REVIEWS - Middle East Forum · Reviews / 87 REVIEWS The Arab Lobby: The Invisible Alliance That Undermines America’s Interests in the Middle East. By Mitchell Bard. New York: Harper,

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The Arab Lobby: The Invisible Alliance ThatUndermines America’s Interests in the MiddleEast. By Mitchell Bard. New York: Harper, 2010.432 pp. $27.99 ($14.99, paper).

An “Israel lobby” in the United States hasbeen the subject of at least eight books in re-cent years with the 2007 Israel Lobby and U.S.Foreign Policy1 by Harvard’s Stephen Walt andthe University of Chicago’s John Mearsheimerperhaps best known. Reminiscent in part of theProtocols of the Elders of Zion and other ex-amples of anti-Semitism, these books argue thatWestern, and especially U.S., foreign policy isat the mercy of this small but super-powerfullobby. While some, like Abraham Foxman andAlan Dershowitz, have attacked these works byexposing manipulated facts (and in some casesoutright lies), Bard, executive director of theAmerican-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise, offersanother, and perhaps more effective, approach.

Bard turns the tables on the conspiracy theo-rists and compellingly dissects the arguably morepowerful Arab lobby. He demonstrates convinc-ingly that an Arab lobby exists and is comprisedof two main clusters. Members of the first groupare agents of the oil exporting states of the GulfCooperation Council (GCC), especially SaudiArabia. They have powerful allies in the UnitedStates in the form of multinational oil companiesand exporters of defense industrial goods, along-side Arabists within the State Department.

The second group is composed of ethniclobbies of Arab and Muslim-Americans, in alli-ance with non-evangelical Christian groups andthe campus-based academic left. The first groupis interested mainly in energy policy and the

geopolitics of the Persian Gulf region, and, inthe case of the GCC, the export of Salafist ver-sions of Islam; the second group is focusedmainly on the Palestinian question.

In contradistinction to pro-Israel groups,the Arab lobby does not exist primarily to fosterclose relations between the United States andthe Arab world. More of its energy is expendedon vilifying and opposing Israel and striving toweaken the alliance between Jerusalem andWashington. While the Arab lobby has lots ofmoney, it garners little support from the Ameri-can people.

Despite repeated exertions, Americans ofArab origin have not rushed to join in a crusadeagainst Israel. More than half of all Arab Ameri-cans come from Lebanese and Syrian Christianbackgrounds, and many remember the damagedone to their coreligionists by extremist Arabnationalist and Muslim groups in their homecountries. While the major successes of the Arablobby have not, up until now, been on the Pales-tinian question, it has not been completely inef-fective. In areas such as energy policy, arms ex-ports, and the spread of Islam, there have beennotable successes.

Bard presents data never before assembledon all the elements of the Arab lobby. He leavesno doubt that, measured by level of effort, if notresults, the Arab lobby is equal, or superior to,anything done by the friends of Israel.

Steven RosenWashington Project

Cutting the Fuse: The Explosion of Global Sui-cide Terrorism and How to Stop It. By Robert A.Pape and James K. Feldman. Chicago: Univer-sity of Chicago Press, 2010. 349 pp. $30.

Ever since the attacks of 9/11, Westernscholars have struggled to understand what

Brief Reviews

1 Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007.

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motivates suicide terrorists to take their ownlives in paroxysms of violence against civilians.In Cutting the Fuse, University of Chicago po-litical scientist Pape and Feldman, formerly ofthe Air Force Institute of Technology, analyzenew data, extending Pape’s earlier research onsuicide terrorism in Dying to Win: The StrategicLogic of Suicide Terrorism.2 This enhanced dataset now includes the universe of suicide attacksfrom 1980 to 2009. According to the authors, theoriginal argument is robust and still stands.

