Journal of Public Affairs

Volume 11 Number 4 pp 372 381 (2011)

Published online 24 March 2011 in Wiley Online Library
(wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/pa.387

Research Article

The Israel lobby, American democracy

and foreign perceptions of the USA
Pierre Guerlain*
English and American Studies, Universit Paris Ouest Nanterre, Nanterre, France

There has been much discussion about the power of the socalled Israel lobby in the United States. Although the
debate has been around for at least three decades the terms of this debate have changed with recent publications. The
key questions concerning the socalled Israel lobby are, rst, one of denition who can be said to belong to or
support this lobby, by no means an easy matter which can be solved in ethnic termsand then one of effectiveness
is US foreign policy in the Middle East shaped by the Israel lobby and is the image of the US in this region of the
world and beyond highly correlated with the activities of a domestic pressure group?
Analyzing the activities of the Israel lobby leads one to challenge the concept of a separation between domestic and
foreign policy. This paper analyzes how the Israel lobby operates within the context of American democracy and also
tackles the issue of foreign perceptions of the US and of an often ill dened Israel lobby. Copyright 2011 John Wiley &
Sons, Ltd.

By a faction, I understand a number of citizens,

whether amounting to a majority or minority of the
whole, who are united and actuated by some
common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse
to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent
and aggregate interests of the community.
Madison, Federalist N 10
There has been much discussion about the power
of the socalled Israel lobby in the USA. Although
the debate over what some consider to be a foreign
lobby and others only an information agency has
been around for at least three decades; the terms of
this debate have changed with recent publications,
such as the books by former President Carter1 or
Walt and Mearsheimer, the two political scientists
who devoted a book to this pressure group in 2006.2
The key questions concerning the socalled Israel
lobby are, rst, one of denitionwho can be said
to belong to or support this lobby, by no means an
easy matter that can be solved in ethnic termsand
*Correspondence to: Guerlain Pierre, English and American
Studies, Universit Paris Ouest Nanterre, 200 Bd de la Rpublique,
92000 Nanterre, France.
E-mail: pierre.guerlain@clubinternet.fr
1
Palestine Peace not Apartheid. Simon & Schuster, 2006.
2
There was rst an article, The Israel Lobby and US Foreign
Policy, The longer Kennedy School of Government version on
Harvards site is at http://ksgnotes1.harvard.edu/Research/
wpaper.nsf/rwp/RWP06011 and then a book, The Israel Lobby
and U.S. Foreign Policy. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007.
Alan Dershowitzs reply is on the same site at http://www.hks.
harvard.edu/research/working_papers/dershowitzreply.pdf.

Copyright 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

then one of effectivenessis US foreign policy in

the Middle East shaped or largely shaped by the
Israel lobby. Finally, is the image of the USA in this
region of the world and beyond highly correlated
with the activities of a domestic pressure group?
Analyzing the activities of the Israel lobby leads
one to challenge the concept of a separation between
domestic and foreign policy. This paper will focus on
how the Israel lobby operates within the context of
American democracy; it will also tackle the issue of
foreign perceptions of the USA and of the activities
of an often illdened Israel lobby.

SEMANTIC, POLITICAL AND

POLEMICAL DEFINITIONS
It is by no means easy to dene what the Israel lobby
is. First, there are many denitions or descriptions
that have very different connotations and refer to
varying political interpretations. The Israel lobby, my
preferred denition, is variously called the proIsrael
or proIsraeli lobby, at times, the Jewish lobby, the
Zionist lobby or just The Lobby (capital L). It is easy to
see that calling a lobby Jewish reduces political
activity to ethnicity, and the phrase Jewish Lobby is
antiSemitic in most cases. It is also wrong from a
terminological standpoint: not all Jews support the
activities of the Lobby (if it is dened as the group of
people who support the state of Israel and its
succeeding governments). America Israel Public
Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the cornerstone of the

Israel lobby and foreign perceptions of USA

Israel lobby, has to contend not only with another
lobby J Street, which is also proIsrael, but also be
critical of some policies but with the determined
opposition of many American Jews. Not all Jews are
supporters of the ofcial Israel lobby, and many
supporters of this lobby are Christians. Indeed, in
numerical terms, there are more Christian evangelicals in this lobby than Jews. Many Christian
fundamentalists are antiSemitic from a religious
point of view and have formed an alliance of
convenience with Israel. The privileging of ethnicity
to make sense of political activity is understandable in
the US context where there are innumerable national
or ethnic lobbies from the Indian lobby, to the
Armenian lobby and to the Greek or Turkish lobbies.
Yet in the case of Jews, the situation is quite
different: contrary to Iranians or Armenians, Jews
have been US citizens for a long time, and they come
from very diverse environments. German Jews who
arrived in the 19th century or after Hitlers rose to
power are very different from Jews eeing Russian
pogroms in the early 20th century. Sephardic Jews
from North Africa, less numerous than Ashkenazi
Jews from Eastern Europe in the USA, also have a
different history; notably, they were often away from
the reach of Nazi Germany. Jews in the USA do not
represent a national community nor a religious one,
for many American Jews are not religious and there
are divisions among those who are religious.
Armenians are united in their desire to see Turkey
acknowledge the genocide it carried out in 1915.
There is no such political unity among US Jews.
Indeed, the ercest critics of Israel in the USA are
themselves Jewish. As Noam Chomsky, a Jewish critic
who advocates a twostate solution in Israel
Palestine, put it, there is no circle of conniving Jews
pulling the strings of US foreign policy. So there is no
Jewish lobby for Jews are disunited politically and
are very diverse. This lack of unity is common to all
ethnic groups (leaving aside here the thorny question
of whether Jews represent only one ethnic group).
Diversity is acknowledged by most academics and
liberals. The recent article by Peter Beinart in the New
York Review of Books, entitled The Failure of the
American Jewish Establishment, is typical of this
open acknowledgement of Jewish political diversity.3
Things would be clear and easy to decipher if
within the Jewish community there were not groups
deliberately trying to create the illusion of Jewish
unity. A proIsrael writer Jonathan Goldberg, the
editor of Forward, a Jewish publication that traces its
roots to the Yiddish Vorwrts, even published a book
that he entitled Jewish Power; Inside the American Jewish
3
10 June 2010, pp. 1620. The article moves from the American
Jewish establishment to conicts within Israel itself, notably by
references to Avraham Burg, the author of The Holocaust Is Over,
We Must Rise from Its Ashes, published in London by Palgrave
Macmillan in October 2008. Beinart refers to the split between the
liberalism of most young American Jews and the older versions
of Zionism defended by the establishment.

