{"id":55444,"date":"2025-10-05T08:46:26","date_gmt":"2025-10-05T16:46:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=55444"},"modified":"2025-10-05T08:46:26","modified_gmt":"2025-10-05T16:46:26","slug":"john-mearsheimer-on-israels-lawyers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2025\/10\/05\/john-mearsheimer-on-israels-lawyers\/","title":{"rendered":"John Mearsheimer on Israel’s Lawyers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reprinted from John’s Substack<\/a>:<\/em><\/p>\n

In May 2005, Aaron David Miller, an American who has a passionate attachment to Israel and was one of President Bill Clinton\u2019s advisors at the Camp David negotiations in the summer of 1999, published a remarkable op-ed in the Washington Post<\/em> titled \u201cIsrael\u2019s Lawyer.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

Miller wrote:<\/p>\n

\u201cFor far too long, many American officials involved in Arab-Israeli peacemaking, myself included, have acted as Israel\u2019s attorney, catering and coordinating with the Israelis at the expense of successful peace negotiations. If the United States wants to be an honest and effective broker on the Arab-Israeli issue, than surely it can have only one client: the pursuit of a solution that meets the needs and requirements of both sides.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cWith the best of motives and intentions, we listened to and followed Israel\u2019s lead without critically examining what that would mean for our own interests, for those on the Arab side and for the overall success of the negotiations. The \u201cno surprises\u201d policy, under which we had to run everything by Israel first, stripped our policy of the independence and flexibility required for serious peacemaking. If we couldn\u2019t put proposals on the table without checking with the Israelis first, and refused to push back when they said no, how effective could our mediation be? Far too often, particularly when it came to Israeli-Palestinian diplomacy, our departure point was not what was needed to reach an agreement acceptable to both sides but what would pass with only one — Israel.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

While Miller is to be commended for his honesty, his comments are truly remarkable in that he is effectively admitting that even though he is an American who should have axiomatically privileged the US national interest over Israel\u2019s, he was privileging Israel\u2019s interests over America\u2019s. And note that he says he was not the only one who subordinated the US national interest to Israel\u2019s interests. He surely would include his fellow advisor at Camp David, Dennis Ross, who also has a passionate attachment to Israel.<\/p>\n

Obviously, hardly anything has changed since Miller penned his op-ed, as President Trump\u2019s top two advisors who will be negotiating with Israel and Hamas in Egypt this week are ardent Zionists \u2014 Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff.<\/p>\n

This situation is unacceptable. It is not in the American national interest to have individuals with a dual loyalty \u2014 or who might even be \u201cIsrael firsters\u201d \u2014 negotiating on behalf of the United States. Common sense dictates that the US negotiators in Egypt should be individuals who are solely guided by what is in the American national interest.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reprinted from John’s Substack: In May 2005, Aaron David Miller, an American who has a passionate attachment to Israel and was one of President Bill Clinton\u2019s advisors at the Camp David negotiations in the summer of 1999, published a remarkable op-ed in the Washington Post titled \u201cIsrael\u2019s Lawyer.\u201d Miller wrote: \u201cFor far too long, many […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":308,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[1054],"class_list":["post-55444","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"0","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55444","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/308"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55444"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55444\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55449,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55444\/revisions\/55449"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55444"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55444"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55444"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=55444"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}