Book Review for The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, by John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt

• Introduction: Why I read this
• Summary: EIL5 the book
• Reflections: Prophetic power and grievance politics
• Conclusion: It boils down to appeasement vs hard line

Introduction: Why I read thisIntroduction: Why I read this

I read this book because of a comment made on Stacker News. In #1361232, @elvismercury asked, "What is the source of this power that people claim Israel has over the US?"

I thought it was an important question. From casual observation, it's clear that Israel has at least some degree of outsized influence on US politics. Some attribute this to conspiratorial theories ("THE JEWs coNtroL tHE MedIA"), but I'm rarely satisfied with such simplistic answers. I wanted to dig further, not least of which because of how much noise and emotion this issue seems to generate (as the classic John Stewart skit indicates:)

So I wanted to find an academic, supposedly unbiased treatment of the subject. Naturally, I asked ChatGPT for some book recommendations. Its first recommendation was Mearsheimer and Walt's, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy. I had heard of Professor Mearsheimer before. I had watched some of his lectures on YouTube where he argued that the Ukraine conflict was foreseeable and that Russia was provoked into this war by the US and its Nato allies. I appreciated his realistic take on geopolitics, while at the same time noting that many critics were calling him a Putin apologist. Undeterred by the controversies surrounding the author, I picked up the book, understanding that I'm capable of making my own judgments on how sound the arguments are.

Summary: ELI5 the bookSummary: ELI5 the book

AIPAC ad found on instagram

The main premise of the book can be summarized in two simple points:

• The pro-Israel lobby in the U.S. wields outsized influence on US foreign policy, and it has pushed said policy in directions that are (in the authors' view) counterproductive to both US and Israeli long-term interests undermining peace and security in the Middle East.
• At the same time, the pro-Israel lobby is not more secretive, clandestine, or nefarious than other special interest groups operating in the U.S. It practices politics in the same way that other interest groups do. It differentiates itself from other lobbies only to the extent of its effectiveness. It is an unusually effective lobby for multifaceted reasons, ranging from Christian sympathies for the Jewish state, Western guilt over the holocaust, and the long tenure of Jewish immigrants in the US compared to Arab immigrants.

The book is divided into two halfs. In the first half, the authors discuss the lobby itself: how it is organized, its key players, its policy positions, and some of the political tactics that it uses. In the second half, the authors discuss specific ways that the lobby has influenced US foreign policy in different countries in the Middle East. The final chapter concludes with the authors' views on how US foreign policy should move forward.

Reflections: Prophetic power and grievance politicsReflections: Prophetic power and grievance politics

Many passages in this book from 2007 read like prophecy

I came away from this book more educated about US foreign policy in the Middle East. I learned a few facts about the extraordinary support that the US provides for Israel, support that is of a qualitatively different nature than the support it provides to other countries. For example, I learned that US annual aide to Israel is provided all at once in the month of January rather than disbursed throughout the year, allowing Israel to earn interest on the unused portions. This type of benefit is not provided to any other country. There are many more such examples in the book that I can't recall off the top of my head.

Where I was less convinced is that I felt the book portrayed Israel as being at fault for the lack of peace in the Middle East. The authors seem to have adopted the position that, "If only the Israel lobby (and by extension the US) had not adopted such a hard line against its hostile neighbors, the security situation in the Middle East would be better." This may indeed be true, but I think I need more convincing. I didn't think the book spent enough time wrestling with the possibility that Israel's neighbors will never accept its existence, even if it had extended more olive branches in the past.^[1] This would certainly be the argument of the pro-Israeli side, and I don't think it was adequately addressed in the book.

Two other things struck me. First, the unusual effectiveness and power of the Israel lobby: of that, I am well convinced. What strikes me especially is that the book was published in 2007, during the Bush administration. And yet, many of the passages read like prophecies of the future. Many events that the book claimed were objectives of the Israel lobby back then, including the ouster of Bashar al-Assad in Syria and the US bombing of Iran nuclear facilities, have now come to pass. It was certainly chilling to read about how policy goals brewed decades earlier can give rise to kinetic action 20 years later.

