[lbo-talk] Chomsky: Israel Lobby ?

[Carl Remick]

>From: Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu>
>
>Carl Remick wrote:
> >
> > [clip]
> > [I don't find Chomsky's thoughts in this instance convincing.  A more
> > persuasive POV (below) is offered by a recent poster (whom I do not 
>know) on
> > the Marxism list, so I am taking the liberty of citing it in full.   
>[clip]
> >
> > From: "M. Junaid Alam" <alam at lefthook.org>
> >
> > [Louis Proyect wrote:]  "Israel does not exercise a 'tyranny' over US
> > foreign policy. US foreign policy is simply an extension of English 
>foreign
> > policy that goes back to the Balfour declaration."
> >
> > This is really a bit odd. First, because this totally contradicts Louis'
> > earlier argument that perhaps support for Israel is totally irrational
> > because systems on the brink behave irrationally. But more to the point,
> > while the argument here tries to make US support for Israel sound as 
>natural
> > as the sun setting in the evening, it ends up doing quite the opposite. 
>Yes
> > - the policy is definitely an extension of British foreign policy - but 
>then
> > the question is: what motivated Britain's support for Jewish settlement 
>in
> > Palestine? The Brits didn't wake up one morning and say, "hey you know 
>what
> > would be a kick-ass idea? A Jewish state in the middle of the Muslim 
>world!"
> > Rather, it was Zionists in the mold of Herzl and Weizmann who actively
> > lobbied the British government to create a state.
>
>I have great respect often for M. JUnaid Alam's posts -- but here he is
>talking nonsense. And those who repeat this nonsense are (mostly without
>realizing it) spouting an anti-semitic explanation of u.s. and british
>foreign policy.

You're focusing on a point that is marginal at best to Alam's central 
argument, which is that present-day Israel subverts the US's obvious 
material interests, i.e.:

"The obvious American path [to world domination], if we started carte 
blanche, would be to actually get 300 of the 306 million people in an 
oil-rich region on your side as much as possible; to get the side that 
actually has the oil to tolerate you - you know, the dozens of countries 
versus ... just the one without any oil. Otherwise,  you end up with some 
nasty stuff: mass riots ostensibly over cartoons, a totally unstable 
simmering Arab world with creaky despots sitting on a pot of boiling 
Islamists, a fanatical Iranian regime which nonetheless understands that 
another country owning 200 nuclear warheads legitimizes its own possession 
of such arms - and so on."

QED I'd say.

Carl