Pape originally claimed that occupation isthe taproot of suicide terrorism. In the new book,the authors emphasize that since 2006, use ofthis tactic has spiked in Afghanistan and Paki-stan following U.S. interventions. Although theAfghan case supports Pape’s thesis, the notionthat Pakistan is occupied makes one wonderabout the authors’ grip on reality. Consequently,it is unclear why suicide attacks there have spiked

in recent years. More broadly, the explicit rejec-tion of a religious explanation in favor of a secu-lar, strategic logic does not hold, as Max Boothas convincingly demonstrated in The WeeklyStandard.3

The nature of this supposed strategic logicis also murkier here than in the first book. Nolonger does Pape claim that people turn to sui-cide terrorism because of its effectiveness incoercing government concessions. Rather, heand his coauthor acknowledge terrorism’s po-litical limitations: Groups such as al-Qaeda standno chance of achieving their expansive demandsto establish a caliphate.

This tension throughout the book raisesunresolved questions about the motives of sui-cide terrorists. Why would an al-Qaeda memberblow himself up to achieve nothing tangiblepolitically? And how is such costly behaviorstrategic in the absence of attaining any mean-ingful political concessions? To square thecircle, Pape and Feldman downplay governmentconcessions as the foremost objective of sui-cide terrorists, emphasizing instead their hatredtoward occupiers and the desire to make themsuffer, perhaps as an end in itself.

Such defensive, ad hoc shifts in reasoningand logic on the part of Pape and Feldman pointto evidence of a degenerating research effort.

Max AbrahmsJohns Hopkins University

Egypt: A Short History. By Robert L. Tignor.Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010. 363pp. $29.95.

Appearing just before the uprising thatoverthrew Husni Mubarak, Egypt: A Short His-tory offers a timely reminder of the wild vicissi-tudes and mass upheavals which have been in-tegral to Egypt’s history.

Tignor, emeritus history professor atPrinceton University, begins 5,000 years ago withEgypt’s Old Kingdom and ends with the last year

2 Random House, 2005.3 Max Boot, “Suicide by Bomb,” The Weekly Standard, Aug1, 2011.

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of Mubarak’s reign. The overview of Egypt’smany different epochs—pharaonic, Greco-Ro-man, Christian, medieval Islamic, European im-perialist, pan-Arab—offers a look at the totalityof Egypt’s history.

Because of this, otherwise important epochsreceive a few pages of bare bone summary; like-wise, the book follows traditional narratives andoffers few unique insights or controversial in-terpretations. Worse, Tignor’s history is marredby apologetics for Islam: suggesting that in thedecades preceding Pope Urban’s 1095 call forthe Crusades, “Christians [under Muslim rule]no longer lived in danger of their lives or theirlivelihoods,” is demonstrably false, as evincedby the Turkish advance into Anatolia followingthe Battle of Manzikert (1071) and the EgyptianFatimid caliph’s persecution of Christians anddesecration of the Church of the Sepulcher.

The book offers no footnotes, even for themany quotes, which frustrates the specialist. Incontrast, the general reader, for whom the bookis mainly geared, will benefit from the fast-paced,readable narrative.

One comes away from this broad sweep withthe insight that no civilization endures forever.Egypt experienced nearly three millennia of thepharaonic, nearly one millennium of the Greco-Roman, and 500 years of the Christian, so whyassume that Arabic/Muslim civilization, now1,400 years old, is the final and ultimate destinyof Egypt?

Raymond Ibrahim

Gaza: Morality, Law and Politics. Edited byRaimond Gaita. Crawley, Aus.: UWA Publishing,2010. 222 pp. $29.95.

After years of indiscriminate rocket attacks,Israel launched Operation Cast Lead in the GazaStrip in late 2008 and early 2009. While Israelmade its case for self-defense, the United Na-tions established a fact-finding mission in April2009 to investigate alleged violations of interna-tional law. The flawed report, issued under theauspices of South African jurist Richard Gold-stone, accused Israel of war crimes and possiblecrimes against humanity.

Gaita, professor of philosophy at Austra-

lian Catholic University and professor of moralphilosophy at King’s College London, assemblesthe generally feeble and rambling thoughts ofseven academics (none Middle East specialists)on this incident. With some exceptions, thescholars express disdain for Israel’s actions andtreat the Goldstone report as gospel.

Gaita himself argues stridently that the“case against Israel is serious and strong. Toomany reports from reliable sources concur.”Geoffrey Brahm Levey of the University of NewSouth Wales argues that both Hamas and Israelshould “be hauled before the International Crimi-nal Court to answer the charges.” He callsJerusalem’s actions “state terror” and alleges thatIsraeli “indifference” to civilian life “may havebeen deliberate.”

