threat that he should be removed even if he did not have WMD.*° Nor was the desire for war confined to Israel’s leaders. Apart from Kuwait, which Saddam conquered in 1990, Israel was the only country outside of the United States where a majority of politicians and the public enthusiastically favored war. A poll taken in early 2002 found that 58 percent of Israeli Jews believed that “Israel should

encourage the United States to attack Iraq.”4© Another poll taken a year later in February 2003 found that 77.5 percent of Israeli Jews wanted the United States to

invade Iraq.47 Even in Tony Blair’s Britain, a poll taken just before the war revealed that 51 percent of the respondents opposed it, while only 39 percent

supported it.48

This rather unusual situation prompted Gideon Levy of Ha’aretz to ask, “Why is it that in England 50,000 people have demonstrated against the war in Iraq, whereas in Israel no one has? Why is it that in Israel there is no public debate about whether the war is necessary?” He went on to say, “Israel is the only country in the West whose leaders support the war unreservedly and where no

alternative opinion is voiced.”49

Israel’s enthusiasm for war eventually led some of its allies in America to tell Israeli officials to damp down their hawkish rhetoric, lest the war look like it was

being fought for Israel.°° In the fall of 2002, for example, a group of American political consultants known as the Israel Project circulated a six-page memorandum to key Israelis and pro-Israel leaders in the United States. The memo was titled “Talking about Iraq” and was intended as a guide for public statements about the war. “If your goal is regime change, you must be much more careful with your language because of the potential backlash. You do not want Americans to believe that the war on Iraq is being waged to protect Israel rather

than to protect America.”>!

Reflecting that same concern on the eve of the war, Sharon, according to several reports, told Israeli diplomats and politicians to keep quiet about a possible war in Iraq and certainly not to say anything that made it appear that Israel was pushing the Bush administration to topple Saddam. The Israeli leader was worried by the growing perception that Israel was advocating a U.S. invasion

The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy: John J. Mearsheimer, 2008