Walt and Mearsheimer Rebut (and Humble) Their Critics

I've just gotten a copy of a 79-page paper called "Setting the Record Straight: A Response to Critics of 'The Israel Lobby'" by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt. The scholars began circulating the rebuttal privately in December but have not published it on-line, I gather, because they are working on a book about the lobby and are trying to keep some of their powder dry till publication. Nonetheless, the paper is getting around. I find it exciting, and will be referring to it in days to come.

On first reading, my chief response is (surprise) positive: the paper humanizes Walt and Mearsheimer, the voice is warmer and more intimate than their stunning original of last March. You have the feeling here of two minds struggling through a difficult subject. For instance, the authors say that it was former Harvard Dean Walt's decision—not Harvard's—to remove the Harvard logo from the on-line Kennedy School version of the original after newspapers began referring to the paper as "the Harvard study," but that given the great symbolism attached to this gesture, it was a mistake, and illustrates the saying, no good deed goes unpunished.

The sense of intellectual engagement here is thrilling. The tone is, Here is what our critics have said, here's our response. W&M itemize a wide range of critical arguments, and detail them, including the Forward's assertion, "In Dark Times, Blame the Jews." And while they don't give an inch, really, the respectful debate they are pursuing ennobles them and honors the contributions of Benny Morris and even Alan Dershowitz—far more than Dershowitz, who slimed these guys, deserves. For instance, there is a shocking quote in here from Dershowitz on MS/NBC, saying that W&M "copied" their words from neo-Nazi websites. Thus vilified, some people would threaten to sue. These scholars take the argument on calmly. God bless America.

Something else that humanizes the document is the section at the end titled, "Our Mistakes." O.K., a number of these are penny-ante, still the tone is humbling. "...there are places where our choice of words could have been clearer or more nuanced... although we went to some lengths to demonstrate that we harbor no animus towards Israel or its more ardent defenders in America, it is possible that some of our discussion did not make this point as forcefully as would have liked. First and foremost, we regret having capitalized the word 'Lobby' in our original article..." Etc.

The paper concludes with a moving statement about the controversy. The ferocity of the attacks "offers additional evidence of he lobby's efforts to create a climate that discourages questioning of its actions, Israeli policies, or the U.S.-Israeli relationship. This situation is not healthy for American democracy." Hear, hear.

But now the anger over their publication seems to be dissipating, and what they had hoped for is coming to pass: a discussion of the ideas on their merits. Myself, the March day that a friend first emailed me W&M's paper and I read it through at my desk with my eyelids glued open was a great day. I had long felt constrained by the lobby, it had limited my work and freedom. W&M had a liberating effect.

Comments

[bill Pearlman]

Not often that you see such wide eyed hero worship in anybody over the age of 12. If I didn't know that Phil was married I would think he really has a "thing" for these guys. Anyway, good to know that Phil is no longer hamstrung has he goes about his IMPORTANT work.

[LanceThruster]

BP - Though I am loathe to address you directly as it is about as productive as trying to teach a pig to sing*, I will say that I agree with the tone of the piece as it shows why these men are considered "champions" by those who read and comprehend their works.

I think your envy comes from the realization that only those slightly less feeble-minded than yourself would ever consider you as a champion of anything.

* "Never try to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and it annoys the pig." ~ Robert Heinlein

[Jaquito Gordone]

How do these two eminent people with so much going for them in their writings get new-found respect for their openly supportive position for Arab causes at the expense of the so-called "israel lobby"?

Having read and reread their March 2006 article, I cannot come to any other conclusion that they are anything but one-sided in their Arab love affair.

[KoboldBlew]

Zen Koan

Master to Grasshopper:
What is the sound of a mind hermetically sealed shut?

Grasshopper to Master:
I can't hear you, Master,
Bill Pearlman's got his mouth open again.

Master to Grasshopper:
Excellent, my child. You are near to Enlightenment.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Later the Grasshopper sheepishly approached the Master as he was serving tea.

Grasshopper to Master:
Master, how can I be near to Enlightenment when I don't even understand what you said I said?

Master to Grasshopper:
The more closed the mind, the more open the mouth.

The Bill Pearlmans of this world are sent to us as a test.

The Bill Pearlmans of this world fill the air with hogswallow to distract you from hearing the truth. They themselves have no part of truth, or logic, or evidence, or rational discourse, or even good old horse sense; for if they did, they wouldn't shout and scream and call names and stand on their heads and drop their pants, and play with their feces, and do anything else they can think of, because by their efforts of distraction, diversion, and calumny, all they will attract is fools. They are, in fact, a magnet for fools, and they will eventually gather enough fools around them so that they and the fools will all be sucked into the great black hole that is the reward for willful ignorance.

The beginning of wisdom is to know that wisdom and truth cannot be found in the presence of men who think that everyone who disagrees with them is an anti-Semite worthy of villification or a self-hating Jew.

And so, Grasshopper, because you recognized that you could not hear the truth when the Bill Pearlmans of the world were speaking, it is a sure and certain sign that you are on your way to Enlightenment.

[face splat]

Constrained by "the Lobby" for years Phil? Maybe you're just a mediocre wanker and irrelevant. Ever consider that Phil? I suggest that "the Lobby" will be constraining Phil Weiss for as long as lives. There is only one way out Phil. You know it. It's the sport of chumps: suicide. But better get it right the first time Phil, cause nothing's worse than a failed suicide jump. Ha Ha Ha HA

[Deborah]

Constrained by "the Lobby" for years Phil? Maybe you're just a mediocre wanker and irrelevant. Ever consider that Phil? I suggest that "the Lobby" will be constraining Phil Weiss for as long as lives. There is only one way out Phil. You know it. It's the sport of chumps: suicide. But better get it right the first time Phil, cause nothing's worse than a failed suicide jump. Ha Ha Ha HA

Do you have any idea how sick you sound to those of us who don't really take sides, except against those who do?

[Gene Machina]

Phis is right. Mearsheimer and Walt have done this country a tremendous service by making it possible for the rest of us to talk about the elephant in the living room--Israel's stranglehold on America's mideast policy. Future generations will remember their paper as today we remember Patrick Henry's "give me liberty or give me death" speech or Franklin Roosevelt's response to the attack or Pearl Harbor. Someone who knows how such things are done should nominate them for the Nobel Prize.