It might be too much to hope that Gaita,Levey, and the other contributors to this vol-ume would now question their own judgment.Goldstone does. In April 2010, the jurist wrote inThe Washington Post that he no longer believedIsrael had intentionally targeted civilians in

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Gaza.4 With one brief op-ed, Goldstone renderedhalf this book obsolete.

Another problem with Gaza: Morality, Lawand Politics is its overuse of academic jargon.For example, Mark Baker of Monash Universityexamines “Jewish and Palestinian nationalismfrom an ethnographic perspective” to “exposethe way Israel and Palestine have come to func-tion as cultural codes for a wider set of assump-tions and attitudes whose roots lie in the struc-tures of victim identities.” Then there is HilaryCharlesworthy, who applies feminist theories tothe conflict claiming “it is possible to have thebiological sex of a woman, but to adopt a mascu-line gender and vice versa … concepts of mas-culinity and femininity alter across time and cul-tures, but are typically defined as opposite toone another.” Such verbiage makes the book atough slog.

To be sure, there are some insights to glean.The University of Melbourne’s Gerry Simpsonpenned a thoughtful essay and rightly notes that“Israelis kill Palestinian civilians because this isthe only way to attack Palestinian fighters, andPalestinians kill Israeli civilians because this isthe only way to attack the Israeli state.”

Unfortunately, such clear-eyed analysis isin the minority in this book, rendering it unwor-thy of scholarly attention.

Jonathan SchanzerFoundation for Defense of Democracies

Inside Insurgency: Violence, Civilians, andRevolutionary Group Behavior. By ClaireMetelits. New York: New York University Press,2010. 242 pp. $70 ($23, paper).

Inside Insurgency addresses a questionimportant to both academics and policymakers:How does one explain the variation in the typesand level of victimization of civilian populationsby insurgent groups. Some groups brutalize thelocal population while others do not. Some in-surgent groups attack civilians but only someof the time.

Metelits, assistant professor of politicalscience at Washington State University, hasconducted extensive field research in Colombia,Iraq, Kenya, Sudan, and Turkey since 2001. Brav-ing insurgent hot-spots, she interviewed morethan a hundred insurgent leaders, military com-manders, government officials, and civilians. Herresearch focuses on three insurgent groups inparticular: the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK),the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia(FARC), and the Sudan People’s Liberation Army(SPLA). Although each organization has preyedon the local population, Metelits explores thevariations in their victimization of civilians. ThePKK targeted Turkish civilians for some timebefore moderating this practice. FARC evolvedin the opposite way, from protecting Colombiancivilians to killing, kidnapping, and extortingthem. The SPLA’s trajectory was akin to that ofFARC, committing widespread human-rightsviolations against the southern Sudanese peoplebefore winning over their allegiance.

Her explanation for this variation is intu-4 Richard Goldstone, “Reconsidering the Goldstone Report onIsrael and War Crimes,” The Washington Post, Apr. 1, 2010.

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itively plausible and well-argued. Metelits dem-onstrates empirically that the key explanatoryvariable is “active rivalry.” She writes: “Whenan insurgent group does not face competitionover resources, the level of violence is low. Incontrast, when an insurgent group faces com-petition—a threat to control of resources—thelevel of violence is likely to rise.” That is, whenan insurgent group faces competition from ei-ther state or non-state entities over strategic re-sources essential to organizational survival (e.g.food, guns, or money), violence against civilianpopulations can be expected to increase. Ac-cordingly then, insurgents can be viewed as “ra-tional” actors who tend to harm the populationin response to their own organizational concerns.

This scholarship dovetails with research onterrorist groups by Mia Bloom, Jonathan Schan-zer, and others who have shown that terrorgroups’ violence against civilians is sometimesa function of inter-organizational squabblesrather than broader, ideological reasons. Thisobservation has potential implications in the waron terrorism. Post-bin Laden, al-Qaeda affiliatedgroups are less unified than ever and may, there-fore, ramp up their violence against civilians ifthe Metelits thesis can be generalized to thiscritical case.

