How the GOP Became the Israel Party
Bill Kristol and John McCain have replaced Robert Novak and Pat Buchanan in Republican foreign policy influence.
When the unexpectedly detailed P5+1 framework agreement with Iran was announced last Thursday, Illinois Republican Mark Kirk made a bizarre comment. “We all know” said the senator, that this is going to end with “a mushroom cloud somewhere near Tehran”—a result of Israel having to go to war to “clean up the mess” made by American and European negotiators. A few days earlier John McCain had expressed the wish that Israel “go rogue” and attack Iran in order to upend the Iran negotiations.
It would have been one thing if such comments had come from backbench congressmen. But McCain is a former GOP presidential nominee, one of his party’s most prominent foreign policy spokesmen. Kirk is the co-sponsor of what was, until recently, the major Senate legislation intended to scuttle the Iran negotiations—a leader in GOP “pro-Israel” circles. Yet neither remark sparked a repudiation, or even any reaction at all. They were what one expects from the GOP these days, recklessness about war and peace fused with a passion for Israel. It was if all the diffuse sentiments which once fueled American nationalism and militarism were concentrated into a tight stream and displaced onto Israel, turning the country into the fantasy surrogate of American hawks. The conservative belief in American exceptionalism is like Zionism, Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol boasted. Kirk and McCain may know that Americans have little enthusiasm for another Mideast war; the U.S. Army understands perfectly well that no occupation of Iran could be sustained, and America would have zero international support if it tried. But no matter, they have Israel.
Even 20 years ago some Republican senator would have signaled some collegial disagreement with Kirk and McCain. A Bob Dole or Dick Lugar or a Mark Hatfield would have let on that this sentiment wasn’t the only opinion in the party. Now if there are any who dissent, they dare not speak. Benjamin Netanyahu has become the symbolic leader of the GOP, and even he is probably not as aggressive as most in the party would like him to be.
How did this transformation occur? How did the party of Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan come to this? The New York Times published two recent pieces exploring this subject. The first, by Peter Baker, takes off from observing Jeb Bush very quickly disassociating himself from former Secretary of State James Baker’s moderate speech at J Street; the second, by Eric Lipton, explored the rapid growth in ties between hawkish pro-Israel donors and the Republican Party.
Baker’s piece fills out the basics: the top realist foreign policy voices of the 1980s and ‘90s GOP, Baker, and Colin Powell and Brent Scowcroft have no influence anymore. Jeb Bush threw James Baker under the bus at the first squawk from Sheldon Adelson; support for the Israeli right has become a Republican litmus test. To explain this, Baker mentions the new donors, the rise of right-wing evangelicals within the party, the vague sense emerging from 9/11 that Israel and the United States faced the same enemy in Islamic terrorism, and the pro-Israeli leadership of George W. Bush, who repudiated the foreign policy realism of his father.
Lipton focuses on the new money stream. He shows that Adelson, Paul Singer, and other right-wing, pro-Israel donors, their spending unleashed by the Citizens United Supreme Court decision, have pushed the GOP past the Democrats as recipients of “pro-Israel” PAC money. He uncovers some fairly shocking facts, such as the rapid infusion of “pro-Israel” funds into Arkansas freshman senator Tom Cotton’s campaigns. This detailed reporting about Israel-related money in a widely read centrist publication is an important and welcome development: until recently, it was subject hidden in whisper and awkward euphemism, as when two election cycles ago, retired general and possible presidential candidate Wesley Clark referred to “New York money people” pushing for war with Iran. Clark had to be walked through an apology with the assistance of Abe Foxman.
But important as the finance angle is, the subject has other important dimensions. If Sheldon Adelson and Paul Singer had tried to purchase the Mideast policy of the Republican Party 20 or 30 years ago, they would have failed, even under the new campaign finance rules. I am not persuaded by the evangelical argument: my rough sense is that Christan Zionism may have peaked 15 years ago within the evangelical movement; increasingly there are prominent evangelical voices calling for justice in Israel and Palestine. In any case, evangelicals hardly make up a decisive segment of the Republican electorate.
But the ground for Singer and Adelson and their cohorts has been prepared over 20 years. Several events from the 1990s were critical in the process. During the Reaganite 1980s, Pat Buchanan and Robert Novak were probably America’s most popular media conservatives. Neither was a big Israel backer (though Buchanan had been earlier in his career). Both saw Mideast conflicts through the lens of those in the American foreign policy establishment who knew the region: Israel had done deep wrongs to the Palestinians, which could and should be practically addressed; American had profound strategic needs to get along with the Arab world.
But in a sustained and fairly well documented strike, the neoconservative media establishment began a campaign against Buchanan, who had been far more polemical about Israel than Novak. Buchanan survived the attacks, but they damaged his standing as a Republican. Younger activists got the message that if you were ambitious about advancing in the conservative movement, better just leave the Israel subject alone—or better still, become a passionate Zionist. The attacks took someone who used to be at the core of the conservative polemic industry and essentially neutralized him. Buchanan eventually left the GOP, but the party was not better for it.
