MORE ON THE ANTI-ISRAEL HARVARD PAPER PUBLISHED BY THE LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS

Targeting The American Public (NY Sun)
"The uproar over a paper co-authored by the academic dean of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government about what is described as the far-reaching influence of an 'Israel lobby' erupted on Capitol Hill yesterday, as one congressman labeled the paper 'trash' and described its authors as 'anti-Semites,'" today's New York Sun reports.

The paper also drew fire from Cambridge, Mass., as Harvard faculty members and students joined the chorus of denunciations. One day after Kennedy School scholar Marvin Kalb lambasted the paper's authors for failing to meet basic quality standards for academic research, another Harvard professor, Ruth Wisse, called for the Kennedy School to withdraw the paper until the authors remedy their "poor scholarship."

(The Sun has reported on this here and here, and editorialized on it here and here.)

Havard Professor Ruth Wisse writes in the Wall Street Journal that:

Organized as a prosecutorial indictment rather than an inquiry, the essay does not tell us why the "Israel Lobby" should have formed in the first place. The 21 countries of the Arab League with ties to 1.2 billion Muslims world-wide are nowhere present as active political agents. There is no mention of the Arab rejection of the United Nations's partition of Palestine in 1948; no 58-year Arab League boycott of Israel and companies trading with Israel; no Arab attacks of 1948, 1967 and 1973; no Arab-Soviet resolution at the U.N. defining Zionism as racism; no monetary and strategic support for Arab terrorism against Jews and Israel; and no Hamas dedication to destroying the Jewish state. The authors do not ask why Arab aggression and Muslim "rage against Israel" should have morphed into a war against the U.S. and the West. Israel's existence elicits Arab and Muslim hostility, hence in their view Israel is to blame for Arab and Muslim carnage.

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.

Rick Richman at Jewish Current Issues has more, as does Scott Johnson at Powerline.

See also Study Decrying "Israel Lobby" Marred by Numerous Errors - Alex Safian"
The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy" by Professors Walt and Mearsheimer is riddled with errors of fact, logic and omission, has inaccurate citations, and displays extremely poor judgment regarding sources. Is it true that U.S. policy in the Middle East, and specifically our support for Israel, is due almost entirely to the activities of the "Israel Lobby?" The authors are hardly the first to so argue, though their report ignores all prior serious work on the subject, including the seminal book refuting such claims by the late Professor A.F.K. Organski, The $36 Billion Bargain: Strategy and Politics in U.S. Assistance to Israel. The report is a deep embarrassment to both Harvard University and the University of Chicago. While Mearsheimer and Walt are free to make any assertions they like, no matter how baseless, Harvard University should have nothing to do with such shoddy, biased work. (CAMERA)