Author: Martin Kramer

Thank you, Senator Frist

On By Martin Kramer

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) gave a speech this past Sunday, and he said the following, which I am pleased to bring to the attention of my colleagues in Middle Eastern studies.

As many of you know, since the Cold War, the United States has funded university-based Area Studies Centers to train men and women who can serve in our defense and intelligence agencies.

But many Area Studies Centers, particularly those which deal with the Middle East, have become captive to narrow agendas: they propagate misleading or one-sided curricula for students and K-12 teachers, negatively portray Israel at every turn, and even bar military and intelligence agencies from advertising job openings.

I prize free academic debate and wide open discourse, but we must make sure that the Area Studies Centers carry out the role we created for them.

Which is why I’m supporting changes to the Higher Education Act that will ensure that these Centers fulfill their role to facilitate national security and foster global democracy.

Until now, Title VI reform didn’t have a champion in the Senate. Now it has one and they don’t come any bigger.

A powerful lobby

On By Martin Kramer

One of the nuttiest passages in “The Israel Lobby,” the co-production of professors Stephen Walt (Harvard) and John Mearsheimer (University of Chicago), occurs in the very first footnote. (It’s in the full version, on the website of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard.)

Indeed, the mere existence of the [pro-Israel] Lobby suggests that unconditional support for Israel is not in the American national interest. If it was, one would not need an organized special interest group to bring it about. But because Israel is a strategic and moral liability, it takes relentless political pressure to keep U.S. support intact.

Other commentators have pointed to the absurdity of this statement, since every conceivable special interest has a lobby in Washington, and they can’t all be working against the national interest. “By that standard,” writes Max Boot, “Social Security, the 2nd Amendment and Roe vs. Wade must not be ‘in the American national interest’ either, because they are all defended by even more powerful lobbies.” Caroline Glick hits even harder:

Every semi-sentient person with even an incidental knowledge of American politics knows that there is no area of human endeavor that is not represented by a lobby in the US. Walt and Mearsheimer’s asinine assertion means is that every American interest group–from the elderly to the insurance industry, from the Muslims to gun owners to organic food lovers–stands opposed to the American national interest simply by existing. Any professor who made a similar assertion about any other interest group would be imperiling his career.

You can be absolutely sure no professor will make that assertion about one of the most powerful lobbies in Washington: the higher education lobby.

Start with Harvard’s own Office of Federal Relations, conveniently described on its own website. There we learn the following: “Harvard’s federal relations teams in Cambridge and Washington, D.C. work to maintain a positive and ongoing relationship between Harvard and the Congressional and Executive branches of government.”

There you have it, Professor Walt! Evidence that federal support for Harvard is not in the American national interest! If it was, Harvard would not need federal relations “teams” operating out of Cambridge and Washington to bring it about. But because so many Harvard professors are intellectual and moral liabilities, it takes relentless political pressure to keep federal support intact.

Even if Harvard is sitting on a $26 billion endowment, and collecting tens of millions from Saudi princes, it still needs your money. But it’s not just Harvard. Every major research university, and lots of lesser ones, have offices of “government relations”–in-house lobbies that often keep branches in Washington. The downtown Washington office of the University of California, the largest, has a professional staff of twelve. Universities also contract K Street lobbyists when they need them. For example, the Chicago Tribune reported in January that the University of Chicago has hired the Federalist Group, a Washington lobbying firm, to help it win what is supposed to be a merit-based competition to manage the Argonne National Laboratory. The university is applying political pressure to preserve its established hold on the laboratory. What say you, Professor Mearsheimer?

Beyond the lobbying efforts of individual institutions, there’s an alphabet soup of about fifty Washington-based higher ed organizations, led by the mighty American Council on Education (ACE). “There’s a virtual armada of professional educational lobbyists who, more often than not, move in lock step to preserve the status quo,” the spokesman of the House education committee reports. The universities’ main game is to raise tuition faster than inflation, and then get the taxpayers to foot the bill through student aid, mostly in loans ($90 billion in federal money last year). According to the College Board, the overall tuition and fees at private four-year schools in the United States rose an average annual rate of 5.8 percent from 2001 to 2006. If you paid that, or graduated with a mountain of debt, thank the higher ed lobby.

What would happen if you ran the higher ed lobby against the pro-Israel lobby, in a battle of the titans? Walt and Mearsheimer criticize “the efforts Jewish groups have made to push Congress into establishing mechanisms to monitor what professors say. If they manage to get this passed, universities judged to have an anti-Israel bias would be denied federal funding. Their efforts have not yet succeeded, but they are an indication of the importance placed on controlling debate.”

That’s a lie. There is no Jewish-inspired mechanism being “pushed” on Congress that would monitor what professors say or punish anti-Israel bias. There is a Republican-led effort to get something back from area studies programs that suck subsidies out of Washington. I can testify, from first-hand knowledge, that most Jewish organizations haven’t and won’t go up to the Hill to support that effort. They’re not absolutely sure the reform will do anything for Israel, and they have an innate fear of confronting the higher ed lobby.

Why? First, the higher ed crowd will accuse you of McCarthyism on the slightest pretext, and Jewish organizations are super-sensitive to that. Second, within living memory, America’s great universities limited the access of Jews, so Jewish organizations don’t want to rock the boat. If any reform of these programs passes, it’ll be thanks to conservative Republican congressmen who are fed up with the way liberal-left academe stiffs them on area studies. They want to see some grads come out of these programs who really know difficult languages and are willing to sign on for national service. Benefit to America? Potentially immense. Benefit to Israel? Not obvious.

