Why has no one in these posts addressed Israel’s aggresive espinoage against the United States? Or the fact that Israel has sold technology, developed by the US and Israel, to America’s principal adversary, the Chinese?

BTW – just so we are clear, Mearsheimer is from the University of Chicago, Walt is from Harvard. They are two of the world’s most respected IR thinkers and are saying things that many poeple know, but are afraid to.

I’m sure you say something similar to this above: “because it’s very hard for the secular mind – I know this well from my own experience – to identify with and understand societies deeply bound in faith and tradition. These societies’ behavior must be explained by material conditions – and perhaps they can be, but not nearly as simply, and ultimately dismissively, as these professors do.”

And I think it was true in the book; for Moses Wine; and is true today.

The Embargo of 1973/4 used Israel as its excuse. The reason for the formation of OPEC and the Embargo had to do with the prices paid by the 8 Sisters (oil Companies) and the value of a barrel of oil as compared to the traditional value of gold to oil. Not all of OPEC is composed of Arab countries.

Johnson took the US off the gold standard in the 1960s when France wanted to exchange all its Marshall Plan dollars for US Gold. Johnson had a butter and bullets inflation to cope with. Then Nixon in an effort to offset inflation broke the US dollar link of gold at $32 an ounce. And price of gold jumped to the low $50s if I remember correctly.

As a result their benchmark, the value of oil to gold, plummeted and OPEC countries got even. BTW the only port embargoed was Rotterdam.

The 1973 war and the Israeli victory were the reasons stated by the MSM and believed by the world. The real value of oil was never mentioned.

Is Israel autarkic? Off course not. But then again neither is the US or any other country. The only country to really go out on such a scheme is North Korea. We have seen how successful that has been. The point being is if Israel is threatened with extinction today, she is going to take out her enemies tonight and not worry about her next month’s imports. Or ours.

Oil is a commodity. And the oil ticks are rent collectors. Israel on the other hand is something the ticks aren’t; they are real genuine producers of technology and as long as they can do so they will find suppliers for their needs.

We play a tough balancing act. We give aid to Israel in return for her not destroying her enemies. We support the ticks in order to supply us and others with fairly cheap oil and remind them to not get too crazy or we won’t be able to restrain the Israeli’s.

Again for the Israel haters, here is something to ponder. Cut her off and cast her aside, do we really want to see the Chinese Air force armed with the best Russian aircraft employing the best Israeli electronics and avionics and weapons?

Do we or the Europeans really expect Israel to commit national suicide for our short term benefit? For all their bluster the ticks need us as suppliers even more than we need their oil.
First sign of us getting really serious about getting free from them as suppliers the ticks will drop oil prices faster than a whore drops her panties.

As for Harvard perhaps it’s time for the US taxpayer to disinvest from the university. Do we really want to subsidize a university that in the beginning of the 21st century employs professors who use a discredited 19th century method to analyze a 7th century cargo cult? Strip Harvard of it’s tax exempt and charitable status. Deny them accepting 529 plan funds. Cutting the financial oxygen from the Marxist cancer in our schools would be far better use of our tax funds than cutting Israel off.

The real premise of the article is that the US invaded Iraq — with all that that entailed — due to the Israel lobby’s persistence.

I don’t think that premise is accurate, but it’s an argument that can be made, and we don’t need to freak out when it is made.

But the real point of that argument, therefore, concerns not Iraq but what happens next. The authors are concerned about widening the war into Iran and/or Syria, which they also feel is being lobbied for by Israel. There is no question that Israel is lobbying against Iran and Syria. The question is whether the US will go to war as the result of such lobbying.

My guess is no for both. In particular, a war with Iran is going to put a huge fifth column of Iraqi Shi’ites in our rear. Therefore, since the war isn’t going to happen, the authors don’t have to worry about it.

Funny how few academics get that these days.

One could get the idea that when the revolution comes, they don’t expect to be in the proletariat, but the nomenclatura.

… If you need an ally somewhere, don’t you want it to be the smartest, most powerful, and most resourceful guy on the block, who also happens to admire you? …

It took the United States some twenty years to figure this out. … The United States recognized Israel in 1948, but it didn’t do much to help it defend itself, for fear of alienating Arab monarchs, oil sheikhs, and the “Arab street.” …

So Israel went elsewhere. It got guns from the Soviet bloc, and fighter aircraft and a nuclear reactor from France. … Then came June 1967, and Israel showed its stuff. In October 1973, it achieved what military analysts have called an even greater victory …

It was then that the United States began to look at Israel differently: as a potential ally. The fact that the United States hadn’t backed Israel before 1967 didn’t prevent key Arab capitals from falling into the Soviet orbit. To the contrary: along with Nasser, they tried to play Washington off Moscow, with a preference for Moscow since it made policy by uncomplicated diktat. …