[bill Pearlman]

Gene, a little over the top, don't you think. Just a little, although I know you think that their doing I believe the quote was "doing the lords work" finishing up that his blood will be on them and their ancestors thing I suppose.

Kobold:
I have to give you points for creativity. Always was one of my favorite shows.

[LanceThruster]

I hear the Master is indeed wise.

And see that the elephant in the room is indeed large.

And know that the gems of the Pearl-man, without luster and prized not, suitable for neither adornment nor currency, are scattered by his hot wind blowing from an empty cave surrounded by a fetid swamp.

His purpose seems but to make truth as an oasis, universalism as a beautiful and sustaining garden, and justice as a distant but abundant island on a perilous ocean, coming not without considerable effort and sacrifice, making it truly a prize of great honor and undeniable correctness to be won.

Master,I give my most sincere and humble thanks to the Pearl-man.

[Rowan Berkeley]

All this is a bit previous, as the illogical but charming English expression as it. The document has not yet been submitted to us for our views.

[the wise king]

Sandstorm
A web column of commentary and analysis from Martin Kramer

Friday, March 17, 2006. Stephen Walt's World. There is much ado today about "The Israel Lobby," a long essay written by Stephen Walt of Harvard University and John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and published in the London Review of Books. The bottom line is simple and familiar: the Israel lobby has taken over Washington. Within the academy, it's the sort of thing that Juan Cole and Rashid Khalidi have been claiming all along, without getting any traction. And it's what Walt himself argued in a few pages of his book, Taming American Power, which appeared last fall, and which also got very little traction.

This newest article, obviously the work of Walt more than Mearsheimer, cobbles together a lot of half-truths and untruths that have been out there on the far fringe, and gives them "academic respectability" (which, as I have shown time and again, is usually a contradiction in terms when it comes to the Middle East). 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. The Washington correspondent of Haaretz called the new article "academic garbage" in his blog this morning, and offered it as an example of "the decline of academic values and the misuse of academic titles by contemporary American pseudo-scholars." That it is, but it's got plenty of competition.

Back in the fall, a donor to Harvard asked me to counter Walt's argument that Israel is a liability. So I wrote a short rebuttal, sent it off, and filed it away. I have no idea whether it went any further, or whether it reached Walt himself. But now seems a perfect moment to resurrect it, so here it is, just as I wrote it in October. It doesn't address all the arguments made in the new essay, because Walt didn't make all those arguments in his book. But it will do for now.

Fortunately we do not live in Stephen Walt's world, where shared values with others are meaningless, and cerebral mandarins make foreign policy by fiat. We live in a real world, where real people respond to other real people who share history and values, and where foreign policy is the result of a tumultuous interaction of interests, ideas, and emotions. Walt would have the United States make its foreign policy like Syria and Egypt do. It's not going to happen.

But let's enter Walt's World, and accept its presumptions, for argument's sake—and for the sake of an argument about Israel. Let's set aside the claim that Israel and the U.S. share democratic values, rooted in a common tradition. Let's set aside the fact that the American public has a genuine regard for Israel, shown in poll after poll, which prevents it from ever seeing Israel as one more Norway. (Walt: if Israel tries to impose an "unjust solution" on the Palestinians, the United States should reduce its support for Israel to "the same way that we support a Norwegian state.") Let's just ask his simple question: is Israel a strategic asset or a strategic liability for the United States?

To recap: Walt thinks that by any objective measure, U.S. support for Israel is a liability. It causes Arabs and Muslims to hate America. Since he thinks the United States should disengage from the Middle East, and follow a policy of "offshore balancing," he believes America needs to cultivate a sense of shared purpose with Arabs and Muslims, many of whom detest Israel or its policies or both. The less the United States is identified as a supporter and friend of Israel's five million Jews, the easier it will be for the United States to find local proxies and clients to keep order among the billion or so Muslims. And the only thing that has prevented the United States from seeing this clearly is the pro-Israel lobby, operating through fronts as diverse as AIPAC, The Washington Institute, and—yes—even the Brookings Institution. Have I simplified Walt's argument? Probably not as much as you might think.

To answer Walt's simple argument, I'll respond with a simple question. If you need an ally somewhere, don't you want it to be the smartest, most powerful, and most resourceful guy on the block, who also happens to admire you? And what is the point of having an ally who's backward, weak, irresolute, and thinks in his heart of hearts that you're his enemy? That's the choice the United States faces in the Middle East.

It took the United States some twenty years to figure this out. Between 1948 and 1967, it believed in Walt's zero-sum concept of the Middle East. The United States recognized Israel in 1948, but it didn't do much to help it defend itself, for fear of alienating Arab monarchs, oil sheikhs, and the "Arab street." That was the heyday of the sentimental State Department Arabists and the profit-driven oil companies.

So Israel went elsewhere. It got guns from the Soviet bloc, and fighter aircraft and a nuclear reactor from France. It even cut a deal with old adversary Britain at the time of the Suez adventure. Israel wasn't in the U.S. orbit, and it didn't get significant American aid, but it grew ever stronger. It even became a nuclear state. Then came June 1967, and Israel showed its stuff. In October 1973, it achieved what military analysts have called an even greater victory, repulsing and reversing a surprise attack that might have overwhelmed a less determined and resourceful people.

It was then that the United States began to look at Israel differently: as a potential ally. The fact that the United States hadn't backed Israel before 1967 didn't prevent key Arab capitals from falling into the Soviet orbit. To the contrary: along with Nasser, they tried to play Washington off Moscow, with a preference for Moscow since it made policy by uncomplicated diktat. America's Arab allies were in a precarious position, and in 1958 it had to send the Marines to Lebanon to bail some of them out.

In 1967, Israel showed itself to be stronger than the whole lot of its neighbors, transforming U.S. perceptions. Israel looked to be the strongest, most reliable, and most cost-effective ally against Soviet penetration of the Middle East, because it could defeat any combination of Soviet clients on its own. It could humiliate them, and in so doing, humiliate the Soviet Union and drive thinking Arabs out of the Soviet camp. That worked: expanded U.S. support for Israel persuaded Egypt to switch camps, winning the Cold War for the United States in the Middle East. Egypt thus became an American ally alongside Israel, not instead of Israel, and became integrated into an overall Pax Americana. The zero-sum theory of the Arabists—Israel or the Arabs, but not both—collapsed. U.S. Middle East policy underwent its Copernican revolution.

