NATIV Online        

Vol. 10 / June 2007 / Sivan 5767                          A JOURNAL OF POLITICS AND THE ARTS

 

Understanding the “Official Mind” of Whitehall and the State Department – The Necessity for Israel

 Christopher Barder

“If bias is a collection of small things coming together like mosaic tiles to form one big picture, taking down bias is a matter of small victories.”1

 I

Introduction: A Western Mindset which Needs to Change

Any attempt at successful diplomacy and foreign policy, not to mention hasbara, must rest on a well- informed grasp of the ways of thinking and operating of friend and foe alike. The more significant the player, the more important becomes an accurate reading of his motives and intentions, of his means and ends, of his understanding and objectives, and modus operandi. It is not, of course, that these are monolithic or, indeed, that they do not involve internal debate or varied nuances, within the policymaking forums of the democratic West. Nor is it the case that countries “think” like individuals. Nonetheless, governments do speak through spokesmen and actions and they therefore reveal something, which may usefully be referred to as an “official mind”, however much this may be a metaphor for more complex processes.

Of course, so-called intellectual history is often perceived to be a discipline somewhat isolated from the realities behind diplomacy. However, very frequently, it provides essential keys by which to interpret and explain the relationships which result from diplomatic and intelligence contacts. The thought-worlds of officials spin off into the agreed advice given to governments. These depths need to be fathomed and revealed. Furthermore, it is difficult for public opinion in the West to advance beyond the “expert” and so “informed” slants which are conveyed by the media.

The simplest thing involving Israel can become an international incident: for example, on June 21, 2006, Ghana’s foreign minister apologized for a footballer John Pentstil’s waving of the Israeli flag at the football World Cup, saying it had no official support and should not be allowed to harm ties with Arab countries. Some Ghanaian embassies in the Arab world received death threats after the incident. Foreign Minister Nana Akufo-Addo said that he had conveyed the government’s apologies to the Arab world and the international community. The issue is, further, why the Arab world should need appeasing merely because a footballer, who has played football in Israel and celebrates the fact, should cause large-scale offense. The answer is a stark reminder of the degree of absolute failure of the “peace” process.

The media frenzy against Israel itself exhibits deep traits of irrationality and of what Professor Wistrich has famously exposed as “the longest hatred”. As Michael Oren has put it with reference to the Gaza beach deaths,

Indeed, many world leaders and virtually all of the press hastened to condemn Israel for allegedly firing a shell onto a Gaza beach that killed eight Palestinians. That the IDF denied firing the shell and that the Palestinians destroyed exculpatory evidence by gouging shrapnel from the victims’ limbs could not repair the damage to Israel’s image.²

It is not a matter of evidence or principles of natural justice when it comes to Israel. Therefore the associated phenomena need to be tackled on a more far-reaching and deeper level than Israel and its supporters have so far managed.

Further symptoms are the irregular treatment of Israel in the UN – which includes a unique ban from holding a seat in the Security Council as part of the international revolving system and the long and sordid struggle for Red Cross recognition. Where Israel is concerned there simply have never been consistent honest brokers in high places. Ernest Bevin, renowned for his negotiating skills and the most beloved Foreign Secretary in his department, in the post 1945 history of the Foreign Office, is a figure of dislike in the history of Zionism.³

Israel’s experts are truly up against a wall of incomprehension with deep roots and whose foundations they must understand in order to be effective. They will otherwise never quite comprehend the degree of inculcated antipathy towards Israel’s case and right to defend itself – and so, ultimately, towards its right to exist. The interpretation of intelligence and of advice, by experts or ministers (the contrast is deliberate) is colored by undercurrents and forces, which require elaboration and analysis at the deepest levels.

