This is 50 minutes worth of education on just what Middle East politics is all about for America: it is all about Israel and the worst agents of Israel, the right wing Likud. The completion of the colonization of Palestine, the siege of Gaza, attacking Iran, and maintaining a terrorist-victim conception of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is what Israeli propaganda is and the Israel Lobby are all about today.
For many years now the American foreign policy has been characterized by the strong tie between the United States and Israel. Does the United States in fact keep Israel on its feet? And how long will it continue to do so?
Is one allowed to question that reality, or is the pro-Israel lobby so strong, financially and politically, that the relationship with Israel is taboo and therefore unmentionable? And what happens to those who dare expose the unmentionable
In March 2006 the American political scientists John Mearsheimer (University of Chicago) and Steve Walt (Harvard) published the controversial article ‘The Israel Lobby and US foreign policy’. In it they state that it is not, or no longer, expedient for the US to support and protect present-day Israel. Together with the power shifts in Congress and the increasing doubts about the current Middle-East policy, this could become the fuse in the powder keg. Backlight talks to the people concerned in this ‘new realism’ debate.
The documentary sheds light on both parties involved in the discussion: those who wish to maintain the strong tie between the US and Israel (Neocon Richard Perle, televangelist John Hagee, and lobby organization AIPAC), and those who were critical of it and not infrequently became ‘victims’ of the lobby. Member of Congress Earl Hilliard from Alabama advocated a rapprochement with the Arab world and was promptly ousted by a political adversary who had the support of Aipac money. Historian Tony Judt, who tried to maintain that Israel was becoming a belligerent and intolerant ethno-state, driven by religion, found a lecture cancelled at the last minute. And Human Rights Watch director Kenneth Roth was personally attacked after he had criticised the violence Israel had used in the mini-war against Lebanon last summer.
Finally the question arises to what extend the pro-Israel lobby ultimately determines the military and political importance of Israel itself. Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson (Colin Powell’s ex chief-of-staff) explains how the lobby’s influence affects the decision-making structure in the White House. The lobby, Congress, the White House and Israel itself seem to have ended up in a suffocating embrace: will it ever change and how could it? Tony Judt and Richard Perle conclude by raising the crucial matters: what is the alternative? And what other friends can Israel count on?
Has policy changed since Obama was elected to office? I would guess that we will have to wait and see. The recent experiences of the Gaza Freedom March and the Viva Palestina convoy in Egypt, however, does not augur well. The Lobby is still an insurmountable force in the White House..