Before 1973, the Arab states thought they might defeat or destroy Israel by some stroke of luck, and they tried their hand at it in 1948, 1967, and 1973. Since 1973, the Arab states have understood not only that Israel is strong, but that the United States is Israel's guarantor. As a result, there have been no general Arab-Israeli wars, and Israel's Arab neighbors have either made peace with it (Egypt, Jordan), or keep their borders quiet (Syria, Lebanon). The Levant corner of the Middle East, for all the saturation coverage it gets from an overwrought media, has not been a powder keg, and its crises haven't required direct American military intervention. This is due to U.S. support for Israel—a support that appears so unequivocal to Arabs that they have despaired of overturning it.

United States support for Israel has enhanced its standing in another way, as the only force, in Arab eyes, that can possibly persuade Israel to cede territory it has occupied since 1967. In a paradoxical way, the United States has been a major beneficiary of the Israeli occupation of Arab territories: Arab leaders who wish to regain lost territory must refashion themselves to pass an American test. When they do, the United States sees to it that they are rewarded, and the result has been a network of U.S.-endorsed agreements based on U.S.-mediated Israeli concessions.

It is this "peace process" that has turned even revolutionary Arab leaders into supplicants at the White House door. They would not be there if a strong Israel didn't hold something they want, and if the United States, Israel's ally, were not in a position to deliver it. Walt's notion that Israel has enjoyed total and unqualified support from the United States blinds him to the ways the United States has leveraged its support for Israel into Israeli concessions that are the bedrock of the Pax Americana in the Levant. (It could even be argued—just to be mischievous—that the U.S. interest is best served by a perpetual "peace process," fed by slow and incremental Israeli concessions.)

Compare this to the situation in the Gulf, where U.S. allies are weak. There, the absence of a strong ally has wreaked havoc with U.S. policy, and forced the U.S. to intervene repeatedly. The irresolute Shah, once deemed a U.S. "pillar," collapsed in the face of an anti-American upsurge, producing the humiliation of the embassy seizure and a hostile, entrenched, terror-sponsoring regime still bent on driving the United States out of the Gulf. Saddam Hussein, for some years America's ally, launched an eight-year bloody war against Iran that produced waves of anti-U.S. terror (think Lebanon), only to turn against the United States by occupying Kuwait, and threatening the utterly defenseless Saudi Arabia. Absent a strong ally in the region, the United States has had to deploy, deploy and deploy again. In the Kuwait and Iraq wars, it has put something like a million sets of boots on the ground in the Gulf, at a cost that surely exceeds a trillion dollars.

It's precisely because the Gulf doesn't have an Israel—a strong, capable local ally—that Walt's offshore balancing act can't possibly succeed. If the United States is not perceived to be willing to send in troops there—and it will only be perceived as such if it sometimes does send them—then heavily populated and technologically advanced states (formerly Iraq, today Iran) will attempt to muscle Saudi Arabia and the smaller Arab Gulf states, which have the bigger reserves of oil. In the Gulf, the United States has no allies. It has only dependencies, and their defense will continue to drain American resources, until the day Americans give up their SUVs.

In Israel, in contrast, the U.S. is allied to a militarily adept, economically vibrant state that keeps its part of the Middle East in balance. The U.S. has to help maintain that balance, with road maps and diplomatic initiatives, but this is at relatively low cost, and many of the costs flow back to the U.S. in the form of arms sales, useful Israeli technological innovations, etc.

In the overall scheme of the Pax Americana, then, U.S. policy toward Israel and its neighbors over the past thirty years has been a tremendous success. Has the U.S. brought about a final lamb-lies-down-with-lion peace? No; the issues are too complex. Are the Arabs happy about U.S. support for Israel? No; they still dream of pushing Israel off the map. But any time U.S. interests are upheld without the dispatch of U.S. troops, it's a success. 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. They can't accumulate power, and they can't handle modernity, and they resent anyone who reminds them of it. How would U.S. abandonment of Israel alleviate this inferiority complex, which has been centuries in the making?

And is it not actually better for the United States to signal the Arabs that until they change, Israel will remain America's favorite son? Would this not be doubly so in Walt's preferred scenario of "offshore balancing," in which America would drop its active democratizing altogether? What lever would remain to encourage progressive change in the Arab world, if the United States were to back away from the one democratic, modern, and pluralistic society in the Middle East—the most persuasive and proximate argument made to the Arabs, for the empowering and overpowering might of Western democracy and Western modernity? Would the atrophy of such an Israel not fill the ranks of extremists, much as the sacrifice of Czechoslovakia to Hitler did?

Indeed, for argument's sake, let's imagine that we have followed Walt's policy—that we have somehow tumbled back to the pre-Copernican policy. The United States has decided that Israel should "go it alone," since Israel isn't willing to concede all things to the insatiable Arab appetite for Israeli concessions. How long would it be before the Arabs would revert to their pre-1967 fantasy of defeating or destroying Israel? (The medieval-minded Islamists have never abandoned it.) How long would it be before Israel felt compelled, as it did in 1967, to launch a preemptive strike against Egypt, with its massive conventional force, or Iran, which even now rattles a nuclear saber against Israel? Remember, pace Walt, Israel isn't Norway: it can and will defend itself against threats, be they real or perceived, present or anticipated. It is populated by the remnant of a people that was nearly obliterated in the twentieth century, and that's unlikely to take chances in the twenty-first. Less American support would mean less Israeli restraint, less Israeli maneuverability, and a quicker Israeli finger on the trigger.

How long would it be before the United States would have to pull out all the stops to defuse gigantic crises, or clean up the mess in the aftermath of another war? How long would it be before the United States would have to deploy forces—to save an Arab regime that didn't join the frenzied free-for-all, or to position peacekeeping forces between hostile armies, or to reassure Israel to keep its nukes in the silos? Why would any serious policymaker even contemplate exchanging the present stability—and the situation is stable—for these uncertainties and imponderables? And for what? Some boost for America in Arab public opinion polls, which seem to have Walt all twisted in knots of anguish?

In short, the Levant in Walt's World would become a far more dangerous place than it is now, for Israelis, for Arabs, and ultimately for Americans. Without a strong Israel, buttressed by the United States, it might begin to look like it did before 1967, or as the Gulf has looked over the last three decades. Why anyone would imagine this to be a feasible U.S. policy option—even at Harvard—is a mystery

[the wise king]

Harvard attack on ‘Israel lobby’ is actually a targeting of American public

By Ruth R. Wisse

A Cambridge luminary fires back

http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | In Boston in the early 1980s, I was asked by an Irish cab driver what language I had been speaking with a fellow passenger we had just dropped off. When I told him, Hebrew, the language of Israel, the man exclaimed: "Israel! That's America's fighting front line! Israel fights our battles better than we could fight them ourselves."

