New Pro-Iraq-War Organization Hides Its Pro-Israel Agenda

Last night Ari Fleischer was on Hardball speaking up for Freedom's Watch, a new organization that is buying ads to support George Bush's war "plans" in Iraq. Fleischer warns that if we don't stay the course, the whole region will "explode."

According to the Washington Post, two of the three leaders of Freedom's Watch, including Fleischer, are associated with the Republican Jewish Coalition (the third is involved with the Holocaust Memorial). Its donors, per the Post, include three other members of the Rep. Jewish Coalition and Gary Erlbaum, a leader of the conservative Jewish community in Philadelphia. That's a lot of right wing Jews.

I talked to Erlbaum a year ago. Israel is front and center for him. Three years ago I heard Fleischer talking to a Jewish audience in Cincinnati, urging them to vote for George Bush in the upcoming election. Fleischer made explicit pro-Israel appeals. He said that his mother was a Democrat who opposed Bush but had softened because the Iraq war had been good for Israel's security. He said that he was proud of the fact that in all his statements on Israel/Palestine while White House press secretary, he had never used the term "cycle of violence." I.e., he masked the endless brutalization there, as if Israel is getting somewhere by bulldozing houses and performing messy assassinations that kill little children, too.

There is nothing wrong with rightwing Israel-centric Jews getting involved in American politics. Let 100 flowers bloom. But I want their agendas explicit. It's clear to me that several members of the new group care about Israel's security as a reason for American military engagement in the Middle East.  They should say so upfront. As it is, the Freedom's Watch website has imagery of the eagle wrapped in a flag; its big new ad shows an Iraq War veteran who continues to support the disastrous war because of 9/11, and no one on the site is talking about Israel. Fleischer didn't mention it last night in his analysis of the regional fallout if we left Iraq. This is dangerous dishonesty. As Glenn Greenwald wrote in A Tragic Legacy, the U.S. might well be willing to fight to defend Israel's security; but the people have a right to know that.

[I]f Americans are being induced to support wars not in American interest but in Israel's, and if American lives and treasure are being squandered in wars justified by false premises, by a hidden agenda, they will realize that at some point...When the realization begins to dawn that at least one substantial factor as to why America waged Middle Eastern war(s) is because influential individuals with an overarching devotion to Israel pushed for war against Israel's enemies, then an anti-Israeli backlash is highly likely to occur.

Last night Mike Barnicle played the Freedom's Watch ad with the soldier's appeal to stay the course; then asked Fleischer who the soldier was. Fleischer said he didn't know. But he said that when a soldier dies in Iraq, everyone in America grieves with the family. This is b.s.; there is a real difference between supporting the war from armchairs and going to Iraq. The next guest on the show, a veteran opposed to the war, said that Fleischer's lack of sincerity was exposed by the fact that he didn't know the soldier's name. I agree. And smell a rat. Fleischer's group ought to be upfront about its concerns. Rather than manipulating public opinion.

Comments

[bill Pearlman]

I guess Phil, the question is, how many Jews does it take to, I guess contaminate a host organism. Are we a cancer, surely Jews must disclose themselve whereever we are. Its just too easy to hide. I still think the yellow star or the armband is the way to go. There is precedent.

[Kathleen]

Why is Ari Fleisher still able to run around a free man pushing for more wars? Fleisher is a radical and a traitor and has jeopardized U.S. National Security by being part of the team who outed a CIA under cover agent whose job it was was to follow the path of WMD's.

Fleisher should be behind bars for being a traitor. At the very least he should be impeached so that he can never slip back into any administration in the future.

Who is Ari Fleisher working for?

[Chuck]

So Bill Pearlman agrees with the so called Freedom Watch's deceitful representation that they somehow represent American interests when it is clear that they are actually pursuing Zionist objectives? Remind me again, what is the Mossad's motto, Bill? And just how much antipathy does one have to have for their fellow Americans to adopt such a deceitful approach to public affairs?

[lester]

pearlman is the biggest anti semite ever. he wants to make sure the israel agenda is promoted as dishonestly as possible so as to bring about another holocaust when people eventually wise up.

[Bill Pearlman]

Something your looking forward to Lester, the next holocaust, inshallah

[evanj]

Fleischer is just acting to keep the heat under the boiling pot.
Iraq was invaded in the first place for the misplaced sake of Israel (why aren't Boy Feith and his mates in jail?) - oil was a side issue.
The blood lust can't be satisfied. It's got too easy killing chickens in a cage (the Pals); bigger challenges are in order.
If Foxman, Fleischer, et. al., didn't have Israel to wet their pants over, what would be left in their lives?

[Alex Chaihorsky]

Lester,
Billy is just a shtetl clown, his only style is same boring sarcastic "throw hands in the air" shtik. Have you ever heard an argument from him? Too hard. Need know things. Need think. But yelling sarcastically every time that "Oh, yeah, blame the Jews, yellow stars, new holocaust" - that does not demand anything, even reading the original post. One can actually do that by a text robot! Why is he so short on actual arguments?

Easy. After his ignorant, insolent ass was whooped so many times here, he finally learned, as a Pavlov's dog "learns", that each time he tries to say something - he discredits his own cause so bad, that now he is a major embarrassment to Zionist side and we are asked by Zionists on this forum not to take him as representing their cause! Poor Billy! I can see him cry!
And that total inability to see the chessboard more than a single move ahead! He accused me of misrepresenting that I am a Jew, but never even though how would he bail out if he was wrong and made an idiot out of himself when I proposed a third party mediated large bet. Not putting your money where your mouth is - nothing can be more discrediting here in America than that! Couple of days ago His Bozoid Smuttiness suggested that my Dad was a Nazi collaborator and when I proposed public-mediated contest between my father's and my grandparents and his a WWII war awards contest he was not even able to answer a simple question on what was his Daddy did during WWII! No! Billy ran for cover! See? Every time he is trying to be smart - BANG! His ass get whooped! EVERY TIME, ladies and gentlemen, every time! Now we all know whose family was fighting Nazis and whose was doing geshefts when American and Russian boys were paying with their lives fighting Nazis! And we do not need to squeeze it out of Billy - stupid Billy volunteers delivers this embarrassment HIMSELF, by attacking others and never asking himself a question - what would I do if I will be asked back? A one-step mind! Giving our tribe's obsession with education and learning - quite a rare phenomenon... Now I think we all have a reason to ask - Are YOU a Jew, Billy? Or you're just a wannabe? 'Cause it damn looks that way very, very much!

[Montag]

Ari Fleischer,

You told us in so many ways
That you were in the right
The rich are quick to start a war
When it's the poor who fight

When first you suckered us into war
You promised it would be grand
We hear only the bugles at funerals now
Instead of a marching band

Don't ask why wounded heroes
Are nickel & dimed at home
Since money doesn't grow on trees
Cut benefits to the bone

You can use him as a mouthpiece
For sympathy's part of the game
But how many limbs must a veteran lose
Before you remember his name?

[Joachim Martillo]

BTW, the USHMM is not really playing any sort of useful role in educating Americans about genocide.

I put up a short note at http://eaazi.blogspot.com/2007/08/one-sided-dialogue-from-us-holocaust.html on its DIFFICULT DIALOGUE SYMPOSIUM: DIALOGUE BETWEEN FORMER ENEMIES to be held at Clark University in Worcester on Nov. 1.

[Joachim Martillo]

On second thought this comment may be more appropriate to this posting.

The Israel Lobby demonizes Arabs and Muslims the way John C. Calhoun dehumanized African slaves.

Obviously Calhoun did not want the slaves to be freed. The Israel lobby does not want Arab and Muslim Americans to be free to exercise their rights to participate fully in American society and politics.

Since Slavery there has been no Lobby like the Israel Lobby, and the US congress criminalized this sort of conspiracy against rights.

Using a state of war to subvert the US government clandestinely to serve a foreign government's interests and to negate the constitutional rights of American citizens is getting real close to an attempt to put down the US government. It is time to research the case law, for the Israel Lobby is treading very close to a violation of Title 18.2384 Seditious Conspiracy.

It has to be high crimes and misdemeanors for a sitting president to surround himself with advisors that are engaged in conspiracy against rights and very close to seditious conspiracy.

[lester]

pearlman- just admit you're a masochist who's goal in life is to make people despise jews so you can point out how anti semetic they are then being

[Arie Brand]

I hope that Walt and Mearsheimer's book pays some attention to Chomsky's arguments against their thesis.

