| Eric Alterman As I noted earlier this week, it is impossible to criticize America’s Israel lobby, or even call attention to its actions--even the ones for which its top employees are not accused of spying-- without being smeared as an anti-Semite, a crank, an isolationist, or more likely, all three. (And not just by the Cathy Youngs and Nick Kings of the world….) This is true for America’s most admired realist foreign policy scholars like John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, as it is for any of us and serves as an extremely intimidating factor to anyone who might consider doing so, especially if unprotected by such enviable titles as “Wendell Harrison Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago” and “Renee Belfer Professor of International Affairs [and Academic Dean] at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard.” Here are six such responses to the author’s paper, which is here, and I’m certain this is only the beginning. Note that the first one looks to go after the Kennedy School funding because “academic freedom does not mean that donors have to subsidize such drivel.” Response I: An e-mail response by Rob Satloff to “Members of The Washington Institute's [for Near East Policy] Board of Trustees From: Rob Satloff, Executive Director” forwarded to the author: It is, at its core, a warmed over version of Paul Findley's "classic" They Dare to Speak Out, with additional elements of Edward Said and Rashid Khalidi…. With 211 footnotes, this "Harvard Working Paper" has the veneer of academic precision; in fact, it wouldn't pass muster as a research project in my son's third-grade class…. instead they chose the path of propaganda, not scholarship. If you have a connection to Harvard (and, specifically, the Kennedy School), I urge you to contact the relevant officials - especially the major gifts officers! - and express your outrage. Academic freedom means that universities have to provide allowance for writing by tenured professors that can be inane, stupid and otherwise professionally unacceptable. But academic freedom does not mean that donors have to subsidize such drivel. Response II: This from the Institute's Wexler-Fromer Fellow, Dr. Martin Kramer, from his blog, Sandstorm (and is copied in the e-mail above). Within the academy, it's the sort of thing that Juan Cole and Rashid Khalidi have been claiming all along, without getting any traction.
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In particular, the authors have put together an "unedited version," in which the notes are as long as the text, and which carries the title of a Kennedy School of Government "Faculty Research Working Paper." This is presumably intended to make the study appear even more "academic." But it's really a piece of journalistic sensationalism, reminiscent of the 1987 book The Lobby by Edward Tivnan.
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That Walt can't see this suggests that his own vision is marred by a bias against Israel, the depth of which only he knows. Walt's notion that U.S. support for Israel is the source of popular resentment, propelling recruits to Al-Qaeda, is of a piece with his argument that the United States is hated for what it does (its detested policies), and not what it is (its admired values). In fact, America isn't hated for what it does or what it is. It's hated because of what they can't do, and what they aren't. Response III: From Ruth R. Wisse, the Martin Peretz Professor of Yiddish Literature and professor of comparative literature at Harvard, in today’s Wall Street Journal, here: Organized as a prosecutorial indictment rather than an inquiry,… Judging from the initial reaction to their article (one of my students called it "wacko quacko"), the two professors may be subjected to more ridicule than rejoinder.
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Their tone resembles nothing so much as Wilhelm Marr's 1879 pamphlet, "The Victory of Judaism over Germandom," which declared of the Jews that "There is no stopping them . . . German culture has proved itself ineffective and powerless against this foreign power. This is a fact; a brute inexorable fact." A parallel edition of these two texts might highlight some American refinements on the European model, such as the anti-Semitic lie that "Israeli citizenship is based on the principle of blood kinship." In fact, unlike neighboring Arab countries, Israeli citizenship is not conditional on religion or race. Yet it would be a mistake to treat this article on the "Israel Lobby" as an attack on Israel alone, or on its Jewish defenders, or on the organizations and individuals it singles out for condemnation. Its true target is the American public, which now supports Israel with higher levels of confidence than ever before. When the authors imply that the bipartisan support of Israel in Congress is a result of Jewish influence, they function as classic conspiracy theorists who attribute decisions to nefarious alliances rather than to the choices of a democratic electorate. Their contempt for fellow citizens dictates their claims of a gullible and stupid America. Their insistence that American support for Israel is bought and paid for by the Lobby heaps scorn on American judgment and values. No wonder David Duke, white supremacist and former leader of the Ku Klux Klan, claimed that this article "validated every major point I have been making since even before the [Iraq] war started." Response IV: And from the always reliable David Horowitz, in the form of an article by Lowell Ponte entitled “David Duke and Harvard's New Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion,” here: Anti-Semitism can appear in many forms, many disguises. Its latest camouflage can be seen in “The Israel Lobby,” an article in the March 23 London Review of Books by Political Science Professor John J. Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Dean Stephen M. Walt of Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.
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This working paper, carefully timed to make news just ahead of Israel’s election and a planned leftist propaganda barrage against two accused pro-Israel lobbyists, is really an 83-page Opinion-Editorial article based on the authors’ personal prejudices. This Mearsheimer and Walt attack is so nastily slanted against Israel that their paper ought to be called The New Protocols of the Elders of Zion. No wonder that among those praising their paper most loudly is the Southern white racist, former American Nazi Party enthusiast and Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, now himself a Ph.D. The footnotes that comprise almost half of this paper reveal the left-wing sources that have shaped Mearsheimer’s and Walt’s anti-Israel prejudices … Response V: James Taranto on the WSJ's Opinion Journal, here: Walt and Mearsheimer's method of analysis presumes Israel's guilt. Every past or present Israeli transgression is evidence of its wickedness, whereas Arab ones, if they are acknowledged at all, are "understandable." This approach paints a highly misleading picture. It is anti-Semitic in effect if not in intent. Which brings us back to David Duke. His endorsement no doubt is anathema to Walt and Mearsheimer, but it is telling that he finds their ideas congenial. Response VI: Eli Lake, quoting Duke, the Muslim Brotherhood, Alan Dershowitz and Marty Peretz in the New York Sun, here: A paper recently co-authored by the academic dean of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government about the allegedly far-reaching influence of an “Israel lobby” is winning praise from white supremacist David Duke. The Palestine Liberation Organization mission to Washington is distributing the paper, which also is being hailed by a senior member of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist organization. ..A professor at Harvard Law School, Alan Dershowitz, whom the authors call an “apologist” for Israel, said he found much of the paper to be “trash.” He said, “It could have been written by Pat Buchanan, by David Duke, Noam Chomsky, and some of the less intelligent members of Hamas.An intelligent member of Hamas would not have made these mistakes.” ..A retired lecturer at Harvard, Martin Peretz, who is editor of The New Republic, a magazine named in the report as one of those that “zealously defend Israel at every turn,” said, “It is easier to attribute disloyalty to Jews than to question the loyalty of Islamists.This is really questioning the loyalty of Jews, that is what this is about. Everyone is looped in, even people who are a little dicey about Israel like Aaron David Miller and Howard Dean. This goes from the lobby in capital letters, from Jerry Falwell to every left wing Jewish Democrat in the House. It is the imagining of a wall to wall conspiracy and therefore it’s nutsy.” The executive director of the Committee for Accurate Middle East Reporting in America, Andrea Levin, said yesterday that she would be asking the Kennedy School to withdraw the paper because it failed to meet academic standards. She said the paper relied too much on “new historians,” a group of Israeli academics who have been critical of the founding of Israel. She called them “a thoroughly discredited lot.” She also said the authors wrongly say that her group organized a rally in front of the Boston affiliate of national public radio.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11926202/#pushback |
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