Now Professors Stephen Walt of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago would have us believe that the Boston cabbie was a dupe of the "unmatched power of the Israel Lobby." Their essay in the latest London Review of Books — based on a longer working paper on the Kennedy Center Web site — contends that the U.S. government and most of its citizens are fatally in thrall to a "coalition of individuals and organizations who actively work to steer U.S. foreign policy in a pro-Israel direction." Though not all members of said "coalition" are Jews, and though not all Jews are members, the major schemers are such key organizations as the America-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, joined by neoconservatives, think tanks, and a large network of accomplices including (they will learn to their surprise) The Wall Street Journal and the New York Times.

The thesis of Messrs. Walt and Mearsheimer is remarkably broad and singleminded: A loose association of special-interest groups has persuaded the country to sacrifice its interests to a foreign power, thereby jeopardizing "not only U.S. security but that of much of the rest of the world." Israel, it is claimed, hurts every facet of American life: U.S. emergency aid to Israel during the War of 1973 triggered a damaging OPEC oil embargo. Israel is a liability in the war on terror: It goaded the U.S. into the war in Iraq, betrays America through espionage, and destroys American democracy by quashing all criticism. Recently the Israel Lobby — a term the authors render with a sinister capital "L" — has begun to intimidate the universities by trying to create a field of Israel Studies and monitoring anti-Israel bias.

Were it not for the Lobby, the U.S. would have nothing to fear in the world, not even a nuclear threat from Iran: "If Washington could live with a nuclear Soviet Union, a nuclear China or even a nuclear North Korea, it can live with a nuclear Iran. And that is why the Lobby must keep up constant pressure on politicians to confront Tehran." Not Iran but the Lobby is the true threat to America's security by trying to compel the U.S. to oppose Iran against its interests. Most dangerously, Jews control the man at the top: In the spring of 2002 "[Ariel] Sharon and the Lobby took on the president of the United States and triumphed." Given the creative scope of these charges, one is surprised to find no hint of Israel's role in the spread of avian flu.

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.

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. Several Web sites are in the process of listing all their bloopers, distortions and omissions. 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." But he and Walt-Mearsheimer have it backwards: Americans don't support Israel because of the strength of any lobby; Israel earns American support the hard way, for the very reasons the Boston cabbie cited several decades ago

[the wise king]

Yes, It's Anti-Semitic

By Eliot A. Cohen
Wednesday, April 5, 2006; Page A23

Academic papers posted on a Harvard Web site don't normally attract enthusiastic praise from prominent white supremacists. But John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt's "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy" has won David Duke's endorsement as "a modern Declaration of American Independence" and a vindication of the ex-Klansman's earlier work, presumably including his pathbreaking book, "Jewish Supremacism."

Walt and Mearsheimer contend that American national security dictates distancing ourselves from the state of Israel; that U.S. support for Israel has led to such disasters as America's status as the No. 1 target for Islamic terrorists; and that such an otherwise inexplicable departure from good sense can be accounted for only by the power of "The Lobby" (their capitalization), an overwhelmingly Jewish force abetted by some Christian evangelicals and a gentile neocon collaborator or two, who have hijacked American foreign policy and controlled it for decades.

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One of Mearsheimer's University of Chicago colleagues has characterized this as "piss-poor, monocausal social science." It is indeed a wretched piece of scholarship. Israeli citizenship rests "on the principle of blood kinship," it says, and yet the country has a million non-Jewish citizens who vote. Osama bin Laden's grievance with the United States begins with Israel, it says -- but in fact his 1998 fatwa declaring war against this country began by denouncing the U.S. presence in Saudi Arabia and the suffering of the people of Iraq. "Other ethnic lobbies can only dream of having the political muscle" The Lobby has -- news to anyone advocating lifting the embargo on Fidel Castro's Cuba. The Iraq war stemmed from The Lobby's conception of Israel's interest -- yet, oddly, the war attracted the support of anti-Israel intellectuals such as Christopher Hitchens and mainstream publications such as The Economist. America's anti-Iran policy reflects the dictates of The Lobby -- but how to explain Europe's equally strong opposition to Iranian nuclear ambitions?

Oddly, these international relations realists -- who in their more normal academic lives declare that state interests determine policy, and domestic politics matters little -- have discovered the one case in which domestic politics has, for decades, determined the policy of the world's greatest state. Their theories proclaim the importance of power, not ideals, yet they abhor the thought of allying with the strongest military and most vibrant economy in the Middle East. Reporting persecution, they have declared that they could not publish their work in the United States, but they have neglected to name the academic journals that turned them down.

Inept, even kooky academic work, then, but is it anti-Semitic? If by anti-Semitism one means obsessive and irrationally hostile beliefs about Jews; if one accuses them of disloyalty, subversion or treachery, of having occult powers and of participating in secret combinations that manipulate institutions and governments; if one systematically selects everything unfair, ugly or wrong about Jews as individuals or a group and equally systematically suppresses any exculpatory information -- why, yes, this paper is anti-Semitic.

Mearsheimer and Walt conceive of The Lobby as a conspiracy between the Washington Times and the New York Times, the Democratic-leaning Brookings Institution and Republican-leaning American Enterprise Institute, architects of the Oslo accords and their most vigorous opponents. In this world Douglas Feith manipulates Don Rumsfeld, and Dick Cheney takes orders from Richard Perle. They dwell on public figures with Jewish names and take repeated shots at conservative Christians (acceptable subjects for prejudice in intellectual circles), but they never ask why a Sen. John McCain today or, in earlier years, a rough-hewn labor leader such as George Meany declared themselves friends of Israel.

The authors dismiss or ignore past Arab threats to exterminate Israel, as well as the sewer of anti-Semitic literature that pollutes public discourse in the Arab world today. The most recent calls by Iran's fanatical -- and nuclear weapons-hungry -- president for Israel to be "wiped off the map" they brush aside as insignificant. There is nothing here about the millions of dollars that Saudi Arabia has poured into lobbying and academic institutions, or the wealth of Islamic studies programs on American campuses, though they note with suspicion some 130 Jewish studies programs on those campuses. West Bank settlements get attention; terrorist butchery of civilians on buses or in shopping malls does not. To dispute their view of Israel is not to differ about policy but to act as a foreign agent.