US interventionist foreign policy, based on a seemingly inextricable mixture of a sense of America's unique moral mission and the hard headed interests of the arms industry and the energy corporations is much older than "The Lobby". Chomsky has a point there. He argues that US interventionism in the Middle East is quite similar to policies pursued elsewhere in the world, notably in Central America.

He doesn't talk about America's sense of a moral mission (through which I presume the population at large comes on board), but emphasizes the particular interests of the arms and oil industry. By and large he deems pre-Bush US policy to maintain control of what the State Department called half a century ago that "stupendous source of strategic power", Middle East oil, a success.

He also quotes Zunes' assertion that the lobbies related to the arms industry and energy corporations make far heftier political donations than "The Lobby" is able to do.

Gabriel Kolko has in a recent article especially emphasized the interests of the arms industry, pointing out that it is immaterial to the people involved whether the US wins or loses a conflict.

He wrote:

"There is a very profound consensus between the two parties on arms spending, which began under the Democrats a half-century ago and it will not go away – no matter how neglected the bridges and infrastructure, health, or the like. Arms lobbies are not only very powerful in Washington but create crucial jobs in most states and military spending keeps the economy afloat. Weapons producers make money regardless of whether the Pentagon wins or loses its wars – and making money is their only objective. It is surely a key causal factor even if it is far from being the sole explanation of why the U.S. intervenes where it shouldn't."

Chomsky points out that "The Lobby" only took off when Israel had performed a huge service to the U.S.Saudi energy corporations by impeding Arab secular nationalism that threatened to allocate resources to domestic needs.

It seems to me, however, that a key question now is not how large the respective political donations are but where politically applied financial power is located. Do the arms industry and energy corporations have as much influence in the mainstream media as "The Lobby"?

And how come that a large part of that "herd of independent minds" (to borrow Chomsky's quote of Rosenberg) that is located in academe has come to view "The Lobby"s platform sympathetically as well? These people would not easily be bamboozled by crude references to the interests of the arms industry and energy corporations.

[Joachim Martillo]

What South American country receives aid like Israel?

If Findley or Percey had criticized the relationship of a South American regime and the USA, would they have been subjected to a concerted national campaign to remove them from office?

Do the arms and oil industries conduct vicious and racist campaigns of demonization against segments of the American population?

Where are the oil and arms industries' equivalents of Honest Reporting and Camera?

I know that Hollywood produces movies that are critical or criticize the arms and oil industry. Where are the Hollywood movies that criticize Israel?

High school world civilization textbooks in the Boston area are full of Zionist propaganda.

The situation is similar elsewhere.

My kids are subjected to Zionist Holocaust education that essentially distorts the history of Central and Eastern Europe as well as the history of the Czarist Empire from 1881 through 1945.

Why do we have a Holocaust memorial in Boston and not a memorial to slavery or to the Nakba/Holoexaleipsis (carried out by fanatic racist Zionist Ashkenazim) or to the Holodomor and other mass murders and genocides, in which Soviet Ashkenazim were up to the eyeballs in complicity?

What do fanatic racist anti-Arab group like the David Project get access to Congress and the media?

Is there anything comparable in the arms and oil industry to the marketing that the Israel Lobby does to the club scene with fuel for truth?

Who is the Alan Dershowitz for the arms and oil industry?

Why are 200 or so American University presidents condemning the decision of the British URU to consider a boycott of Israeli academia when the Israel Lobby is attempting to exclude Arab and Muslim academics by campaigns of academic assassination whenever they stray from the Zionist narrative?

Just consider the current campaign against Nadia Abu el Haj and take a look at the petition against her. It appears to be about 96% or more ethnic Ashkenazi.

Do the oil and arms lobbies run campaigns against New York charter schools like the Khalil Gibran International Academy?

Do the oil and arms industries try to make illegal attempts to feed populations that governments are trying to starve like Palestinians in Gaza (a tactic that Soviet Ashkenazim used in the Ukraine)?

I can go on for an hour at least.

Guess what. Chomsky is a Zionist.

He has never condemned as psychotic or even racist or simply immoral the idea that Eastern European Ashkenazim had the right to steal Palestine from the native population on the basis of an etymological relationship between the word "Jew" and "Judea," and he is supposed to be one of the preeminent experts in linguistics.

[Arie Brand]

Yes there are many differences between the pro-Israel lobby and those other ones. I suppose that the pro-Israel lobby has to make up for its comparative lack of financial clout (if Zunes can be believed)with the disgraceful activities of its thought police.

However, that does in itself not mean that this lobby is more effective than the others in setting the course of American foreign policy. It might be but I suggest that this cannot be determined by merely pointing to its hateful visibility.

The 'Chomsky is a Zionist' bit is merely an ad hominem argument. Ironically, when Abba Eban way back pleaded for the equation of anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism he chose as his prime examples of anti-Zionists I.F.Stone and ... Chomsky.

Abba Eban when pleading for the idea that an anti-Israel stance should be equated with anti-Semitism chose as his prime examples of anti-Zionists I.F.Stone and ...Chomsky.

Anyway, this issue is

[Arie Brand]

Sorry, something went obviously wrong in my last post. Phil should add a 'modify' function.

[Joachim Martillo]

The lack of financinal clout is a red herring.

Here is an example.

Bronfman may not be as personally wealthy as ADM is valued, but as vice chairman of the board of Universal he has an awfully large megaphone that comes with the job while ADM has to pay for ad time.

Murdoch is another example. He runs his papers at a loss apparently as Zionist propaganda platforms. And I would love to understand his relationship with Purcell at the Boston Herald.

Thanks to Larry Summers, I have had to research the issue.

The Israel Lobby has formal and informal open operatives (organizations like AIPAC, the Israel Project, individuals like Haim Saban) as well as formal and informal covert operatives like the Boston CJP, which I allege to be involved in massive tax fraud, or the Bancrofts, who controlled the WSJ editorial page.

These four elements have an immense amount of resources, which are leveraged.

Then there is the whole issue of hegemonic blocking and pop culture. Melani McAlister discusses the latter issue in "Epic Encounters."

It is a hard problem in accounting to determine the financial clout of the Zionist Lobby especially because so much of it is leveraged. It might be a good PhD thesis topic, and I know people in academia that might have a good shot at coming up with a number and justifying it, but Zunes is not someone that would have come to mind.

[David]

Chomsky's perspective is Marxist, where the problem is never with individual actions but with the capitalist/imperialist structure. This approach is ingrained in the thinking of the left, and those brought up with it are not going to give it up easily. You don't need to ascribe evil motives to Chomsky to explain his position. (Although the fact that he did once choose to live in "the Jewish state" suggests that his personal sense of identity is capable of influencing his analysis -- as it is with most of us.)

There's a lot of people like him, so Arie's question is an important one: how can those who are used to interpreting the world as a clash of economic forces ("big oil vs. the common man") be brought to recognize the role of the Zionist lobby. You can point out all the thousands of examples of brute power--the careers ended, the politicians humbled, the media cowed--but what these people are looking for is a theoretical framework.

The first step is to remind them that the two explanations are not mutually contradictory: a strong Zionist lobby based on ethnic tribalism does not preclude the possibility of a class of economic elites working to advance their economic interests.

Usually, the "it's all about oil" message is a red herring. Does the arms industry really make any more money when we're using up our military budget on salaries, gas, and bombs -- as opposed to fancy new high-tech systems that never get used? And as for oil, can anyone claim that our strategic control over that resource has increased?

There's a lot more to be said on this topic. Like Arie, I hope that M&W elaborate how these different lobbies co-exist.

[Jim S.]

Sorry but mass movements are much more influential in American society than moneyed interests, if they can be organized. The pro-Israel movement is more influential tha Big Oil.
Basically, people like Zunes just do not want to admit that the Jewish people are capable, like all people, not only of great good and culture (I was brought up on such culture) but also of considerable evil.

[Alan]

To anyone interested on the people paying for those ads (and some very intriguing details), here is a very good article by Raimondo:

http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=11498

"... Mel Sembler – A multi-billionaire shopping center magnate and real estate developer, CEO of the Sembler Company, and former ambassador to Australia, Nauru, and Italy, Sembler was also chairman of the Scooter Libby Defense Trust. His tenure in Rome was coincident with a series of rather dubious goings-on connected to the Niger uranium forgeries, including secret back channel meetings between leading neocons in the Pentagon, Iranian arms dealer and Iran-Contra figure Manucher Ghorbanifar, and convicted spy Larry Franklin, who was caught red-handed funneling classified top secret information to Israeli embassy personnel via two officials of AIPAC, the powerful pro-Israel lobbying group. As Joshua Micah Marshall put it:

"There's a lot that's still really murky about what was happening at the U.S. embassy in Rome after 9/11 with the forgeries and other matters. That was on Sembler's watch. And Libby's bad acts stem from the whole forgeries bamboozlement. (Whacking Wilson was part of the larger White House effort to keep the forgeries scam covered up – a cover-up that's still underway.)