Another step in setting the stage for Adelson and Singer was Rupert Murdoch’s starting and funding of The Weekly Standard, perhaps the most successful political magazine in history. Before the Standard, National Review was the most important conservative magazine, pro-Israel but hardly obsessively so, and open to an array of perspectives. James Burnham, the magazine’s principal strategic thinker through the 1970s, was highly skeptical of the Israel-U.S. alliance. But by the 1990s, Burnham was dead and NR had a wealthy competitor, one which could count on a reported $3 million annual subsidy from Murdoch (while Buckley had labored for years to keep NR afloat with four- and five-figure donations). Leading neoconservatives, including editors of the Standard, played the anti-Semite card against key National Review figures: aggressively in the case of Joseph Sobran, with more subtlety in the case of John O’Sullivan and Richard Neuhaus. By the late 1990s, National Review had capitulated, becoming indistinguishable from Commentary or The Weekly Standard on the Mideast and most other issues.
One should also mention the proliferation of hawkish pro-Israel conservative think tanks. There is the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, the Hudson Institute, AEI, and dozens of others: if you are conservative, interested in foreign policy, and want a think tank job in D.C., being hawkishly pro-Israel is the way to go. Pro-Israel hawks have done more in 20 years than create a fundraising apparatus designed to impose pro-Israel litmus tests upon Republican politicians; they have forged an entire ideological party inside the Beltway, comprised of think tank staffers and ideological journalists, all of whom can be reliably counted on to advocate for some version of a right-wing Israeli perspective whenever circumstances require it. These forces weren’t in place when George H.W. Bush faced off with Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Shamir over Israeli settlements in 1991, but they rule in Republican circles now.
I am pessimistic about the Republican party’s short term prospects to overcome and reverse this takeover, but not about the issue overall. All my senses tell me that President Obama, and what remains of a centrist and liberal foreign policy establishment, will succeed in persuading the country that the deal with Iran is a large net-plus for American interests; it helps enormously that what was agreed upon in Lausanne seems to have surpassed expectations, which has been remarked upon by quite a few observers who expected far less. Republican politicians will move on to other subjects if they sense the public is not with them in opposing the Iran deal, Sheldon Adelson notwithstanding. In the medium term, the defeat of Mark Kirk next year—altogether possible—would signal that blind obeisance to a foreign country can be a loser politically.
Finally, there are underlying dynamics in the Middle East which all of Sheldon Adelson’s money cannot overcome. Most important is that Iran has clearly become one of the more stable, modern, and democratic countries in the region. Another is that Israel is becoming a harder sell to Americans. As David Shulman put it in theNew York Review of Books, “What really counts is that the Israeli electorate is still dominated by hypernationalist, in some cases protofascist, figures. It is in no way inclined to make peace.” Information flows quite freely in the age of the Internet, and these Mideast realities are slowly seeping into the American consciousness. The same factors which now make divestment from companies doing business with Israel an important issue on many American college campuses cannot forever be ignored by a large political party competing for power in a free society. The process, however, is going to take a while.
Scott McConnell is a TAC founding editor.
And all this time I had thought it was those videos of the GOP politicians on vacation in Thailand, at private parties thrown by donors, in hotels, airport bathrooms, etc. – screwing children, goats, interns, each other, etc..
Sheldon Adelson.
@AC….the Rep’s got sloppy seconds after the Dem’s.
BW loves sloppy seconds.
Same way they all became corrupt . Campaign contributions . Money ,lots of money.
Somebody’s gonna hafta stand up and say: “Hey, whose country is this anyhow?”
I’m all like sympathetic towards the Israeli people, but that government has got to go. And if not, they can at least give me back MY government.
United States of Israel’ has compromised U.S. ‘sovereignty’ on Iran policy — Gideon Levy in D.C.
US Politics Philip Weiss on April 12, 2015
Gideon Levy is a dean of Israeli journalism, a longtime columnist for Haaretz, and on Friday he gave an impassioned speech at the National Press Club appealing to Americans to change a pro-Israel policy that goes against U.S. interests and has made Israel a “lost case.”
His bluntest words were over Israel’s interference in the Iran deal:
Let’s call it from now on the United States of Israel. Because many times when someone looks at the relations between Israel and the United States, one might ask, who is really the superpower between the two? And those questions become much more valid in the recent days when you see what is going on in Iran. And really I am not in a position to tell Americans what to feel… But would I be an American, I would really be embarrassed. When you see a title in Haaretz, in my newspaper, which says two days ago…”Israel to pressure Congress to thwart Iranian nuclear deal.” And an Israeli official says [to] Haaretz, that Israel will lobby the US Congress to pass legislation that would make it difficult or even impossible to approve a comprehensive deal with Iran– Can you imagine yourself if it was the opposite, if someone had written that the Americans are trying to act in the Israeli parliament to change its decisions? We are dealing now really with almost questions of sovereignty. We are dealing, needless to say –that no state in the world would have dared to do it, and no statesman in the world. And I will tell you frankly, It’s not Israel’s fault. Israel is doing whatever it can– it’s the one who enables it.