If this sounds personal, it is, although I am only a footnote target for Mearsheimer and Walt. I am a public intellectual and a proud Jew; sympathetic to Israel and extensively engaged in our nation's military affairs; vaguely conservative and occasionally hawkish. In a week my family will celebrate Passover with my oldest son -- the third generation to serve as an officer in the United States Army. He will be home on leave from the bomb-strewn streets of Baghdad. The patch on his shoulder is the same flag that flies on my porch.

Other supposed members of "The Lobby" also have children in military service. Impugning their patriotism or mine is not scholarship or policy advocacy. It is merely, and unforgivably, bigotry.

The writer is a professor at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies.

[Isaac Isaacs]

I look forward to reading the rebuttal, though in a sane world it wouldn't be needed. I read (both) M&W papers when they came out and said a quiet 'bravo' - for their courage. At the same time I wondered for the thousandth time how it could be that most of what they stated wasn't self-evident to any American with eyes in their head, a brain between and no axe to grind. But, the fact that what could NOT be said by most distinguished academics in public, HAS now been said, makes this publication a 'defining moment'. Hear the grinders now? Thought you would!

[John]

Phil, could you put a word limit on reader comments, so we don't have to scroll and scroll through the cut-and-paste jobs of "the wise king"? For some reason he thinks it's edifying if he saturates readers with right-wing, Likudnik screeds, so as to snuff out the calmer voices of those who don't wish to be tribal and paranoid in approaching the Levant.

[Adolf]

What a load of garbarge? "Felt constrained by the lobby for years..limited my work and freedom". How, please do tell? What you and W&M are trying to do is to de-legitimize a large body of American public sentiment because that sentiment -- ie, pro-Israeli -- has actually won the day in America. All with unfounded, hysterical statements like your own ..and without a shred of evidence or even an assertion.

[Laura]

Adolf writes: "What you and W&M are trying to do is to de-legitimize a large body of American public sentiment because that sentiment -- ie, pro-Israeli -- has actually won the day in America."

And HOW did it come about that a "pro-Israel sentiment" has "won the day in America"?

An interesting question. There seems to be something almost supernatural in this subjugation of three generations of Western men to the mumbo-jumbo of Zionism.

But it is not sorcery; it is a well-understood disease process studied by some psychologists who have been carrying out their research for years now though their results are not widely known. That, in itself, is due to the activities of the very process they are studying! But let me try to synopsize the progress of the disease using a real life example.

B'nai B'rith is an organization that can easily be compared to similar groups of other religions such as the Young Men's Christian Association or the Knights of Columbus; its declared objects were the help of the poor, sick and fatherless and good works in general.

An ideology of any benevolent association is formed by certain constant factors regardless of their quality, quantity, or scope of action: namely, the motivations of a wronged group, radical righting of wrongs, and the noble intentions of the individuals who join the organization. This is good. But it can be easily converted to evil because these same objectives can also facilitate sublimation of the feeling of being wronged by the universe that exist within pathological individuals. Finding a “home” in such organizations can release these deviant types from the social dictates of universal moral principles. With a “cause” to fight for, the end justifies the means. Only when pathological types are involved, the “end” is often not what the original organization had in mind.

When a benevolent association has been taken over by pathological elements, there is a gradual adaptation of the primary ideology to functions and goals other than the original formative ones. A certain kind of layering or schizophrenia of ideology takes place during this process. The outer layer closest to the original content is used for the group's propaganda purposes—especially as regards the outside world, although it can in part also be used inside with regard to disbelieving lower-echelon members. The second layer is fully comprehended by the insiders; it is more hermetic, generally composed by slipping a different meaning into the same names. Some current day examples of this kind of corrosion of language include:

1) "bringing peace [insert foreign country here]" - This refers not to bringing any kind of meaningful peace to a country that needs it. It simply means killing all enemies. Without anyone to fight back, there is peace. For a pathological deviant, peace means any and all opposition has been exterminated.

2) "bringing freedom to [insert foreign country here]" - This refers not to any real freedoms, but merely the freedom to rape, pillage, and plunder a given group of people. For a pathological deviant, freedom means doing whatever they hell he wants to.

3) "protecting our freedoms" - A variation of 2), this simply means protecting the right to rape, pillage, plunder, etc.

4) "defending oneself" / "acting in self-defense" - This refers not to any real type of defense, as a result of an unprovoked attack. Self-defense means that a pathological deviant has the right to maim, torture, terrorize, or kill anyone who complains that he is already maiming, torturing, terrorizing, or killing. For a deviant, defending oneself means attacking blaming the victim for the deviant's own crimes, and holding them fully accountable for actions that are the responsibility of the deviant.

5) "War on Terror" - The war on terror is a war of terror. It is a war on the victims of terror at the hands of psychopaths. When the victims of psychopathic terror respond, they are attacked in the name of terror.

6) re: morality, e.g. "Jewish morality" or "Israel's military is the most moral in the world" - When used in the context of a psychopathic military, 'morality' refers to a complete lack of conscience. For example, feeling empathy for your enemy is "soft", "weak or simple-minded". Cold-blooded killing machines are moral soldiers, in the minds of pathological deviants.

7) "Militant Islamo-fascism wants to take over the world and install the law of Islam on the peoples of the world" - This means that pathological deviants, in fact, wish to take over the world of normal people (the majority of humans), installing the universal law of the psychopath. This 'law' can manifest itself in any ideology, whether it by capitalist, socialist, fascist, communist, Judaic, Talmudic, Christian, Muslim, etc.

10) "Anti-semitic" - A label which refers to any behavior critical of the bloodthirsty Talmudic Zionist war-machine in Israel that murders Palestinians every day.

11) "Self-hating Jew" - A Jew that displays "anti-semitic" behavior but cannot have this label (libel?) applied for obvious reasons.

12) "Globalization" - It's not about the distribution of the marvelous wealth the capitalistic system has to offer to the poorer countries, but another way or another excuse for the big corporations and the wealthier nations to steal and plunder the natural resources of those same poorer countries leaving the native populations with nothing.

Getting back to doublespeak, since identical names signify different semantic content depending on the layer in question, understanding this "doublespeak" requires simultaneous fluency in both languages.