"So Sembler just seems like a pretty big part of this story to be collecting money for the one person under indictment for their role in it."

Sembler's bio veers from the neoconnish to the nightmarish when we consider his founding of "Straight, Inc.," a teen drug rehabilitation program that was forced to close on account of numerous successful lawsuits by former clients who were tortured, raped, and systematically humiliated. Their hair-raising testimony of sadistic abuse while in custody at Sembler's teen-Guantánamo can be read here. Apparently, an entire movement of Sembler's victims has risen up spontaneously – that's how many lives "Straight, Inc." destroyed. All this bad publicity required a name change, and "Straight, Inc.," was reconstituted, in 1996, as the Drug Free America Foundation. As a result of Sembler's political clout, the Foundation is prospering, thanks to federal subsidies, $720,000 in the year 2000 alone.

The drug war, the Iraq war, Scooter Libby's private war against Valerie Plame and her husband – with Sembler, it's always wartime, and that's the way he likes it.

John Templeton, Jr. – The son of renowned investor John Templeton, is in charge of the Templeton Foundation, which, last year, poured some $60 million into numerous projects broadly dedicated to "bringing science under the guiding hand of religion." Templeton is an evangelical Christian, and his generosity has funded a wide variety of projects dear to conservative hearts, such as the theory of "intelligent design" and the re-election of George W. Bush. Some libertarians have also been in on the gravy train: the Cato Institute received funding for its Russian-language web site, cato.ru – and presumably to pay for the dubious services of such pro-war blowhards as Cato senior fellow Andrei Illarionov, who has openly called for the West to prepare for a military conflict with Russia.

Sheldon G Adelson – He's the third richest person in the U.S., worth $20.5 billion, with a rags-to-riches story: the son of a Boston cabdriver, Adelson inaugurated the Comdex computer trade show, and then went into tourism, real estate, and casinos. He is CEO of the Las Vegas Sands Corp., which operates the Venetian Casino Resort and the Sands Expo and Convention Center. Adelson is a major contributor to Jewish and Israeli causes, and to the GOP. This series of ads isn't his only propagandistic foray: the Vegas casino king has also gone into the newspaper business – in Israel. Yisrael Hayom is a new daily paper closely tied to the ultra-nationalist wing of the Likud party, and Benjamin Netanyahu's political aspirations. It was recently launched with a massive free mailing to hundreds of thousands, and has attracted considerable attention.

Richard Fox – He made his fortune in real estate, with properties centered in eastern Pennsylvania and southern New Jersey, and is a co-founder of the Republican Jewish Coalition.

Gary Erlbaum, owner of Greentree Properties in Ardmore, Pa., an ardent Republican organizer in the Orthodox community and a Giuliani supporter, as well as a staunch advocate for Israel.

Anthony Gioia, former ambassador to Malta, and the head of Gioia Management. He's on Giuliani's "finance team."

Howard Leach, former ambassador to France, CEO of Leach Capital Corp. and president of Foley Timber and Land Co.

Ed Snider, chairman of Comcast Spectacor, which includes TicketMaster and the Philadelphia Spectrum sports center. He also is the proprietor of Prism, the biggest pay-per-view TV network in America. Snider sits on the board of the Simon Wiesenthal Holocaust museum in Los Angeles, and is owner of the Philadelphia Flyers pro hockey team.

Kevin E. Moley, once a senior advisor to Dick Cheney and formerly US representative to international organizations in Geneva.

President of this astroturf outfit is Bradley A. Blakeman, formerly a deputy assistant to the president and now with the public relations firm of Gordon and Gregg."

[freespeechlover]

I think the problem with Chomsky is not so much that he is a Zionist but that he is deeply attached to ideas about how the world works.

That said, Mearsheimer and Walt, like Chomsky are under no obligation to produce interpretations that focus on everything possible, as if there were such a thing. Mearsheimer and Walt have produced a commonplace in academia, which is to bring to light overlooked or neglected forces involved in events. They do not claim to tell the "whole" story, as no one can, but they instead shed a strong partial light on the role of Israel's lobby in distorting U.S. policy. There's nothing unacademic about that; it just seems that way to people outside the academy who don't do scholarship in a day to day way and recognize that there are many different kinds of scholarly articles that get written. Or to those inside and outside the academy that wanted to attack them, which surprised nobody inside the academy. The most important academic works have always been those that provoke and disturb.

[freespeechlover]

As for Ari Fleisher and these ads, it is clear that the sponsors who are tied to AIPAC and other questionable interests are so far afield of U.S. public opinion, it will be very interesting to see if the ads have any impact at all. I just don't think the argument "we're surrendering" washes for the majority of the U.S. public. These ads are disgusting in the same manner that these people and others got us into the Iraq war. I just think that the U.S. public has had enough or John Warner wouldn't have called today for troop reductions--yeah, yeah, I know what they mean by troop reductions, but that felt he had to make this move speaks more about the unpopularity of the war than anything else.

[evanj]

freespeechlover has gone straight to the heart of the matter:
'Mearsheimer and Walt have produced a commonplace in academia, which is to bring to light overlooked or neglected forces involved in events.'
Check the photos of these two - you couldn't get anything more pedestrian.
If these two were writing about anything, literally anything other than Israel and the Israel lobby, even about the criminality of the junta occupying the WHite House, the publication of their book would be just another ho-hum event.
The Israel lobby is a cult, a self-lobotomising force. If it was just like most other cults, where they go about their business poisoning the minds (and the pocketbooks) of the gullible and the young, then tut-tut, but laisser-faire is in order. Give free rein to the cult busters for their own interest. But when this cult seeks to dictate foreign policy across a number of states, in facilitating largesse to and tolerance of a state for whom ethnic cleansing is a raison d'etre, in the process jeopardising our own national and personal security, then it is a noxious pest to be cleansed from the body politic.

[David]

Rosner on the counter-campaign:
WALT-MEARSHEIMER AND THE WAR OVER THE ISRAEL LOBBY, ROUND TWO
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/rosnerBlog.jhtml?itemNo=897116&contrassID=25&subContrassID=0&sbSubContrassID=1&listSrc=Y&art=1

[David]

Here's a longer version of the Rosner piece--
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/896812.html

[Arie Brand]

Freespeechlover wrote re Chomsky's critique of Walt and Mearsheimer:

"They do not claim to tell the "whole" story, as no one can, but they instead shed a strong partial light on the role of Israel's lobby in distorting U.S. policy. There's nothing unacademic about that; it just seems that way to people outside the academy who don't do scholarship in a day to day way and recognize that there are many different kinds of scholarly articles that get written."

Apparently Tony Judt is one of those people "who don't do scholarship in a day to day way".Did he in his NYT Op-Ed just fleetingly refer to other factors that might be considered when "explaining American actions overseas" ("the domestic "energy lobby"... the influence of Wilsonian idealism, or imperial practices left over from the cold war"), in a television interview for "INN World Report" with Lenny Charles on Oct.5 2006 he was more direct. There he said that Walt and Mearsheimer "probably needed to focus on other explanations ... the Israel lobby is hugely influential and very damaging but so is the oil lobby and a lot of other groups" (I have no transcript but I am pretty sure that that is what he said - you can listen to it for yourself on http:///www.innworldreport.net/archives/2006/10/05/index.html).

In an earlier post I simply expressed the hope that W.& M.would respond to Chomsky's criticism in their book. I might have missed something but I don't think he was included in their "first round rebuttals" which is a bit strange seeing that they drew on his work in the main text.

[Arie Brand]

Corrected address for the Judt interview:
http://www.innworldreport.net/archives/2006/10/05/index.html

Corrected text for Judt-quote: "a lot of other groups" should be "various other groups".

[Arie Brand]

Corrected address for the Judt interview:
http://www.innworldreport.net/archives/2006/10/05/index.html

Corrected text for Judt-quote: "a lot of other groups" should be "various other groups".

