XPost: uk.politics.misc, alt.politics.british, alt.conspiracy   
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   y.america-at-war   
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   From: o@o.org   
      
   Robert Fisk: United States of Israel?   
   When two of America's most distinguished academics dared to suggest that US   
   foreign policy was being driven by a powerful 'Israel Lobby' whose influence   
   was incompatible with their nation's own interests, they knew they would   
   face allegations of anti-Semitism. But the episode has prompted America's   
   Jewish liberals to confront their own complacency. Might the tide be   
   turning?   
   Published: 27 April 2006   
   Stephen Walt towers over me as we walk in the Harvard sunshine past Eliot   
   Street, a big man who needs to be big right now (he's one of two authors of   
   an academic paper on the influence of America's Jewish lobby) but whose   
   fame, or notoriety, depending on your point of view, is of no interest to   
   him. "John and I have deliberately avoided the television shows because we   
   don't think we can discuss these important issues in 10 minutes. It would   
   become 'J' and 'S', the personalities who wrote about the lobby - and we   
   want to open the way to serious discussion about this, to encourage a   
   broader discussion of the forces shaping US foreign policy in the Middle   
   East."   
      
   "John" is John Mearsheimer, a political scientist at the University of   
   Chicago. Walt is a 50-year-old tenured professor at the John F Kennedy   
   School of Government at Harvard. The two men have caused one of the most   
   extraordinary political storms over the Middle East in recent American   
   history by stating what to many non-Americans is obvious: that the US has   
   been willing to set aside its own security and that of many of its allies in   
   order to advance the interests of Israel, that Israel is a liability in the   
   "war on terror", that the biggest Israeli lobby group, Aipac (the American   
   Israel Public Affairs Committee), is in fact the agent of a foreign   
   government and has a stranglehold on Congress - so much so that US policy   
   towards Israel is not debated there - and that the lobby monitors and   
   condemns academics who are critical of Israel.   
      
   "Anyone who criticises Israel's actions or argues that pro-Israel groups   
   have significant influence over US Middle East policy," the authors have   
   written, "...stands a good chance of being labelled an anti-Semite. Indeed,   
   anyone who merely claims that there is an Israeli lobby runs the risk of   
   being charged with anti-Semitism... Anti-Semitism is something no-one wants   
   to be accused of." This is strong stuff in a country where - to quote the   
   late Edward Said - the "last taboo" (now that anyone can talk about blacks,   
   gays and lesbians) is any serious discussion of America's relationship with   
   Israel.   
      
   Walt is already the author of an elegantly written account of the resistance   
   to US world political dominance, a work that includes more than 50 pages of   
   references. Indeed, those who have read his Taming Political Power: The   
   Global Response to US Primacy will note that the Israeli lobby gets a   
   thumping in this earlier volume because Aipac "has repeatedly targeted   
   members of Congress whom it deemed insufficiently friendly to Israel and   
   helped drive them from office, often by channelling money to their   
   opponents."   
      
   But how many people in America are putting their own heads above the   
   parapet, now that Mearsheimer and Walt have launched a missile that would   
   fall to the ground unexploded in any other country but which is detonating   
   here at high speed? Not a lot. For a while, the mainstream US press and   
   television - as pro-Israeli, biased and gutless as the two academics infer   
   them to be - did not know whether to report on their conclusions (originally   
   written for The Atlantic Monthly, whose editors apparently took fright, and   
   subsequently reprinted in the London Review of Books in slightly truncated   
   form) or to remain submissively silent. The New York Times, for example,   
   only got round to covering the affair in depth well over two weeks after the   
   report's publication, and then buried its article in the education section   
   on page 19. The academic essay, according to the paper's headline, had   
   created a "debate" about the lobby's influence.   
      
   They can say that again. Dore Gold, a former ambassador to the UN, who now   
   heads an Israeli lobby group, kicked off by unwittingly proving that the   
   Mearsheimer-Walt theory of "anti-Semitism" abuse is correct. "I believe," he   
   said, "that anti-Semitism may be partly defined as asserting a Jewish   
   conspiracy for doing the same thing non-Jews engage in." Congressman Eliot   
   Engel of New York said that the study itself was "anti-Semitic" and deserved   
   the American public's contempt.   
      
   Walt has no time for this argument. "We are not saying there is a   
   conspiracy, or a cabal. The Israeli lobby has every right to carry on its   
   work - all Americans like to lobby. What we are saying is that this lobby   
   has a negative influence on US national interests and that this should be   
   discussed. There are vexing problems out in the Middle East and we need to   
   be able to discuss them openly. The Hamas government, for example - how do   
   we deal with this? There may not be complete solutions, but we have to try   
   and have all the information available."   
      
   Walt doesn't exactly admit to being shocked by some of the responses to his   
   work - it's all part of his desire to keep "discourse" in the academic   
   arena, I suspect, though it probably won't work. But no-one could be   
   anything but angered by his Harvard colleague, Alan Dershowitz, who   
   announced that the two scholars recycled accusations that "would be seized   
   on by bigots to promote their anti-Semitic agendas". The two are preparing a   
   reply to Dershowitz's 45-page attack, but could probably have done without   
   praise from the white supremacist and ex-Ku Klux Klan head David Duke -   
   adulation which allowed newspapers to lump the name of Duke with the names   
   of Mearsheimer and Walt. "Of Israel, Harvard and David Duke," ran the   
   Washington Post's reprehensible headline.   
      
   The Wall Street Journal, ever Israel's friend in the American press, took an   
   even weirder line on the case. "As Ex-Lobbyists of Pro-Israel Group Face   
   Court, Article Queries Sway on Mideast Policy" its headline proclaimed to   
   astonished readers. Neither Mearsheimer nor Walt had mentioned the trial of   
   two Aipac lobbyists - due to begin next month - who are charged under the   
   Espionage Act with receiving and disseminating classified information   
   provided by a former Pentagon Middle East analyst. The defence team for   
   Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman has indicated that it may call Secretary of   
   State Condoleezza Rice and National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley to the   
   stand.   
      
   Almost a third of the Journal's report is taken up with the Rosen-Weissman   
   trial, adding that the indictment details how the two men "allegedly sought   
   to promote a hawkish US policy toward Iran by trading favours with a number   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)