THE "ISRAEL LOBBY" MYTH
The "Israel Lobby" Myth - George P. Shultz (U.S. News)
- Israel is a free, democratic, open, and relentlessly self-analytical place. To hear harsh criticism of Israel's policies and leaders, listen to the Israelis. So questioning Israel for its actions is legitimate, but lies are something else.
- The catalog of lies about Jews is long and astonishingly crude, matched only by the suffering that has followed their promulgation. Defaming the Jews by disputing their rightful place among the peoples of the world has been a long-running, well-documented, and disgraceful series of episodes across history. Again and again a time has come when legitimate criticism slips across an invisible line into what might be called the "badlands," a place where those who should be regarded as worthy adversaries in debate are turned into scapegoats, targets, all-purpose objects of blame.
- In America, thousands of groups vie for influence. Among these are Jewish groups that have come under renewed criticism for being part of an all-powerful "Israel lobby," most notably in a book published last week by Profs. Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer. Jewish groups also largely agree that the United States should support Israel. But the notion that they have anything like a uniform agenda and that U.S. policy in Israel and the Middle East is the result of this influence is simply wrong.
- Another tried and true method for damaging the well-being and security of the Jewish people and the State of Israel is a dangerously false analogy. Witness former President Jimmy Carter's book Palestine-Peace Not Apartheid. Here the association on the one hand is between Israel's existentially threatened position and the measures it has taken to protect its population from terrorist attacks, driven by an ideology bent on the complete eradication of the State of Israel, and, on the other, the racist oppression of South Africa's black population by the white Boer regime.
- The United States supports Israel not because of favoritism based on political pressure or influence but because the American people, and their leaders, say that supporting Israel is politically sound and morally just.
- Those who blame Israel and its Jewish supporters for U.S. policies they do not support are wrong. They are wrong because support for Israel is in our best interests. They are wrong because Israel and its supporters have the right to try to influence U.S. policy. And they are wrong because the U.S. government is responsible for the policies it adopts, not any other state or any of the myriad lobbies and groups that battle daily to win America's support.
See also Unfair Charge vs. Israeli Lobby - Steve Huntley
In 2003 John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago was one of nearly 1,000 American academics signing a letter suggesting Israel would exploit the U.S. invasion of Iraq to expel millions of Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza Strip - and maybe also Arab Israelis from Israel itself! It was a preposterous notion then and looks even more ridiculous today. The view embraced by Mearsheimer displayed a profound misunderstanding and ignorance not only of Israeli society but also of the moral culture of American Jews. The notion that 5 million Jews in Israel would carry out ethnic cleansing of more than 4 million Palestinians from the West Bank, Gaza and Israel, and that Americans Jews would sanction it staggers the imagination. To believe that requires a bias against Israel so deep seated that it defies reality. Whether it spills over into anti-Semitism, I'll leave for you to judge. (Chicago Sun-Times)
See also Engel "Disappointed" by Ford Forum for Mearsheimer - Annie Karni
The Ford Foundation, which came under congressional scrutiny in 2003 for supporting groups committed to destroying Israel, is again drawing censure, this time for funding a panel at Columbia University highlighting a professor who blames Israel and its American supporters for the Iraq War and for al-Qaeda terrorism against America. Professor John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago, co-author of The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, is scheduled to speak at Columbia's Heyman Center for the Humanities next month on the issue of free speech in academia. The October 30 panel, titled "Freedom and the University," is funded with a $100,000 grant from the Ford Foundation.
"It's disappointing that the Ford Foundation would make Mearsheimer one of the highlights of what they're funding," said Rep. Eliot Engel, a Democrat of the Bronx. "If the Ford Foundation is going to say they've changed their attitudes, doing something like this only calls into question whether they've got the message and changed." The executive director of the NGO Monitor, Gerald Steinberg, said that by funding a panel where Mearsheimer is scheduled to speak, the Ford Foundation risks reneging on that promise by underwriting at Columbia the kind of falsehoods it was funding at Durban. "He [Mearsheimer] won't debate the assertions and the things they say," said Malcolm Hoenlein, the executive vice president of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. "They never engaged anyone from the 'lobby.' They hide behind the guise of academic freedom when they're the ones denying us free speech. It seems a little out of place for them to speak on academic freedom." (New York Sun)
Labels:
9/11,
anti-semitism,
Conspiracy,
lobbying,
Walt and Mearsheimer
1 comment:
I don't think these professors are actually anti-Semitic. However, what they are is worse than run-of-the-mill anti-Semitism because it affects us all.
Allow me to explain.
It is true that Walt and Mearsheimer are utilizing the same anti-Semitic tactics as despots who wish to distract from the malignant social ills that despots foster. Unlike despots who fabricate Jewish conspiracy theories out of a combination of opportunism and actual hate, however, these professors have written their essay and book based on the former motivation alone, opportunism.
Their motivation for this outrage is primarily because “the Jews are there”, are the target du jour of the Islamofascists (for now!), and have proven useful as punching bags to countless others in history.
The professors’ writings show no respect for the Jewish people and for their past persecutions, but the professors are not anti-Semitic, just amoral and opportunistic. Accusations of anti-Semitism are a distraction from the real issues.
