Where Walt and Mearsheimer Fear to Tread

While the entire nation seems gripped in the euphoria of hope lately, Palestine solidarity and anti-war activists found little to be hopeful about in Walt and Mearsheimer's talk in Ann Arbor last Friday. Far from a principled stand against Israeli apartheid or US imperialism, Walt and Mearsheimer argued for a reformed occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, stripped of its excesses. While they admitted that a "Jewish state" was fundamentally at odds with democratic principles (such as those the US preaches but rarely practices), they argued that any solution to the conflict that does not leave the Jewish apartheid state intact was unacceptable. We ask how a "Jewish state" will be created without ethnically cleansing the Palestinians living within Israel? What kind of sovereignty will two open-air prisons connected by some kind of "monorail" and under Israeli lock and key have? What vision, what hope do Walt and Mearsheimer offer to Palestinians and Palestine solidarity activists? The answer is simple, they offer none.

Walt and Mearsheimer's fatal flaw is their inability to see support for Israel as part and parcel of white supremacy and imperialism in the United States. They argue that the Israel lobby has led US interests around by the nose for the last forty years, as if the Zionist project of colonizing Palestine is not in the interest of Western imperialism. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, Theodor Herzl, spiritual and ideological father of the modern-day Zionist movement, stated explicitly in his founding text of the Zionist movement, "The Jewish State," that his goal in creating a Jewish state in Palestine was to create "a wall of defense for Europe in Asia, an outpost of civilization against barbarism." Here, Herzl concisely summarizes the racist assumptions underlying the Zionist colonial project. Europeans, Herzl argues, have a right to the land that supersedes that of the indigenous people. Further, the colonial project is part and parcel of the historical “burden” that has fallen upon Europeans to bring “lower cultures” up to the level of civilization Europe has achieved.

In spite of such clear statements, Walt and Mearsheimer argue that US support for the Zionist project is an aberration. To do so is to ignore the entire colonial history of the United States from its very inception! And lest we forget, the US was founded on the basis of ethnic cleansing and genocide against the indigenous people of the Americas in ways that strikingly parallel the founding of the state of Israel and its practices against the indigenous people of Palestine, using much the same racist logic. Far from an aberration, support for Israel is part and parcel of the long white supremacist history of the United States, and lines up nicely with the interests of US imperialism. One important service Israel provides in the region is its attempts to disrupt and destroy grassroots movements throughout the region that threaten to overthrow client states of the US, or disturb business as usual in the region.

This is what is perhaps most disturbing about Walt and Mearsheimer and the argument they make. Far from a principled stand against US imperialism in the Middle East, their opposition to the "special relationship" Israel enjoys with the US represents their belief that supporting Israel is harming the ability of US imperialism to achieve its objectives in the region. For example, they imply that the occupation of Iraq could be better achieved with the help of Syria and Iran, and that the Israel lobby's opposition to both states makes it far more difficult than it otherwise would be to work with both states to crush the resistance in Iraq. Sincere anti-war activists must surely cringe at the suggestion that Iran and Syria be recruited to assist the US in continuing, and better managing, the occupation of Iraq.

In short, Walt and Mearsheimer are imperialists who do not fundamentally oppose the white supremacist basis of American foreign policy. They seek to lead sincere Palestine solidarity activists down a road of ruin that criticizes the excesses of Israeli apartheid, but does not fundamentally challenge its premises.

So where do we go from here? Walt and Mearsheimer, in spite of their best intentions, showed us the way forward when they quoted Ehud Olmert, speaking at the Annapolis "peace" talks a couple months ago. At that time, Olmert noted that "if the two-state solution collapses, and [Israel] faces a South African-style struggle for equal voting rights, then the state of Israel is finished." ARA agrees and welcomes the development of such a struggle whole-heartedly. We must do our part to develop such a movement in the United States. Wherever two or three of us are gathered, we have tremendous strength. We must exercise that strength by demanding divestment in our city councils, universities, and workplaces. We must oppose imperialism and white supremacy in their entirety, and not just their excesses. We should begin where Walt and Mearsheimer fear to tread, by challenging the right of Israel to exist, by objecting not only to current ethnic cleansing operations in the West Bank and Gaza, but also to the ethnic cleansing that led to the foundation of Israel, by demanding the return of all refugees to their historic homelands, by demanding democratic rights to all people living within historic Palestine. These are not utopian demands, but basic, simple rights that all people should enjoy, and many have fought and died to achieve.