The mood that stalks the corridors of power, Lord Chalfont’s “Laurentian Arabism” in the British Foreign Office for example,⁴ needs effective and serious think-tank and university level argument against it, for the sake of rational debate and, for Israel, as a matter of necessity. For purposes of reasoned appraisal and for a fair hearing of Israel’s legitimate arguments, there has to be a shattering of the near monopoly of Middle East Studies by Muslims and, very sadly, rational and determined assertion from Israeli academics explaining in their work, the centrality of Islamic attitudes towards Israel (the “Little Satan”) and the core issues of the conflict the Muslim world has with Israel and with the West, especially the USA, the “Great Satan”. However, for Israel to have interlocutors, there must be a grasp of why a dialogue of the deaf prevails and has been so pronounced. The West needs to understand and recognize that oil requirements and arms dealing may serve to blind them to their own best interests, as may other deeper attitudes and outlooks, as appear to have been exposed in the literature on Eurabia, particularly, although not only, in the work of Bat Ye’or. The cultural slide of Europe must be challenged at the highest echelons where those who formulate and influence policy can hear a weight of evidence and argument reasoned at the highest academic level. This is the role of Israel’s intellectuals and intelligence analysts and those in the Diaspora who support them and participate in the realm of ideas and policy analysis. Anti-Semitism itself needs constant challenge and exposure, so that the liberal conscience cannot ignore it and grows sick over its revelation (as in the case against Holocaust denial).

In seeking to explore what this “official mind” might be and how it has been formed, and to delineate something of its ways of reasoning and attitudes, concerning issues in the Middle East, particularly the Arab-Israel conflict, this paper can do no more than scratch the surface, suggest avenues for further enquiry and highlight markers on the way. It is endeavoring to demonstrate how much lies below the surface of public policy to try and explain and understand why and how the opinions holding sway, relating to Israel, are as they are. That is, how the mindset and prism through which events are interpreted and perceived, is formed. A more thorough exposition must await further work.⁵

It is the main thrust of this paper that Israel needs to influence not simply the political and elected masters, with whom there are high-level meetings, but their servants who supply them with the tools of analysis and the warped insights. This means penetration of the universities and interlocutors among the mandarins and think-tanks and interaction with the professionals in the corridors of power.

 

II

Western Analysis Needs Israeli Insights

Public Arab statements in French or English seldom carry weight within the Arab world, which receives quite different messages in Arabic. And yet, few in the West are told – barring experts of course – what the real message was. It might change public perceptions and/or impact government policy. Hamas has learnt the Arafat lesson well.

Hamas has learned the Lessons of Doublespeak. Hamas understands the rewards of Doublespeak. Hamas knows that even though the United States and Europe knew that Arafat was delivering double messages, they felt uncomfortable saying “no” to him in the face of his fancy words. Hamas knows that the United States and Europe want to avoid direct clashes and conflict and so, they choose the path of self-delusion and respond to what they know to be messages meant for their diplomatic ears only and promises never meant to be carried out and fulfilled.

Furthermore,

Today, this method [of doublespeak and taqiyya] is used in the heart of the Western democracies, not due to fear of exposure, but in order to continue the secret advance [towards defined goals] without worrying anyone. Thus, a body such as The Union of Islamic Organizations in France can harshly condemn suicide operations, while the Fatwa Council of the same organization simultaneously issues a clear fatwa legitimizing these operations.⁶

In fact Israel understands the doublespeak; Western officials do not (witness C. David Welch, the US Undersecretary of State for Near East Affairs trying to encourage the US and Israel to give money to the Palestinians). Exposure needs to penetrate at the highest levels.

What may be of some surprise to many is that September 11 has not made much difference and the cardinal issue of Islam and the roots of Islamic terror are still thoroughly and comprehensively misunderstood in the USA and more especially perhaps, in Europe and the UK. There is neither common cause with Israel nor grasp of its plight as the front line against Islamism and world-wide global jihad. An example was that of Michael Doran, a promising former Princeton professor who, after venturing to suggest, in Foreign Affairs and elsewhere, that the Arabs – rather than Israel, not the United States – bore primary responsibility for their malaise, was publicly excoriated and never granted tenure. “Indeed, it seems the only real disputation among scholars today is over which is the more sinister, Zionism or US imperialism.”⁷ Admiral Stansfield Turner has demonstrated “our failure to understand Islamic fundamentalism sufficiently to anticipate the fall of the Shah of Iran hurt the CIA’s reputation badly.”⁸ He then goes on to list further serious failures, including the fall of the Soviet Union. Nor is this all. “Intelligence performance simply cannot be separated from foreign policymaking and military operations.”⁹

Importantly, the point is that Israel could supply abundant insights to transform the nuances, lack of realism and overall grasp of Western analysis, especially as “The United States has always had miserable counterintelligence capabilities.”¹⁰ Until the withdrawals from South Lebanon and Gaza – and hopefully still – Israel was capable of superlative monitoring and a depth of analysis from which a wide variety of networks should be able to benefit; and, ideally from which, were the world less unjust, ideally, Israel should be able to reap a genuine reward.¹¹

Top level Islam experts and government personnel miscalculate and fail to understand Islamism. For instance, Dennis Ross is supremely the optimist and seems willing to believe selected opinion polls to support his optimism, which proves ill-founded in reality.¹² The issue is to challenge such understanding in order to help modify the policy creation, which stems from it.

