A response to Richard Cohen

According to Richard Cohen of the Washington Post, I have "for some time been carrying on a running dialogue with almost anyone to make the point that supporting Israel is not in America’s best interest." His characterization of my views is false, and it suggests that Cohen hasn’t read me very carefully. To demonstrate the point, what would Cohen make of the following statements from our book, assertions that my co-author and I have repeated in public on numerous occasions?

• "We do not call for abandoning the U.S. commitment to Israel-indeed, we explicitly endorse coming to Israel’s aid if its survival were ever in jeopardy." (p. 18).

• "As we have noted repeatedly, there is a strong moral case for supporting Israel’s existence, and we believe the United States should remain committed to coming to Israel’s aid if its survival were in jeopardy." (p. 338).

• "In effect, the United States should give Israel a choice: end its self-defeating occupation of the West Bank and Gaza and remains a close U.S. ally, or remain a colonial power on its own." (p. 344).

• "It is time for the United States to treat Israel not as a special case but as a normal state, and to deal with it much as it deals with any other country." (p. 341).

Reasonable people can disagree about the wisdom of each of these statements, but the first two should make it clear I have no problem with the United States "supporting Israel." The last two statements reveal the critical distinction that Cohen has missed. It is the difference between strong support for Israel’s existence, on the one hand, and the unconditional support that AIPAC et al encourage, on the other. It is the difference between a "special relationship" that pretends the two states always have identical interests, and a normal relationship that acknowledges that sometimes those interests will diverge.

In short, I argue that providing Israel with generous economic, military and diplomatic support no matter what it does is not in America’s strategic interest, because it makes us complicit in the illegal effort to colonize the West Bank and it helps fuel anti-Americanism and extremism throughout the Arab and Islamic world. It also means we are tacitly supporting repressive and discriminatory actions that are contrary to U.S. values. Cohen believes "shared values" are the real reason the United States should back Israel, but he admits that uprooting olive trees on Palestinian lands isn’t what America really stands for. I might add that unconditional U.S. support has also encouraged Israel to continue policies that may be jeopardizing the long-term future of the Jewish state, and I suspect Cohen might agree. Indeed, the United States would have been a far better friend to Israel had it used its considerable influence to curb some of Israel’s worst excesses.

Bottom line: I favor the United States "supporting Israel" when it acts in ways that are consistent with U.S. interests and values. But the United States ought to distance itself when Israel acts otherwise, and use its leverage to try to get Israel to change its behavior in those cases. In other words, we should treat it the same way we would treat any other democracy. Is that really such a controversial notion?