When it comes to reporting the news, everyone wants to be seen as impartial. Ask someone what that means, however, and they’ll probably just offer you a synonym – unbiased, objective, neutral. But dig deeper into the meaning of impartiality and two things become clear. One is that you can be impartial in very different ways. The other is that when it comes to the quest to remain objective, most major media outlets are suffering from serious – arguably disabling – misconceptions as to how the news should be reported. As recent events have once again highlighted, the globally admired British Broadcasting Corporation is no exception.
There are two pro-Israel lobbies in America.
One is a modest group of think tanks, politicians and generally liberal media commentators who, though strongly supportive of Israel, are nevertheless extremely critical of its policies towards Palestine and of the opinion that these policies hurt not just the Palestinians but Israel itself. They support Israel in the true sense – looking after its objective interests rather than instinctively supporting the illogical mania of its politicians. They are not very powerful, nor are they that influential, especially in political circles.
The second group is the “pro-Israel” lobby, and if my use of quotation marks to distinguish them isn’t clear now, then I hope by the end of this post it will be. The “pro-Israel” lobby is a vast network that includes numerous political and public committees, right-wing media commentators and members of Congress – both Democratic and Republican. They believe in the literal sense of supporting Israel – in other words America must back Israel in everything it does, even if it does something that is not only bad for the peace process but harmful to its own interests as well. If Israel does it, it must be right – this is their logic. Anyone who dares to criticise Israel’s policies, no matter how reasonably, is labelled as an anti-zionist or, worse, anti-semitic. This is regardless of the source of the criticism – you may be an Ivy League professor and respected expert on the Middle East, but dare to challenge Israel policy and you’ll become the victim of a ferocious campaign to discredit and smear you. Being Jewish won’t save you from these modern day McCarthyites either : you’ll simply be dismissed as a self-hater. The “pro-Israel” lobby has a stranglehold on U.S. Middle East policy and prevents any meaningful debate of the issue, at least any debate that involves criticism of Israel itself. Indeed, genuine political criticism rarely survives the co-ordinated assault of lobbyists and powerful “pro-Israel” Congressmen. This point cannot be emphasised enough. It is almost impossible for even-handed critics of Israel to play a political role in America’s handling of the issue, so powerful is this lobby and the politicians who serve it. As far as America’s crucial role in the Middle East goes, it is therefore one of the greatest threats to the peace process.
All of the above has been correct for a long time. But it is particularly relevant right now, as a recent victory by these modern day McCarthyites has cast into doubt whether Barack Obama can really change the tone of America towards the Israel/Palestine issue and whether the U.S. can escape from the grip of the “Pro Israel” lobby in time to rescue any hopes of a successful peace process.
I am talking about the withdrawal of Charles Freeman from his appointment as chairman of the National Intelligence Council, an issue which the traditional media largely ignored but which has been analysed in admirable detail across the blogosphere (choice highlights: Glenn Greenwald’s detailed accounts here and here; Stephen Walt’s eloquent, expert take here and here)