 

III

The Role of Intelligence Communities: An Opportunity Israel Must Not Squander

Efraim Halevy has observed:

In the current global circumstances, the role of intelligence gathering and analysis in policymaking has become increasingly important. As a result, intelligence leaders have ever more influence in the policymaking process...Intelligence officers are uniquely positioned to effectively advise political leaders on policy...Given the increasing importance of intelligence officers in policymaking, governments must insure that their intelligence offers are recruited from the best and the brightest. It is critical that intelligence officers enjoy the support of the greater public – not just the confidence of the president or the powers that be...

And in relation to the popularity of Saddam Hussein in the Arab world, he has concluded “The importance of leadership to a nation is a key element within the Muslim world that cannot be ignored. Too little weight is given to the fears and reservations of people in the region on matters of such consequence. The West has erred in this respect.”¹³ Here, from Israel, is a most fitting example of the kind of role Israel can play in supplying a corrective to the prevailing mindset in the “expert” communities in the West – exactly what this paper is advocating.

Aarons and Loftus have stressed the high proportion of history which is effectively “secret history”. “In the underworld below, one-third of modern history is still classified.”¹⁴ What happens behind the scenes is both different to, and creates different layers of explanation from, what is seen on the outside. The attitudes inculcated in corridors of power are not those which voters in democracies necessarily hear through their media and government statements. To reapply the previous analogy, governments speak, but not always what they think. What they think may more closely relate to their “education” than to what they say, just as their actions may stem from what they truly want, more than from what they say they believe. One former CIA agent put it this way. “It’s pure hypocrisy. In public, Israel is our ally. What the public doesn’t know is that all Western nations have covert policies to side with the Arabs. It keeps the intelligence community busy. Screwing Jews is what I did for a living.”¹⁵

There is a structural change of which Israelis may be aware.

Traditionally diplomats and Foreign Ministries have seen themselves as the experts on weighing up foreign states and their policies and intentions, using “secret intelligence” as an input on the margins; now diplomatic reports are sometimes seen as just one source of material for intelligence evaluation. In previous times diplomats were expected to predict overseas coups; now Western surprise at overseas events is quoted as intelligence failure.¹⁶

This means Israeli expertise and understanding can in a sense by-pass some of the stiffer diplomatic formalities and perhaps State Department and Whitehall “professionals” can be taught, in the current climate of fear, to hear Israel’s reasoning afresh. For example there are moves afoot to create greater clarity in the parliamentary oversight of Britain’s intelligence establishment, and greater openness. This may mean awareness of and openness to, Israel’s and its friends’ insights, not least in the fight against Islamism and terror, even if careful work building up contacts and communication channels is painstaking and time consuming.¹⁷

The origins of the CIA merit study in their own right. Institutions have a habit of developing “closed shop” identities and an ethos, which reflects prevalent value structures and traditions. These have been traced in some detail and by no means in a flattering and reassuring manner.¹⁸ Similarly analysis of the Anglo-American establishment before the state of Israel was formed has shown that its congruent aims might have been one thing but its methods could be horribly flawed and conspiratorial, due to “...their tendency to fall back on standardized social reactions and verbal clichés in a crisis, their tendency to place power and influence into hands chosen by friendship rather than merit, their oblivion to the consequences of their actions...”¹⁹

A 2001 Independent Task Force Report, on the State Department, made a number of points clear.²⁰ “Congress recognizes that our nation’s foreign policy apparatus is broken and needs to be fixed” but this will gain no Congressional funding until the administration regards reform as a top national security priority and such resources for reform action would have a revitalizing effect on a number of State Department functions. What is important is whether at such a time of renewal Israel can start to change mindsets – for example the way in which official neutrality is non-existent behind closed doors in relation to Israeli political parties.²¹