The masses of average people succumb to the first layer's suggestive insinuations for a long time before they learn to understand the second layer as well. But it is very important to notice that they DO, eventually, wise up!

However, in the beginning, comprehending this doubletalk is hard work fraught with quite understandable psychological resistance; this very duality of language, however, is a pathognomic symptom indicating that the organization in question is touched by the pathological process to an advanced degree.

With this in mind, we note that, in 1913, B'nai B'rith gave birth to the "Anti-defamation League" which, by 1947, had become a formidable secret police in America.

It could be said that the creation of the A.D.L. was a symptom that B'nai B'rith had been taken over from within by the above described pathological elements.

In Doublespeak "anti-defamation" means "defamation" and the A.D.L. lives by calumny, using such terms as anti-Semite, fascist, rabble-rouser, Jew-baiter, Red-baiter, paranoiac, lunatic, madman, reactionary, diehard, bigot and so on.

What is interesting to the objective observer is that the vocabulary is rather fixed and the true nature of any writer's or newspaper's allegiance may be detected by keeping count of the number of times these trade-mark words are used.

The achievement of the A.D.L. has been to make "trigger words" by iteration so that politicians, academics, and the average person hasten to deny that they are any of these things.

Under the influence of the A.D.L., reasoned debate became effectively outlawed.

When the A.D.L. was born in 1913 it had desk space in the parent B'nai B'rith office and a tiny budget. In 1933 Mr. Bernard J. Brown wrote:

"Through the intervention of the A.D.L. we have succeeded in muzzling the non-Jewish press to the extent that newspapers in America abstain from pointing out that any person unfavourably referred to is a Jew".

In 1948 the Jewish Menorah Journal of New York wrote:

"Should but one phrase in a reprinted literary classic reflect unjustly upon Jews, the A.D.L. will promptly belabour the innocent publisher until he bowdlerizes the offending passage. Let one innocent movie-producer incorporate a Jewish prototype, however inoffensive, in his picture and the hue and cry raised by the A.D.L. will make him wish he's never heard of Jews. But when Jews are subtly propagandized into accepting Communist doctrine . . . the A.D.L. remains silent. No word, no warning, no hint of caution, much less exposure and condemnation: although there are men high in the councils of the organization who should know by their own experience how the Communists 'infiltrate'." (The Menorah Journal spoke for the many Jews who were alarmed because the A.D.L. was attacking anti-Communism as anti-Semitism).

These quotes show the growth of the A.D.L.'s power in only thirty-five years. It has imposed the law of heresy on the public debate in America. No criticism of Zionism is allowed to pass without virulent attack.

"Jerusalem is the capital of the world no less than the capital of Israel" (the Zionist mayor of Jerusalem, 1952).

America has today very few writers who fight on for independent debate and comment. They will discuss any public matter, in the light of traditional American policy and interest, save Zionism, which hardly any of them will touch. If you ask them why, you will always get the same answer: it canno be done. The employed ones would lose their jobs, if they made the attempt. The independent ones would find no publisher for their books because no reviewer would mention these, save with the epithets enumerated above.

The A.D.L., of such small beginnings in 1913, as early as 1948 had a budget of three million dollars (it is only one of several Jewish organizations pursuing Zionist aims in America at a similar rate of growth of expenditure). Today, the budgets of these organizations are undoubtedly as large as the budgets of small nations.

The Menorah Journal, discussing "Anti-Defamation Hysteria", said:

"Fighting anti-Semitism has been built up into a big business, with annual budgets running into millions of dollars". It said the object was "to continue beating the anti-Semitic drum" and "to scare the pants off prospective contributors" in order to raise funds. It mentioned some of the methods used ("outright business blackmail; if you can't afford to give $10,000 to this cause, you can take your business elsewhere"), and said American Jews were being "stampeded into a state of mass-hysteria by their self-styled defenders".

The Menorah Journal also drew attention to the falsification of news by Jewish news agencies subsidized by the big organizations. It showed that some minor brawl among juveniles in Manhattan had been depicted in "front-page scare headlines which would have led a stranger to believe that a Czarist pogrom was going on" (by these same means the "Czarist pogroms" earlier, and Rabbi Stephen Wise's "reported pogrom in Berlin" in 1933 reached the world). Out of this particular "scare headline" grew a mass-meeting in Madison Square Garden, where Wendell Willkie (aspiring to the presidency at the time) declared:

"The mounting wave of anti-Semitism at home shocks me. . . etc., etc."

"Mass-hysteria" is not only produced among Jews and band-wagon politicians by this method; it produces another kind of mass-hysteria among earnest but uninformed people of the "Liberal" kind: the mass-hysteria of self-righteousness, which is a tempting form of self-indulgence.

George Orwell was of those who helped spread "mass-hysteria" in this way during those early days. He went to fight when the Civil War broke out in Spain, then discovering that Communism, when he saw it, was worse than the thing which (as he thought) he set out to fight against. He died before he could go to Palestine and experience any similar enlightenment about Israel, so that what he wrote about "anti-Semitism" was but the echo of "anti-defamationist hysteria".

He explored "anti-Semitism in Britain" (1945) and found " a perceptibly anti-Semitic strain in Chaucer". Mr. Hilaire Belloc and Mr. G.K.Chesterton were "literary Jew-baiters". He found passages in Shakespeare, Smollett, Thackeray, Shaw, T.S. Eliot, Aldous Huxley and others "which if written now would be stigmatized as anti-Semitism" (he was right without knowing it; if written now they would have been stigmatized, the operative word being "stigmatized").

Then Orwell fell on his backside: He said that "offhand, the only English writers I can think of who, before the days of Hitler, made a definite effort to stick up for Jews are Dickens and Charles Reade". Thus he extolled one of the A.D.L.'s "Jew-baiters" as a champion of Jews.

In America the film of Oliver Twist was banned because of Fagin! This was the work of the A.D.L.; its representative, a Mr. Arnold Forster, announced:

"American movie-distributors refused to become involved in the distribution and exhibition of the motion picture after the A.D.L. and others expressed the fear that the film was harmful; the Rank Organization withdrew the picture in the United States".
Later the picture was released after censorship by the A.D.L.; "seventy two eliminations" were made at its command and a prologue was added assuring beholders that they might accept it as "a filmization of Dickens without anti-Semitic intentions".

A private organization which can produce such results is obviously powerful; there is nothing comparable in the world.

