Mearsheimer and Walt waste no time in getting to their thesis. In the preface we are told that the material and diplomatic support that the United States has given to Israel in amounts that increase with each decade

[cannot] be explained on either strategic or moral grounds. Instead it [is] due largely to the political power of the Israel lobby, a loose coalition of individuals and groups that seeks to influence American foreign policy in ways that will benefit Israel. … The activities of this lobby have led directly to the ill-fated invasion of Iraq, and the ongoing confrontation with Syria and Iran … [and other policies that are] not in the U.S. national interest and [are] in fact harmful to Israel's long-term interests as well.

In the introduction, Mearsheimer and Walt tell the story of how their earliest effort to put their thesis forth as an essay in a major journal was stifled by the lobby, which caused a great cry of "anti-Semitism" to go up across the land—precisely the same experience, they say, that Jimmy Carter had with his Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid (reviewed in Books & Culture, January/February 2007). Such attempts to muzzle dissent seemed to justify fleshing out the article into the formidable volume that we consider here: 400 pages of argument ballasted by 100 pages of notes. And somehow, despite the long reach of Israel's partisans, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy enjoyed a run on the bestseller list.

A key to the Israel lobby's hold on our minds, say Mearsheimer and Walt, is the tireless promotion of the fallacy that the Muslim world hates Israel because it hates us and our civilization. Mearsheimer and Walt won't have any of this: Israel's behavior, they explain, is the cause of Muslim rage against the United States. Why this should be so is never explained; certainly, Mearsheimer and Walt never argue with it. That the Muslims hate the Jews is simply stated as an immutable truth.

Take the case of Osama bin Laden. "The young Bin Laden was for the most part gentle and well behaved," according to Osama Bin Laden's mother (and who should know better?); and even "in his teenage years he was the same nice kid." What turned Bin Laden into the household name that he is today was "anger at the United States for backing Israel so strongly."

Mearsheimer and Walt mock the notion that the terrorists who have Israeli citizens in their sights have any quarrel against us except that which follows from our pro-Israel policies. If we could get that notion out of our heads, we could see in a different light the geopolitical realities of the region. For example: "It would not be a strategic disaster for the United States if some of these states in this region were eventually to acquire WMD despite our best efforts. Instead, U.S. concerns about Saddam's WMD programs or Iran's current nuclear ambitions derived largely from the threat they are said to pose to Israel." Likewise, the lobby has persuaded the American public that Palestinian suicide bombers are a threat to the United States because somehow connected to the terrorists who attacked America on September 11, 2001. In fact, however, "in contrast to al-Qaeda," the terrorist organizations that threaten Israel (such as Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Hezbollah) do not attack the United States and do not pose a mortal threat to America's core security interests." The bottom line is that Israel is not a strategic asset for the United States, nor is there is a compelling moral rationale for favoring Israel. A better strategic case and an equally persuasive moral case (properly understood) can be made for supporting Saudi Arabia.

Mearsheimer and Walt reiterate at intervals that, of course, they recognize Israel's right to exist. They do remind us, however, that Israel came into existence only because the world swallowed Zionist lies about their intention to live in peace, side-by-side with the local populations. And by deliberately averting its gaze from the truth, we are told, every American administration since 1948 has enabled Israel's oppression of its neighbors. Every one of the contests that Israel describes as a series of struggles for the very right to exist was in fact started or provoked by Israel, knowing that it had overwhelming advantages. Indeed, Israel would have pushed on to the liquidation of its enemies had American presidents and secretaries of state not, at a moment of their choosing, not Israel's, discovered some strategic advantage in making Israel stop short of that goal.

