.
Do you think that it's easier to discuss differences and points of view on these issues, the Iran issue, the Palestinian issue, in Israel than it is here in the United States?
Oh, the public debate in Israel around all of these issues has historically been much broader than in the United States.
I think that's become less true in recent years just because the Israeli left is not nearly as strong as it used to be, in part because of disillusionment over previous peace processes.
So I think within Israel it's narrowed somewhat.
There are not as many pro-peace voices that are taking as strong a role as they did in the past in public debate in Israel.
I think there's also been a lot of just kind of general alienation from public life, in part because of corruption and other things that have taken place in Israel.
But in terms of discussing, of major figures discussing and seriously considering direct talks between Israel and Syria, direct how to address Hamas diplomatically, how to engage Hezbollah one way or another, or even Iran, the establishment debate in Israel accommodates those kinds of views.
In the United States they're much more difficult to become a major feature of public debate on those kinds of issues.
There's just less tolerance for it.
All right, well I appreciate your time very much, everybody.
It's Jim Loeb, he's the Washington Bureau Chief for Interpress Service.
Everything he writes can be found on the blog at antiwar.com and at his blog, the Loeb blog, and also at antiwar.com.
Thanks very much.
Thank you.