[Arie Brand]

The last two bits of the address keep falling away. They are: index.html

[Steven]

There is plenty of hysteria on both sides.

The Iraqis were not able to run a normal country when they were independent. Not under Hassa, Sidqi, Qassem, Saddam...

Now they are at least shielded from the mad leaders of Iran, and can work out a normalcy.

The USA can not leave Iraq while the Khomeini-Khaminei junta is in power in Iran. It will be the worst tyranny in history if Iran and Iraq can be united under Khaminei. Assad is also a danger to the area.

Iraq must rise to a decent internal arrangement with a well organized representative government, and only then can the USA leave.

It is possible to make a decent society under occupation if the people recognize that the internal decency is a priority over a weak immediate independence, which may to leave to dependency on Iran.

As a strong and decent society, Iraq will not need the USA military.

Let us calm down.

[freespeechlover]

As I said, Arie, there are many ways to do scholarship. I don't disagree with Judt, by the way. There is a kind of scholarship in academia; it is "ground-clearing." It's done in all fields. That doesn't mean everyone does it.

As for responding to Chomsky, maybe they should have, although I will tell you publishers always always always limit authors--they are in the business of book selling, and they are scared to death of lengthy books. Even academics as prominent as these are subjected to editors' constraints which are considerable. Clearly, there were others who mattered more to them, and I imagine they're people like Dennis Ross and the politicians-cum-intellectuals who have worked with AIPAC, etc.

[Graham Wellington]

New Freedom's Watch Commercial

http://podblanc.ath.cx/?q=node/5423

[trouvere]

The upcoming book gets an appreciative mention on the Time/CNN site:
http://time-blog.com/middle_east/2007/08/storm_over_the_israel_lobby_1.html

[Peter H]

Have Walt & Mearsheimer's reply to their critics been posted yet? If anybody knows where it's posted online, let me know.

[Montag]

The head of that "Freedom's Watch" astroturf group, Brad Blakeman, appeared on the PBS Lehrer Newshour on Friday, but REFUSED to appear with a representative from the opposition "Americans Against Escalation In Iraq." When questioned about this he said that they were illegitimate because they didn't have as much money as they said they did! Basically he was claiming the right NOT to debate the issue because he was also claiming the right to DECIDE who should be included in any debate! Apparently, the only legitimate opponent whom he was willing to debate was an empty chair. How arrogant!

[trouvere]

PeterH:

In May 2006 they published a letter in the LRB addressing some of the early responses to the paper--
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n09/letters.html

There was also a debate at the Cooper Union--
http://www.scribemedia.org/2006/10/11/israel-lobby/

Here is their CAIR speech on the Lebanon War, where they address some of the issues raised by critics--
http://www.c-span.org/Search/basic.asp?ResultStart=1&ResultCount=10&BasicQueryText=Mearsheimer

[Arie Brand]

Steven wrote:

"The USA can not leave Iraq while the Khomeini-Khaminei junta is in power in Iran. It will be the worst tyranny in history if Iran and Iraq can be united under Khaminei. Assad is also a danger to the area.

Iraq must rise to a decent internal arrangement with a well organized representative government, and only then can the USA leave."

This amounts to the belief that only he who has shattered the vase can glue it together again.

This opinion interests me because it seems so flagrantly at odds with reality. Is here the "American Ideology" at play?

Anatol Lieven wrote in an interesting article in the Financial Times of Sept.6 2006:

"The belief that it is the US's national right, duty and destiny to spread "democracy" and "freedom"
in the world is ingrained in most Americans from early childhood. This belief stems from the faith in the constitution, law
and democracy that forms the so-called "American creed", the foundation of America's collective national identity.

In the
words of the great American historian Richard -Hofstadter: "It has been our fate as a nation not to have ideologies, but
to be one."

This American creed shares with Soviet communism the belief that it is applicable not just to its host nation, but to all
mankind. ...

The nationalist myths attendant on the creed include a widespread belief that America is exceptional in its allegiance to
democracy and freedom and that America is, therefore, exceptionally good. Because America is exceptionally good, it
both deserves to be exceptionally powerful and by nature cannot use its power for evil ends. The creed is therefore also
a foundation of belief in America's innate innocence. So, if as has often been said, Mr Bush occupies a kind of
ideological bubble, it is a bubble made of steel and he shares it with tens or even hundreds of millions of other
Americans."

(I owe this article to the interesting collection David Seaton presented to the readers of his blog as a holiday gift.)

[trouvere]

OBAMA: DENNIS ROSS GIVES ME MIDEAST ADVICE
http://www.jta.org/cgi-bin/iowa/news/print/20070824rossobama.html

"The Democratic presidential hopeful made the disclosure during a closed meeting in New York with 25 Jewish leaders. ... It comes, as the senator's campaign is making a concerted effort to reach out to the Jewish community across the country."

[Alan]

Very nice collection of articles indeed. It is a compressed (winzip) pdf file. Here is the link:

http://www.geocities.com/seatonsnet/2006-2007-BestofSeason.zip

And Seaton's blog:

http://seaton-newslinks.blogspot.com/

[David]

Some things which were left out of 1978 edition of Sharett's diaries, mainly in the "dirty-tricks" category--
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/896787.html

[bob f.]

My impression is that there's still a split within the U.S. power elite between a pro-Lobby and anti-Lobby faction (which has helped to promote the book of the former Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA) consultant). Although the AIPAC-Cheney-JINSA faction seems more powerful, a former Chevron board member still is the U.S. Secretary of State; and doesn't Novak's recent book also talk about the negative special influence of the Lobby in U.S. foreign policy-making decisions?

As I've indicated on the www.bfeldman68.blogspote.com recently, one reason Columbia University President Lee Bollinger (who also sits on the board of directors of the Washington Post Company/Newsweek media conglomerate) may be opposing the academic boycott campaign is that one of the law firm that lobbies for Columbia's land-grabbingcampus expansion project has financial ties to the Israeli establishment. But unlike James Petras, I'm not sure that the Big Oil companies,the military-industrial complex and the CIA folks that often keep a lower public profile than AIPAC these days are no longer able to check AIPAC, at times, when their special economic interests or strategic goals in the Middle East appear to be endangered by the Lobby's adventurist strategic proposals/pressure.

Andrew and Leslie Cockburn's 1990s book, Dangerous Liasison: The Inside Story of the U.S-Israeli Covert Relationship might possibly be out-of date in the post-2001 era. But according to Andrew and Leslie Cockburn's book: "The success of Israel in using American power and money to advance the position has depended on far more than just a lobby. It has been one result of a symbiotic relationship between the two countries that functions in ways in which the public knows little but that has helped mold the world and change the fate of nations and people."

Despite MIT Professor Chomsky's recent tendency to minimize the power of the Lobby, some of what he wrote in his Towards A New Cold War book might still be somewhat relevant: "The fundamental concern of the U.S. government is not Israel and its immediate neighbors but rather control over the vast reserves of energy in the Middle East. During World War II, the United States established a firm hold over Saudi Arabian reserves...

"The relation between the U.S. government and the energy corporations in this regard is complex. There are, of course, the major American international corporations, and their role in designing U.S. foreign policy has always been great...Despite the ultimate congruity of interests, conflicts have arisen in the past and still do. For several years, American oil companies operating in the Arab world have been urging the government to modify its support for Israeli occupation of the territories conquered in 1967...Israeli power protected the `monarchical regimes' of Jordan and Saudi Arabia from `a militarily strong Egypt' in the 1960s, thus securing American interests in the major oil-producing regions...Eddward Behr reports that CIA payments to Israel in the mid-1960s amounted to millions of dollars and that in the late 1960s, checks for several hundred thousand dollars each were frequently delivered by U.S. government officials to the Israeli foreign ministry in Jerusalem...to be channelled to the African recipients."

Also, the CIA found the Israeli government to be a useful tool for arming the CIA's right-wing allies in Central America during the 1980s. And in Colombia in the 21st-century, I think there's some evidence that CIA allies are also being armed by the Israeli government.

Even if tax-exempt status was taken away from all U.S. domestic pro-Israeli government lobbying organizations,the special influence of the lobby within U.S. media and cultural institutions were reduced by anti-war movement mass pressure, and political campaign contributions to Dem and GOP politicians by members of pro-Israeli lobbying organizations were prohibited, etc., I'm not sure U.S. foreign policy would automatically become less imperialist or move in a pacifist direction-- unless the Big Oil companies were also nationalized under democratic control, the U.S. military budget were dramatically cut and the CIA and IDA were abolished, etc.