In conclusion: If we accept Walt and Mearsheimer’s claim that a lobby, by definition, works against the national interest, then this must be equally true of the Harvard lobby, the University of Chicago lobby, and the entire higher ed lobby, all of which work for them. There might even be some evidence for such a determination: tuitions rise everywhere and so do taxpayer subsidies, yet nonsense pervades the faculties of America’s greatest universities. Still, it would be foolish to argue that universities are conspiring against the rest of us. It’s just the American way. And if it weren’t for lobbies (and their cousins, think tanks), Washington would be a city short on ideas. We’d be left to rely on uneven if not shoddy “scholarship” that’s dogmatic, one-dimensional and simplistic. “The Israel Lobby” is a case in point.

Power will not moderate Hamas

On By Martin Kramer

This op-ed appeared in the March 27, 2006 edition of Bitterlemons.org, a website that presents Israeli and Palestinian viewpoints on prominent issues of concern. It ran alongside three other op-eds on the new Hamas government, by Hisham Ahmed, Yossi Alpher, and Ghassan Khatib.

The election of Hamas has prompted an epidemic of self-induced amnesia among pundits who interpret Palestinian politics. For years they argued that Israel should do everything to bolster Yasser Arafat, and later Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen), lest Hamas gain ground. Hamas would grow if Israel did not make far-reaching concessions, thus destroying any prospect of a negotiated peace.

But now that Hamas has assumed power, these very same pundits ooze reassurances that Hamas is a partner for Israel after all. True, it has yet to recognize Israel, renounce violence, or dismantle its clandestine “military wing.” True, it declares openly that it will do none of those things. But this is mere rhetoric, insist the pundits. Now that Hamas is in power, it will have no choice but to accept Israel de facto.

The problem with this interpretation is not that it ignores the past history of Hamas. The problem is that Hamas acquired power too easily. It has never sat in opposition, joined a larger coalition, or acquired the habit of compromise.

Hamas entered parliament with an absolute majority in its first election. It has achieved, in 20 years, what the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt has not achieved in 80 years. Turkey’s Islamists, regarded as the model of Islamist moderation, came to power only after decades of up-and-down parliamentary politics.

Hamas, in contrast, has never experienced any period of across-the-board suppression. Leaders of the movement were targeted by Israel, and some of its activists did time in Israeli prisons or were forced into exile. But Hamas has been largely free to organize, publish, acquire arms and launch attacks.

Islamist movements have been domesticated in strong states, where they have learned to interact with more powerful forces. But in the West Bank and Gaza, Arafat preferred struggle to state-building. Hamas accepted his nominal status as figurehead of the Palestinian cause, in return for almost complete freedom to do as it pleased.

Not only has Hamas assumed power on its first try. It has done so with its militia, its guns and its ideology intact. Its speedy and sweeping ascent has simply validated its past militancy.

Now, late in the game, the United States, Israel and Europe seek to extract from Hamas those gestures of acquiescence Hamas would not make when it was weaker. It is no surprise that Hamas evades them. Like Hizballah, it believes itself to have forced an Israeli retreat. It won a decisive electoral victory without parallel in the Arab world. And Hamas is convinced it enjoys the sympathy of millions of Arabs and Muslims, prepared to extend unconditional moral and financial support. Why should it bend?

Hamas will devote its rule to achieving three goals. First, it will seek to consolidate its grip over the institutions of the Palestinian quasi-state, at the expense of Fateh. Second, it will move gradually to Islamize Palestinian life. (Hamas will meet less resistance than secular observers think. Last year, a poll showed that two-thirds of Palestinians believe Islamic law should be the sole source of legislation.) Third, it will write its own “roadmap” in Palestinian consciousness, leading away from a two-state solution. For that purpose, Hamas will make the media and the schools into extensions of the mosques.

Hamas might continue the tahdiya, the informal “hold-your-fire,” if Israel executes more unilateral withdrawals. But this process will slow or stop somewhere well short of the green line. Then, if not earlier, Hamas is liable to open space for “resistance”— terror which, to its mind, is the only language Israel understands.

The Hamas concept of victory through “resistance” not only delegitimizes Israel’s peace with Egypt and Jordan. It undercuts the United States, which trades on its reputation as the only force that can deliver Israeli concessions. Israel, the US, Egypt and Jordan thus have a vital interest in seeing Hamas fail. So too does Europe, which has invested heavily in Palestinian civil society.

To make Hamas fail, the Palestinian electorate must be made to realize that, tough as life has been, Hamas is making it worse. If Hamas is allowed to feed the Palestinians both bread and illusions, the bread will sustain the illusions. Only a regime of targeted economic sanctions can break the cycle.

Palestinian pollsters tell us that Palestinian opinion largely favors negotiation with Israel. Hamas thus needs the illusion of a “peace process” created by desultory contacts with foreign governments and mediators. If Hamas is to fail, it must be denied any legitimacy for which it refuses to pay a price. That requires an effective diplomatic blockade.

Will Hamas evolve? History shows that Islamist movements change only when confronted with strong counter-forces. Hamas has never faced such forces; it must be made to face them now. Power will not moderate Hamas. The prospect of losing it just might.