Copyright 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

373

Establishment in 1996.4 AIPAC or the Conference of

Presidents of Jewish Organizations also strives to
rally all Jews round their ags. At the March 2010
AIPAC conference, the advocate of Israel right or
wrong Alan Dershowitz launched into an attack on a
leader of J Street and blamed him for not being fully
supportive of Israel, a country he defended in
glowing terms.5 The socalled organized Jewish
community, or the Jewish Establishment, strives to
eliminate dissent among Jews or at least dissent in
public.6 AntiSemites and advocates of the state of
Israel often end up resorting to a similar all
encompassing denition: for antiSemites, the Jewish
lobby is bad, evil and responsible for Israels
atrocities, and it runs US foreign policy; for the
organized Jewish community in the USA (but it is the
same in other countries such as Canada or France),
Jews are intimidated into agreeing with whatever
Israel does or face the accusation of being renegades
and selfhating Jews.7 An article published in
December 2006 entitled Progressive Jewish
Thought and the New AntiSemitism by Alvin H.
Rosenfeld for The American Jewish Committee highlights this technique.8 The bitterest enemies are thus
rhetorically in the same boat; they basically argue that
[a]ll Jews are or all Jews should when in fact Jews
are ideologically diverse. Scholars must avoid this
4

Addison Wesley, Reading, MA.

See article and video at the site of Judaism Without Borders:
http://www.judaismwithoutborders.org/2010/03/22/from
theaipacconferencealandershowitzvshadarsusskind/. In the
video, Dershowitz says we resolve our differences internally and
we speak with one voice. He accuses J Street of helping Israels
enemies, for clearly for him, there should be a party line on Israel.
For his fulsome praise of Israel right or wrong, listen to his
AIPAC speech in 2010 at http://www.aipac.org/PC2010/webPlayer/sun_dershowitz10.asp.
6
The next issue of the New York Review of Books contains an
exchange between Abraham Foxman and Peter Beinart that
perfectly illustrates both the diversity of thought among Jews
and the pressures to conform on the part of the Establishment. 24
June 2010, p. 61. Foxman is the author of The Deadliest Lies: the
Israel Lobby and the Myth of Jewish Control, New York, Palgrave
Macmillan, 2007, which is a rebuttal of Walt and Mearsheimer.
7
For an example of this rhetoric, see The Pathology of Jewish Anti
Semitism [incl. Shlomo Sand and Richard Falk], Middle East Studies
in the News, http://www.campuswatch.org/article/id/9168.
Steven Plaut the writer uses the expression Jewish antiSemitism.
The writers he mentions are slandered.
On this topic, see Mike Marqusees If I Am Not for Myself; Journey of an
AntiZionist Jew, London, Verso, 2008.
8
The paper is mostly a dishonest use of quotations isolated from
their context so as to give the impression that all these Jewish
authors are closet antiSemites or blind to antiSemitism when, in
fact, writers like Chomsky or Neumann are very careful not to play
into the hands of antiSemites.
http://www.ajc.org/atf/cf/%7B42D75369D58243808395
D25925B85EAF%7D/PROGRESSIVE_JEWISH_THOUGHT.PDF
In Israel itself, the delegitimation of critics is in full swing. See Gidi
Grinstein, Israel delegitimizers threaten its existence, Haaretez, 14
January 2010, and notably this paragraph: Israels delegitimacy is
propagated in a few global metropolisessuch as London, Madrid
and the Bay Areathat are hubs of international NGOs, media
outlets, academia and multinational corporations. Therefore, an
extraordinary effort is required to respond to and isolate Israels
delegitimizers. We must play offense and not just defense.
Available at http://www.haaretz.com/weekend/weeksend/
commentisraeldelegitimizersthreatenitsexistence1.261477.
5

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374

P. Guerlain

polemical generalization and reject the phrase Jewish

lobby not only because it is often clearly antiSemitic
but also because it obscures reality.9
Although the phrase Zionist lobby is rarer and
used by some on the farleft but also by some pro
Israeli advocates, for instance, those who belong to
the Zionist Organization of America, it is clearly
problematic. The history of Zionism is complex and
does include people who clearly had an imperial
project in Palestine and involved the expulsion of
Palestinians.10 This project has changed over time
although some Israeli Zionists have put into practice
Jabotinskis Iron wall theory and built a fence to
isolate Israelis from Palestinians.11 The phrase is used
by people who reject what they construe as Israels
annexation policies, but it is also used by antiSemites
who use antiZionism as a cover. It also shifts the
focus from what Israel as a nationstate is doing today
and lumps different groups of Americans together.
Many of the severe critics of Israel, such as Tony Judt
who criticize Israeli actions, are in favor of the
existence of the state of Israel and could therefore be
labeled Zionists by their opponents. Clearly, Judt is
totally at odds with AIPAC, and creating a category
that lumps them together is confusing.12 Shlomo Sand
argues that today being antiZionist means wanting
the destruction of Israel, which is why, like many new
Israeli historians, he prefers the expression post
Zionist and claims that Israel should become the state
of all its citizens.13 By this token, even the Palestine
Liberation Organization (PLO) is not antiZionist
any longer for it has acknowledged Israels right to
exist, along with a Palestinian state that is the
dominant international position. Scholars should
reject both the phrase Jewish lobby as well as
On Jewish diversity in the US, see my article Fighting for the
hearts and minds of American Jews: identity politics at the
crossroads of domestic and foreign policy, available at http://
www.graat.fr/Pierre%20Guerlain.pdf.
10
See Ilan Papp, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, Oxford,
Oneworld, 2006.
11
See Avi Shlaim, The Iron Wall, Israel and the Arab World, New
York, W. W. Norton & Co, 2008.
Jabotinsky wrote in 1023: Thus we conclude that we cannot
promise anything to the Arabs of the Land of Israel or the Arab
countries. Their voluntary agreement is out of the question.
Hence those who hold that an agreement with the natives is an
essential condition for Zionism can now say no and depart
from Zionism. Zionist colonization, even the most restricted,
must either be terminated or carried out in deance of the will of
the native population. This colonization can, therefore, continue
and develop only under the protection of a force independent of
the local populationan iron wall which the native population
cannot break through. This is, in toto, our policy towards the
Arabs. To formulate it any other way would only be hypocrisy.
Available at http://www.marxists.de/middleast/ironwall/ironwall.htm.
12
By Tony Judt, see A Lobby Not a Conspiracy, New York Times,
19 April 2006. See his closely reasoned article Israel: the
Alternative, New York Review of Books, 23 October 2003 and,
more recently, The Problem of Evil in Postwar Europe, The
New York Review of Books, Volume 55, Number 2, 14 February
2008, and Israel without clichs, New York Times, 10 June 2010.
13
Quotation in Shlomo Sand, Derek Penslar and Avi Shlaim, Isral
face son pass, Prface de Dominique Vidal, Paris, Les Editions
Arkh, 2010. Quoted in the introduction by Dominique Vidal, p. 20.
9

