Walt & Mearsheimer: The hardcover version

The Israel Lobby is so dangerous to America, the authors of the widely-discredited paper have turned it into a book. And they’re taking it on the road. Only the Israel Lobby is preventing them from speaking, because you simply can’t speak out on the Israel Lobby. Not even in the New York Times. The Lobby will silence you, I tell you. Silence you!

Backlash Over Book on Policy for Israel
“The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy” is not even in bookstores, but already anxieties have surfaced about the backlash it is stirring, with several institutions backing away from holding events with the authors.

John J. Mearsheimer, a political scientist at the University of Chicago, and Stephen M. Walt, a professor at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, were not totally surprised by the reaction to their work. An article last spring in the London Review of Books outlining their argument — that a powerful pro-Israel lobby has a pernicious influence on American policy — set off a firestorm as charges of anti-Semitism, shoddy scholarship and censorship ricocheted among prominent academics, writers, policymakers and advocates. In the book, published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux and embargoed until Sept. 4, they elaborate on and update their case.

“Now that the cold war is over, Israel has become a strategic liability for the United States,” they write. “Yet no aspiring politician is going to say so in public or even raise the possibility” because the pro-Israel lobby is so powerful. They credit the lobby with shutting down talks with Syria and with moderates in Iran, preventing the United States from condemning Israel’s 2006 war in Lebanon and with not pushing the Israelis hard enough to come to an agreement with the Palestinians. They also discuss Christian Zionists and the issue of dual loyalty.

You see how silenced they are? There’s an article in the New York Times telling us that they’ve been silenced. They’ve had six events cancelled or turned down! Six! That damned Israeli Lobby is so powerful, it controls whether or not people want Walt & Mearsheimer to speak at their venues.

Opponents are prepared. Also being released on Sept. 4 is “The Deadliest Lies: The Israel Lobby and the Myth of Jewish Control” (Palgrave Macmillan) by Abraham H. Foxman, the national director of the Anti-Defamation League. The notion that pro-Israel groups “have anything like a uniform agenda, and that U.S. policy on Israel and the Middle East is the result of their influence, is simply wrong,” George P. Shultz, a former secretary of state, says in the foreword. “This is a conspiracy theory pure and simple, and scholars at great universities should be ashamed to promulgate it.”

The subject will certainly prompt furious debate, though not at the Center for the Humanities at the Graduate Center at the City University of New York, the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, a Jewish cultural center in Washington and three organizations in Chicago. They have all turned down or canceled events with the authors, mentioning unease with the controversy or the format.

So, let’s recap: W&M have been cancelled out of three events. And they were turned down by three organizations. Let’s see exactly how that played out. Their speaking appearance was canceled by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. Why?

Mr. Bouton was out of town, but Rachel Bronson, vice president for programs and studies at the council, said, “Whenever we have topics that are particularly controversial or sensitive, we try to make sure someone from another point of view is there.” In this case, she said, there was not sufficient time to set up that sort of panel before the council calendar went out. There are no plans to have the authors speak at a later date, however.

Ah. The Council wanted someone there for an opposing viewpoint. Yes, we know that one. It’s used for every pro-Israel speaker invited to college campuses. It’s a goose/gander thing. But what about those three turn-downs the Times is touting?

After the cancellation Roberta Rubin, owner of the Book Stall, a store in Winnetka, Ill., offered to help find a site for the authors. She said she tried a Jewish community center and two large downtown clubs but they all told her “they can’t afford to bring in somebody ‘too controversial.’ ” She added that even she was concerned about inviting authors who might offend customers.

So the three cancellations are all tied to the same Chicago event? Isn’t that interesting. An event that was cancelled at one venue—which raises red flags when trying to schedule it at other venues—was turned down by three other venues. So it’s one event that was turned down by three alternative venues. Not three separate events turned down by people who didn’t want W&M to speak. And let’s think…. why is it that a Jewish Community Center would be reluctant to have Walt & Mearsheimer come to tell an audience of Jews about how the Israel Lobby is controlling American foreign policy? Let me think about this one for a while, and see if I can find a reason why they were turned down. Hm. Jewish Community Center. Lots of Israel supporters. The W&M claim that the Israel Lobby is controlling U.S. policy…. That’s a tough one. Nope, I can’t figure out why they were turned down by the Chicago JCC.

Please.