There is a mounting body of evidence in the media and from “insiders” that the CIA is not only in need of reform but has been over the past few years, falling apart. In terms of the Middle East this fits with Martin Kramer’s now famous expose of US Middle East Studies Centers and their far-reaching failures. The CIA is indeed central in advising and analyzing. But it suffers from serious defects, details of which lack of space forbids here.²² The significance is that its views on Israel, Islam and terrorism cannot be trusted on an institutional level. The same may very likely be true of British intelligence and of the State Department and Whitehall nexus, as well. More than anything else, the significance of this for Israeli and allied viewpoints must not be overlooked when remedy for faulty grasp must stem from more informed opinion, in the hope, and as a result of, the necessity of shifting the core and paradigms of opinion. (This is parallel with, and analogous to, those who recognize the need to wean the West away from its oil dependency). Many scholars agree it is essential on many levels to diminish US oil import dependency on the Middle East – it is an area which has the capacity to free administrations from leaning favorably towards Arab civil rights abusive regimes and their hatred of Israel. “Every time we fill up our cars, we transfer a greater part of our personal and national wealth to questionable governments.”²³

Sir Reginald Hibbert has sketched how the pull exerted by the Joint Intelligence Committee has disturbed the previous authority of the British Foreign Office and Treasury. “There is now an invisible force exercising a certain pull on these great bodies... [it] is exerted by the joint intelligence and assessment machinery in the Cabinet Office.”²⁴ What Michael Herman asserts is that the same may be said even more forcibly concerning the relative influence of the CIA vis-à-vis the State Department. It is now one of government’s “regular windows on the world”.²⁵ Yet as a window it is subject to all sorts of dangerous and profound failings.

Indeed, the line between diplomat and intelligence officer has not always been clear-cut...diplomatic reports on the political situation in the host country can be important inputs to any political analysis. A diplomat who has good access to major political figures in a country or sophisticated appreciation of a country’s history and political makeup should be able to provide insights into the internal political situation that would not be found in the media.²⁶

 

IV

The Need to Break the Mindset Mold

The point is principally this: that diplomats and intelligence officers work within a framework in their creation of data and analysis of it. This is what governments receive from them – what they are trained to deliver and also what they think their careers and their political masters will find most agreeable in terms of policy justification. It is not really very easy to have a career “in opposition” to the norms. Continuity from Minister to Minister is what is stressed.²⁷ and the consistent framework needs confrontation with pro Israel academic expertise, a highly sophisticated diplomatic and intellectual offensive based on a deep understanding of how and why the West has come to think the way it does.

One primary contributing cause of this “mindset” for British training, in the past, was very possibly the training center, used by other countries but run by Britain and located near Beirut, at Shemlan: the Middle East Center for Arab Studies (MECAS). For security reasons, this was moved from Jerusalem where it was founded (1944) to Lebanon in 1947! Israel’s supporters felt that the institution had such a molding effect on its trainees that Foreign Secretary James Callaghan (during the Labour Government of 1974-1976) ruled that all Foreign Office graduates of the facility would have to visit Israel, soon after their graduation “to see [the] other side of the hill”. Such was the suspicion concerning this “mafia of Arabists” and its pro-Arab bias.²⁸ The work of MECAS has been enormously influential right up until very recently and amply illustrates the possibility of an institutional, corporate grasp of ideas which shared training may induce and that sympathetic understanding of one another’s views shared by a whole group of “experts”. About 1000 students learnt Arabic and about 2000 attended the Background Courses. Between 1966 and 1997 103 British ambassadorial appointments in the Arab world were MECAS graduates (some serving in more than one post). In the Kuwait crisis (190-1991), every ambassador in an involved Arab country was a Shemlan graduate. In 1997 the three senior officers in the FCO (Permanent Under Secretary, Political Director and the Chief Clerk), the head of the SIS (MI6) and the Director General of the Middle East Association were all ex MECAS. So were the British ambassadors in 12 Arab countries, the US ambassador in Damascus, and the Japanese ambassadors in Cairo and Kuwait. Many other distinguished people passed through this village, “famous throughout the world”. Interestingly, perhaps tellingly, 20 out of 36 Arabic teachers were Palestinian and 16 Lebanese. The graduates learnt not only the language and hospitality of that culture but also Arab tradition and life.²⁹ One wonders whether there was a comparable sense of enculturation when there were the visits to Israel.

