Is the Israeli Lobby Running Scared?
Or Killing a Chicken to Scare the Monkeys
By Robert Dreyfuss
TomDispatch
March 16, 2009
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175046/robert_dreyfuss_the_freeman_affair
Is the
force? Or is it, perhaps, running scared?
Judging by the outcome of the Charles W. ("Chas")
Freeman affair this week, it might seem as if the
Israeli lobby is fearsome indeed. Seen more broadly,
however, the controversy over Freeman could be the
Let's recap. On February 19th, Laura Rozen reported at
ForeignPolicy.com that Freeman had been selected by
Admiral Dennis Blair, the director of national
intelligence, to serve in a key post as chairman of the
National Intelligence Council (NIC). The NIC, the
official in-house think tank of the intelligence
community, takes input from 16 intelligence agencies
and produces what are called "national intelligence
estimates" on crucial topics of the day as guidance for
a stellar resumé: fluent in Mandarin Chinese, widely
experienced in Latin America, Asia, and
former
Gulf War, and an ex-assistant secretary of defense
during the Reagan administration.
A wry, outspoken iconoclast, Freeman had, however,
crossed one of
strong criticism of the U.S.-Israeli relationship. Over
the years, he had, in fact, honed a critique of
that was both eloquent and powerful. Hours after the
Foreign Policy story was posted, Steve Rosen, a former
official of the American
Committee (AIPAC), launched what would soon become a
veritable barrage of criticism of Freeman on his right-wing blog.
Rosen himself has already been indicted by the
Department of Justice in an espionage scandal over the
transfer of classified information to outside parties
involving a colleague at AIPAC, a former official in
Donald Rumsfeld's Pentagon, and an official at the
Israeli embassy. His blog, Obama Mideast Monitor, is
hosted by the
Pipes, a hard-core, pro-Israeli rightist, whose Middle
East Quarterly is, in turn, edited by Michael Rubin of
the American Enterprise Institute. Over approximately
two weeks, Rosen would post 19 pieces on the Freeman story.
The essence of Rosen's criticism centered on the former
ambassador's strongly worded critique of
was no secret. Freeman had repeatedly denounced many of
relationship with
the Palestinians by the Israeli occupation shows no
sign of ending," said Freeman in 2007. "American
identification with
Rosen, and those who followed his lead, broadened their
attacks to make unfounded or exaggerated claims, taking
quotes and emails out of context, and accusing Freeman
of being a pro-Arab "lobbyist," of being too closely
identified with
about
paint the sober, conservative former
wild-eyed radical, an anti-Semite, and a pawn of the Saudi king.
From Rosen's blog, the anti-Freeman vitriol spread to
other right-wing, Zionist, and neoconservative blogs,
then to the websites of neocons mouthpieces like the
New Republic, Commentary, National Review, and the
Weekly Standard, which referred to Freeman as a "Saudi
puppet." From there, it would spread to the
and then to the op-ed pages of the Wall Street Journal,
where Gabriel Schoenfeld called Freeman a "
coddling
Jonathan Chait of the
Before long, staunch partisans for
Hill were getting into the act. These would, in the
end, include Representative Steve Israel and Senator
Charles Schumer, both
Republican House members led by John Boehner of Ohio,
the minority leader, and Eric Cantor of
Republican Whip; seven Republican members of the Senate
Select Committee on Intelligence; and, finally, Senator
Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, who engaged in a sharp
exchange with Admiral Blair about Freeman at a Senate hearing.
Though Blair strongly defended Freeman, the two men got
no support from an anxious White House, which took
(politely put) a hands-off approach. Seeing the writing
on the wall -- all over the wall, in fact -- Freeman
came to the conclusion that, even if he could withstand
the storm, his ability to do the job had, in effect,
already been torpedoed. Whatever output the National
Intelligence Council might produce under his
leadership, as Freeman told me in an interview, would
instantly be attacked. "Anything that it produced that
was politically controversial would immediately be
attributed to me as some sort of political deviant, and
be discredited," he said.