Israel looked to be the strongest, most reliable, and most cost-effective ally against Soviet penetration of the Middle East, because it could defeat any combination of Soviet clients on its own. … expanded U.S. support for Israel persuaded Egypt to switch camps, winning the Cold War for the United States in the Middle East. …

Since 1973, the Arab states have understood not only that Israel is strong, but that the United States is Israel’s guarantor. As a result, there have been no general Arab-Israeli wars, and Israel’s Arab neighbors have either made peace with it (Egypt, Jordan), or keep their borders quiet (Syria, Lebanon). The Levant corner of the Middle East, for all the saturation coverage it gets from an overwrought media, has not been a powder keg, and its crises haven’t required direct American military intervention. …

United States support for Israel has enhanced its standing in another way, as the only force, in Arab eyes, that can possibly persuade Israel to cede territory it has occupied since 1967. …

It is this “peace process” that has turned even revolutionary Arab leaders into supplicants at the White House door. …

Compare this to the situation in the Gulf, where U.S. allies are weak. …

It’s precisely because the Gulf doesn’t have an Israelóa strong, capable local allyóthat Walt’s offshore balancing act can’t possibly succeed. If the United States is not perceived to be willing to send in troops thereóand it will only be perceived as such if it sometimes does send themóthen heavily populated and technologically advanced states (formerly Iraq, today Iran) will attempt to muscle Saudi Arabia and the smaller Arab Gulf states, which have the bigger reserves of oil. …

In the overall scheme of the Pax Americana, then, U.S. policy toward Israel and its neighbors over the past thirty years has been a tremendous success. …

Walt’s notion that U.S. support for Israel is the source of popular resentment, propelling recruits to Al-Qaeda, is of a piece with his argument that the United States is hated for what it does (its detested policies), and not what it is (its admired values). In fact, America … [i]s hated because of what they can’t do, and what they aren’t. They can’t accumulate power, and they can’t handle modernity, and they resent anyone who reminds them of it. …

And is it not actually better for the United States to signal the Arabs that until they change, Israel will remain America’s favorite son? … What lever would remain to encourage progressive change in the Arab world, if the United States were to back away from the one democratic, modern, and pluralistic society in the Middle Eastóthe most persuasive and proximate argument made to the Arabs, for the empowering and overpowering might of Western democracy and Western modernity? …

Indeed, for argument’s sake, let’s imagine that we have followed Walt’s policy … How long would it be before the Arabs would revert to their pre-1967 fantasy of defeating or destroying Israel? … How long would it be before Israel felt compelled, as it did in 1967, to launch a preemptive strike against Egypt, with its massive conventional force, or Iran, which even now rattles a nuclear saber against Israel? … It is populated by the remnant of a people that was nearly obliterated in the twentieth century, and that’s unlikely to take chances in the twenty-first. Less American support would mean less Israeli restraint, less Israeli maneuverability, and a quicker Israeli finger on the trigger. …

We sure hate to see what the “lobby” is capable of.

At the time of his resignation, I was the ONLY blogger to cite Larry Summersí support for Israel and his opposition to ìIsraeli divestmentî as the beginning of his end with the faculty at harvard – a faculty which is patently Leftist and anti-Semitic.

LINK:http://astuteblogger.blogspot.com/2006/02/left-wing-anti-semites-strike-again.html

excerpt:

Like Jospin, Summers supported Israel too much (he opposed divestment of Israeli assets in Harvardís HUGE asset funds) and this pissed off the hard-Left of Harvardís faculty. Then, when he raised accurate but ìpolitically incorrectî questions about gender-based bifurcation in a few academic fields, it was his death knell; the Leftist faculty agitated until they finally forced him to resign this week. THE NY SUN AGREES:

Mr. Summers has shown flashes of brilliance since taking over in July 2001 as president of Americaís oldest, richest, and most famous university. We were among those who cheered his willingness to confront political anti-Semitism on campus; his speech in Memorial Church, where he said the signers of a petition to get the university to divest from Israel were anti-Semitic in their effect if not their intent, is one of the most important ever given by a Harvard president. When Mr. Summers came under attack for remarks on gender differences, we observed – in an editorial called ìThe Soul of Harvardî – that Mr. Summersís travail could not be separated from his defense of Israel.

[http://www.nysun.com/article/27844]

This sad news about Summers reinforces my firm belief that todayís Left – (the Left of Sheehan and Moore and Belafonte and Chavez, to name just a few who have made frequent and blatant anti-Semitic comments) – is utterly reactionary and the true home of anti-Semitism. SCRATCH A LEFTIST AND YOU FIND AN ANTI-SEMITE.

At the same time, however, Israel really can’t do whatever it wants. Israel needs to import food, fuel, and many other things. It is not autarkic by any stretch of the imagination.

Moreover, probably 50% of the Jewish support for Israel is liberal support, i.e., there are strings attached there, too. Israel would not survive without strong US Jewish support, no matter how many nukes it has.