Stephen Walt on the current trend of US-Israel relationship
Stephen Walt thinks that the last year has brought a serious shift in the trend of US-Israel relations:
At first glance, the “special relationship” between the United States and Israel seems stronger than ever. The Biden administration has given Israel a blank check, while Israel has ignored Washington’s ineffectual calls for restraint. Netanyahu got repeated ovations as he told a pack of lies to Congress, and universities have bowed to pressure from politicians and wealthy donors by cracking down on pro-Palestinian protests.
Yet October 7 and after still constitute a watershed in U.S.-Israeli relations. Israel’s brutal attempts to destroy not just Hamas but thousands of innocent Palestinians have cost it the sympathy it received a year ago, and its violent campaigns on the West Bank, in Lebanon, and elsewhere have exposed its true character. The Israel lobby has been forced into the open, defending a genocide that has done lasting damage to America’s own image and interests. It won’t end overnight, but [the] “special relationship” [between the US and Israel] will never be the same.1 [my emphasis]
Walt co-authored with John Mearsheimer the highly influential The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy (2007). But Mearsheimer in the many interviews he’s been giving in the last year seems to be fatalistic about the enduring effect of the Israel Lobby and grumbles that he thinks that for the foreseeable future, the US will continue to back whatever the Israeli government does because of the lobby’s influence.
As I’ve said repeatedly, Mearsheimer has a very annoying habit of often being right about his predictions. But on this issue, I think Walt’s more optimistic view is also, well, more realistic. Both are leading advocate of the Realist school of international relations. But they claim different emphases, with Walt favoring “defensive Realism” and Mearsheimer “offensive Realism.” But Mearsheimer himself argues that the outsized and lopsided US support for Israel is a rejection of the course that Realist IR theory would recommend. Because he sees the US support for Israel’s wars and occupation policies as damaging to the practical foreign policy position of the US. He and Walt see the influence of the Israel Lobby as having counteracted the normal power-political calculations that one would expect to come into play for the US.
Like everything about American policy towards Israel, there are conflicting arguments on that point. Advocates for Israel’s long-standing policies are that Israel provides great benefits to the US in its fight against terrorism and in dealing with the Muslim world by helping confront jihadist terrorism and Iran.
But after a year of seeing Israel’s genocidal targeting of civilians in Gaza and now recklessly pushing to involve the US in a war with Iran, lots of Americans are now seeing dramatically what the downsides for American interests and US relations with other countries are. And how gut-wrenchingly brutal and criminal Israel and its “world’s most moral army,” the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), are willing to be to Palestinian civilians, aid workers, and journalists.
All of Israel’s significant military conflicts – as opposed to low-level engagement with guerrilla attacks have been much shorter, lasting only months or even weeks. What is called the First Lebanon War is conventionally dated as lasting from 1982 to 2000, which includes the full period of Israeli occupation in southern Lebanon. Most of the active combat was in 1982-83. The Israeli invasion of June 1982 was formally ended by an armistice of August 21. Hezbollah, which formed during that did wage low-level guerrilla warfare against the IDF during that period. Most Israeli forces had been withdrawn by mid-1985.
Israel’s military planning and public relations strategies (aka, propaganda) assume that most of their wars will be short. This current war is the longest they’ve ever had. And there is yet no obvious end in sight. That means that claims that are memorable and dramatic – Hamas beheaded dozens of babies on October 7; the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) are the Most Moral Army In The World; Israel always gives warning for civilians to clear out before bombing their cities and residences; the Oslo process offered the Palestinians an independent state and they inexplicably refused to accept – initially sound convincing to American audiences. Not least because Americans tend to take a sports-event attitude toward far-away wars, i.e., pick you team and cheer for them all the way through.
But after a year of tens of thousands of civilians targeted and killed, little kids shot in the head by sharpshooters, the Lavender and Where’s Daddy AI systems that target adult Palestinian males and make it a point to kill them along with their families, of repeated relocations of civilians who the IDF then attacks as they are evacuating or later in refugee camps, hospitals and schools and universities bombed with scant evidence for the claims of the extensive underground terrorist military facilities supposedly concealed underneath them, Knesset members debating whether the anal rape by IDF soldiers of prisoners with metal rods was justifiable or not – lots of Americans are much more dubious of Israeli claims.
That is shown by the large number of respondents in polls who describe Israel’s actions in Gaza as genocide or possible genocide. And the fact that the US is at the moment being steadily drawn in to active combat roles supporting Israel, with a possible direct war with Iran in prospect, inevitably causes people to wonder whether Israel is acting in the best interest of the United States in their wars.
And, certainly for Democratic voters, the fact that the obnoxious and toxic Benjamin Netanyahu came to address Congress with what was essentially a campaign speech for Donald Trump didn’t make the best impressions of what game Netanyahu is playing.
So, Stephen Walt’s speculation that this (continuing) war is “a watershed in U.S.-Israeli relations” certainly sounds plausible.
Omer Bartov, the Israeli-American historian and expert in the Holocaust and genocide, discusses the situation as it appears a few days before the anniversary of the October 7 attack. Includes the ugly authoritarian trends in current Israeli politics.2
Symposium: Will US-Israel relations survive the last year? Responsible Statecraft 10/03/2024. <https://responsiblestatecraft.org/october-7-anniversary-israel/> (Accessed: 2024-05-10).
Omer Bartov—Israel Guilty of Genocide, Ethnic-cleansing; US Totally Complicit; Israel Could Implode. The Wire YouTube channel 10/04/2024.