There is a history of an innate attitude among diplomats and Foreign Ministers in Britain.³⁰

Often forgotten is that Israel is a vital ally of Great Britain and that Britain’s present strategic interests in the Middle East hang, very much as they did in 1956, on cooperation with the Jewish state.

Sadly, even that may not be enough to dislodge almost a century of antipathy to both Israel and Jews in the British Foreign Office. All of which might provide convincing evidence that anti-Semitism has an after-life that no level of geopolitical reality will ever completely erode.

A few illustrations of the working attitudes of officials must suffice.

Following the Munich Olympics massacre, a senior British diplomat (consul-general in Jerusalem, Gayford Woodrow), urged his government to take a soft line with the Palestinians and understand their “normal human failings”, He maintained,

The Palestinians in particular have seen their land taken away from them by a group of mainly European invaders equipped with superior armed force and modern technology. Whatever one’s moral criticism, it must be agreed that the Munich operation was well planned and that the Arabs there carried it out to the bitter end...

His departmental head, James Craig, wrote on the letter “Not bad but he goes just a little too far.”³¹

Former British ambassador to Israel, Sherard Cowper-Coles, unusual for having learnt Hebrew, explained away the London invitation to Bashir al Assad and spoke of times when terrorism was justified, which he then glossed in terms of legitimacy for attacks on military formations (citing partisan attacks on Nazis).³² The problem was that of seeming to excuse as acceptable levels of Arab hatred and violence which officials ill-understand. A classic example was Cherie Blair’s comments on suicide bombers only volunteering for such missions because they have no hope, which was fully supported by the then Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook, who thought Tony Blair had a sympathy for Israel and did not identify with the “consistent repression of the Palestinian people”!³³

It has been well said of Israeli government policy that “The conventional wisdom has been to consider issues immediately related to national security and the acquisition of arms to be of the highest priority and foreign policy – which includes information policy – to be of secondary importance.” How this needs reversing has been well put together in a carefully reasoned, historically informed, paper by Dr. Joel Fishman.³⁴ What is revealed in this present paper is intended to sharpen grasp of what kinds of target audience should be aimed at. Indeed, Dr. Fishman entirely correctly asserts “...the American contribution to the suppression of relevant information must be addressed.”

The CIA also remains a major employer of newly minted social scientists and PhDs, [sic] at least for the moment. Doctoral candidates in relevant fields learn early on where the jobs can be found. Sympathetic professors, who might once have enjoyed an institute of their own, now often have to make do with consulting projects and incentives for recommending promising recruits.³⁵

It is not difficult to imagine that a consistent consensus prevails within institutions where findings are generally along the lines of what is expected. Their conclusions derive from not only a form of tradition, but also from a common educational background among the personnel. Examples need not be rehashed ad nauseam, but the task required of hasbara must not be under-rated in this media age, as has been the case so often with Israeli governments in the past.

Britain and America work in the context of the EU, which aspires to becoming a great power and it views seriously its financial and political commitments to the Palestinian Authority and state in the making.³⁶ US policy makers allow EU ambitions to push them forward in order that they not have their influence outstripped. Britain is spurred on to spearhead a Europe where France and Britain may have to be bold in order to maintain a level of leadership over Germany in military and foreign affairs. Within the EU, a kind of bureaucratic orthodoxy has adhered to the Venice Declaration and an apparently overtly pro Palestinian position. Again, suppression of the truth has been a hallmark.

In this example, the dogged determination to maintain an institutional line has been particularly clear in the stance taken by Christopher Patten over PA corruption and EU funds being used for terrorism.

