1. Why introduce “The Jewish-Israeli Lobby” as a new category?
22nd March 2006
Posting 1. on The Jewish-Israeli Lobby, by George Salzman
In my recent essay, “Changing History, 1”, which is at http://site.www.umb.edu/faculty/salzman_g/Strate/2006-03-18.htm, I started to try to understand how it came about that Adolph Hitler, who began life as innocent as each of us, developed into an adult capable of instigating what ought to be unspeakably horrendous acts. The culture he lived in was suffused, as is every cultural environment, with an entire set of values which affect the development of every normal person, into which category I would place Hitler.
He was, according to what I know, an avid reader of newspapers and political pamphlets, which, along with his personal experiences in Vienna from age 18 to 23, played an important — I think crucial — role in the development of his conviction that “the Jews” were largely responsible for the terrible conditions in Vienna, as well as elsewhere, and his obsession — it was really an obsession — to eliminate all European Jewry.
“Beer Hall Putsch”, from Tiempo de Guerra: História Ilustrada de la Secunda
Guerra Mundial (Time of War: Illustrated History of the Second World War),
p.15, published by Reader’s Digest in Spanish, in 1992 in Mexico. The book
is essentially a glorification of war, promoting the ideology typical of the
Reader’s Digest Corporation’s publications.
Clearly, what people believe is extremely important. This is well-recognized in the United States (as well, I am sure, as everywhere), where Joesph Goebbel’s role as the Minister of Propaganda in the Third Reich is widely credited with the success of the Nazi state in promoting belief, among ordinary Germans, in the righteousness of the government’s programs, including World War II and ridding Germany of Jews. The effort to shape people’s beliefs is pursued by every government, as part of the arsenal for controlling “its” population. That “All governments lie” is a truism.
But governments are not alone in lying to influence public opinion. For example, corporations are notorious liers in advertising their products, and in denying their lack of guilt for illegal behavior. The immediate “special interest” that motivated me to initiate this category is raised in a major article exploring the impact of what Mark Bruzonsky <> refers to, I think with reasonable accuracy, as “The Jewish-Israeli Lobby”. According to the article, “The Lobby” has had, and continues to have, great influence on the U.S. government and on American public opinion, to the detriment of the United States, in the supposed interest of Israel. The article, in The London Review of Books, Vol. 28 No. 6, 23 March 2006, at www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n06/mear01_.html, titled The Israel Lobby is by John Mearsheimer, Prof. of Political Science, Univ. of Chicago, and Stephen Walt, Prof. of International Affairs, Harvard Univ. Bruzonsky’s preface follows:
MER - MiddleEast.Org - Washington - 18 March: This is a vital subject, The Jewish-Israel Lobby, but it is one rarely paid the attention it is due and one hardly ever discussed as openly and thoughtfully, and as honestly and ‘candidly’, as it should be. These two well-known American academics . . . make a limited stab at doing so in this nevertheless quite important article. But they gloss over far too much, almost totally overlook far more, and at the end of the day pull far too many punches in view of the unique sensitivities this subject arouses within American society and American Jewry. Furthermore the article comes only now, it seems, because two of the most important long-time American Israel Political Action Committee (AIPAC) figures are under indictment — not as ‘spies’ which in other settings could and would be the charge, but for improperly handling ‘classified’ information which in the end got to the Israelis. All this is said to provide the requisite context. This article . . . makes very interesting and necessary weekend reading.
It’s a lengthy article, but I strongly recommend it. —George