Copyright 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Zionist lobby to avoid the ethnicization of politics

and the confusion between various historical periods.
Ury Avnery reminds his readers that when Israel
was founded in 1948, there was a distinction between
the words Hebrew, which was used to refer to
Israelis or rather Jews within Israel, and Jewish,
which referred to Diaspora Jews. The disappearance
of this semantic distinction accompanies a strategy on
the part of Israel and proIsrael lobbies around the
world. An effort is made to link all Jews in Israel and
the Diaspora and to stress their common fate in the
shadow of the Holocaust, now often called Shoah, a
Hebrew word that means catastrophe.14 Israel is
presented by its supporters and lobbyists as the last
refuge for Jews in a world rife with antiSemitism and
also as the Jew among nations that is an international
pariah. In Avnerys words, referring to Israel but it
applies to the Jewish Establishment in the USA, too,
For two generations, our foreign policy used the
Holocaust as its main instrument. The bad conscience
of the world determined its attitude towards Israel. The
(justied) guilt feelingseither for atrocities committed or for looking the other waycaused Europe and
America to treat Israel differently than any other
nationfrom nuclear armaments to the settlements.
All criticism of our governments actions was branded
automatically as antiSemitism and silenced.15
In order to forge unity between Israeli and Diaspora
Jews, the old prejudices against survivors of the
Holocaust were forgotten, and the Shoah, after 1967,
was used to create this bond between all Jews. In an
answer to Rgis Debrays book entitled A un ami
isralien, Elie Barnavi, the former Israeli ambassador to
France, recalls that [w]hen I was a teenager, one still
talked about the victims as of a herd which had let
itself be led to the slaughterhouse, an image which
was at odds with the Jewish new man created by
Zionism and the wimps were referred to as soaps,
an atrocious allusion.16 Today the Israel lobby, like
many mainstream Israeli organizations, often tries to
shame all Jews into supporting Israel whether the
country is right or wrong and to unite all Jews in a
history based upon ghting against the repetition of
the Holocaust. Many American Jews refuse to toe this
line linking very different historical phenomena.17
Scholars, therefore, have to navigate between the
fake generalizations of antiSemites who lump all
14
Shoah is also the title of the world famous movie made by
Claude Lanzmann documenting the crimes of antiSemitic
perpetrators during World War II, mostly by making various
people talk about their part in these crimes or their experience as
victims.
15
Israel and the Flash of Lightning, When Force Doesnt Work,
CounterPunch, 22 June 2010, http://www.counterpunch.org/
avnery06222010.html.
16
Rgis Debray, A un ami isralien avec une rponse dElie
Barnavi, Flammarion, Caf Voltaire, Paris, 2010, p. 145.
17
See Marla Brettschneider, Cornerstones of Peace; Jewish Identity
Politics and Democratic Theory, New Brunswick, NJ, Rutgers
University Press, 1996, and my own paper mentioned above:
http://www.graat.fr/Pierre%20Guerlain.pdf.

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Israel lobby and foreign perceptions of USA

Jews together and reduce politics to a matter of
ethnicity and propagandists for a nation state that
aim at crushing dissent within an ethnic community,
which like national communities is also an imagined
community.18 Facts and phenomena should be
deethnicized in order to make sense of them, and
the usual concepts of geopolitics should apply when
analyzing Israels actions. In this domain Israel, like
the USA, is no exceptional state. It often behaves like
any other state in situations of power.
Within the USA, AIPAC is part of a proIsrael
lobby that includes many nonJews, but Jewish Voice
for Peace is not part of the Israel lobby.19 The key
dividing line is not ethnic or religious or communitarian but political and ideological. Ilan Papp gives
a denition of the Israel lobby or proIsrael lobby that
is quite interesting: he includes four large groups in
this lobby, which he calls the fundamentalist
quartet: big oil, the militaryindustrial complex,
AIPAC and Christian Zionists.20 Clearly, denitions
vary in accordance with ideological preferences.
Unfortunately, clearcut distinctions are hard to make
for ideological opponents share a desire to generalize
about all Jews, thus sidestepping political issues.

AMERICAN DEMOCRACY AND THE

POWER OF THE ISRAEL LOBBY
As the quotation from The Federalist 10 in the epigraph
shows, the USA has grappled with the power of
factions or special interests or lobbies since its
founding. So in a sense, there is nothing new under
the sun: the nature of lobbies changes, but the
phenomenon of factions exerting power over other
citizens has always existed. Even before Alexis de
Tocqueville coined the now famous phrase of tyranny
of the majority, Madison considered that a faction
could include a majority of citizens. In the 1950s, there
was much talk of the China or Chinese lobby that was
said to be very powerful. Today, the Indian lobby is
said to wage enormous inuence. And, of course, the
Israel lobby is at the center of a major controversy in
the USA but also outside the borders of the hegemonic
power. This aspect of the impact of the Israel lobby on
domestic US policy has been most studied, but the link
with foreign policy is not always made. I propose to
explore the foreign policy dimension at a greater
length in the next section.
18

This is, of course, a reference to the concept forged by Benedict

Anderson in Imagined Communities, New York, Verso, 2006.
19
http://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org/. A totally different approach from AIPAC as can be seen from the ofcial site.
20
http://infomideast.com/wordpress/?p=434
This Fundamentalist Quartetthe oil industry, the military
complex, AIPAC and Christian Zionistsis strongly behind the
present American vision of a new Middle East. This coveted
Middle East will be subjected economically to the needs of the
American way of life and in it, Israel would be allowed to take
over most of historical Palestine and slowly cleanse the native
population out of it. Around the expanded Jewish state there will
be only secular Arab regimes that support US policy and
reconcile with Israel.

