Anti-Semitic Hubris

QUESTIONER: I am Richard Whalen. I'm a writer, and I'm working on a book that's looking at the preliminaries to World War II, when we last had a debate about whether we should go to war before we were thrust into war. I want to congratulate you on reintroducing some of the fundamental issues and questions that have to be addressed before you go to war in a democratic society. And you have particularly focused on the forbidden subject of whether the United States has any limits with the spoiled child of Western civilization, the state of Israel, which insists upon having its own way, to the extent we must read the Israeli press on the Internet and read [the Israeli newspaper] Haaretz so that we see real criticism of a policy that has gone too far. Now, you have taken some criticism for your approach. I'd like to hear what you feel about this subject.

SCHEUER: I always have thought that there's nothing too dangerous to talk about in America, that there shouldn't be anything. And it happens that Israel is the one thing that seems to be too dangerous to talk about. And I wrote in my book that I congratulate them. It's probably the most successful covert action program in the history of man to control--the important political debate in a country of 270 million people is an extraordinary accomplishment. I wish our clandestine service could do as well. The point I would make--the point I try to make basically in the book is we just cannot--we can no longer afford to be seen as the dog that's led by the tail. I've tried to be very clear in saying we have an alliance with the Israelis. We have a moral obligation to try to work through this issue, if we can. But I don't think we can afford to be led around, or at least appear to be led around by them. And I certainly, as an American, find it unbearable to think there's something in this country you can't talk about. That's really my spiel I guess on that, sir.

LEMANN: Gary?

SCHEUER: It was interesting to see the sheet suggested ways to review "Imperial Hubris" that came out from AIPAC [the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee]. [Laughter]

QUESTIONER: I'm curious--Gary Rosen from Commentary magazine. If you could just elaborate a little bit on the clandestine ways in which Israel and presumably Jews have managed to so control debate over this fundamental foreign policy question.

UNKNOWN: All you have to do is look at this landscape of American politics and see how many people who have raised this issue of the Israeli relationship.

SCHEUER: Well, the clandestine aspect is that, clearly, the ability to influence the Congress--that's a clandestine activity, a covert activity. You know to some extent, the idea that the Holocaust Museum here in our country is another great ability to somehow make people feel guilty about being the people who did the most to try to end the Holocaust. I find--I just find the whole debate in the United States unbearably restricted with the inability to factually discuss what goes on between our two countries.

QUESTIONER: [Inaudible] Teitelbaum [inaudible] Agency in Hamburg, Germany. Listening to you it sounds as if there is some kind--some sort of Jewish conspiracy about American policy. Can you just tell me in your mind how the Jews make it?

SCHEUER: Are what?

QUESTIONER: How the Jews do it? How do they do it?

SCHEUER: How do they do it?

QUESTIONER: Exactly.

SCHEUER: Well, mostly through abuse in the media. If someone says anything negative about Israel. We do it to ourselves in some way. [Inaudible]

Well, you know, the idea of the Jewish conspiracy is in your mouth, not mine. What I did was compliment Israel on its ability to control debate in the United States. I don't quite know how they do it, but clearly the reaction of most of our media, electronic and print, to anyone who says, "Geez, you know, maybe the Israelis shouldn't have the lead on all these things," is generally negative.

Surely there can be no other historical example of a faraway, theocracy-in-all-but-name of only six million people that ultimately controls the extent and even the occurrence of an important portion of political discourse and national security debate in a country of 270-plus million people that prides itself on religious toleration, separation of church and state, and freedom of speech. In a nation that long ago rejected an established church as inimical to democratic society, Washington yearly pumps more than three billion taxpayer dollars into a nation that defiantly proclaims itself "the Jewish state" and a democracy--claims hard to reconcile with its treatment of Muslims in Israel, its limitations on political choice for those in the occupied territories, and the eternal exile it has enforced on those camped in the refugee diaspora across the Levant. [emphasis added]