It is true of course that the population of the Yishuv when the mandate ended was only about 650,000, while the Arab population of the Mandate was 1.2 million; and it is true that at the same time the total population of all the Arab neighbors who declared war on Israel amounted to 30 million, and that the disparity in numbers and landmass and in sheer numbers of soldiers and other military available to fight has widened since. But the larger consideration is this: "The Arab states have been remarkably ineffective at translating these latent resources into actual military power, while Israel, by contrast, has been especially good at this." Does the thought of incompetence occur? Mearsheimer and Walt would not disagree. The Arabs couldn't do what the Israelis could do, and thus the contest was unfair. And yes, in 1948 and again in 1967 and again in 1973, "there is no question that some Arab leaders talked about 'driving the Israelis into the Sea' … but this was largely rhetoric designed to appease their publics."

Indeed, "with the possible exception of Iran, it is hard to make the case today that Israel's neighbors are bent on destroying it." Mind you, that intention is what Israel's enemies are constantly proclaiming. But they should all be ignored—Ahmadinejad, the Hamas leaders, the Hezbollah leaders, Assad, and the lot—because "they do not have the capability to pose a mortal danger." Really, "Israel's survival is not in doubt, even if some Islamic extremists harbor unrealistic hope. Iranian President Ahmadinejad says that 'Israel should vanish from the page of time' "—a thought which "is often mistranslated as a call for Israel's physical destruction"—but no sophisticated observers take this silliness seriously.

Mearsheimer and Walt take pains to disassociate themselves from conspiracy theorists, and they are by-and-large justified to do so. The Israel lobby, they insist rightly, "is the antithesis of a cabal or conspiracy; it operates out in the open and proudly advocates its own clout." Its strength, the reason for its blockbuster effect in U.S. policy-making, is that it stands upon the nearly unanimous political support of democratically elected politicians in Congress and in the Executive. Here all people of good will would agree. There does not need to be a plot. The overwhelming pro-Israel disposition exists among the candidates and among the politicians because it exists among the public. Mearsheimer and Walt believe that this state of affairs is both foolish and immoral.

The refreshing aspect of Mearsheimer and Walt's approach is that it draws our thoughts to the massive popular support for Israel and should inspire us to inquire after its meaning. The authors themselves make no effort to examine the deeper causes of this massive popular support—except for a brief examination of the Christian Zionist phenomenon, which they see as a bizarre theological enthusiasm, founded in something called premillenialism or dispensationalism or something like that, which somehow has got itself attached parasitically upon an alien host, an ethnic-interest bloc.

The preachers who hold forth at officially funded mosques in the Palestinian Authority, and in Israel itself, on the Temple Mount, and whose words go out daily throughout the Palestinian Authority on its official television channels, have an answer to why the world hates Israel: "Because there are none who love the Jews on the face of the earth: not man, not rock, and not tree, everything hates them. They destroy everything, they destroy the trees and destroy the houses. Everything wants vengeance on the Jews, on these pigs on the face of the earth, and the day of our victory, Allah willing, will come." [1] The existence of this mindset is never noted in the present book.

Nothing is left to defend Israel with if you accept all these proofs of cheating and malice that mark Israel's march to power and the Palestinians' descent into perennial, limitless victimhood. An honest conclusion must be: Israel delenda est. If that thought does not occur to you as you read every other page, then you are not paying attention. In the concluding chapter we are told:

Although we believe that America should support Israel's existence, Israel's existence is ultimately not of strategic importance to the United States. In the event that Israel was conquered … neither America's territorial integrity, its military power, its economic prosperity, nor its core political values would be jeopardized.

 The logic is irresistible, even if Mearsheimer and Walt choose not to follow it to its consummation. If Israel's existence is the preeminent cause of all the unhappiness in the Muslim world, and if it is America's support of Israel which alone keeps Israel alive, America should use its super power to win back the goodwill of the world by taking up the cause that is closest to the whole world's heart—the liquidation of Israel.

Paul C. Merkley is the author of American Presidents, Religion, and Israel (Praeger).

1. From a collection of Friday sermons carried by official Palestinian television, which can be heard at the website of Palestine Media Watch, www.pmw.org.il

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