Coming Soon to a Television Near You

According to this Amazon list, The Israel Lobby by Walt and Mearsheimer was #18 in sales for new and forthcoming books this a.m. Just a bounce from yesterday's piece in the Times, or are things changing? Someone better get these guys a New York venue.

Comments

[Oarwell]

From the NYT article:

"Opponents are prepared. Also being released on Sept. 4 is “The Deadliest Lies: The Israel Lobby and the Myth of Jewish Control” (Palgrave Macmillan) by Abraham H. Foxman, the national director of the Anti-Defamation League. The notion that pro-Israel groups “have anything like a uniform agenda, and that U.S. policy on Israel and the Middle East is the result of their influence, is simply wrong,” George P. Shultz, a former secretary of state, says in the foreword. “This is a conspiracy theory pure and simple, and scholars at great universities should be ashamed to promulgate it.”

The subject will certainly prompt furious debate, though not at the Center for the Humanities at the Graduate Center at the City University of New York, the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, a Jewish cultural center in Washington and three organizations in Chicago. They have all turned down or canceled events with the authors, mentioning unease with the controversy or the format."

Question. Is it the power of the myth (Foxman) that gets the venues shut down? Or is it fear of the myth? Who engages in mythopoesis, M&W, or AF?

What are other myths we are not allowed (publicly) to discuss?

[HF]

How about the reality of women controlling everything? Try discussing that with your wife. If she will let you!

[Turner]

Speaking of media coverage of these types of topics. An interesting series on CNN about religion called "God's Warriors" is currently in play. Here is an excerpt about a Jew that now works for the FBI.

The path to faith often takes unexpected twists. In the case of Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, the road went through three of the world's major religions -- Judaism, Islam and Christianity -- and ultimately brought him to the FBI.

Born to Jewish parents who call themselves mystics, he grew up in what he calls the "liberal hippie Mecca" of Ashland, Oregon, a town of about 20,000 near the California border. It was in this ultraliberal intellectual environment that a young Gartenstein-Ross experimented with a radical form of Islam that eventually led him to shun music, reject women's rights and even refuse to touch dogs because he believed this was "according to God's will."

"I began to pray for the mujahedeen, for these stateless warriors who were trying to topple secular governments," he said.

His journey began in 1997, when as a junior at Wake Forest University, he began to examine his own spiritual identity after experiencing a couple of brushes with death caused by illness. "That kind of thing can cause spiritual discomfort and make you reevaluate what it is that you're living for," he told CNN in an upcoming documentary called "God's Warriors." Watch behind-the-scenes with CNN's Amanpour for the making of the TV special »

A college friend introduced him to Islam and he was intrigued by its peaceful message. "Islam was a very simple faith and as I learned more and more about it, it seemed more and more fascinating to me," he said.

That fall, he called home to tell his parents he was planning to become a Muslim.

"We felt it was OK," his father Moshe Ross said. "We were glad that he was going to study something and hopefully seriously. And we were happy with Islam."

When Gartenstein-Ross returned to Ashland, he got his first taste of radicalization when an imam at a local makeshift mosque blasted Western society.

"His argument was that the West was so inherently corrupt, so inherently anti-Islamic, that if we stayed in this society, then inevitably our faith would be eroded," said Gartenstein-Ross, who chronicled his experience in a book called "My Year Inside Radical Islam."

The humble mosque would soon move to a hilltop headquarters in Ashland, thanks to financial support from a Saudi Arabian charity known as the Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation, which has since been shut down by U.S. and Saudi authorities for alleged terror ties. Lawyers for Al-Haramain have denied those charges and have filed suit against the U.S. government seeking to have its name cleared.

Gartenstein-Ross said a man named Pete Seda, who ran the charity's local office, offered him a job. Seda became his mentor and within a few months Gartenstein-Ross said he found himself agreeing with extreme views. At Al-Haramain, he said he saw the religion which he had embraced for its tolerance become obsessed with rules and ideology.

"What I didn't expect was that over time my ideas would fall into line with theirs," he said. "I wasn't to shake hands with women. I wasn't to pet a dog. I wasn't to wear shorts that came up above my knees. But conversely, my pants legs couldn't be too long."

But at times, he still had doubts about some beliefs espoused at the mosque. Whenever he questioned the rules, his co-workers would tell him his own views were irrelevant. The view was that "your moral inclinations do not matter. All that matters is whether this is what's right according to God's will," said Gartenstein-Ross.

In 1999 he left his job at Al-Haramain for law school at New York University. Away from his co-workers, he was free to question the radical doctrines he'd learned in Oregon and meet with others about spirituality, including Christians. A year later, he converted to Christianity and was eventually baptized in the Baptist church.

It was a decision he took extremely seriously because he said his colleagues at Al-Haramain had preached that leaving Islam was punishable by death.