Max Abrahms

Militarism and Israeli Society. Edited by GabrielSheffer and Oren Barak. Bloomington and India-napolis: Indiana University Press, 2010. 386 pp.$70 ($26.95, paper).

This volume is a perfect illustration of howfar the tenured Left will go to suppress realdiversity and balance in academic discoursewhile misrepresenting one-sided advocacy asscholarship. Militarism and Israeli Society isa collection of articles that were presented at aconference sponsored by Israel’s semi-Marx-ist Van Leer Institute and edited by two He-brew University professors, Sheffer and Barak,noted for their vocal attacks on the Jewishstate.

Alongside these ideological biases is asloppy use of terminology at the heart of thebook. For the writers, the terms “militaristic” and

“having a large army” are generally used inter-changeably. Granted, Israel does have a siz-able military, understandable in the face of themultiple threats it continually faces. But the ab-sence of militarism (and the reality of civiliancontrol over the Israeli military) was dramati-cally illustrated in recent months when Israelicivilian politicians repeatedly considered andthen ruled out generals for the position of chiefof staff.5

Israel’s army interacts with other parts ofsociety in interesting ways. Military officers re-tire and often become politicians. Social network-ing is often based on one’s old army buddies.These would be interesting issues to analyze.But Militarism and Israeli Society has little in-terest in such things. With only a few excep-tions, the writers in the volume simply bash Is-rael rather than examine it seriously.

Thus a chapter by Kobi Michael opines at

5 Asia Times (Hong Kong), Feb. 11, 2011; Reuters, Feb. 13,2011.

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length (and with painful polysyllabic inventionslike “epistemic authority” or “Type A DiscourseSpace”) that civilian control over the Israelimilitary is weak without offering any evidencethat this is true. Yoram Peri complains that theIsraeli media is subservient to and coddles thearmy but never mentions the ideological Left’shegemony over most news outlets. A shrillchapter denouncing Israel’s security barrier byYuval Feinstein and Uri Ben-Eliezer dismissesthe initiative as a “Method of a New War” byIsrael against Palestinians; the authors nevermention that the fence was built to keep outterrorists or that it was constructed as a civil-ian project to protect both Jewish and Arabcitizens who were being blown up with tragicregularity. There has been debate as to howmuch the drop in terrorist atrocities in recentyears was due to the partial completion of thisfence. Perhaps the only chapters in the booknot seeking to grind an ideological axe are theones on Israel’s defense budget by Zalman F.Shiffer and one on the role of the religiouslyobservant in the military by Stuart A. Cohen.

The word “analysis” may be the mostoverused term, showing up on almost everypage of the book. Yet, there is virtually none tobe found in this collection of rhetoric posingas scholarship.

Steven PlautUniversity of Haifa

My Brother, My Enemy: America and the Battleof Ideas across the Islamic World. By PhilipSmucker. Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 2010.364 pp. $26.

My Brother, My Enemy, being true to itsnamesake, takes a fraternal, even emotional, ap-proach to understanding the conflict betweenthe United States and the Muslim world, basedon the author’s travels and interviews in theMiddle East

While Smucker, a foreign journalist for pub-lications including U.S. News and World Reportand Time, appears sincere in his search for peace-ful solutions, he is ultimately too ideologicallydriven for this book to have much value. All theclassic leftist bromides appear here: The notion

of an “Islamo-fascist” movement is “a mirage, afalse specter created out of our own fears”; withproper cooperation, Hamas might “morph intosomething far more peaceful in the future”; atwo-state solution will not only solve the Arab-Israeli conflict, it will destroy al-Qaeda and radi-calism; Fort Hood killer Nidel Hasan is misun-derstood and was primarily motivated by a senseof moral outrage.

Smucker’s biases are sometimes moresubtle: In a paragraph describing the worship ofJews, Christians, and Muslims in Jerusalem, thelast are portrayed straightforwardly while less-than-dignified depictions are reserved for Chris-tian pilgrims “huffing and perspiring fanatically”and Jews who “bob up and down” at the West-ern Wall. The author’s apologies for Islam leadhim amateurishly to quote and comment on theQur’an and Islamic history, portraying, for in-stance, Muslim-dominated Spain in the medievalera as nearly as tolerant as modern-day America.