Vincent Sheehan wrote in 1949 when the A.D.L. was flexing its muscles:

"There is scarcely a voice in the United States that dares raise itself for the rights, any rights, of the Arabs; any slight criticism of the Zionist high command is immediately labeled as anti-Semitic".

Dorothy Thompson, whose picture and articles at that time were published everyday in hundreds of newspapers, similarly protested.

Sheehan's popularity with book-reviewers immediately slumped; Miss Thompson's portrait and writings disappeared from the American press.

Does anybody remember either of them?

How is this supernatural fog imposed on masses of people? What are the logistics? By what means has America (and the entire West) been brought to the state that no politician or writer or editor or producer of any mass media feels secure at his desk, until he has brought out his prayer-mat and prostrated himself to Zion?

How have presidents and prime ministers been led to compete for the approval of this faction like bridesmaids for the bride's bouquet?

Why do supposedly substantial persons suffer themselves to be paraded at hundred-dollar-a-plate banquets for Zion, or to be herded on to Zionist platforms to receive "plaques" for services rendered?

The power of money and the prospect of votes have demonstrably been potent lures, but by far the strongest weapon is the power to control published information; to lay stress on what a faction wants and to exclude from it all that the faction dislikes, and so to be able to give any selected person a "good" or a "bad" press. This is in fact control of "the mob". In today's language it is "the technique of propaganda and the approach to the masses", as Chaim Weizmann said, but it is an ancient Asiatic art and was described, on a famous occasion, by Saint Matthew and Saint Mark: "The chief priests and elders persuaded the multitude. . The chief priests moved the people . ."

In forty years the A.D.L. perfected a machine for persuading the multitude.

It is a method of thought-control of which the subject-mass is unaware and its ability to destroy any who speak against it is formidable.

One of the first to be politically destroyed was the head of the Congressional Committee charged to watch over sedition (the Un-American Activities Committee).

Martin Dies related that he was required by the secret inquisition to restrict the definition of "subversion" to "fascism", and to equate "fascism" with "anti-Semitism".

In other words, "subversion" must mean any kind of resistance to Zionism, not the subverting of the U.S. He would not yield, and was driven out of politics by defamation.

The A.D.L. (and the American Jewish Committee) "set out to make the American people aware of anti-Semitism". It informed Jews that "25 out of every 100 Americans are infected with anti-Semitism", and that another 50 might develop the disease.

By 1945 it was carrying out "a high-powered educational program, geared to reach every man, woman and child" in America through the press, radio, advertising, children's comic books and school books, lectures, films, "churches" and trade unions.

This program included "219 broadcasts a day", full-page advertisements in 397 newspapers, poster advertising in 130 cities, and "persuasions" subtly incorporated in the printed matter on blotters, matchbox covers, and envelopes.

The entire national press of the time ("1900 dailies with a 43,000,000 circulation") and the provincial, Negro, foreign-language and labor newspapers were kept supplied with, "and used", its material in the form of "news, background material, cartoons and comic strips".

In addition, the A.D.L. in 1945 distributed "more than 330,000 copies of important books carrying our message to libraries and other institutions", furnished authors with "material and complete ideas", and circulated nine million pamphlets "all tailored to fit the audiences to which they are directed". It found "comic books" to be a particularly effective way of reaching the minds of young people and the military, and circulated "millions of copies" of propaganda in this form. Its organization consisted of the national headquarters, public relations committees in 150 cities, eleven regional offices, and "2,000 key men in 1,000 cities".

The name of the body which supplied this mass of suggestive material never reached the public.

During the 1940's the system of "syndicated writers" in New York or Washington enveloped the entire American press. One such writer's column may appear in a thousand newspapers each day; editors like this system for its cheapness' it saves them the cost of employing their own writers. Through a few dozen such writers the entire stream of information can be tinctured at its source.

By all these means three generations have been brought up in America (and this applies equally to England) which have been deprived of authentic information about, and independent comment on, the nature of Zionism, its original connection with Communism, the infestation of administrations and capture of "administrators".

The opposition to this creeping control was strong at first and was gradually crushed during two decades by various methods, including the purchase of newspapers, but chiefly by unremitting and organized pressure, persuasive or menacing.

In America a newspaper which prints reports or comment unacceptable to the A.D.L. may expect to receive a visit from its representatives. Threats to withdraw advertising are frequently made. The corps of "syndicated" writers joins in the attack on any individual writer or broadcaster who becomes troublesome; many American commentators have been driven from the publishers' lists or "off the air" in this way.

Even the figures for expenditure, staff and activities, convey no true idea of the power and omnipresence of the A.D.L. It is incomprehensible that a body of such might can almost invisibly operate in a state still nominally governed by a president and Congress.

The A.D.L.'s numerous offices and sub-offices are clearly only the centers of a great network of agents and sub-agents, for its eye is as all-seeing as that of the N.V.D. in communist Russia or of the Gestapo in Nazi Germany.

In in 1952, when a book by former London Times WW II correspondent had appeared in England, the American Legion's magazine at Hollywood published some five hundred words from it.

The A.D.L. at once demanded a retraction from the Hollywood commander of the Legion, who referred to the magazine's editor. No inaccuracy was alleged; the deputation just called the book "anti-Semitic".

The editor refused to retract unless false statement or other valid reason were proved, and resigned when the commander, ignoring him, published the familiar "apology" in face of threats that "all Jews" would boycott the Hollywood Stadium, which was operated by the Legion.

The editor, departing, said this proved the truth of what was stated in the book.

Ironically, the apology availed the commander nothing for the ABC, which had been televising the Legion's events at the Stadium, at once announced that it would terminate its contract with the Legion and televise rival events; the commander ruefully said that this "comes as a complete shock to me".

The reader need only multiply these few examples to see the effect on the total sum of information supplied to the public. The peoples of the Western nation-states are deprived of information in the matters most vitally affecting their present and future, by a press which (they are constantly told) is "the freest in the world".

In conclusion, we see that "a large body of American public sentiment ...ie, pro-Israeli" has actually been "won" by a covert and insidious propaganda campaign. The "pro-Israeli" sentiment is, effectively, no different from the pro-Nazi sentiment of the WW II Germans.

Major tip of the hat to Douglas Reed and Andrew Lobaczewski.

[Alan]

Major tip of the hat to you, Laura!

Thank you.