On March 10th, Freeman bowed out, but not with a
whimper. In a letter to friends and colleagues, he
launched a defiant, departing counterstrike that may,
in fact, have helped to change the very nature of
plumb the depths of dishonor and indecency and include
character assassination, selective misquotation, the
willful distortion of the record, the fabrication of
falsehoods, and an utter disregard for the truth,"
wrote Freeman. "The aim of this lobby is control of the
policy process through the exercise of a veto over the
appointment of people who dispute the wisdom of its views."
Freeman put it more metaphorically to me: "It was a
nice way of, as the Chinese say, killing a chicken to
scare the monkeys." By destroying his appointment,
Freeman claimed, the
other critics of
might seek jobs in the Obama administration.
On Triumphs, Hysterias, and Mobs
It remains to be seen just how many "monkeys" are
trembling. Certainly, the
triumph. Daniel Pipes, for instance, quickly praised
Rosen's role in bringing down Freeman:
"What you may not know is that Steven J. Rosen of the
attention to the problematic nature of Freeman's
appointment," wrote Pipes. "Within hours, the word was
out, and three weeks later Freeman has conceded defeat.
Only someone with Steve's stature and credibility could
have made this happen."
The Zionist Organization of
advocacy group that supports
Action Alerts to its membership, ringing further alarm
bells about Freeman as part of a campaign to mobilize
public opinion and Congress. Behind the scenes, AIPAC
quietly used its considerable clout, especially with
friends and allies in the media. And Chuck Schumer, who
had trotted over to the White House to talk to Rahm
Emanuel, President Obama's chief of staff, later said bluntly:
"Charles Freeman was the wrong guy for this position.
His statements against
severely out of step with the administration. I
repeatedly urged the White House to reject him, and I
am glad they did the right thing."
Numerous reporters, including Max Blumenthal at the
Daily Beast website and Spencer Ackerman of
Firedoglake, have effectively documented the role of
the
Freeman's appointment. From their accounts and others,
it seems clear that the lobby left its fingerprints all
over Freeman's National Intelligence Council corpse.
(Indeed, Time's Joe Klein described the attack on
Freeman as an "assassination," adding that the term
"lobby" doesn't do justice to the methods of the
various lobbying groups, individuals, and publications:
"He was the victim of a mob, not a lobby. The mob was
composed primarily of Jewish neoconservatives.")
On the other hand, the
hysterical editorial, decided to pretend that the
Israel lobby really doesn't exist, accusing Freeman
instead of sending out a "crackpot tirade." Huffed the
Post, "Mr. Freeman issued a two-page screed on Tuesday
in which he described himself as the victim of a
shadowy and sinister 'Lobby'... His statement was a
grotesque libel."
The Post's case might have been stronger, had it not,
just one day earlier, printed an editorial in which it
called on Attorney General Eric Holder to exonerate
Steve Rosen and drop the espionage case against him.
Entitled "Time to Call It Quits," the editorial said:
"The matter involves Steven J. Rosen and Keith
Weissman, two former officials for the American
Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC... A trial has been
scheduled for June in the
Eastern District of Virginia. Mr. Holder should pull
the plug on this prosecution long before then."
In his interview with me, Freeman noted the propensity
members of the
lobby's existence, even while taking credit for having
forced him out and simultaneously claiming that they
had nothing to do with it. "We're now at the ludicrous
stage where those who boasted of having done it and who
described how they did it are now denying that they did it," he said.
Running Scared
The
even as it has long carried on with its work, in
stealth as in the bright sunlight. In retrospect,
however, l'affaire Freeman may prove a game changer. It
has already sparked a new, more intense mainstream
focus on the lobby, one that far surpasses the flap
that began in March, 2006, over the publication of an
essay by John Mearsheimer and Steven Walt in the
Review of Books that was, in 2007, expanded into a
book, The
committed by Freeman, according to his critics, is that
an organization he headed, the
Council, published an early version of the Mearsheimer-
Walt thesis -- which argued that a powerful, pro-Israel
coalition exercises undue influence over American
policymakers -- in its journal.
In his blog at Foreign Policy, Walt reacted to
Freeman's decision to withdraw by writing:
"For all of you out there who may have questioned
whether there was a powerful '
admitted that it existed but didn't think it had much
influence, or who thought that the real problem was
some supposedly all-powerful 'Saudi lobby,' think again."