Smucker appears to be motivated by noblesentiments: “Indeed, my work on My Brother,My Enemy has reaffirmed a basic principle I al-

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ways knew to be true: ‘Love your enemies, anddo good, and lend, expecting nothing in return;and your reward will be great and you will besons of the most high’ [Luke 6:35].” While suchcounsel may be noble for an individual’s con-science, it is disastrous as state policy.

In the end, Smucker’s “brotherly” advice isbeing preached to the wrong audience. Much ofthe Muslim world scoffs at the notion that theinfidel is a “brother” and sees him only as a mis-guided enemy. Surely it is in greater need of suchadvice than the West.

Raymond Ibrahim

Partition through Foreign Aggression. TheCase of Turkey in Cyprus. By William Mallinson.Minnesota Mediterranean and East EuropeanMonographs. No. 20 (Minneapolis: Universityof Minnesota, 2010). 126 pp. $30, paper.

While Hesiod identified Cyprus as the firsthome of the goddess Aphrodite, the island hasbeen inhabited by many who are not lovers. Al-ready a bone of contention between ancientGreeks and Persians, later Venetians and Otto-mans, Cyprus has maintained a strategic signifi-cance in the struggle between East and West,and therefore has attracted the attention of mod-ern powers, such as Britain, the United States,and, of course, Greece and Turkey.

Mallinson, a former British diplomat nowteaching history at a Greek university, has writ-ten a monograph lamenting the partition of Cy-prus as a largely unjust and cynical machinationof great power politics. At the same time, he ac-knowledges that the island is populated by twoethno-religious communities hardly in love witheach other—Greeks and Turks—but then pro-ceeds to ignore his own findings.

In an era where nationalism and religionstill play an important role in international poli-tics, it is foolhardy to assign blame simply tooutsiders who have sought to dominate the isle.For example, the author suggests that Cyprusshould be treated in a post-nationalist “Euro-pean spirit,” allowing for a reunification thatobfuscates the ethno-religious differences.While the jury is still out on the success of theEuropean project, ignoring the political potency

of these factors leads to a shallow understand-ing of politics everywhere, including Cyprus.

The disdain and aggressive tone through-out the monograph toward the realpolitik para-digm does not befit an academic work. Simi-larly, the contempt for social science theory isextremely problematic. The preaching tone, thesimplistic insistence on legality in the interna-tional system (despite the fact that use of forceis allowed by that system), an adoration of sucha morally bankrupt institution as the U.N., andnaive idealism turns the work into a polemicaltirade rather than a respectable, intellectualexercise.

The author makes a far-reaching claim thatpartitions in international relations are ineffec-tive and immoral. This particular crusade againstpartitions, advocating tacitly multi-ethnic states,lacks intellectual rigor and depth. The authorcould have marshaled better arguments had heread the rich literature on partitions.

Efraim InbarBegin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies

Bar-Ilan University

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The Third Choice: Islam, Dhimmitude, andFreedom. By Mark Durie. Melbourne, Aus.:Deror Books, 2010. 270 pp. $38 ($19.95 paper).

Durie, an Anglican pastor and an accom-plished scholar of issues involving Christianityand Islam, has produced a reasoned, compre-hensive, and well-written book that is particu-larly apt for readers lacking an extensive back-ground in Islam.

His title comes from the three choices thatthe classic religious texts of Islam offer “peoplesof the book”: Convert to Islam, perish by thesword, or accept a second-class status, whichmodern analysts call dhimmitude. This lastchoice renders Jews, Christians, and Zoroastri-ans subject to heavy social, legal, and economicdiscrimination enforced by the ruling Muslimsand implying a status of perpetual humiliation.

The book’s first half clarifies the theologi-cal underpinnings of dhimmitude. Durie debunkssome myths about Islam, such as the idea thatjihad does not mean war but rather spirituality.He discusses the concept of abrogation in the

Qur’an, used by Muslim exegetes to explain awayseeming contradictions within the text. Durieshows how the more conciliatory verses of theQur’an, quoted by contemporary Islamic apolo-gists to underscore the peaceful nature of Islam,were written earlier in Muhammad’s career whenhis position was tenuous. However, the moremilitant, less-forgiving phrases that traditionclaims were revealed to Muhammad in the win-ter of his life abrogate many of these earlierpeace-oriented verses.

