The Israel lobby is failing

Ilan Pappé: "Despite its tremendous influence over the American political system, AIPAC has proven unable to stem the systemic shift in public opinion regarding Israel — in America and globally"

The Israeli historian and political scientist Ilan Pappé has just published a new book called Lobbying for Zionism on Both Sides, a masterful counter-history of the pro-Israel lobby. In it, Pappé tracks Zionism’s evolution from a relatively marginal European ideology to one of the most powerful forces in American (and Western) politics.

Pulitzer-winning journalist and commentator Christ Hedges has just published a long interview with Pappé, in which the author goes over the book’s main themes:

Among other things, Pappé explains how the Zionist movement originally comprised various ideological strands. Early Zionists were separated into two ideological groups: the religious Zionists, who actually believed in a messianic connection to historic Palestine, as well as protecting marginalised Jews, and those who the Israeli author describes as “more cynical”; the imperialists, or those “who saw the theological ideas as a good pretext for fulfilling more secular political roles. […] They wanted not only Palestine, but also Syria and Egypt to expand the British empire”.

Pappé covers a lot of historical ground — including the very cynical reasons for which Britain and other Western governments initially supported the Zionist settler-colonial project in Palestine — so I strongly recommend you listen to the whole interview.

He then moves on to talk about the contemporary Israel lobby, especially in the United States — i.e., AIPAC. The most interesting part is where he explains how AIPAC, despite its tremendous influence over the American political system, has proven unable to stem the systemic shift in public opinion regarding Israel — in America, especially among the young, and globally — and has actually contributed to it by enabling the most unhinged Israeli policies. Here’s a snippet from the talk on this topic:

And for those of you who, like me, prefer to read rather than to listen, here’s a transcript of the conversation:

Chris Hedges: You argue at the end of the book that, in essence, the lobby is counterproductive to Israeli interests itself. So let’s talk about since October 7, the role of the lobby, what it’s done and I think it’s kind of spinning its wheels in the mud. I don’t think that it’s working.

Ilan Pappé: No, it’s not. It’s kind of decided to frame as its enemies, young people, conscientious sections of the American civil society, minority groups, people who maybe people mainstream America may consider some of them naive, but very few people would regard them as immoral or enemies of the state. And this is the main problem of the lobby now. Its enemies are people that actually have a spirit that, in the past, America used to admire. Secondly, some of them belong actually to the American elites, definitely the students, and the whole discourse that is brought, that the lobby is trying to fight, is a moral discourse.

Yes, you can bomb a moral discourse to a certain extent. We saw it in the pressure on the presidents of universities, or in Jewish alumni withdrawing money from certain universities. You still use money and force, but you don’t really kill a movement of solidarity that has the same impulses that the anti-Vietnam [war] movement had, that the civil rights movement had. You cannot kill it with money. And therefore you’re right, they’re stuck in the mud, because it’s not a question of convincing the American Congress to give more money to Israel or sell more arms. 

Yes, they can still do that, but they have never had the right methods, and they will never have, I think, the right weapons, if you want, to fight against systemic changes in public opinion that are based on moral values or knowing the reality, or, as you say rightly, on the daily images of a genocide. There is a limit in the 21st century [to] how much you can do that. And they don’t have the kit of tools anymore to deal with it, and therefore I don’t think they will be succeeding unless other factors would not change public opinion in a direction that I think is changing. And of course, they still have the chunk of call it maybe the Trump base in America. They can still unite with them. There’s no need to pressure these guys, but they understand that they’re losing a very important section of America, that they divided American society.

Chris Hedges: And they’ve lost the facade. I mean, they may get support from Trump, but they’ve lost that facade. And just to buttress that point, you write:

The way AIPAC decided who Israel’s enemies were often had very little to do with the actual policies, which were frequently to Israel’s advantage. They decided simply based on how obedient an administration was to the lobby. America’s endorsement of the Oslo Accords was not a milestone on the road to peace for AIPAC, but a testimony to its own failure to influence American policy.

And you make that point throughout the book, that it no longer becomes whether it's good or bad for Israel, but they have to constantly assert their hegemony within the American political system.

Ilan Pappé: Absolutely.

Finally, Pappé talks about how he believes Israel’s actions since October 7 have sown the seeds for the demise of the Zionist project — in the longer run at least:

I think in the end — and I don’t know if it’s a year or two or three years from now — [Israel’s occupation, brutalisation and outright genocide] of the Palestinians will] be something that important regional and international actors [will no longer] tolerate. They’re still tolerating it, but will not tolerate it [forever]. […] Even people in the global states, in the Global North [are beginning to think] that Israel needs to be treated differently. We definitely already heard it from the ICJ and the ICC. 

I really believe that Israel as it stands now doesn’t stand a chance of surviving in the long run as a Jewish state. But again, I’m warning that this, before that would happen, before there is a collapse or disintegration, there is a very dangerous period of that state trying to do all it can, without any inhibitions, to maintain its power, its survival, and I’m very worried for the short run, including a continuation of the genocide, and not just in Gaza, also in the West Bank. But I really think that if I were a young Palestinian, I would hopefully believe that I’m young enough, hopefully, to see something else in the more distant future. And I really believe in it, it’s not just wishful thinking. It’s not the words of an activist [but of] someone who follows the history of Israel and Zionism. I’m 100 percent convinced we are at the midst of the last chapter in this Zionist project in Palestine. And last chapters are violent, they are decolonisation kind of chapters. I’m worried and at the same time I’m more hopeful for the long distance.

To be clear, Pappé is a supporter of the so-called one-state solution: i.e., a single state comprising the currently recognised state of Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, with citizenship and equal rights for all residents — Jewish and Palestinian — regardless of their ethnicity or religion. He explains his view on the matter here:

The two-state solution was never viable. There were times when, maybe, it looked a little more viable for a few weeks after the June 1967 war, when the Jewish settlers came to the West Bank. But it was not viable even then, because it did not fit the basic policy of the Zionist movement since its inception and its arrival in Palestine in the late 19th century. Zionism is a settler-colonial movement and Israel is a settler-colonial state.

Its support — and this includes what is even called the “peace camp” in Israel — for a two-state solution is an idea that says that you do not have to directly control every part of historical Palestine in order to establish your dominance and hegemony between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean. So, if you can squeeze the Palestinians into small Bantustans and allow them to have a flag and a semblance of a government, there are quite a few Israelis who do not mind at all, so long as this will be the last and final kind of settlement for the Palestine question. Which means no real political rights for the Palestinians, no right of return for the refugees, and keeping all Palestinians in different parts of historical Palestine, at best as second-rate citizens, at worst, as subjects in an apartheid state.

I think the two-state solution was never a viable solution because what really mattered was the Israeli interpretation of the two-state solution. This interpretation was always accepted unconditionally by the United States. Because of this, even the European countries did not dare to challenge this interpretation and, as we have unfortunately seen recently, some Arab regimes are also beginning to accept the Israeli interpretation. For a while, they tried to challenge it in the Arab League’s famous Peace Plan in 2002. This is not being tried any more.

I think we have only had one option since the creation of the State of Israel, and this was to replace a settler-colonial state with a genuine, democratic state for all.

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Thomas Fazi

Website: thomasfazi.net

Twitter: @battleforeurope 

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