Copyright 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

375

The recent controversy was launched by the article

and then the book by Walt and Mearsheimer, but the
key arguments of the book were made before in other
books or articles.21 Walt and Mearsheimer argue that
Israel, which was a geopolitical asset of the USA
during the cold war, has now become a liability and
that the Israel lobby obscures this reality. This type of
arguments was recently put forward by General
Petraeus on 16 January 2010 in a brieng to Joint
Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Michael Mullen on the
IsraeliPalestinian conict.22 Later, the nature and
substance of the brieng were denied including by
Petraeus himself.23 Others such as Andrew Cordesman ask whether Israel is a strategic liability for the
USA.24 Apparently even the chief of Mossad is
convinced that Israel has become a burden to the
USA.25 The controversy about foreign policy once
again highlights the debate about the power of the
Israel lobby; however, it is dened.
Walt and Mearsheimer document the quite effective ways in which the core of the Israel lobby, notably
AIPAC, intervene in domestic politics in the USA.
Congressmen and women receive thousands of
letters of protest every time the President does or is
about to do something that makes the organized
Jewish community (which once again does not
represent all Jews) does something that might be
construed as unfriendly to Israel. Opponents of Israeli
policies are targeted during election campaigns, and
these opponents receive much funding; media outlets
are subjected to pressures and usually adopt a more
proIsraeli stance than in European countries.26
Critical speakers like Tony Judt may be censored,27
21
See for instance Paul Findley, They Dare to Speak Out: People and
Institutions Confront Israels Lobby, Hill, Westport, CT, 1985.
Or Edward Said, Americas Last Taboo, New Left Review,
NovDec 2000, pp. 4553.
22
http://mideast.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/03/14/the_petraeus_brieng_biden_s_embarrassment_is_not_the_whole_story.
See also http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8VfdbCJgpU
Chomsky also goes along with this interpretation of Petraeuss
words: Dialogue avec Noam Chomsky, Le Monde diplomatique,
July 2010, p. 8.
23
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJzXvAK36OI
24
Israel as a Strategic liability? Center for Strategic and International
Studies, http://csis.org/publication/israelstrategicliability.
25
Article in Israeli newspaper Haaretez, 1 June 2010. http://www.
haaretz.com/news/diplomacydefense/mossadchiefisrael
graduallybecomingburdenonus1.293540.
26
The reporting about IsraelPalestine is very different in the
British paper The Guardian from what it is in the New York Times
although Le Monde has moved closer to the New York Times in
recent years. Der Spiegel or El Pais are also less proIsraeli than the
mainstream media in the USA. Haaretz in Israel is actually a more
informational publication with a big variety of opinions and
includes columnists like Gideon Levy or Amira Haas who are
tougher on Israeli policies than their American or European
counterparts. See Richard Falk and Howard Friel, IsraelPalestine
on Record: How the New York Times Misreports Conict in the Middle
East, New York, Verso, 2007.
27
In October 2006, Tony Judt was prevented from giving a talk at
the Polish consulate in New York after the AntiDefamation
League and the American Jewish Committee complained. He got
the support of many scholars, including many who did not share
his views (see article on Judts career at http://chronicle.com/
article/TheTrialsofTonyJudt/63449/).

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376

P. Guerlain

as well as plays about Rachel Corrie, for instance.28

Yet Judt can write in the New York Times, and the story
of Rachel Corrie can be mentioned in the media. The
USA is not a dictatorship; it is in Chomskys oft
repeated phrase, one of the freest countries in the
world, so censorship cases are rarely nal. Clearly,
Israel and its supporters have great clout in the
USA, but they do not control political life. As a lobby,
AIPAC (not ofcially a PAC, political Action Committee nor a foreign power agent) is resourceful and
well connected as it is the case of other lobbies in the
USA such as the National Rie Association, the
American Association of Retired Persons, the oil
business known as Big Oil, and the defense sector,
which also have power and exert it in a way that is
quite undemocratic: money talks instead of people.
The question of whether an undeniably strong
lobby perverts American democracy or even negates it cannot be separated from the denition of
this lobby and an analysis of who is part of it.
Lobbies do pervert democracy through the inuence of money, but ethnic or national lobbies nd it
hard to sway US foreign policy unless they form an
alliance with key sectors of US business. If the Israel
lobby is dened broadly, in the way Chomsky or
Papp dene it, then yes it is very powerful for it
includes the militaryindustrial complex and Christian evangelicals. If it is dened more narrowly so
that it includes only the mainstream Jewish organizations, then its power is less impressive. Israel is a
client state of the USA and enjoys many advantages
from its relationship with the USA, from protection
from censure at the UN to a yearly allowance of
$3bn and to generous loan guarantees and massive
shipments of uptodate military equipment.
So while it is accurate to point out that US
weapons are used against Palestinians in the illegally
occupied territories or in Gaza that is not ofcially
occupied but controlled by Israel, it is wrong to
suggest that these weapons are sold or given to Israel
because of a socalled Jewish lobby or of a narrowly
dened proIsrael one. The immense power of the
proIsrael forces comes from the alignments of major
power centers in the USA. When the alignment is in
question, the power of the lobby diminishes. Thus,
Chomsky quotes the fact that even the George W.
Bush administration stopped Israel from selling
weapons to China, as Clinton had also before.29
According to the British newspaper The Guardian,
Bush also turned down an Israeli request to bomb
Iran.30 The statement and then correction by General
Petraeus seem to suggest that the alignment between
the US military and Israel is at times not quite total.
28

See the story of the banning of the play called My Name is

Rachel Corrie in New York at http://www.guardian.co.uk/
stage/2006/mar/01/theatre.usa.
29
Noam Chomsky, The Israel Lobby? 28 March 2006, http://
www.zcommunications.org/theisraellobbybynoamchomsky.
30
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/sep/25/iran.israelandthepalestinians1