Durie gives many examples of dhimmitude,both historical and contemporary, which clarifythe misery, fear, poverty, and degradation thatframed the world of the pre-modern dhimmi. Andwhat of dhimmitude today? Durie gives examplesof Islamic-driven discriminatory practices inMuslim states. He also explores the self-inflictedbehaviors in Western states, which mirrordhimmitude, that are driven by political correct-ness and fears of being labeled a bigot.

The Third Choice is a good first choice forthose concerned about dhimmitude today.

Mark SilinskyU.S. Department of the Army

A Vulcan’s Tale: How the Bush AdministrationMismanaged the Reconstruction of Afghani-stan. By Dov S. Zakheim. Washington, D.C.:Brookings Institution Press, 2011. 335 pp. $32.95.

The oft-repeated maxim attributed toGustave Flaubert, “God is in the details,” has avariant: “Governing is in the details,” asZakheim’s memoir, a firsthand postmortem ofthe Bush administration’s Afghanistan and Iraqpolicies, makes clear. The volume provides aninsider’s view not only on strategy but also onan underappreciated aspect of the history—the“practicalities of implementation.”

Zakheim was one of the first advisors in1998 to join the Bush campaign’s foreign policyteam, dubbed by Condoleezza Rice, the“Vulcans.” He joined other, better-known namesincluding Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz, tohelp brief Bush on international issues and thenmoved on to the Department of Defense afterthe election.

The author demonstrates that problems

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with postwar reconstruction efforts in Afghani-stan and Iraq resulted from factors incidental tothe Bush administration’s initial aversion to “na-tion-building.” He stresses another crucial rea-son for the mismanaged reconstruction initia-tives: mid-level bureaucratic disputes over ap-propriations between Congress, the DefenseDepartment, and the Office of Management andBudget.

In his capacities as the Pentagon’s comp-troller, chief financial officer, and coordinator forAfghan civilian reconstruction, Zakheim negoti-ated with coalition partners to raise and disbursefunds for the Afghanistan and Iraq missions.Describing these negotiations, Zakheim providesinsights into the unfortunate realities of dealingwith authoritarian Middle Eastern regimes. Not-withstanding the ostensible confluence of inter-est between these states and Washington, cor-ruption, haggling, secrecy, double-talk, and falsepromises were a fact of life.

Zakheim illustrates the point with numbers.After the first Afghan donors’ conference, forexample, the government of Saudi Arabia pledged$220 million but disbursed $27 million; Kuwaitdisbursed $2 million of its $30 million pledge; andQatar simply did not bother to follow up on its$12 million pledge. Zakheim’s failed 2003 nego-tiations with Syrian charge d’affaires, ImadMoustapha, over frozen Iraqi assets—the high-est-level Pentagon talks with Syria in years—reveal the futility of the Bush administration’sattempted rapprochement with Damascus.

Zakheim unintentionally reveals a majorshortcoming in the White House’s Afghanistanstrategy: By repeatedly defending the Bushrecord vis-à-vis Pakistani president PervezMusharraf, he highlights the administration’sinability to recognize and deal with Pakistan’sdouble-game of cooperating with Washingtonwhile inciting instability across its borders.

A Vulcan’s Tale is weaker in its strategicanalysis. Zakheim advances the oft-repeatedcharge that the “rush to war with Iraq” detracted

from the reconstruction of Afghanistan. Espe-cially given his intimate involvement with the is-sue, Zakheim’s discussion is simplistic and ulti-mately unconvincing, relying too much on anec-dotes about administration officials’ supposedinattention to Afghanistan. He downplays, forexample, the fact that almost immediately afterthe start of the 2003 Iraq war, the Bush adminis-tration doubled funding for Afghanistan recon-struction and greatly increased the size of thecountry’s national army and police.

Overall, Zakheim’s memoir remains usefulin explaining the impact that U.S. decisions after9/11 had on subsequent outcomes in Afghani-stan and Iraq.

Pratik Chouguleformer State Department official