Customer Reviews

The $36 Billion Bargain: U.S. Aid to Israel and American Public Opinion

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Professor Organski's book is a must-read for any serious student of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. It is a book that is sure to offend both those Arabists who pursue the myth that the United States supports Israel based on the whims of the "Israel lobby", and those Zionists who believe that the United States supports Israel out of sentimentality. The reality, as Professor Organski underlines, is that the first U.S. President to supply military aid to Israel was Richard Nixon, hardly a man who was indebted to the "Israel lobby" for his political position. The cold truth is that American support for Israel was a calculated experiment, one that forced such East Bloc clients as Egypt's Anwar Sadat to break from the Soviet fold. Under this experiment, a military option was no longer available to the Arab leadership. Under this experiment, the only road to a negotiated settlement began at the doorsteps of Washington. All of this, accomplished for less than the cost of a single U.S. carrier task force. Although published prior to the collapse of the Soviet Union, the lessons of this book remain true. American foreign policy has been, and remains, guided by strategic goals and interests, not by tiny lobby groups nor by sentimental attachments.

I am a bit biased, because Prof. Organski was one of my favorite teachers in college. Even so, the truth is Organski was, for more than 30 years, a world renowned political scientist. His work became the text books for political science classes throughout the country. His analysis of the Israel - US relationship is trenchant, easy to read, and persuasive. Plainly, in the context of US-Soviet competition, American aid to Israel was a bargain (never mind also the right and moral thing to do). You will love the scholarship, appreciate the keen analysis, and enjoy the easy, almost jargon-less (for this kind of work) style. For anyone who wants to understand how the U.S.- Israeli relationship came to be, this is a great place to start!

AFK Organski sets out to examine the theory that the US supports Israel due to the strength of the Jewish Lobby. Organski finds that theory to be woefully inadequate, and sets forth an alternative explanation that is very convincing. First, he destroys the myth of the Jewish lobby using both quantitative and qualitative methods. Organski cited figures that demonstrate that the Jewish vote is not large enough to effect Presidential elections, and the Jewish lobby not rich enough to contribute to enough Congressmen. Furthermore, the causation he finds is that once Congressmen have decided to support Israel the lobby funds them, not vice versa. The quantitative section is very well documented and persuasive. The qualitative section discusses th reason for US support. Organski finds that it is straight strategic purposes that drive US policy to Israel, much like US policy to every country. It wasnt until 1970 that the US really began to give Israel large amounts of aid, and it was clearly in order to balance against the radical Arab states in the region which were financed by the Soviet Union. The partnership increased after the 1973 War, and Israel served its purpose by defeating Egypt and making them turn to the US for support, a process which culminated in the Camp David Accords. Organski's book was written in 1990, so it focused on the Cold War and the containment of the Soviet Union as the reason for US support for Israel. Organksi has not updated his book to include reasons for support since then, but we can surmise he explain it in state goals of countering terrorism, balancing against US enemies, etc. But the main premise of his book is inescapable: The Jewish lobby does not control US policy. It never has and never will. The myth of the Jewish lobby is used by Israel's opponents to explain why the US supports Israel without blaming America while putting the blame on those nasty manipulative Jews. Serious and casual readers alike should examine this book carefully.

I found this book extremely biased and shallow in presentation. The numbers given for US aid to Israel are underestimates; they do not include billions of lost interest because we give Israel money in lump sum at the beginning of the fiscal year (unlike any other aid) and all such aid money is borrowed and the US has to pay interest on its debt. The total aid to Israel has cost taxpayers close to 200 billion from conservative estimates (such as from the Council of National Interests). This excludes billions more sent to Israel as tax deductible contributions under very loose definitions allowed by law (even Friends of the Israel Defense Forces has tax deductible status). The idea that all of this is in our national interest is naive at best and is likely "suspect" propaganda efforts. Israel has been an impediment to foreign policy in the Middle East (e.g. the Iraq issue & Gulf Oil). How could we justify aid to the tune of $12,000/per Israeli when we give less than $1 per Subsaharan African. For a good book on these issues see "They dare to Speak Out" by Paul Findley.

Flash: rominent Jewish academic uses tools of "social science" to advance Jewish-Zionist agenda. How novel! For comprehensive background on the machinations of the many Organski's of the world, see Kevin MacDonald's "Culture of Critique."

Now to the specific's of this book--a characteristic, cunning, manipulative deception:

1. Organski understates the true cost of supporting Israel by many orders of magnitude. Respected economist Thomas Stauffer estimated the cost of our pro-Zionist foreign policy at $3 trillion: http://www.wrmea.com/archives/june2003/0306020.html.
And that was before the illegal invasion of Iraq, which as Gen. Anthony Zinni, Sen. Fritz Hollings and Rep. James Moran have all confirmed, was conceived by a cabal of Jewish neocons for the sole purpose of eliminating one of Israel's potential adversaries. More: http://www.nowarforisrael.com/. The Iraq adventure will cost another $600 billion: http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0519/p01s03-usmi.html?s=hns. So in total we're talking in the neighborhood of a cumulative $750,000 for each Jew in Israel, this for the benefit of the wealthiest ethnic group in the world. And not to mention the almost 2,000 American troops who have died fighting for them, and the 3,000 WTC victims who perished due to US entanglement in squabbles between Semitic cousins.

2. Organski's apologia for the Israel lobby is laughable since it omits political contributions by individual wealthy Jews and Jewish businesses which ensure that neither party and no significant political candidate departs from the kosher stance on Israel. JJ Goldberg boasts in "Inside The American Jewish Establishment" that at least 50% of the money going to the Democratic Party is Jewish, and 20% of the Republicans' money is Jewish. And if you believe that this has nothing to do with Zionism, recall the words of billionaire Haim Saban who contributed $7 million to the DNC in 2002 alone: "I'm a one-issue guy and my issue is Israel": http://www.middleeast.org/read.cgi?category=Magazine&num=1205&standalone=0&month=11&year=2004&function=text. That any pol who runs afoul of the Zionist movement will feel the brunt of these funds is demonstrated most recently by the fate of Rep. Cynthia McKinney: http://www.finalcall.com/perspectives/blacks_jews09-24-2002.htm.

3. But the larger power that allows smooth sailing for Jewish-Zionist agenda is fear of the explosive smear of "anti-Semitism," which, according to Joe Sobran, no longer applies to someone who someone who dislikes Jews, but rather someone whom Jews dislike. Orchestrated by the monopoly held by the Anti-Defamation League, Simon Wiesental Center and other Jewish "civil rights" groups on terms such as "anti-Semitism,' "hate," "tolerance," etc., these charges are rapidly spread through the Jewish-dominated mass media and instantly destroy the political careers of uppity goyim. Just ask Pat Buchanan.

Even though far costlier than Organski admits, and engineered by Jewish financial and media clout, the question remains whether the unprecedented "special relationship" with Israel is really in America's best interests. The media champions Israel as our only reliable "ally" in the Middle East. What they deliberately omit is that without the Zionist albatross, we'd have no enemies in the Middle East.