Copyright 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

American democracy suffers from many ills, some

of them were put into relief by the very contested if
not dubious election of 2000, and lobbies or interest
groups are certainly one of these problems. Low voter
participation, exclusion of African American, unfair
probusiness nancing, additional power given to
small states that tend to be white and rural and the
ubiquitous power of green, which is an access to
sources of nancial support, are key factors. Among
these factors, AIPAC and other mainstream proIsrael
organizations play a part, and they do insist on their
Jewishness in their lobbying, often accusing their
opponents of being antiSemites or selfhating Jews,
thus reinforcing the idea that there is one Jewish
political position that is patently untrue. The silencing
effort is leveled rst at dissident Jews, for leftliberal
Jews who disagree with Israeli occupation policies, for
instance, and disagree with the USAs almost total
support for Israel are the major propaganda danger:
they destroy this presentation of one Jewish position
based upon ghting the antiSemites who allegedly
make common cause with Holocaust deniers or
enemies of Israel. Dershowitzs diatribe against
J Street can be understood in this context. As in other
countries, notably France and Britain, the organized
Jewish community wants to exaggerate its power, to
give the impression that it has more power than it
actually does.31 This plays into the hands of anti
Semites who are only too happy when proIsrael
lobbyists or propagandists talk about Jewish power.
Madison in Federalist number 10 did warn that a
faction may be comprised of a majority of citizens.
Thus, he wrote that [w]hen a majority is included
in a faction, the form of popular government, on the
other hand, enables it to sacrice to its ruling
passion or interest both the public good and the
rights of citizens.32 Although polls vary about the
support of Israel among Americans,33 it is clear that
this support and also the opposition to Israeli policies
are largely nonethnic, nonreligious and mostly
ideological. Support for Israel varies according to
various periods; it dipped after the 20082009 military
31

See for instance a similar analysis for France by Esther

Benbassa, Le Crif, vrai lobby et faux pouvoir, Libration, 17
Fvrier 2010. Benbassa wonders whether the French proIsrael
lobby is not a second Embassy for Israel. Exactly what can be
asked about AIPAC.
32
In Alexander Hamilton, John Jay and James Madison, The
Federalist; A Commentary on the Constitution of the United States,
edited by Robert Scigliano, New York, The Modern Library, 2000,
p. 57.
33
For one February 2010 poll, see http://www.gallup.com/poll/
126155/supportisraelnearrecordhigh.aspx.
Eric Alterman uses another 2007 poll to argue that most Jews
disapproved of the Bush Administration policies (http://www.
ajc.org/site/c.ijITI2PHKoG/b.3642849/), Bad for the Jews, The
Nation, 7 January 2008.
After the May 2010 otilla affair, see other poll: http://www.
rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/current_events/
israel_the_middle_east/49_say_pro_palestinian_activists_to_
blame_in_gaza_ship_incident.
The title is 49% Say ProPalestinian Activists to Blame in Gaza
Ship Incident, yet a majority of Americans, 51%, also want an
international inquiry not an Israeli one.

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Israel lobby and foreign perceptions of USA

operation in Gaza code named Cast lead, which led
to many deaths on the Palestinians side and the
condemnation of the Goldstone report.34 And it varies
across generations with younger American Jews
being more likely to criticize a state they do not
always identify with. When a majority of Americans
support Israel, they do it mostly for foreign policy and
ideological reasons as when a majority supported war
in Iraq or Afghanistan. Ethnic considerations are
secondary.
Tony Smith has convincingly shown that ethnic
lobbies cannot by themselves shape American
foreign policy however well organized and funded
they are.35 The Israel lobby, which is not an ethnic
lobby because it includes major elite sections of the
US population, can achieve much, even write
legislation for Congressmen or women and intimidate critics, but this power comes largely from the
alliance between the socalled Jewish Establishment and the other sectors of the Establishment.
There is indeed a blindness to Israeli crimes and a
leniency toward Israel, which is unequaled for any
country but very similar to the blindness and
leniency that South Africa, a key ally during the
apartheid regime or Chile under Pinochet, also
beneted from, not to speak of Iraq under Saddam
Hussein before his fateful error when he invaded
Kuwait. The Israel lobby enjoys the power of other
lobbies and distorts democracy but so do the Cuban
lobby, the loggers lobby, Big Oil, the military
industrial complex or the world of business
generally. These other lobbies proved how strong
and effective they could be when Obama presented
a National Health Insurance scheme and they
mobilized against it.36
Here, a political attitude should be deconstructed. Many critics of the Israel lobby feel that
the injustice, or immorality, of this lobby should be
reason enough to cause its downfall. Yet immoral or
unfair situations do not disappear as a result of
ethical condemnation. Poverty, which is the equivalent of a crime against humanity, is unacceptable
but has not disappeared from the USA; in fact, it
has gotten worse lately. For political situations to
change, there must be a change in power relationships. Politics is not the realm of ethics, and moral
approaches may help understand a phenomenon
and not necessarily change it.
The signs showing that divisions within the
Jewish community are widening and that the usual
alignment between various sources of elite power
within the USA is challenged validate the old
Madisonian idea that factions can cancel each other
34
Available at http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/hrcouncil/
specialsession/9/docs/UNFFMGC_Report.pdf.
35
Tony Smith, Foreign Attachments : the Power of Ethnic Groups in
the Making of American Foreign Policy, Harvard University Press,
2000.
36
See The Money Fighting Health Care Reform, The New York
Review of Books, Michael Tomaski, 8 April 2010.