European Foreign Affairs Commissioner Chris Patten has turned down a leading European legislator who wants an investigation into alleged illegal use of EU aid to the Palestinian Authority. In response to a question by Charles Tanner, Conservative foreign affairs spokesman in the European Parliament, about charges that European aid to the Palestinians currently running at 10 million euros a month is being diverted to fund terrorist activity, Patten said he wants the issue investigated “like a hole in the head”.³⁷

(This, after the Al Aqsa Martyrs, an offshoot of Fatah, claimed responsibility for an attack on Kibbutz Metzer). The Commission also resisted, further demonstrating lack of accountability and openness. The refusal to investigate is very serious and shows a lack of deference to both justice and sound politics. As Mr. Tanner put it “aggrieved Israelis will feel entitled to sue the EU.” It is this deep cultural bias that Oriana Fallaci has famously and powerfully exposed – a deep flaw in the prevalent political culture in Europe.

Daniel Pipes has suggested for the USA that a number of influences are brought to bear, not merely the idiosyncrasies of the President or the Secretary of State.³⁸ For example, the administrations of Truman, Johnson, and Reagan exemplified the situation when the President chose not to be involved actively, and the influence of the bureaucracy, Congress, and interest groups would increase. Pipes suggests “the bias of Foreign Service Officers against Israel does more than delay or accelerate decisions; it dominates a secretary of state like William Rogers who enters office inexperienced in foreign affairs and without developed views on the Arabs and Israel...as Steven Emerson demonstrated in his investigation of petrodollar influence in Washington, The American House of Saud, business interests can shape US policy in the Middle East. An example was the passage of the AWACS package in 1981, a decision fraught with potential effects on warfare between the Arabs and Israel.”

This is all crucial for an understanding of how policy is created, and for targeting and seeking to reeducate, the personnel sources from which it derives. Again, Pipes provides useful insight into this complex but penetrable process and series of human interactions. “The fact that the Arab-Israel conflict falls outside the conservative/liberal debate enhances the importance of bureaucrats and interest groups. Since the political parties lack personnel trained in Middle East affairs, more key positions are held by bureaucrats, who exert more influence. Interest groups also gain, for the usual ideological stands and coalitions do not apply to the Middle East.”

Insofar as the Presidential elite derive their ideas from outside, and also have to respond to new realities “on the ground”, they are dependent on those who provide them with analysis and explanation. “Busy officials do very little original thinking; they derive their goals and their principles from sources outside government.” Here the think-tank personnel, lobbyists and university-educated elites battle for the hearts and minds of the political and administrative echelons.

It is unclear as yet to what degree pressure from the pro-Israel lobby may affect US policy.³⁹ In Britain, the whole process is far more closed and the views of mandarins and politicians, and their interaction together, have to be studied minutely in order to elucidate where each stands, and they seem to have a harmony of interest and outlook. This has been referred to as a “loop”.⁴⁰ Margaret Thatcher felt so aware of the dominance of Whitehall in advising ministers that she appointed her own advisers, deliberately choosing those who might counter this influence, such as Professor Sir Alan Walters in economics and Charles Powell and Sir Alfred Sherman in foreign policy. Tony Blair has some 70 “special advisers” as some sort of independent corps. Such is the perceived power of Whitehall’s analysis.

Illustrating what Aarons and Loftus found in their research, Bruce Brill, a former Middle East analyst for the US National Security Agency, has written a celebrated account of what happened in the US intelligence community at the time of the Yom Kippur War and the double-speak which occurred:

It doesn’t take great imagination to conclude that somehow the intelligence manipulation took place inside cells within the Agency that are off-limits to Jews, even those possessing the highest clearances, simply because they are Jews... In effect, there is no reason not to assume that the likes of the secretive Skull & Bones, a respectable white-shirt- and-tie crowd that sees no evil in working toward Israel’s demise, are not untouchably imbedded in the inner workings of the US intelligence community.⁴¹

It should not be forgotten that this kind of withholding is precisely what Jonathan Pollard said was happening and which he has declared prompted his actions in exposing Iraq’s threat potential which morally, and in terms of cooperative agreement, the USA was supposed to pass on to Israel.⁴²

Bruce Brill continues:

The existence of such cells, off limits to a particular minority (or minorities), flies in the face of the US Constitution’s Bill of Rights...[and] That the results of their operation have put and continue to put the innocent citizens of a publicly declared friend in jeopardy should be indictable under the Judgments of Nuremberg.⁴³

As has been suggested, there is a very close British parallel to what Bruce Brill recounts here, in terms of the education of analysts:

Among the Arabic linguists there was anti-Israel prejudice brought along from the 47 intensive weeks of Arabic language training at the Defense Language Institute (DLI). All instructors at DLI were native speakers and much time was allotted to culture of the target nation. With six hours daily of in-class study, this naturally allowed the instructors ample opportunity to inundate the student with their perspectives on history, religion and politics.