Some of the planned sites, like the Sixth & I Historic Synagogue, a cultural center in Washington, would have been host of an event if Mr. Mearsheimer and Mr. Walt appeared with opponents, said Esther Foer, the executive director.

Mr. Walt said, “Part of the game is to portray us as so extreme that we have to be balanced by someone from the ‘other side.’ ” Besides, he added, when you’re promoting a book, you want to present your ideas without appearing with someone who is trying to discredit you.

If you are presenting a book written about a charge that has been widely discredited in its thesis form, people are going to want to let your audiences know that you are, well, not being truthful with the facts, shall we say? Jimmy Carter pulled the same drek. The common theme here? Both books charge Israel (and American Jews) with controlling American foreign policy. Both books charge Jews with being less than full citizens of America (the old dual loyalty canard). And both books are riddled with inaccuracies and lies. Of course he doesn’t want his “ideas” discredited. People won’t buy a book based on information that has been shown to be false. The more coverage W&M’s opponents get, the fewer dollars fall into their pockets. But don’t worry. It’s going to be a guaranteed best-seller in the Arab world. It will be on the bookshelves right next to Mein Kampf, and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

W&M are also now defending themselves against charges of anti-Semitism. And they do it by showing that the Israel Lobby isn’t really as powerful as they claim it to be. They do it in a wholly unironic way. You really have to wonder if these men ever listen to themselves speak.

Overall Mr. Mearsheimer said he thinks the response to their views will be “less ferocious than last time, because it’s becoming increasingly difficult to make the argument in a convincing way that anyone who criticizes the lobby or Israel is an anti-Semite or a self-hating Jew.” Both Mr. Mearsheimer and Mr. Walt pointed to the growing dissatisfaction with the war in Iraq, criticism of Israel’s war in Lebanon and the publication of former President Jimmy Carter’s book “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid” as making it somewhat easier to criticize Israel openly.

“This isn’t a cabal; this isn’t anything secretive,” Mr. Walt said.

American Jews who lobby on Israel’s behalf are not all that different from the National Rifle Association, the anti-tax movement, AARP or the American Petroleum Institute, he said, “They just happen to be really good at it.”

Translation: It’s much easier to criticize Israel now because people are criticizing Israel, but we’re being silenced because we’re criticizing Israel. And everybody lobbies, but the Jews are really good at it, and saying so doesn’t make us anti-Semitic.

“It’s the way American politics work,” he continued. “Sometimes powerful interest groups get what they want, and it’s not good for the country as a whole. I would say that about the farm lobby and about the Cuba lobby.”

And yet, they have not written a book about the farm lobby or the Cuba lobby. They have written a book about the Israel lobby. Funny, that.

To the authors, dual loyalty is as American as Presidents’ Day sales and “Law & Order” reruns. As Mr. Mearsheimer explained: “People are allowed to have multiple loyalties. They have religious loyalties, loyalty to family, to an organization and you can have loyalty to other countries. Someone who is Irish can have a loyalty to Ireland.”

“The problem,” he said “is when you raise the subject of dual loyalty, many people tend to think of it in the context of the old anti-Semitic canard and making the argument that Jews are disloyal to the U.S.”

That’s because it is always raised in the context of the old anti-Semitic canard. It is simply disingenuous to pretend otherwise. You cannot accuse a Jew of dual loyalty without meaning that the person you are accusing is disloyal to his or her home country. The concept of dual loyalty is never raised in terms that Mearsheimer “explains” above. That is patently false. Ted Kennedy managed to support the IRA and never be accused of being disloyal to America. Just go do a Google search on Joe Lieberman and see how many times his loyalty to America is questioned, and not just over his support to Israel. Lieberman’s loyalty is questioned simply because he is Jewish. W&M are utterly full of it when they pretend that the dual loyalty charge is not meant in the same fashion.

Walt & Mearsheimer are handing the anti-Semites of the world a great recruiting tool, and a book that will have to be discredited for many years to come, and will ultimately settle in with the Stormfront crowd as “proof” the Jews control America. Their paper has already found wide acceptance in neo-Nazi circles. David Duke is particularly fond of it, touting it as vindication of his anti-Semitic filth.

And there is, of course, the W&M disclaimer:

In print and in interviews both authors have stressed that they hold no animus towards Israel or Jews. “We think Israeli policy is fundamentally flawed,” Mr. Mearsheimer said, “just as we think American policy is fundamentally flawed.”

Right. No animus. Just lies, inaccuracies, and a modern retelling of the old Jews-control-the-world myth.