Copyright 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

377

out and that the proIsrael faction is less and less

cohesive although still impressively strong. Contrary to other lobbies or special interests, the Israel
lobby depends a lot for its effectiveness on
geopolitical considerations. Indeed, as Peter Novik
argues in his book The Holocaust in American Life
before 1967, the Holocaust and Israel were not
major concerns for Americans nor even for many
American Jews.37

THE US LOBBY AND US

PERCEPTIONS ABROAD
Contrary to other purely domestic lobbies, the Israel
lobby is largely dependent on foreign policy and
geopolitical considerations. It is not a primarily ethnic
lobby but functions more as the agent of a foreign
state. So the perceptions of the lobby are caught in a
feedback loop with perceptions of Israel and of US
interventions abroad. What Israel does and how it is
supported in the USA are two related phenomena.
The cracks within or between the various groups that
make up the Israel lobby are indications of changing
perceptions about Americas geopolitical strategies
and positions.
A little historical background is useful here. The
Israel lobby did not have as much clout in the 1950s
and early 1960s even if some whisper that Truman
was inuenced by Jews when he voted for the
creation of Israel in 1947 (but the USSR then in the
grip of a virulent antiSemitic campaign and many
other countries without an Israel lobby also voted in
favor of the partition of Palestine). Before 1967 and
the Six Day War that showed that Israel was the
undisputed military force in the region, the USA was
less close to Israel whose major arms supplier was
Francethe country that helped Israel develop its
nuclear weapon. There were few references to the
Holocaust and few accusations of some Jews being
selfhating Jews. In other words, the public debate
followed geopolitical realities. Eisenhower did not
suffer much from his forcing Israel (and Britain and
France) to cancel their Suez offensive in 1956.38
When Israel became a major ally in the Middle
East along with Iran, which Kissinger wanted to
have nuclear weapons, the domestic American
proIsrael lobby became stronger and more visible.
The strategic alliance led to a defense of Israel
within American institutions. The people who
staunchly supported Israel were sometimes anti
Semites such as Nixon. Realpolitik never considered
the phenomenon of antiSemitism as a barrier to
alliances. Israel formed a close bond with apartheid
South Africa and in 1978 even welcomed John
37

New York, Houghton Mifin Company, 1999.

On this topic, see Noam Chomsky, The Fateful Triangle: the
United States, Israel, and the Palestinians, Updated edition,
London, Pluto Press, 1999.

38

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378

P. Guerlain

Vorster, the South African Prime Minister although

he had been a fervent admirer of Hitler during
World War II and interned by the British for this
very reason.39 The current link established by the
organized Jewish community or the socalled
Jewish establishment between the ght against
antiSemitism and the denial of the Holocaust on
the one hand and the defense of Israel is highly
problematic for to this day Israel does not hesitate
to build alliances with antiSemites from the right
whether they are religious or not and denounces
critical leftliberal Jews who oppose its policies.
Israel as a state is like most other states, a cold
monster, as De Gaulle used to say, and is guided
by realpolitik considerations rather than by ethical
ones, which are only invoked in propaganda
battles, once again very much like other states.
Because the Israel lobby is caught between the
appearance of being an ethnic lobby and an attitude
that suggests the behavior of a foreign lobby, its
fortunes depend on two sets of factors. Before
analyzing its impact on the image of America
abroad, a few clichs need to be deconstructed.
Because the USA does support Israel militarily
and politically and protects it from world censure
at the UNto block the Goldstone report, for
instancemany, especially in the countries that are
hostile to the USA for political reasons, notably in
the Arab or Muslim world, think that the Israel
lobby pulls all the strings and determines US
foreign policy. They feel that the USA is involved
in a war against Islam and is encouraged in this
war by Israel and its lobbyists. This simplistic
view of US foreign policy often ties in with an
ethnicized apprehension of politics. This interpretation, which often has antiSemitic overtones,
ignores the fact that the USA often builds alliances
with Muslim regimes as in Saudi Arabia or Egypt
or even Morocco. These regimes tend to be
undemocratic, fundamentalist or to offer the US
some possibilities, for instance, torture, which is
farmed out to these countries where the rule of
law is shaky or nonexistent. There is no war
against Islam here, at times even a close cooperation with radical Islamists as was the case in
Afghanistan under Soviet occupation. Israel itself
has now become a de facto ally of Saudi Arabia in
their ght against Iran, the Saudis fearing the
emergence of a shia power, the Israelis the emergence of a strong nuclear power in the Middle East.
In the same way as the ethnicization of political
debate within the USA serves the interests of both
the Israel lobby that wants to create political
solidarity with Israel among all Jews and anti

Semites who analyze political phenomena in terms

of a conniving all powerful minority, the ethnic
analysis of geopolitics is an empty propaganda
gesture. Israel chose South Africa under apartheid
as an ally for reasons that had nothing to do with
ethics, antiSemitism or ethnicity. Israel helped
launch Hamas to undermine the inuence of the
PLO.40 The US support for Israel has very little to
do with the fact that Israel is a democracy, for the
USA either supports dictatorships or topples
democracies (Chile in 1973). The ethnic interpretation of geopolitics is not only unethical but also
blind as if all Jews were Netanyahus or all Arabs
Saddam Husseins.
Unfortunately, this ethnic interpretation is gaining round among the groups opposed to either
Israel or the USA. Indeed, politics is often reduced
to ethnicity, and the ethnicity of the current
president of the USA has often served as a kind
of political badgeeven when his policies in
Afghanistan are more interventionist than those
of his hated predecessor. So perceptions of the
USA are inuenced by its support for Israel, but
these perceptions are very often distorted by
prejudices or simplistic understandings. Yet here
too complexity sets in for Israel and its lobbyists in
the USA encourage this simplistic perception of
geopolitics. After launching Hamas, Israel uses
Hamas as the gure of the arch enemy; neoconservatives who support Israel have adopted a
Clash of Civilizations approach and refer to islamofascism to explain conicts between Israel and the
Palestinians.41 In other words, the simplistic
Huntingtonian reading of geopolitics suits some
in the two opposing camps. The Israel lobby, like
Israeli politicians, is trying to frame the conict in
cultural, religious or way of life terms. So the
conict becomes one between Jews and Arabs
or the West and Islam (or the West and the
rest) or the free world versus the terrorists. In the
propaganda battle, the model of a conict between
an occupying colonial power and an occupied
people is put forward only by academics, leftliberal
thinkers and wellintentioned Israel and Palestinian
thinkers.
Defending and supporting Israel when the latter
is perceived as a brutal occupier damages the image
of the USA, mostly outside the USA but also, to a
lesser extent, within the USA. As Tony Klug, a British
Jewish leader writing in Tikkun, the American
Magazine argues

39

40

A new book by Sasha PolakowSuransky, senior editor at

Foreign Affairs, documents the relationship between Israel and
apartheid South Africa: The Unspoken Alliance: Israels Secret
Relationship with Apartheid South Africa, New York, Pantheon
Books, 2010. See a twopart interview on Democracy Now:
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/5/25/israel.

