Pushing for a Perverse Policy

Samuel G. Freedman reviews The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy.

In their original-sin perspective, there has been no tangled spiral of causes and effects; only Israel's actions and policies have destabilized the Middle East. Palestinian terrorism is the response of an occupied, outgunned people; from the Munich Olympics massacre to the suicide bombing in 2002 at a seder in Netanya, the attacks that traumatized Israel's populace and many moderate-to-liberal American Jews and drove their politics to the right are barely mentioned. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's vow to "wipe Israel off the map" was mistranslated, according to Mearsheimer and Walt. The Israeli offer of land for peace at Camp David was only "purportedly generous."

Of course.

The logical outgrowth of such dismissiveness appears in this rather chilling section toward the book's end: "Although we believe that America should support Israel's existence, Israel's security is ultimately not of critical strategic importance to the United States. In the event that Israel was conquered . . . neither America's territorial integrity, its military power, its economic prestige, nor its core political values would be jeopardized. By contrast, if oil exports from the Persian Gulf were significantly reduced, the effects on America's well-being would be profound."

Think about it. Most of the world sells blood for oil by ignoring the atrocities committed on Israel by Arabs and their regimes. These authors are advocating that we ought to go down the same immoral path.