Dumping Israel

'It's those damned Jews." That's the muffled message I hear when, pretending to represent our national interest, voices call for the abandonment of Israel.

We've heard it from agenda-driven scholars who write that our alliance with Israel is responsible for our problems in the Middle East. More worrisome still, I've begun to hear it from a minority of military officers, as well as from Washington types.

This latest, and sadly lasting, bout of moral cancer can be dated back to 2006 and the publication of an article that had sought a home for years, "The Israeli Lobby And US Foreign Policy," by professors John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt.

The book's assault on Israel was welcomed by figures including President Jimmy Carter's national-security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski -- a hoary Israel detractor. With their Ivy League credentials, Mearsheimer and Walt made anti-Israeli diatribes (semi-)respectable. Their effect has been lasting.

OK, let's get one thing straight: There is no evidence that if Israel disappeared tomorrow, the Middle East would suddenly blossom into a pro-American model of justice, hard work and progress.

Nor is there any evidence that anti-American terrorism would slacken. In al Qaeda's list of complaints, Israel barely makes the top dozen. A US turn away from Israel would only encourage and empower terrorists, convincing them of our cowardice and folly.

The grotesquely failed societies of the Middle East desperately need Israel and the US to blame for their self-wrought problems. Neither Washington nor Tel Aviv and Jerusalem are responsible for the Arab world's pervasive corruption, stagnation, oppression of women and lack of creativity or a work ethic.

Neither the US nor Israel is to blame for the unprecedented squandering of wealth by Arab oil powers, for their failure to invest in human capital or productive infrastructure, for the absence of democracy and respect for human rights, or for the region's mockery of the rule of law.

Given the vast homemade tragedy of the greater Middle East, it's inevitable that Israel's hated for its shining success amid the local squalor. Likewise, the US is hated for our might -- and the seductiveness of our civilization.

But if that explains why Arabs, Persians and others would relish, but not reward, our abandonment of Israel, it doesn't explain the American voices repeating Arab propaganda about devious Jews controlling our foreign policy.

I divide the dump-Israel movement's leaders and fellow travelers into four groups:

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