Copyright 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The Diaspora associated with the occupying state may

also be in danger of losing its moral direction. There
Charles Enderlin, Le grand aveuglement : Isral et lirrsistible
ascension de lislam radical, Paris, Albin Michel, 2008.
Samuel Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking
of World Order, New York, Simon & Schuster, 1996.
See Paul Berman, Terror and Liberalism, New York, W. W. Norton
& Co, 2003, for a discussion of islamofascism.
41

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Israel lobby and foreign perceptions of USA

may be some individuals who know that the latest
military assault is merely the most recent in a rolling
sequence of onslaughts that have pounded towns and
villages in neighboring countries and in the occupied
territories in preceding years, but who nd themselves
barely batting an eyelid at the widespread devastation.
They have become inured to it. Some may go further
still and celebrate the carnage, taking leave of their
moral compass altogether. One of the problems with
occupation regimes is that, irrespective of their
national identity or religious or other afliation, they
tend to brutalize the occupier as well as the
occupied.42
Klug also argues that Israeli actions actually
foster antiSemitism, the very antiSemitism that is
then denounced by proIsrael lobbyists. The settlement policy that goes by the name of judaizing
areas of the occupied territories creates this confusion between Jews and Israelis so opposition to
Jewish settlements takes antiJewish rhetorical
forms. AntiSemitism, whether rhetorical or as a
policy, is always wrong and so is the use of the
language of ethnic uniqueness or specicity to
cover up crimes or injustice. This is something that
many people, Jewish or not, are quite aware of. Pro
Israel lobbyists, like some commentators in Israel,
argue that Israel is the Jew among nations, that is,
it suffers from prejudice and rejection in the same
way Jews were historically excluded (mostly in
Europe in fact). Critics of Israel as a nationstate
counter that Israel must be judged by its deeds like
any other state.43 Some American or Israeli Jews,
like some nonJewish observers, agree that Israel
itself is fostering antiSemitism.44
Here, it is important to insist on the link between
reality or facts on the ground and the image of a
country. No amount of propaganda can offset the
disastrous effects of military intervention. The USA
under Bush had a catastrophic image everywhere in
the world except in Israel. When Obama was elected,
the image changed almost overnight. Obama won
the Nobel Peace Prize that was a sign of the change of
image. The only country in which Obama was not
popular was Israel (although a majority of US Jews

379

had voted for him). After Obama made his famous

Cairo speech,45 his popularity in the Arab and
Muslim world soared, but his hesitations and lack
of clout in imposing his views on the illegal Israeli
settlements in Palestine (or the Palestinian territories
for Palestine is not a fulledged state) led to the
plummeting of his popularity and no improvement
in Israel. Israel insulted Vice President Biden when
he visited Israel in March 2010, and new settlement
construction was announced.46 Yet the Obama
Administration has not been able to change the
course of Israeli policies, and it supports Israels
refusal to discuss the Goldstone report. Obamas
policies in Afghanistan or the resort to drones in
Pakistan or Yemen are not likely to improve the
image of the USA either.
This image clearly is not manufactured by the
Israel lobby alone (if by Israel lobby we understand
the Jewish Establishment). Many factors and factions are at work here. When the military
industrial complex comes to feel that Israel may
be a strategic liability and when regional actors
become stronger and go against US hegemony,
things are bound to change. Turkey and Brazil
recently intervened in the dispute between Iran and
the West. Turkey, a key NATO ally, is angered by
the death of its citizens in the Free Gaza otilla
affair and seems to be moving away from its close
alliance with Israel. These tectonic shifts do not all
depend on Israel or the Israel lobby in the USA but
are the consequence of shifting power relations
between various countries and areas of the world.
Tough powerful and inuential Israel and the Israel
lobby do not rule the world nor are they the only
factors shaping US foreign policy.
Here, another irony or complexity should be
mentioned. In the same way as Israel lobbies in
the USA and France, tries to project an image of
Jewish unity and crushes dissent within the Jewish
community in order to exaggerate their real power,
the view of strong Jewish power may be used by
US politicians to explain why they cannot change
US policies or the canard of Jewish power may
lead to some foreign countries trying to establish
4 December 2009. Obama stated that I have come here to seek
a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around
the world; one based upon mutual interest and mutual respect;
and one based upon the truth that America and Islam are not
exclusive, and need not be in competition. Instead, they overlap,
and share common principlesprinciples of justice and progress;
tolerance and the dignity of all human beings. This rhetoric was
not so new for Bush also praised moderate Muslims but Obamas
biography inspired trust. Script found at http://www.nytimes.
com/2009/06/04/us/politics/04obama.text.html.
46
March 2010. David Axelrod called this an affront (http://
blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2010/03/axelrodisrael
settlementapprovalanaffrontinsult.html) and Hilary Clinton
an insult (http://www.mediaite.com/online/hillaryclintonis
nothappyisraelinsultedtheus/).
Yet US support for Israel did not diminish. The USA was one of
the few countries that did not blame Israel when the Free Gaza
otilla was violently stopped in international waters and nine
people died in May 2010.
45

42
Are Israeli Policies Entrenching AntiSemitism Worldwide?,
Tikkun, MayJune 2010, available at http://www.tikkun.org/
article.php/may2010klug.
43
A typical formulation can be found in an article in German by
Alfred Grosser. Alfred Grosser is a French professor who ed
Nazi Germany because he was threatened as a Jew. Warum ich
Israel kritisiere; Die israelische Politik ist unrecht. Wer sie
bekmpft, ist kein Antisemitsondern legt an Jerusalem
lediglich gleiche Mastbe an. Internationale Politik, Februar
2007. (Why I criticize Israel. Israeli policy is unfair. Those who
ght it are no antiSemitesbut apply to Jerusalem the same
standards as for others). Many American Jews from Judith
Butler to Norman Finkelstein, Noam Chomsky or even Rabbi
Lerner have made similar statements.
44
See for instance Saul Landau, Israel Again Gives Jews A Bad
Name, available at http://www.zcommunications.org/israel
againgivesjewsabadnamebysaullandau.