[Adolf]

What Laura states in interminably long prose proves my point -- with Anti-semites it is impossible for jews to participate in American political life without being accused of undermining America. I think Weiss is an idiot fellow traveler in this game. "Laura's" piece bears all the earmarks of anti-semitism. Yes, I will state that. it is paranoid in the extreme, sees conspiracy everywhere and, taken to its logical conclusion, would deprive organized jews of participating in American political life. Anyone who thinks the Wash Post, CNN, NY Times, Christian Science Monitor, LA times or Peter Jennings has been friendly to Israel is smoking crack.

[Alan]

Adolf,

The old anti-Semitism libel got old. You cry wolf all the time, you lose credibility. You must be too desperate to use that card, I guess when not able to counter facts, personal attacks are the last resort.

And your last comment on mainstream news outlets being unfriendly to Israel?????? Either you smoke too much crack or you consider "friendly" only the shameless pro-Likudnik propaganda of "newspapers" like the Jerusalem Post!

Hard for American newspapers to please Zeev "fascism is cool" Jabotinsky's, Caroline "Drama Queen" Glick's and Avigdor "forcible transfer" Lieberman's fans!

(According to the Jerusalem Post, when the NY Times reported on the Peace Now report which proved (and is still being supposedly “studied” and of course not refuted by the Israeli Government since the report was based on its own databases) that over 40% of settlements on the occupied territories are built on PRIVATE Palestinian land, that was a "betrayal"! You gotta admire the J Post's journalistic standards!!! But at least they surely please Adolf!)

[Brian]

February 25, 2002
The ADL Spying Case Is Over,
But The Struggle Continues

By Jeffrey Blankfort, Anne Poirier
and Steve Zeltzer
Plaintiffs in the of ADL Spying Case

In 1993, the District of Attorney of San Francisco released 700 pages of documents implicating the Anti-Defamation League, an organization that claims to be a defender of civil rights, in a vast spying operation directed against American citizens who were opposed to Israel's policies in the Occupied West Bank and Gaza and to the apartheid policies of the government of South Africa and passing on information to both governments.

Under great political pressure, Smith later dropped the charges. One wonders what would have happened had an Arab-American or Muslim organization been caught spying with the names of 10,000 people and 600 organizations in their files.

Not only were critics of Israel under ADL's surveillance,including thousands of Arab-Americans, but labor organizations such as the San Francisco Labor Council, ILWU Local 10, and the Oakland Educational Association, and civil rights groups such as the NAACP, Irish Northern Aid, International Indian Treaty Council and the Asian Law Caucus were also found in the "pinko" files of ADL's undercover operative, Roy Bullock.

Moreover, Bullock, who had worked, off the books, for the ADL for more than 25 years, admitted that he had been reporting on the activities of black South African exiles and American anti- apartheid activists for South African intelligence.

Bullock, pretending to be sympathetic to the Palestinian cause, came to the founding meeting of the Labor Committee of the Middle in 1987 at the home of plaintiff Steve Zeltzer, having met Zeltzer at meetings of the Free Moses Mayekiso Defense

Committee, a South African labor solidarity committee in which he also infiltrated under false pretenses.

Having been responsible for exposing Bullock as an ADL agent to the media, we joined together with other Bay Area activists in filing a suit against the ADL for violation of our privacy rights as provided in California law.

Almost a decade later the suit has been settled with a significant cash payment by the ADL and, we wish to emphasize, without our signing any agreement for confidentiality which the ADL had previously demanded. Our efforts to expose the organization's work in defending the policies of the Israeli government and stifling its opponents will continue, using new information gained in the pursuance of the suit.

The ADL spent millions of dollars preventing this case from coming to trial through costly appeals and exploiting the judicial process but, at the end, it had to give up..

During the course of the suit we learned that:

Bullock, the ADL's top "fact finder" had sold confidential information to a South African intelligence agent in San Francisco for $15,000.

Ten days before he was assassinated in South Africa, Chris Hani, the man who would have succeeded Nelson Mandela as the country's president, was trailed by Bullock on a trip through California who reported on it to the South African government.

ADL agent Roy Bullock was discovered to have a floor plan of murdered Los Angeles Arab American leader Alex Odeh and a key to his office.

The ADL supplied confidential information to foreign governments that it obtained from police and federal agencies in the US,

Having infiltrated the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), the ADL's "fact finder" performed a COINTEL-type operation at the convention of the Holocaust-denying Journal of Historical Review when he put ADC's literature on convention tables as a way of smearing the committee for "working with anti- Semites."

The ADL has organized to silence and eliminate all critical voices of Israel from academia and the media and has targeted professors , particularly those who are African American, and who are critical of Israel.

That at least 51% of the activities of its San Francisco office were devoted to defending Israel.

The ADL provided secret files to police agencies when these police agencies were prevented by law from collecting the files themselves,

Many questions must still be answered about the activities of the ADL and it's non-profit status as an "education organization". The settlement offered by the ADL is recognition on its part that it could not afford to go to a trial in front of a jury and face the likelihood that more of its dirty secrets would be revealed.

We call on all people to make sure that these practices on the part of the ADL are not allowed to continue and that the double standard that presently dominates this country on issues dealing with Israel be eliminated.

Finally, we wish to thank our attorney, former congressman Pete McCloskey, himself a victim of the ADL and the Israel Lobby, for his years of work on our behalf and his steadfast commitment to the pursuit of justice.

Jeffrey Blankfort can be reached at: jab@tucradio.org

For more information on this case read CounterPunch's story, ADL Snoops: Were the Spies "Journalists"?

http://www.counterpunch.org/adlspying2.html

[Brian]

Adolf, if this is your idea of "organized jews [sic] participating in American political life", think again.

Readers are encouraged to research this case further. Not for the faint-hearted, you've been warned!

[Adolf]

Oy Vey Brian. If you are going to use something to slam the ADL you may as well use original sources. Your reference to Counterpunch proves my point.

[bill Pearlman]

Brian: you got us man, Jeff Blankfort is certainly an honest, upright, totally unimpeachable source, at least in your bizzarro world. And being a card carrying member of the Jewish lobby ( very nice by the way ) I am personally dgoing to petition to send an ADL hit team afte you. After all we got Chris Hani we can certainly get you.

[Brian]

Adolf, the fact that you are not even trying to deny this case proves my point.

For more links and plenty of sources on this case, try Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Defamation_League

I have to say, this was too easy! Or is any of you two apologists going to deny ANYTHING from the previous article?

Nah, I didn't think so!