[David]

"... I'm not sure U.S. foreign policy would automatically become less imperialist or move in a pacifist direction."

I agree, but I'm sure the outlook for the Palestinian people (and millions of other Arabs) would suddenly become considerably brighter. And I'm sure the hatred for the U.S. which led to 9-11 would suddenly shrink.

Jean Bricmont had a nice article on this subject--
"It is true that a change in the U.S. policy with respect to the Israel-Palestine conflict would change nothing about traditional imperialism-- the United States would still support traditional elites everywhere, and press countries to provide a "favorable investment climate". But the conflict in the Middle East, involving Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, has all the aspects of a religious war-with Islam on one side and Zionism as a secular Western religion on the other. And wars of religion tend to be the most brutal and uncontrollable of all wars. What is at stake in the de-Zionization of the American mind is not only the fate of the unfortunate inhabitants of Palestine but also unspeakable miseries for the people of that region and maybe of the rest of the world. The ultimate irony in all this is that the fate of much of the world depends of the American people exercising their right to self-determination, which, of course, they should."
http://www.counterpunch.org/bricmont08122006.html

[Arie Brand]

"OBAMA: DENNIS ROSS GIVES ME MIDEAST ADVICE"

That is a bit like a British prime ministerial hopeful of the nineties choosing the Reverend Ian Paisley as his adviser on Northern Ireland.

[Alan]

Lots of money been thrown around lately. It seems the Lobby and relevant organizations have their hands full, what with W&M, the boycott campaign, Freedom Watch etc. Now the Keith Weissman and Steve Rosen trial estimated to be one of the costliest in US history ($10 million). AIPAC will pay.

Trial moving toward a January 2008 date:

http://www.forward.com/articles/11284/

[Alan]

Arie wrote: "That is a bit like a British prime ministerial hopeful of the nineties choosing the Reverend Ian Paisley as his adviser on Northern Ireland."

Well, how about having Elliott Abrams as Rice's top Mideast adviser?

"In his capacity as Deputy Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Advisor for Global Democracy Strategy, Mr. Abrams will assist Mr. Hadley in work on the promotion of democracy and human rights, and will provide oversight to the NSC's directorate of Democracy, Human Rights, and International Organization Affairs and its directorate of Near East and North African Affairs. Working with Secretary Rice and Mr. Hadley, he will maintain his involvement in Israeli/Palestinian affairs."

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/02/20050202-10.html

Sort of good cop/bad cop. If Dennis Ross is good cop, Elliott is Dirty Harry:

http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/969

In my opinion, he is an Israeli "asset". So is Michael Ledeen (recently unofficial advisor to Bush) and Richard Perle.

P.S. I remember reading an interview of Perle and suddenly Bibi (Netanyahu) shows up in the midst of the interview, for coffee or something. These guys are so tight you can't tell one from the other.

[Joachim Martillo]

"As I've indicated on the www.bfeldman68.blogspote.com recently, one reason Columbia University President Lee Bollinger (who also sits on the board of directors of the Washington Post Company/Newsweek media conglomerate) may be opposing the academic boycott campaign is that one of the law firm that lobbies for Columbia's land-grabbingcampus expansion project has financial ties to the Israeli establishment."

Bollinger could always hire a different law firm, but he seems to have had an attack of the stupids since the David Project broadsided him with its propaganda film "Columbia Unbecoming."

Even without the copious documentation that most Israeli academics consider themselves primarily to be footsoldiers in the service of Zionism and only secondarily to be scholars, as long as the US Israel Lobby is running a defamation campaign against Arab and Muslim American academics one by one (including right now Columbia/Barnard Professor Nadia Abu el Haj), American universities and scholars committed to independent scholarship and unfettered academic discourse have a categorical obligation to support a boycott of Israeli academia.

[Alan]

Ok, I found it. It was part of Stephen Gaghan's research for his script for the movie "Syriana". Read this, it is hilarious!

"... Traveling with the real life Bear through the Middle East provided Gaghan the opportunity to meet with Hezbollah leaders, but his most interesting research might just have been done on US soil. "I’m in Richard Perle’s kitchen and he’s talking about plans and he’s going to be on boards of directors, he’s passing out favors in the Bush White House and I said ‘I just have one question: who’s gonna run Iraq?’" Gaghan remembers. Doing his best Perle imitation he continues, "‘well it’s a shame we haven’t done a better job. How's your cappuccino Steve?’ ‘It’s delicious Richard.’" Gaghan continues, "He [Perle] steeples his fingers, like Mr. Burns in the Simpsons, and he looks at me and the doorbell rings ‘ding dong’ and he goes, ‘Excellent I’ll introduce you to BiBi on your way out.’ It was Benjamin Netanyahu dropping by for a little visit. So we’re on our way out the door Netanyahu’s there with body guards. Perle has a Wheaton terrier puppy named Reagan, 9 month old puppy, pawing the crotch of Benjamin Netanyahu. True story. Netanyahu doesn’t go ‘what a cute puppy you got there Perle’ or ‘get your dog off me Perle,’ he just stands there, looks down at the dog and shakes with rage. I pulled the dog away from the crotch of Benjamin Netanyahu and say ‘now now Reagan, not on the former heads of state.’ And out the door I go."

http://www.screentalk.biz/interviews/stephengaghan_interview.php

[Arie Brand]

In Israeli arguments against a boycot of Israeli academe it is often overlooked that Israel has now already for decades in actual fact imposed a non-declared boycot on Palestinian education:

Viz:

"Under Israeli occupation, all eleven Palestinian universities have been closed, the longest being Birzeit between 1988 and 1992, and the most recent Hebron Polytechnic which was closed by military order for 8 months in 2003.

During these periods community-based classes were criminalized and its teachers and students arrested. Since 2000, 185 schools have been shelled and scores of teachers and students have been shot at and arrested.

Then there are the less extreme but just as effective obstacles like the 700 restrictions of movement by checkpoints, road-blocks and earth mounds. Through creating and controlling a system of internal borders in the occupied territories, the Israeli military prevents students from accessing Palestinian universities far from their homes.

University campuses are then increasingly ghettoized; Birzeit now attracts the vast majority of its new students from the Ramallah and Jerusalem areas, and its intake of people from Jenin has dropped by 100%.

This also means students are limited in their course choices; 12 students from Gaza have been denied permission to go to Bethlehem and study Occupational Therapy (a course not available in Gaza) despite them not representing a security threat to Israel – a point the military admitted at the Israeli High Court where the decision is currently being challenged.

However, the latest round of Israeli attacks on Palestinian education has been through the control of its external borders. As an occupying power, Israel is legally responsible for guaranteeing all human necessities and rights in the occupied territories, including the right to education, and is in de facto control of all that goes in and out of the territories, including foreign academics, researchers and students."

Read on at:

http://www.flwi.ugent.be/cie/Palestina/palestina226.htm

[bill Pearlman]

University of Manchester Partners with University of Death
Wed, Mar 21, 2007 at 10:20:21 pm PST

The University of Manchester in Britain, at the demand of Islamist student groups, is partnering with one of the most debased, evil institutions in the world, Al-Najah University in Nablus—scene of an exhibit celebrating the Sbarro Pizzeria mass murder, and spawning ground for a host of suicide bombers and murderers: UK, West Bank universities twinned.

The University of Manchester in northern England has been “twinned” with al-Najah University in the West Bank following the passing of a motion filled with anti-Israel rhetoric by the student’s union last week.

Some 19 Palestinian suicide bombers have originated from al-Najah, and in 2001, the university organized a display to celebrate and recreate the suicide bomb attack on the Sbarro pizzeria in Jerusalem, which killed 15 Israelis.

The motion stated that “Palestinian education has been severely hindered since the outbreak of the second Intifada in September 2000 by blanket curfews, the presence of roadblocks and recently the erection of the wall. The cumulative effects of these measures have put the future of many Palestinian universities at grave risk.“ ...

The motion was introduced by a student group called ”Palestine Action," a subsidiary of the British Respect Party, itself made up of an alliance between Islamists and far-Left activists, and supported by the university’s Islamic Society, a Jewish student representative told Ynetnews.

[Joachim Martillo]

I simply do not understand the logic by which the Israeli Zionist interlopers and their racist supporters in the USA expect Zionist thieves and murderers to be able to live in peace and security in a country that they stole from the native population and whose residents they either murdered, drove out or continue to murder and drive out.