 

VI

Working to Change Understanding Through Points of Contact

Israel has therefore to change its “friends’” perspectives in a number of far-reaching ways. It has to become a major cultural interpreter and media agent between the Arab world and the West by the way it informs and teaches the Western advisers and academics of the future (and the present), if this can be achieved, by whatever means. The points of contact have to be stepped up in number and quality.

Daniel Pipes’ Campus Watch a web site details pervasive anti-American and anti-Israeli sentiments on college campuses throughout the United States. It is there that a major part of the battleground exists for Israel. It is not simply a matter of student protest and militancy, but of the battle of ideas for the minds of the future advisers to the political and military elites. Pipes has observed “If you don’t subscribe to those points of view, [pro Palestinian and left wing] you don’t have a legitimate voice.”⁴⁴ For example, the violent clashes between pro-Israeli and pro-Palestinian students at Concordia University (in Montreal) in September 2002 forced the cancellation of a speech by Benjamin Netanyahu, and acted as a precedent.

There is, importantly, another campus problem: the matter of the British academics’ boycott.

Such “soft” US/UK analysis of Islam has caused a storm in Europe, as evidenced by the impact of Oriana Fallaci’s books, whilst it is also at the heart of the debate engendered by Martin Kramer’s informed appraisal of Middle East Studies in the USA. He stresses the absolute failures of Middle East Studies Centers and the academics in them, by listing these grand-scale failures. By this expose, he has caused a furor.⁴⁵ Journalists, think-tank assessors and ex-government officials have been far more accurate than the academics. In calling for two sources for change Kramer omits the role of Israeli realists – whose expertise is required in a multi-level way. It is not just a matter of Professor Kramer’s senior American scholars rethinking or of the federal government and university alumni using their funding powers with wisdom and insight – it is a matter of the scholars and insights Israel, uniquely, can provide when the search for understanding, as now, permits and requires fresh and informed appraisal and analysis.

The alternative is to leave the Arabists of both the USA and UK,⁴⁶ uniquely perhaps able to outflank the French and Germans, still steeped in their prevalent outlooks and practices, inadequately challenged and embroiled in trying to win friends and influence in the hostile Arab world and not seeing that their own frontiers are on Israel’s northern border, on the Golan and along the Gaza Strip, their outposts the very “settlements” they vilify, their defenders on the frontline the “settlers” they call fanatics and wish to see removed. For by their warped attitudes, embodied in Europe by Eurabia and in the USA by other forms of incomprehension and misapprehension, they encourage their own enemies and murderers, even as they do those of the Israelis.

Evelyn Gordon got to the heart of an aspect of this when she wrote of the Jewish right to Yesha: “At this late date, reversing the international perception of Israel as a thief rather than a legitimate claimant will be a Herculean task. But unless Israel makes the effort, it will increasingly be treated as a criminal rather than a seeker of peace.”⁴⁷ The contacts have to be made and then the case, both, expertly.

 