Levy spoke at an all-day conference on the Israel lobby organized by the Institute for Research/Middle East Policy and the Washington Report for Middle East Affairs. He said he had come to plead with the American public to take control of Israel/Palestine policy before all is lost.
The large crowd was silent as he spoke in desperation of a society that had lost all connection with the world:
We have to face reality, and reality is that there is no chance for a change from within the Israeli society. No way… The only hope is for an international intervention, and the only hope is from this place, from Washington, from the United States, from the EU. Only from there.
Because Israeli society is today by far too brainwashed. Life in Israel is by far too good. Israel is, let’s face, it a society which lives in denial, totally disconnected from reality. Would it be a private person, I would recommend either medication or hospitalization. Because people who lose connection to reality might be very dangerous either to themselves or to society. And the Israeli society lost connection with reality, it lost connection with the reality in its backyard, it totally lost connection with the international environment.
Really to believe that 5 million Jews know better than 6 billion people of the world? Really believe that 5 million Jews will be able to continue to live on their sword forever? Is the one example in history in which any country lived on its sword forever? Empires! Really believing that in the 21st century it is acceptable to ignore the international law in such a way, to ignore the international institutions and to rely only on the United States — and Micronesia.
Levy denounced the role of the Israel lobby in producing this mess.
[W]e are dealing with a corrupting friendship. If there wouldn’t be an Israel lobby, Israel would be a better place to live in, Israel would be a more just place. And I think that if it wouldn’t be the Israel lobby, the US would be a better place and a more democratic place. But it’s not for me to judge the American politics. Still by the end of the day we are dealing with an enigma. Nothing can explain it. Nothing can explain how administration after administration, legislators after legislators are going in the very same way which contradicts U.S. interest in so many cases, which contradicts international law, human rights, moral values, you name it. Can it be only this small group as powerful as it is, is it the full explanation? I doubt it but that’s for you to decide, not for us in Israel.
Levy said he thought at first the invitation– from conference organizers IRMEP and WRMEA– was from AIPAC, the premier Israel lobby group.
I said, That’s the chance of my life. I am going to come there to Washington and tell them, with friends like you, Israel does not need enemies.
But even though it wasn’t AIPAC, or even the Anti-Defamation League, the conference is so “crucial and so important,” Levy said, because it gives him hope that there will be change in the United States. “And we jump on any sign.”
He had jumped on the J Street opening in 2008. “Here it comes! But it didn’t come.” And when Obama was elected, Levy said he had cried in joy. “And it didn’t come.”
“Change will have to come here. In Israel– is a lost case, forget about it. Israeli society has surrounded itself with shields, with walls, not just physical walls but also mental walls.”
He said three principles allow Israelis to live easily with the brutal tyranny that is the occupation.
1, “We deeply believe we are the chosen people. Then we have the right to do what we want.”
2, Never in history has the occupier presented himself as the victim. And not only the victim– but the only victim around. (Here Levy brought down the house when he said that a day after Benjamin Netanyahu went to Paris and told all Jews to move to Israel, he said in Israel that Israel was living under an existential threat from an Iranian bomb. “I asked myself How can you dare call Jews to join this suicidal project wwhen the Iranians are going to bomb us?”)
3, Israelis have undertaken the “systematic dehumanization of the Palestinians.” And this allows Israelis to live with everything. Because the occupation does not involve questions of human rights.
“And if you scratch under the skin of almost every Israeli, you will find there, almost no one will treat the Palestinians as equal human beings like us.”
This set of three beliefs has allowed Israelis to live in peace with those ongoing crimes, for many years.
Levy first confronted the reality in the 1980s, accidentally, traveling into the occupation as a journalist and seeing that the real drama of his society was taking place there, in a criminal project just half an hour away from Israelis’ homes. “And we Israelis don’t want to know, and most of all do not care.”
Levy also touched on Jewish identity and Israeli exceptionalism.
I must be frank with you, I don’t know what are Jewish values. I know what are universal values. There are very clear universal values. And very very clear international law. International law is very important– except for Israel. Israel is a special case.
Because of the United States’ support, he said. And things there are only getting worse. His society is moving in a militaristic, religious direction. When Israel bombed Gaza last summer, the beaches in Tel Aviv were crowded as helicopters passed over on their way to rain destruction. And the newspapers and television did not show anything of what Palestinians were experiencing. When Levy called out the pilots in a Haaretz column for carrying out the murderous missions, he needed bodyguards. Till he found that they were settlers, who argued with them, and he dropped the detail because he felt safer without it.
Levy finished up by denouncing the two state solution.
I truly believe the two state solution is dead. I think that this train left the station, I deeply regret it but I believe that it left the station. I think all those who talk about the two state solution do so deliberately only to gain more time in order to base the occupation even deeper and deeper.
Needless to say, Levy’s riveting speech has not been picked up by mainstream media. I will be covering other great speeches at the conference in days to come. But note that Huwaida Arraf and Miko Peled also spoke on Levy’s panel.
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