Walt and Mearscheimer know full well there is no super-powerful "Jewish Lobby”, that the pro-Israel lobbyists have competing counterparts representing many other causes and countries, and that the pro-Israel lobby is not particularly remarkable in this environment. They know full well that the misrepresentations of fact, omissions, things taken out of context, logical errors, etc. in their prior paper and this book are indeed risible, the trash produced by dilettantes, not by serious researchers.
But they don't care.
What would make them produce such garbage?
Fear of Islamofascism, and the standards of (mis)conduct that come right from the halls of academia with which they've lived their lives, notably amorality and betrayal of friends when some self-interest is served. (For professors, it's usually money and status.) They are clearly enthralled with university culture and attempting to export that pathologic "culture" to the rest of the world.
What is the "gain" here? In the main, I do think the reason d'atre of their book is one of appeasement and surrender to Islamofascism.
A few hundred million insane bloodthirsty Arabs and other followers of the death cult of Islam calling for Death to Israel and Death to America: what better way to appease them than writing a book that the authors hope will cause the U.S. to hang Israel out to dry in the face of genocidal maniacs, groups and countries like Hezbollah, Hamas, Ahmadinejad, Syria and Iran?
In fact, they are not anti-Semites. Rather, they are equal opportunity amoralists. If the Islamofascists were chanting “Death to Mexico! Death to America!”, Walt and Mearsheimer would undoubtedly craft conspiracy theories that might justify allowing Osama and his minions to relocate from Waziristan to Acapulco.
University professors are renowned for turning on their friends, students and colleagues at the drop of a hat, if they see a personal gain in doing so. They could care less about ruining careers and lives. See for example, “Academic Tyranny: The Tale and the Lessons”, Robert Weissberg, Review of Policy Research, Vol. 15 no. 4 P. 99-110, Dec. 1998, and especially "Authorship: The Coin of the Realm, The Source of Complaints" by Wilcox, Journal of the AMA, Vol. 280 No. 3, July 15, 1998 that describes how stealing of others’ work and career-ending professorial retaliation against those who complain is common at Walt's university, Harvard. Of course see www.thefire.org as well.
So, Walt and Mearsheimer wrote this book in all its faux-academic glory in the cowardly and academic-culture-inspired hope of spearheading a U.S. betrayal of its friend, Israel, in their hope that this will satiate the Islamofascists' appetite for blood and "honor."
They are incredibly reckless in this regard. Their book is quite socially irresponsible (not a new thing for academia). Their whole theme, abandonment of friends for supposed secondary gain, i.e., the appeasement of a brutal terrorist killer culture, is explicitly amoral (and likely immoral as well for those of us not prone to moral relativism) as well as anti-American.
They are using this book and likely their educational pulpits with students as a weapon, with the desired collateral damage of weakening the U.S. (Does anyone even need to ask anymore why Ivy professors might be against a strong United States?)
Walt and Mearsheimer, through their arrogance, stupidity, and exportation of academia’s amoral tyranny, are tacitly working for our enemies.
These professors are out of control, like a runaway locomotive, thanks to the cheerful support of opportunistic anti-Semites and the MSM (I’m not sure those two are entirely separable). They need to be stopped – however, accusations of anti-Semitism are a distraction and they know it.
Walt and Mearsheimer have more in common with Arthur Neville Chamberlain than David Ernest Duke or Alfred Charles Sharpton.
That said, as Abraham Foxman, Alan Dershowitz, and many others as well have observed (documented at the CAMERA - Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America story “Updated Roundup of Coverage of the Walt/Mearsheimer Israel Lobby Controversy” at http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_context=8&x_nameinnews=189&x_article=1105), Walt & Mearsheimer's faux-scholarship is "riddled with errors" that tend to slant it "in the exact same direction, thus we are dealing not with a little unfortunate carelessness but with a culpable degree of bias."
I submit again that their "carelessness and bias" is most likely knowing and deliberate, but not due to anti-Semitism. Its purpose is promoting appeasement and the weakening of America, at a cost to Israelis and Jews the professors are indifferent to and simply don't care about, typical of Ivy professors who want their way, period.
There is a term for deliberate and knowing falsification in academia for any secondary purpose:
Academic Fraud.
Walt and Mearshiemer have placed themselves in the same league as Finkelstein, Chomsky, and other academic fabricators.
Charges of anti-Semitism are a distraction from their motivations. Charges of academic incompetence are not highly credible considering the experience, resources and positions of these professors.
Charges of deliberate academic fraud are, I believe, closer to reality, and perhaps hold the key to successful challenging of this dangerous charade.
In summary, Walt and Mearsheimer’s distortions are knowing and deliberate, in the interest of appeasement of Islamofascism and the weakening of the “imperialist AmeriKKKa.” The Israelis and Jews make good cannon fodder because “they’re there” and have a historical track record of serving this purpose for despots. W&M malign the Jews not out of anti-Semitism but out of amoral academic convenience.
This is worse than run-of-the-mill professorial anti-Semitism due to its generalized, nihilistic stupidity.
My only hope is that these professors are doing this of their own volition, and that there are no “handlers” involved.
- ERIS
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