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P. Guerlain

connections with the Israel lobby to advance their

own interests. Thus, a Chinese writer from Hong
Kong, Wen Wei Pao, wrote in 1992:
Israel enjoys a special relationship with the US. The
Jewish people in the US have always supported Israel
and are very inuential in US political, economic and
media circles. It is not possible for Israels embellishment of diplomatic relations with China not to have
some effect on the SinoUS relations.47
So the traditional antiSemitic prejudice leads
here not to a condemnation of Jews or Israel but to a
rapprochement strategy. This writer suffers from
the simplistic approach of ethnicized politics but
does not transform his prejudices into hatred or
opposition the way some misinformed Muslim
writers might do (the modier misinformed
indicates there is no generalization about all
Muslims). His antiSemitic prejudice, maybe not
even experienced as antiSemitic, leads him to be
closer to Israel, in the same way as European anti
Semites of the far right might take proIsraeli stands
when Israel bashes Palestinians for their antiArab
racism trumps their antiSemitism. The far right
leader JeanMarie Le Pen made some racist anti
Arab remarks on 23 April 2002 in Haaretz and
declared his support for Sharons war.48 Tony Klug
also mentions other noted antiSemites who support Israel.49
AntiSemitic canards are used by friends of Israel,
whereas Jewish critics of Israel who speak or write
from a leftliberal perspective are denounced as new
antiSemites: the blurring of two sets of ideas
produces a rhetorical monster. Although many Jews
feel and historically have felt a close tie to Israel and
are quite understandably very alert to the dangers of
antiSemitism and justiably denounce Holocaust
deniers, this does not sufce to make a whole
community ideologically uniform. Israel targets its
own NGOs and domestic critics whether they are
Jewish or Arab for it is keenly aware of the
propaganda battle going on in Israel and the world
over Israeli actions.50 Once the ethnic dimension of
the Israel lobby is marginalized or seen in its proper
context, we are left with a traditional geopolitical
phenomenon with its domestic ramications.
Even with the lofty statements about kinship
between US and Israel democracy, the historical
47

Wen Wei Pao (Hong Kong), 25 January 1992, in Foreign

Broadcast Information ServiceChina, 27 January 1992, pp.
1819. Quoted in At What Cost IsraelChina Ties? by P. R.
Kumaraswamy, Middle East Quarterly, Spring 2006, pp. 3744.
Available at http://www.meforum.org/926/atwhatcostisrael
chinaties.
48
See analysis of this at http://www.wsws.org/articles/2002/
apr2002/semia26.shtml.
49
op cit. In all of these cases, professed support for Israel or
Israeli actions is employed to relieve the charge of antiSemitism,
even by an avid antiSemite with a record of Holocaust denial.
50
The website www.ngomonitoring.org is wholly devoted to
trying to delegitimize critics of Israeli crimes.

Copyright 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

similarities that include the dispossession of the

original inhabitants of the area now occupied by the
USA or Israel or the false historical analogies
between the 1930s and 1940s, on the one hand,
and the present, on the other, do not explain much.
It is harder and harder for the core of the socalled
Jewish Establishment to rally the support of young
American Jews and silence leftliberal critics. It is
harder and harder for the superarmed Israel, with
the only nuclear power in the Middle East, to adopt
the stance of the victim. When it does so as when
Israeli spokesmen claimed they acted in selfdefense
when Israeli forces attacked ships in international
waters in May 2010 and killed peace activists who
did not have guns and stopped all communication
between the ships and the world, propaganda
becomes counterproductive.51 It is harder and
harder for Israel to win its wars or military attacks
that causes even the defense establishment in the
US to wonder about American support for Israel.52
Compared to the business lobby or even the
nancial lobby, the Israel lobby, although still very
powerful and well organized, is potentially exposed
and fragile. The unsteady alliance between Christian fundamentalists who are religious antiSemites
and the armed forces and the defense sector is
subject to many potential cracks. If Israels usefulness to US interests decline and regional powers
like Turkey have to be appeased and the Jewish
community in the US does not toe the line of the
Establishment, then the Israel lobby can only lose
inuence and power. Like any major political
development, this kind of shift can only happen
very slowly. The decline of US hegemony started
four decades ago, but the USA is still the dominant
power in the world system.53 Any change in the
power of Israel and its lobbyists will also happen
See How the U.S. Corporate Media Got the Israel Flotilla
Catastrophe So Wrong, AlterNet, http://www.alternet.org/
world/147197/how_the_us_corporate_media_got_the_israel_
otilla_catastrophe_so_wrong.
This includes the following passage Appearances are deceiving
because understanding Israels eternal victimhood requires the
proper mindset. And once you have the proper mindset, there is
no need for facts. Atlantic Monthlys Jeffrey Goldberg, who has
been hanging around a lot of Israeli generals lately, kindly
advises us that there should be no particular pain felt for the
dead on the boat. On the other hand, Theres real pain in
Israelpain at the humiliation of the otilla raid, pain on behalf
of the injured soldiers, and pain that the geniuses who run this
country could not gure out a way to outsmart a bunch of
Turkish Islamists and their useful idiot fellow travelers.
52
Not winning its 2006 Lebanon war against Hezbollah (though
destroying Lebanese infrastructures) and committing massacres
in Gaza in 20082009 without ever ghting a military opponent
proved to be public relations disasters for Israel.
53
Immanuel Wallerstein, The Decline of American Power, New
Press, 2003, and his article The Eagle has crashlanded, Foreign
Policy, JulyAugust 2002, as well as Alternatives, The United States
Confronts the World, Boulder, CO, Paradigm Publishers, 2004,
and The Curve of American Power, The New Left Review,
JulyAugust 2006, pp. 7794. See Emmanuel Todd, Aprs
lempire : essai sur la decomposition du systme amricain,
Paris, Gallimard, 2002. American version: After the Empire, the
Breakdown of the American Order, New York, Columbia University
Press, 2003.
51

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Israel lobby and foreign perceptions of USA

very slowly. Americas declining power will force
Israel to rethink its relationship with the USA, and
the USA will have to deal differently with Israel.
The old rule of geopolitics is still the same; as
Chomsky says, [r]ights are proportional to power.
Palestinians are weak, do not have any allies, they
therefore have no rights. Supporting the powerful

381

in ones own interest refers to a perfectly rational

policy.54 The only major factor in the effectiveness
of the Israel lobby is therefore the power and utility
of Israel. If it is diminished, as seems quite possible,
then the Israel lobby will lose some of its clout like
other lobbies did before. No ethnic or religious or
democratic considerations will matter.

54

In Le Monde Diplomatique, op cit. (translation from the French

that was itself a translation from the original English).

Copyright 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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