What the Freeman affair brought was unwanted, often
front-page attention to the lobby. Writers at countless
blogs and websites -- including yours truly, at the
Dreyfuss Report -- dissected or reported on the lobby's
assault on Freeman, including Daniel Luban and Jim Lobe
at Antiwar.com, Glenn Greenwald in his Salon.com
column, M.J. Rosenberg of the
Phil Weiss at Mondoweiss. Far more striking, however,
is that for the first time in memory, both the
Times and the
about the Freeman controversy that specifically used
the phrase "
and countercharges that followed upon Freeman's claim
that the lobby did him in.
This new attention to the lobby's work comes at a
critical moment, which is why the toppling of Freeman
might be its
As a start, right-wing partisans of
increasingly anxious about the direction that President
Obama intends to take when it comes to
toward
East generally. Despite the way, in the middle of the
presidential campaign last June, Obama recited a pro-
Israeli catechism in a speech at AIPAC's national
conference in
he will prove reliable on their policy concerns. Among
other things, they have long been suspicious of his
reputed openness to Palestinian points of view.
No less important, while the appointments of Hillary
his chief of staff were reassuring, other appointments
were far less so. They were, for instance, concerned by
several of Obama's campaign advisers -- and not only
Robert Malley of the International Crisis Group and
former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski,
who were quietly eased out of Obamaland early in 2008.
An additional source of worry was Daniel Shapiro and
Daniel Kurtzer, both Jewish, who served as Obama's top
Middle East aides during the campaign and were seen as
not sufficiently loyal to the causes favored by
hardline, right-wing types.
Since the election, many lobby members have viewed a
number of Obama's top appointments, including Shapiro,
who's taken the
Security Council, and Kurtzer, who's in line for a top
State Department job, with great unease. Take retired
Marine general and now National Security Advisor James
L. Jones, who, like Brzezinski, is seen as too
sympathetic to the Palestinian point of view and who
reputedly wrote a report last year highly critical of
Mitchell, the U.S. special envoy to the Middle East,
who is regarded by many pro-Israeli hawks as far too
level-headed and even-handed to be a good mediator; or,
to mention one more appointment, Samantha Power, author
of A Problem from Hell and now a National Security
Council official who has, in the past, made comments
sharply critical of
Of all of these figures, Freeman, because of his record
of blunt statements, was the most vulnerable. His
appointment looked like low-hanging fruit when it came
to launching a concerted, preemptive attack on the
administration. As it happens, however, this may prove
anything but a moment of strength for the lobby. After
all, the recent three-week Israeli assault on
already generated a barrage of headlines and television
images that made
little regard for Palestinian lives, including those of
women and children. According to polls taken in the
wake of
many in the Jewish community, have begun to exhibit
doubts about
public opinion has begun to tilt against
Perhaps most important of all,
run by an extremist, ultra right-wing government led by
Likud Party leader Bibi Netanyahu, and including the
even more extreme party of Avigdor Lieberman, as well
as a host of radical-right religious parties. It's an
ugly coalition that is guaranteed to clash with the
priorities of the Obama White House.
As a result, the arrival of the Netanyahu-Lieberman
government is also guaranteed to prove a crisis moment
for the
public-relations problem, akin to the one that faced ad
agency Hill & Knowlton during the decades in which it
had to defend Philip Morris, the hated cigarette
company that repeatedly denied the link between its
products and cancer. The
will be difficult to sell cartons of menthol smooth
Netanyahu-Lieberman 100s to American consumers.
Indeed, Freeman told me:
"The only thing I regret is that in my statement I
embraced the term '
lobby by, for, or about
decided I'm going to call it from now on the [Avigdor]
Lieberman lobby. It's the very right-wing Likud in
Lieberman is really the guy that they really agree with."
So here's the reality behind the Freeman debacle:
Already worried over Team Obama, suffering the after-
effects of the
with the Netanyahu-Lieberman problem, the
is undoubtedly running scared. They succeeded in
knocking off Freeman, but the true test of their
strength is yet to come.
Robert Dreyfuss is an independent investigative
journalist in
This article first appeared on Tomdispatch.com, a
weblog of the Nation Institute, which offers a steady
flow of alternate sources, news, and opinion from Tom
Engelhardt, long time editor in publishing, co-founder
of the American Empire Project, author of The End of
Victory Culture, and editor of The World According to
Tomdispatch:
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