There are congruencies with the modern DEI movement

The other thing that struck me was the similarity between the Israel lobby's tactics and modern DEI tactics. For example, the smearing of anyone criticizing Israel's policies as antisemitic is reminiscent of the smearing of anyone criticizing immigration policy as racist or the smearing of anyone who opposes forced pronoun usage as transphobic. These congruencies seem to run deep, and may not be merely political tactics. They may reflect genuinely held fears of each lobby's constituents, as highlighted by this passage:

The accusation [of anti-Semitism] is likely to resonate among American Jews, many of whom still believe that anti-Semitism is rife...

it defines how American Jews think about the world around them, and not surprisingly has fostered a powerful sense of victimization for some of them...

by virtually any measure, domestic anti-Semitism has declined sharply; however, many American Jews continue to believe that other Jews in the United States are targets of bigotry...

describing Jews in the United States, [Leon Wieseltier] wrote, "The community is sunk in excitability, in the imagination of disaster. There is a loss of intellectual control. Death is at every Jewish door. Fear is wild. Reason is derailed. Anxiety is the supreme proof of authenticity."

These quotes really struck me as reflecting the modern DEI movement as well. Especially the parts about "anxiety being the supreme proof of authenticity" and "believing that other Jews are targets of bigotry." Regardless of how one feels about these various movements and lobbies, it's an interesting insight into the mindset of historically oppressed groups and how this mindset translates into their political behaviors.

Conclusion: It boils down to appeasement vs hard lineConclusion: It boils down to appeasement vs hard line

Full disclosure: my natural sympathies lie with the Israeli side, perhaps because of my Christian background, and perhaps because for most of my life Islamic terrorism has been a plague all over the world. It's hard to sympathize with a group that uses terror tactics, even if their grievances are understandable and legitimate. Yet, Mearsheimer and Walt's point is that when the power differential is so great, terrorism is all they can turn to and is therefore predictable.

If I had to summarize Mearsheimer and Walt's perspective, it may simply be that of political realism. They are not saying that terrorism is a justifiable response to Israeli actions, only that it is predictable, and that we can predictably stop it if the Israelis stopped building settlements in occupied territory and started negotiating in good faith about a two-state solution. As I already mentioned, I am not fully convinced of that, but I think it's a plausible stance to take.

Neville Chamberlain, history's most maligned appeaser

That being said, the inevitable clash that this argument runs into is the classic debate between hard-liners and appeasers. The hard-liners will say, "We can't give into terrorism. If we offer a two state solution now, we only reward their terror tactics and engender more terrorism." Whereas the appeasers will say, "The terrorism is predictable. When you refuse to negotiate or compromise, these people have no other tactics than terror to turn to."

Personally, I don't have an answer. I don't know who's right. Perhaps there isn't a universally correct answer and that appeasement would work in some circumstances and not work in others. It's a tricky knot to untangle; if it wasn't the world wouldn't have been embroiled in this issue for the last half-century. I don't really have any other intelligent thoughts to offer beyond that, except perhaps something that would infuriate both the Arabs and the Jews, which is that Jesus Christ is Lord and that one day he will return and institute a justice that no one will be able to deny.

And that's all I have to say on the matter.

1. As an example of the book's one-sided treatment on this: the book contains many quotes from Israeli leaders demonstrating a warmongering or hard-line attitude towards their Arab neighbors. However, I think it would be equally easy to find quotes from Arab leaders demonstrating a genocidal attitude towards the Jews. I definitely got the sense that the quotes were cherry picked to make the Israeli side look a certain way. Perhaps this is fair, since the book is about the Israel lobby and is not about Arab and Islamic attitudes towards Jews. But if so, then it's also fair for me to call out the discrepancy.] ↩