Israel supporters typically point to the history of the USA to justify their support for Zionist genocidaires even though there is no logical argument to justify Zionist crimes on the basis of historical misdeeds in N. America.

For the first 87 years of the existence of the USA, slavery was legal and then we Americans fought a war over the abolition of the slave system. By the logic and precedent of US history, we Americans should now use military force to eradicate the Zionist system.

I am not surprised that Gore Vidal recounts a story of Norman Podhoretz' lack of interest in the US conflict over slavery and the American Civil War.

[Arie Brand]

Bill wrongly reports that the "twinning" is between the universities as such. This is unfortunately not yet the case. It is thus far only a matter of a closer tie between two student unions. Manchester University is the biggest university in Europe. The Union there chose Al-Najah because it is the biggest Palestinian university.

As to the term "University of Death": groups that support a country that murders people on a daily basis have lost any moral basis for coming up with this type of accusation.

The text of the relevant motion of the University of Manchester Student Union is informative.

This Union notes:

1. That the Universal Declaration of Human Rights guarantees equal rights for all, including the promise that ‘Everyone has the right to education’ (Article 26). That the status of the Palestinian territories (including West Bank, Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem) is described in International Law as “Occupied territories”, and that the Fourth Geneva Convention, 1949 states that “The occupying power shall, with the cooperation of the national and local authorities, facilitate the proper working of all institutions devoted to the care and education of children.” (Article 50)

2. That over one third of the Palestinian population are students in full-time school or University education. That the 700 IDF roadblocks and other military obstacles frequently prevent students from being able to attend university.

3. That Birzeit University has been closed down by Israeli military order 15 times in its history; and that all the Palestinian universities and the majority of schools, including kindergartens, were closed down by military order between the years 1988-1992, when Palestinian education was effectively made ‘illegal’ by the Israeli occupation, denying a whole generation their right to education.

4. That Hebron University and the Palestine Polytechnic University in Hebron were closed down by Israeli military order for much of 2003; and that the students of Hebron had to physically break down the gates to their universities, in defiance of the Israeli Army, to reconvene classes and demand their right to an education.

5. That students from Gaza are banned from reaching the 8 Palestinian Universities in the West Bank: In 2000 there were 350 Gazan students at Birzeit University, in April 2005 there were only 35.

6. That 362km of the projected 730km of the Israeli separation wall has been constructed, all of it on Palestinian lands, dividing, isolating and encircling Palestinian areas and Universities.

7. That 8 out of the total 11 universities in the West Bank and Gaza Strip have been shelled or broken into by the Israeli Army since September 2000.

8. That Al-Najah University of the occupied city of Nablus is a central location for students from other west bank districts such as Qalqilya, Jenin and Tulkarem.

9. That students from Tulkarem, Qalqilya and Jenin represent 50% of the 13000 students of Al-Najah University. A lot of those students are denied access to education due to the direct impact that the Apartheid Wall has on their cities. e.g. Qalqilya is totally enclosed by the Wall.

10. That the 2 major Israeli checkpoints of Howara and Beit Iba enclose the city entirely and have negative impacts on students who aim to reach the University.

11. That the village of Asira Alshamaleyah is 6km from Nablus, and in normal circumstances should not take the students more than 10 minutes to get to the University. Currently, with the presence of Checkpoints, the journey takes 2 or more hours (if they are permitted to pass).

12. That some Palestinian students left their villages due to the harassments and delays faced on checkpoints, and are currently renting accommodation in Nablus: an extra and unnecessary burden on students.

13. The economic impacts (taking into account that Nablus suffered the most from Israeli Occupation, siege and closure) made students postpone their education, and in other cases some have left the university to work in order to support their families or to pay their fees. This phenomenon has increased more during the last year due to the economic blockade suffered by the Palestinians.

This Union Believes:

1. Palestinian education has been severely hindered since the outbreak of the Second Intifada in September 2000 by blanket curfews, the presence of roadblocks and recently the erection of the Wall. The cumulative effects of these measures have put the future of many Palestinian universities at grave risk.

2. The measures noted above violate international law including provisions against collective punishment and guarantees for the protection of civilian populations under military occupation, students’ right to education and the fundamental rights of human beings to live in dignity and freedom.

3. Education is critical to the healthy functioning of Palestinian society, as well as the possibility of peace and reconciliation between the Israeli and Palestinian peoples. It is the responsibility of governments, civil society organizations and ordinary people to defend the universal right to education and to demand its realisation.

This Union resolves:

1. To send a letter of support and a copy of this motion to Al-Najah University Student Union inviting them to twin with UMSU.

2. To lobby the University to provide at least three scholarships for Palestinian students who wish to study at the University of Manchester.

3. To lobby the University to drop International Fees for all Palestinian students and charge them only home fees.

4. To support the students of Birzeit “right to education campaign” and to campaign for Human Rights for all Palestinians, both within the territory of mandate Palestine and for Palestinian refugees.

5. To raise the above concerns with colleagues in the National Union of Students and encourage NUS to support Palestinian students’ right to education.

6. To publicise our policy of twinning with Al-Najah University Student Union by erecting a plaque, like that which publicises our links with Steve Biko, in the lobby of the Steve Biko building with the following words:

Palestine and the Right to Education
The University of Manchester Students’ Union is twinned with the Al-Najah National University in Nablus. Students in Palestine have had their right to education consistently denied by the Israeli Occupation: checkpoints, attacks on Universities and limitations on movement seriously hinder the ability of students in Palestine to learn. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights declares that everyone has the ‘right to education’: we fully support the struggle of our Palestinian brothers and sisters to realise this fundamental Human Right.

[bill Pearlman]

Perhaps Arie, if Paletinian Universities would stop producing terrorists and doing things like that Sbarro bombing exhbit and actually I don't know, studying, then things might be diffferent. But personally I don't see why terrorist cells should get a free pass just because their on a "college campus". And British colleges and Palestinians deserve each other.

Joechem:
Happen to be something of a Civil War buff myself. But who do you refer to when you say we. Jews were here at that time. We've always been here. And in fact the Jewis hwar War Veterans was started by Union army veterans in 1896. What were the Arabs doing then other than, well nothing.

[Susan]

Anyone familiar with Columbia University's expansion project knows that it is a good thing for the community. Land that has sat idle for many years will be put to use and jobs will be provide for local people both directly through the university and indirectly through support services. It is true that some low income housing may be lost but the benefit to the community as a whole far out weighs this. President Bollinger's stance on the academic boycott is consistent and considered but one that I do not agree with.

[Arie Brand]

"if Paletinian Universities would ... actually I don't know, studying,"

It seems to me that studying is the last thing that Israel wants the Palestinians to be engaged in.

[bill Pearlman]

Well, Arie, I know Israeli universities, ( I guess including the people that got blown up at Hebrew University ) are just full of, whats the term. zio-nazi's and Arab universities are just full of pacifists who if not for the jackboot of Zionist oppression would be full of students engaged in utopian pursuits, ( oh wait, Arab colleges aren't really big on Science and math, just jihad but what the hell) but the facts are different. Something that you people don't really let get in the way, do you

[Drawrof]

Critics of Israel often complain that when they try to speak out on the Middle East, they are effectively silenced: Jewish organizations and individual Jewish activists target them for public scorn and blacklisting, denying them an audience and delegitimizing them. The message put out is that those who fail to toe the official pro-Israel line are labeled as enemies and cast out.

These folks have a case. Major Jewish organizations, including centrist as well as hard-line groups, regularly use their clout to narrow the scope of acceptable public debate on Israel. They cast their net wide, indiscriminately targeting independent-minded allies of Israel along with its sworn enemies. Many pro-Israel dissenters have walked away feeling deeply bruised and disillusioned.

Lately, however, some of Israel’s critics have started learning a few tricks themselves — and rather than enriching the conversation, they are choosing to further muddy it. There are substantial numbers of true moderates in this country who believe deeply in the need for Israeli-Palestinian reconciliation. They struggle to make their voices heard in a hostile political and communal environment, and they naturally look for spokesmen who can capture the public’s attention and help unite and mobilize the peace camp — including, most recently, scholars Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer. We are sympathetic to this quest for leadership, but after firsthand experience of these scholars’ definition of “opening the debate,” we feel compelled to speak up: They’re the wrong guys.

