Jim Antle has written a smart, balanced post on Israel and Palestine, and I agree with a lot of what he has said.  To the extent that I think there is any conflict between being paleo and being pro-Israel, it is in the degree to which being pro-Israel entails support for the United States enabling an ally to continue to pursue policies that seem unjust, plainly detrimental to its long-term welfare in the region and also harmful to America’s reputation and interests elsewhere in the region.  More to the point, I think it should be a general rule for paleos and for anyone who wants to adhere to the advice in Washington’s Farewell Address about passionate attachments to other countries to not align oneself as pro-this or that country.  It would make no more sense if the United States had a decidedly pro-Syrian or pro-Iranian bias when it came to making policy in the region.  One of the things that would help the entire debate over policy towards Israel and Israeli policies would be to stop speaking of the opposing perspectives as pro- and anti-Israel or pro- and anti-Palestinian, when one of the problems here as elsewhere is the impulse to align our government’s policies too closely with one side or another in a foreign conflict.  It is pretty much inevitable that people are going to have some sentimental attachments to different nations, but these must be kept in check, which is why this language of being pro-this or anti-that is not helping at all.

Philip Klein expresses his reservations about some critics of Israel.  I’d like to add a few remarks to clarify my views on all of this.  For the reasons stated above, I would not call myself pro-Israel, nor would I call myself anti-Israel or pro-Palestinian.  In my view, their conflict is such a minor one and of such little relevance to the United States that I sometimes find it hard to believe that our government is as bogged down in it as it is.  Israel and America have common interests, but they are scarcely greater than those that we have in common with many friendly states, and the strategic value of the alliance seems to me to be much less than most Americans believe.  Over the long term, Israeli dependence on American aid and American backing is crippling and stunting its internal development and its pursuit of normal relations with all of its neighbours, which it will eventually have to establish.  States that Washington clutches to its bosom have a mixed record when it comes to their own prosperity and well-being.  I might call this is the “real” pro-Israel view, since I think it stands a chance of being much better for the people who actually live in Israel, but as I just said I am not interested in how pro-Israel a policy is, but whether it makes sense for America.  The relationship in its current form doesn’t seem to do very much for America.  Then again, Washington is in the habit of maintaining all sorts of essentially permanent alliances that have long since ceased to serve any useful function (see NATO), but which we don’t end for reasons of inertia, institutional vested interests, and misguided ambitions and fears.  There are, or should be, no permanent alliances, only permanent interests, and it should not be nearly so controversial to say that the interests of our two states are diverging and that it is a mistake to keep pretending that they are extremely similar. 

Klein concludes:

I fear that the pushback by Israel’s critics is slowly but surely creating an environment in which anti-Semitic views are becoming acceptable as long as they are framed within a discussion of Israel and are said to arise from sympathy for the plight of the Palestinians.

This fear seems to me to be misplaced, at least when it comes to the debate in the United States, for a couple of reasons.  First of all, the stigma against anti-Semitic views is as strong today as it has ever been.  These views are not becoming more acceptable; they are not sneaking in under the radar.  No one of any consequence tolerates such views, and essentially every public critic of the U.S.-Israel relationship and Israeli policies makes a point of stating up front that he repudiates and condemns anti-Semitism.  Unless, of course, one insists on labeling anything remotely critical of the influence of “pro-Israel” groups and individuals as anti-Semitic or reminiscent of the ideas of Henry Ford, in which case it will appear as if anti-Semitic views are becoming more acceptable because perfectly reasonable and mainstream views are being classified as anti-Semitic.  This has to do much more with reading in old tropes into arguments that have an entirely different purpose and different context than it does with critical arguments employing old tropes.  When utterly mainstream figures are denounced with some vehemence for alleged anti-Semitism, whether we are speaking of Mearsheimer and Walt or McPeak, people begin to tune out the accusation because it is so clearly being used as a political bludgeon and nothing more.  None of those men even claims to be “anti-Israel,” yet they have now been frequently attacked as anti-Semites, and it has reached such a pass that conventionally pro-Israel politicians receive no credit for the positions they actually take and are treated as suspects who need to justify themselves if they once made the “mistake” of speaking of Palestinian suffering when other people were around.  When the position of the utterly pro-Israel Barack Obama can be seriously doubted, despite taking every conventional view that is expected of national politicians (as a matter of record, he holds literally the same policy views as George Bush with respect to Israel), the search for “anti-Israel” Americans has clearly spun out of control.  In theory, all of that could make people much less likely to take notice of actual anti-Semitism when it does appear, because we have heard voices crying, “Wolf!” so many times for so long that a lot of people have stopped paying attention.  I would submit that if anything is creating an environment in which anti-Semitism can flourish, it is the overuse of the charge and the rather obvious uses of the charge for intra-party or partisan political ends.   

P.S. Klein also wrote:

Today, the argument is that wealthy Jewish donors from New York City influence politicians in both parties, and no politician is willing to challenge them on Israel.

But to the extent that this is part of the argument today at all, it is actually a very, very small part of the argument.  That isn’t the argument of The Israel Lobby, and that isn’t really the argument that McPeak was making, either.  The quote from McPeak that caused such a stir was clumsy and imprecise at worst, which didn’t stop people from attacking him for being “bigoted,” for which there is no evidence whatever.  Of course, there are some of these donors in New York City, which Wesley Clark once had the misfortune to mention in public, thereby ensuring the demise of his already long-shot presidential campaign, but the broader observation that it is political suicide to go against voters all over the country who have strong feelings about Israel, many of them Christians, is so right that it would be unremarkable to say it if we did indeed have “an open and honest debate about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”  Obviously, it is true that politicians dare not challenge the status quo on Israel, and a number of interest groups have a lot to do with that.  Yet routinely “pro-Israel” voices react with horror when someone notes the broad institutional support current policy has and the power that “pro-Israel” groups and individuals wield in keeping that policy in place.  Rarely do people react with such outrage at the observation that their preferred position is institutionally well-entrenched and supported by a broad political consensus.  It’s almost as if they know how flimsy the rationale for the policy is and are afraid that it will evaporate if anyone looks at it too closely.