"This conversion out of Islam toward Christianity was certainly not one I took lightly in any way, because I realized there could be repercussions from it," he said.

The Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation would come up in his life again, but in a very different fashion. His first job after law school was as a clerk with the U.S. Court of Appeals in the District of Columbia. He had to undergo a background check and listed Al-Haramain as a previous employer. Soon, the FBI was quizzing him about the group.

Two years later, in 2004, federal agents raided the Ashland offices of Al-Haramain. When he learned of the bust, Gartenstein-Ross says he contacted the FBI. "I knew about some of Al-Haramain's contempt for U.S. tax law. I knew about the support these guys had for the mujahedeen in Chechnya," he said.

His mentor, Pete Seda, and another top Al-Haramain official now face conspiracy and tax fraud charges for allegedly helping provide $150,000 in funds meant for Muslim fighters in Chechnya. Lawyers for the group say it renounces terrorism, and in a lawsuit filed against the government last week, Al-Haramain says it's a "charitable organization that seeks to promote greater understanding of the Islamic religion."

Seda on Wednesday voluntarily returned to the United States to fight the charges and entered a plea of not guilty.

As for Gartenstein-Ross, he is now a counter-terrorism consultant who works with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a Washington think-tank formed after September 11, 2001, that lists former FBI director Louis Freeh, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Sen. Joseph Lieberman among its "distinguished advisers."

He acknowledges his experience is atypical -- that most American Muslims are well-assimilated into American society and don't embrace radical Islamic ideas.

"There is a lot that's going right about Islam in the United States, and a lot of the conversations I've had with moderate Muslims and other Muslims in the past year-and-a-half have been encouraging in terms of what's happening with Islam in America," he said

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/08/15/daveed.godswarriors/index.html

[David]

NO STRINGS ATTACHED TO NEW DEFENSE PACKAGE FOR ISRAEL
"The new $30 billion American defense package for Israel is not conditioned on diplomatic progress or concessions to the Palestinians, a top U.S. aide said Thursday as representatives from both countries signed the memorandum of understanding in Jerusalem."
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/894644.html

[Defenestrator]

$30 billion. $100 per American going to defend Israel.

[David]

M&W had slipped to #19 on that Amazon list when I checked. Still remarkable when you consider that it is the only title which is not even available yet.

[evanj@]

re Oarwell's note on Foxman's book and the Schulz introduction (ah yes I still remember Shulz through the Iran-Contra hearings, lying through his teeth, bouyed by Bechtel slush; this man is definitely to be taken seriously):
No uniform agenda? Pro-Israel groups have a uniform agenda to deny that there is a uniform agenda. This same line is trotted out every time a critic highlights the transparently uniform agenda.
The other riff is to claim the need for 'ongoing dialogue', which translates as the continuing need to extinguish not only dialogue (exit stage left W&M) but action on the Palestinian plight.

[Denis Drew]

As for the seemingly violence-prone/fanatical Islamics in Ashland, I just take them as coming from a primitive culture where there is not much education -- they remind me quite a bit (though not for the exact same behaviors) of the (sometimes dangerously) primitive attitudes Puerto Ricans when they first arrived in NYC a few decades back. IOW, I would be willing to wait for their primitive side to grow up without too much alarm in between -- it's just people stuff.

As for Jews controlling everything: the Irish control everything -- we take over everywhere we move in. I know we don't have an Irish mayor in New York at present but can anybody identify an Irish neighborhood left in New York at present -- we just moved out.

The pity is that Jews could have gone the Irish route of takeover in Israel: especially with their advantages in education and foreign donations over the locals -- they could have taken over by being nice to everybody. Maybe it was a case of the traumatized abused becoming the abuser. Maybe if Jews were coming from a saner recent history in 1949 they would have seen what I am talking about (friendly takeover) more naturally.

[freespeechlover]

Glad to see that the charges against Mearsheimer and Walt have led to more book sales; I'm going to buy the book both because I want it and because it's important when the content of speech is attacked on this issue to put your money where your mouth is.

[Joachim Martillo]

Foxman's book is only one of many being released. Here is a comment that I sent to the author of another book about the resurgence of anti-Semitism on the left. It first appeared about a year ago. Norman Finkelstein discusses such books like Phyllis Chesler's The New Anti-Semitism in his book Beyond Chutzpah. I understand why the ADL would have a book published, but what marketing model justifies the publication of Chesler's or Harrison's books?

Dear Professor Harrison,

Your book The Resurgence of Anti-Semitism: Jews, Israel and Liberal Opinion indicates that you do not have much background in Jewish studies and that you have not spent much time in the Palestinian occupied territories.

Because Zionists and their supporters accuse anyone critical of Israel or Zionism as anti-Semitic, revisiting the meaning of the terms ”anti-Semitism” and “Jew” is worthwhile.

For the rest, see http://eaazi.blogspot.com/2007/08/last-word-on-anti-semitism.html .