The trick follows a typical pattern. Step one: Publish your views in as provocative a manner as possible. Use words like “apartheid,” as Jimmy Carter did in his book, or paint Jewish lobbying efforts in darkly conspiratorial terms, as Walt and Mearsheimer did in a paper published last year. Step two: Dare the Jewish community to lash out at you, then whine about being victimized by bullies. Step three: Implore fair-minded liberals to line up behind you, forcing them to choose between endorsing your vision — however skewed — or becoming part of the censorship juggernaut.

It’s been a pattern with these two since the beginning. When their original paper, “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy,” first appeared, they claimed that it couldn’t be published in the United States, and so they were forced to release it in a British journal, the London Review of Books (and simultaneously on the Harvard Web site, by the way). “Couldn’t be published here,” as it turned out, meant that they had been commissioned by one magazine, The Atlantic Monthly, but when the 16,000-word manuscript was turned in, it was rejected. And so they gave up on America.

After the paper appeared in London and on the Harvard site, the Los Angeles Times offered to publish a shortened version. The professors turned that down, apparently fearful of jeopardizing their martyr status. Once they’d milked the furor to the limit, they had it published in the respected Washington-based Middle East Policy. Then Farrar, Straus and Giroux, one of the country’s most prestigious publishing houses, came calling. The book is due out September 4, rounding out a campaign of “censorship” that would make most authors green with envy.

We ourselves didn’t realize there was a Step Four — until this past week, when the two ratcheted up their efforts. As part of the advance marketing campaign, the scholars asked to appear before a variety of Jewish audiences, including synagogues and a Jewish community center. They were, predictably, turned down.

Then the Forward was approached. We were asked to sponsor a program at which the professors would present their views, unopposed. Noting that we hadn’t thought much of the paper when it came out, we were assured that the authors had now incorporated last year’s criticisms. We asked to see a copy of the book, but we found it as sloppy as the original paper and decided not to endorse it. All of which played right into their hands, enabling them to argue that the Lobby is still working to suppress their views — with the Forward as Exhibit A.

The Forward’s opinion of their work could not have come as a surprise to them. We published our critique last year in a front-page editorial, the longest editorial in the newspaper’s history.

The professors’ basic argument is that America’s support for Israel is an anomaly. Israel’s origins and behavior are so reprehensible, they wrote, that “neither strategic nor moral arguments can account for America’s support for Israel.” No, it’s all because of the influence of the “Israel Lobby.” There is, they cautioned, nothing illicit about lobbying. Lobbying is part of American democracy. But the Israel Lobby has “a stranglehold on the U.S. Congress,” controls key access to the executive branch and suppresses dissent throughout society. Its “not surprising” goal, they wrote, is to weaken Israel’s enemies to the point that “Israel gets a free hand with the Palestinians, and the United States does most of the fighting, dying, rebuilding, and paying.”

More shocking, considering the professors’ distinguished resumes — Walt was academic dean of the Kennedy School at Harvard, Mearsheimer a leading foreign policy expert at the University of Chicago — was their shoddy research. They invented historical facts. They twisted quotes. David Ben-Gurion was cited as having stated in 1937 that he opposed the partition of Palestine into Jewish and Arab states — drawn from a famous speech in which he went on to say that, nonetheless, partition was the best that Zionism could hope for and should be seized with open arms. Paul Wolfowitz was said to have been described by the Forward as “the most hawkishly pro-Israel neocon in the administration — this from a 2002 article citing the “hawkishly pro-Israel” image as conventional Washington wisdom that was proved wrong that week, when Wolfowitz was booed by a pro-Israel crowd for defending Palestinian rights.

Most of the paper’s flaws survive in the book, but the longer format allowed the introduction of whole new stretches of substandard work. To take but one example, a new section had been added, detailing Israel’s supposed efforts to push America into confrontation with various Muslim states. One whole chapter is devoted to Syria, which is supposedly quarantined by Washington because Israel wants it so. In fact, as the Israeli press has reported extensively, Israel’s military, intelligence and political leadership has endorsed peace talks with Syria almost unanimously for more than a year, but the Bush administration has vetoed the idea because of Washington’s hostility toward Syria. But Mearsheimer and Walt deliberately chose to ignore these details, evincing the same sort of tunnel vision they claim to deplore.

“The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy” is not a good book, and it does no service to those who truly crave a more robust debate in this country. Still, if the Forward had been asked to participate in a debate with the professors, we would have done so happily. Helping them to market their book was a different story. But that’s the genius of the victimhood game: If you’ve been rejected, you’ve won in the court of public opinion.

[From Realistic Dove's Website]

My take on Mearsheimer/Walt was summed up by a letter I wrote to the Nation in response to a piece by Philip Weiss. It was in the June 26, 2006 issue:

When he interviewed me for his article on the infamous Mearsheimer-Walt paper, I told my friend Philip Weiss that America would benefit from candid conversations about the pro-Israel lobby in the public sphere. But I also said that if academics are going to venture into this explosive territory, they should be “very careful” to get their facts straight and avoid using simplistic generalizations to sum up very complex events and trends. Mearsheimer and Walt did neither.

As an activist for Israel’s peace camp who has been skirmishing with the conventional Israel lobby for decades, I would have welcomed an informed, scrupulously documented and honest critique of that lobby by two distinguished scholars. What I read was an elaborate attack ad that was riddled with so many inaccuracies, omissions and unsubstantiated assertions that, as Michelle Goldberg put it in Salon, “it seemed expressly designed to elicit exactly the [hostile] reaction it has received. The power of the Israel lobby is something that deserves a full and fearless airing, but this paper could make such an airing less, not more, likely.

Right-wing American Jews were infuriated by this paper. I was deeply disappointed. These scholars had an opportunity to give people who are inhibited about criticizing Israel and its lobbyists some lucid arguments and facts to help them overcome those inhibitions. They blew it.

Now, in my make-it-up-as-I go-along Reform Jewish fashion, I am going to say a few prayers as we await the publication of their book:

1-May American Jews who are uncomfortable with Mearsheimer and Walt resist the temptation to suppress discussion of their work. May they accept what is incontrovertibly true in the book rather than simply smearing it for whatever untruths it might contain.

In one of his comments to Phil Weiss’ post on the recent Chicago controversy, “David” accuses me of being “the one who famously tried (behind the scenes) to get Phil Weiss to desist from publicly discussing the power of the Zionist lobby. Very much like the folks who contacted the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, I imagine.”

Sorry to disappoint you, David. I think there is no more important topic to discuss in the American public arena. What I have been trying to do is to figure out HOW to talk accurately about Israeli policy and the power of the lobby, without doing more harm than good.

Needless to say, discouraging public discussion of this topic hurts the Palestinians. But it also hurts Israel because some of what the conventional lobby has advocated –like putting onerous conditions on U.S. aid to Palestinian moderates—is not in Israel’s interests. And it hurts American Jews because it appears to vindicate the claim that the conventional lobby censors dissent against Israeli or American policy. And it hurts all Americans because the positions and tactics of the Israel lobby have a direct impact on this nation’s interests.

2– May Mearsheimer and Walt clean up all of their errors of scholarship.. There were so many mistakes and half-truths in their original paper that they undercut the power of their argument

3- May Mearsheimer and Walt accurately describe the power of the conventional Israel lobby, rather than exaggerating it. May they give this lobby its due, as a very important player that helps to set the domestic political context of America’s Middle East policies, but not an omnipotent monster that has complete control over those policies.

I touched upon this in a speech at an event sponsored by Ameinu and Meretz USA on March 6, 2007. An edited excerpt:

For those who haven’t read it or need a refresher course, here is how Walt and Mearsheimer explain America’s Middle East policy:

First, they show why support for Israel is not and has never been in America’s strategic interests. Second, they explain that there are few moral justifications for American support for Israel, because much of Israeli policy has been immoral.

Third, in a wild inferential leap, they argue “If neither strategic nor moral arguments can account for America’s support for Israel, how are we best to explain it? The explanation lies in the unmatched power of the Israel Lobby.”

That kind of reductionism is so simplistic it is almost bizarre that these distinguished professors could rely on it…They are two of this country’s leading political scientists. They must know that people in their field have identified all kinds of influences that go into the sausage-making process of American foreign policy.

There are many studies of the interplay of different factors that influence decisions about foreign policy: the role of bureaucrats and the bureaucratic process, domestic politics, the group-think that settles into any organization, including the White House staff. Sometimes, believe it or not, the White House and State Department try to think rationally about what is in America’s interest.

The classic study of this kind of interplay is Essence of Decision by Graham Allison, which analyzes the different factors involved in the Kennedy Administration’s decisions during the Cuban missile crisis. Stephen Walt has said it was the first book he read in graduate school. You wouldn’t know it from his paper on the Israel lobby.

