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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
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[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.
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