Endnotes

1	Stephanie Gutmann, The Other War: Israelis, Palestinians and the Struggle for Media Supremacy, Encounter Books, 2005, p. 257. This is a hugely valuable analysis.
2	Michael Oren, “Stop Terror at its Source”, The Wall Street Journal, June 26, 2006.
3	Anthony Seldon, The Foreign Office: An Illustrated History of the Place and its People, Harper Collins Illustrated, 2000.
4	See Shmuel Katz, Battleground Fact and Fantasy in Palestine, Updated Steimatsky Edition, 1985, pp. 198-199, especially.
5	I hope to provide this in a forthcoming book under a similar title to this article.
6	The quotations are from Micah Halpern, “Mastering Doublespeak”, Frontpage Magazine, March 2, 2006 at <http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=21466>; A. Dankowitz, “Tariq Ramadan – Reformist or Islamist?”, MEMRI, Inquiry and Analysis Series – No. 266, February 17, 2006, at <http://memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=archives&Area=ia&ID=IA26606>.
7	Michael B. Oren, “Quiet Riot – Tinfoil Hats in Harvard Yard”, New Republic, April 10, 2006.
8	Admiral Stansfield Turner, Burn Before Reading, Hyperion, 2005, p. 258.
9	The remark is made in the context of a whole case for far-reaching reform by .former NSA director William E Odom in Fixing Intelligence for a more Secure America, Yale University Press, 2003, p. 186.
10	Ibid. p. xxx.
11	An example might be the important concept of, and thorough treatment of themes such as the democratic ethical dilemmas in dealing with terrorism, explored in, Boaz Ganor, The Counter-Terrorism Puzzle A Guide for Decision Makers, The Interdisciplinary Center for Herzliya Projects, Transaction Publishers, 2005. This book derives from the author’s doctoral thesis.
12	Dennis Ross, The Missing Peace: The Inside Story of the Fight for Middle East Peace, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2004, pp. 790-791, for examples.
13	These passages come from the account of Eric Trager, the rapporteur of Efraim Halevy’s “Understanding the Middle East: A View from Inside the Mossad”, Special Policy Forum report, Analysis of Near East Policy from the Scholars and Associates of the Washington Institute, Policy Watch Number 1107, May 25, 2006.
14	John Loftus and Mark Aarons, The Secret War Against the Jews How Western Espionage Betrayed the Jewish People, St Martin’s Press, 1994, p. 2.
15	Ibid., p. 510.
16	Michael Herman, [an academic and former senior British intelligence officer], Intelligence Power in Peace and War, Royal Institute of International Affairs and Cambridge University Press, 1996, p. 34. Italics in the original.
17	John Morrison, “Watching over Our Spies Requires More Intelligence”, The Sunday Times, July 16, 2006, p. 5.
18	See, for example, Burton Hersh, The Old Boys: The American Elite and the Origins of the CIA, Tree Farm Books, 2002.
19	Carroll Quigley, The Anglo-American Establishment, GSG & Associates, 1981, p. xi.
20	Frank C. Carlucci, Chair, Ian J. Brezezinski, Project Coordinator, State Department Reform, cosponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations and the Center for Strategic and International Studies, 2001, p. 25.
21	Cf. Madeline Albright , Madam Secretary: A Memoir, Macmillan, 2003, p. 474.
22	See for example the Commission on the Roles and Capabilities of the United States Intelligence Community, set up October 14, 1994 and cf. Joint Inquiry into Intelligence Community Activities before and after the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001. Useful “insider” comments can be found for example in, Lindsay Moran, Blowing My Cover My Life as a CIA Spy, Berkley Books, 2005 and in Melissa Boyle Mahle, Denial and Deception: An Insider’s View of the CIA from Iran-Contra to 9/11, Nation Books, 2004.
23	Americans for Energy Independence President Chris Wolfe, responding to Professor Daniel M. Kammen and his colleagues at UC Berkeley’s Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory (RAEL) report “Towards Energy Independence in 2025”, at <http://www.csnews.com/csn/search/ article_display.jsp?schema=&vnu_content_id=1002611846>.
24	R. Hibbert, [a retired British diplomat], “Intelligence and Policy”, Intelligence and National Security, Volume 5, Number 1, January 1990, p. 117, cited in Herman, p. 35. John Morrison (above) was writing about the Intelligence and Security Committee.
25	Herman, ibid, p. 35.
26	Abram N. Shulsky and Gary J. Schmitt, Silent Warfare Understanding the World of Intelligence, 3rd. Edition, Brassey’s Inc., 2002, p. 37.
27	See for example Simon Jenkins and Anne Sloman, With Respect, Ambassador An Enquiry into the Foreign Office, BBC, 1985, passim.
28	For these comments see James Craig, “MECAS: An Overview”, The Arabists of Shemlan, Volume 1, MECAS Memoirs 1944-1978, Edited by Paul Tempest, Editorial Panel James Craig, Donald Maitland and Paul Tempest, Stacey International, 2006, p. 8. The following figures and quotation come from ibid., pp. 9-10
29	Ibid., p. 11.
30	Avi Davis, “The Hateful Legacy of the British Foreign Office”, Opinion, Arutz 7, January 12, 2003.