To Mearsheimer and Walt, apparently, America’s Middle East policy is a function of a massive Israel lobby and Jewish money, nothing more. In their work, they don’t go into the nuts and bolts of how decisions are made. They just assume that, except for the lobby, no other explanation makes sense… .

To understand why that doesn’t wash, all we need to do is remember that one of most supportive Presidents Israel has ever had was Richard Nixon. Besides being an outright anti-Semite, he didn’t care at all about the Jewish vote. A very small percentage of his campaign contributions came from Jews, like Max Fisher. According to Kissinger’s memoirs, Nixon used to brag about how the Jewish lobby had no influence on him.

And yet Nixon was responsible for a massive increase in military and financial aid to Israel. He’s the one who established the ties between the military-industrial complexes of both countries that exist today. Why? Because he believed Israel was a bulwark against Communism, not because of Israel’s lobby….

…But those of us who have often disagreed with AIPAC and its allies need to do more than carp about the inaccuracies in Mearsheimer and Walt’s work…Because some of their most important premises are true…When American Presidents avoid criticizing Israeli settlement expansion, that is not in America’s interests. When this administration raises only a few, quiet objections to the route of a security barrier that sometimes cuts through Palestinian villages and olive groves, that is not in American interests….There is no doubt that one of the main reasons for this American passivity is the work of AIPAC and the conventional Israel lobby.

4. May their work help to encourage not only candid conversation, but also political action by those who want to change America’s Middle East policy without selling either Israel or Palestine down the river. More from my March 6th speech:

[Mearsheimer and Walt] could have been helpful to those of us who often disagree with the conventional lobby…An honest assessment would have given practical lessons to people who want to either transform the mainstream, pro-Israel forces in Washington or replace them. But by exaggerating the power of the Israel lobby, they made our job more difficult.

If M&W had scratched the surface, guess what they would have discovered? They would have found chinks in the conventional lobby’s armor. They would have found flaws and weaknesses. And, in finding them, they would have provided hope to American Jews who often don’t feel like the lobby speaks for them. The less it comes across as an irresistible political object that no force can remove, the easier it will be to recruit more American Jews and other Americans to either replace or transform it.

Take the power of American Jewish money, for example. Mearsheimer and Walt note that “Money is critical to U.S. elections and AIPAC makes sure its friends get strong financial support from the myriad pro-Israel political action committees. Those sees as hostile, on the other hand, can be sure AIPAC will direct campaign contributions to their opponents.”

Well, that’s certainly true. And, in my experience, it’s disheartening to peace activists who believe that we cannot possibly come close to matching the power of AIPAC’s money machine. But just how much is this money machine generating for members of Congress? When it comes to the impact of political fundraising, AIPAC’s most important tool is the widespread PERCEPTION that it is a major source of campaign gifts. That perception is often not reflected in reality.

You can follow the role of money in American politics by going to the website of the Center for Responsive Politics. They study federal election records and break down contributions into what they call “industries.” There is the energy industry. There are retirees. And there is the pro-Israel industry, which consists of PACS and individuals who mostly toe the AIPAC line.

In 2004, PACS and individuals categorized as “pro-Israel” contributed about $6 million to federal candidates and parties. That’s not a small amount. But the pro-Israel industry was ranked 39 out of the 80 “industries” listed by the Center. Lawyers, the top-ranked industry, contributed more than $85 million. The real estate industry gave about 35 million, six times as much as the pro-Israel industry. These and other corporate interests are the major league lobbyists when it comes to financial contributions. Compared to them, AIPAC and its friends are like Double A ballplayers.

One key aide to a friendly Member of Congress told me that “Except when they are really trying to punish somebody, which doesn’t happen that much, the AIPAC types contribute, at most, maybe 10% of a campaign.” Usually, he indicated, they contribute much less. And, usually, campaigns could survive easily without these contributions.

So it is true that most Members of Congress are reluctant to cross AIPAC. And one of the reasons is the fear of losing campaign contributions. Or the fear that AIPAC’s money machine will punish them by funding their opponents, a fear that is also mentioned by Mearsheimer and Walt. But it would not be inconceivable to diminish the conventional lobby’s hold on Congress.

If American Jews and other Americans who backed Israel’s peace camp launched a massive, well-organized, sophisticated effort to lobby and raise money for politicians, then Congress and the White House staff might stop being gutless. Our government might be more balanced, more pro-active when it deals with Israel and its neighbors….Stranger things have happened. If you will it, it is no dream.

When leaders of the mainstream Jewish community attack Mearsheimer and Walt for exaggerating the conventional Lobby’s power, they do it because they are concerned that the exaggeration will feed anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. They’re not wrong…

…But I believe progressive Zionists also have another reason to show that Mearsheimer and Walt assigned too much power to AIPAC and its allies. We need to encourage the loyal Jewish opposition in this country to get off their butts, speak louder and spend more money.

[David]

Nice cut-and-paste job. But a link would have worked just as well.

The Realistic Doves of this world don't want to rein in the power of the Israel lobby, they just want to protect it from criticism.

Their corrupting presence as gatekeepers is the principal reason America doesn't have an effective Left anymore.

[Alan]

David is absolutely right. When "Realistic Dove" first showed up on Phil's blog at the Observer (as "Tough Dove"), he was only interested in neutralizing Phil's views. He thought Phil was going "too far" and even tried to influence him privately. It didn't escape our attention that he was effectively a gatekeeper, and a most dangerous one because he is a leftist, a liberal. The truth is that whether the Realistic Doves realize it or not, they are in fact the useful idiots of the Likudniks. While they worry about "anti-Semitism" and pogroms in America, the Likudniks advance their agenda unchecked, in large part because the Doves keep any meaningful discussions and exposure of the Lobby's power and influence from materializing. Of course this is hardly news to veterans of the anti-war Left. This has been going on for decades.

To anyone who wants to really understand how this works, Jeffrey Blankfort is the guy to listen to. Here is a long interview but an absolute must-read:

http://sf.indymedia.org/news/2006/11/1733088.php

Here is also the insight of Gore Vidal, from his foreword to Israel Shahak's "Jewish History, Jewish Religion - The Weight of Three Thousand Years":

"...Meanwhile, the misinformation about what is going on in the Middle East has got even greater and the principal victim of these gaudy lies - the American taxpayer to one side - is American Jewry, as it is constantly bullied by such professional terrorists as Begin and Shamir. Worse, with a few honorable exceptions, Jewish-American intellectuals abandoned liberalism for a series of demented alliances with the Christian (antisemitic) right and with the Pentagon-industrial complex. In 1985 one of them blithely wrote that when Jews arrived on the American scene they 'found liberal opinion and liberal politicians more congenial in their attitudes, more sensitive to Jewish concerns' but now it is in the Jewish interest to ally with the Protestant fundamentalists because, after all, "is there any point in Jews hanging on dogmatically, hypocritically, to their opinions of yesteryear?' At this point the American left split and those of us who criticised our onetime Jewish allies for misguided opportunism, were promptly rewarded with the ritual epithet 'antisemite' or 'self-hating Jew'."

http://www.abbc.net/historia/shahak/english.htm

[daveg]

Wasn't Mr. Saban (huge Zionist) the largest single donor to the democrats in 2000?

Just asking.

[Alan]

Another great article which touches on this issue is Tony Judt's "Bush’s Useful Idiots - The Strange Death of Liberal America". A must-read which explains a lot:

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n18/judt01_.html

"... But back home, America’s liberal intellectuals are fast becoming a service class, their opinions determined by their allegiance and calibrated to justify a political end. In itself this is hardly a new departure: we are all familiar with intellectuals who speak only on behalf of their country, class, religion, race, gender or sexual orientation, and who shape their opinions according to what they take to be the interest of their affinity of birth or predilection. But the distinctive feature of the liberal intellectual in past times was precisely the striving for universality; not the unworldly or disingenuous denial of sectional interest but the sustained effort to transcend that interest.

It is thus depressing to read some of the better known and more avowedly ‘liberal’ intellectuals in the contemporary USA exploiting their professional credibility to advance a partisan case. Jean Bethke Elshtain and Michael Walzer, two senior figures in the country’s philosophical establishment (she at the University of Chicago Divinity School, he at the Princeton Institute), both wrote portentous essays purporting to demonstrate the justness of necessary wars – she in Just War against Terror: The Burden of American Power in a Violent World, a pre-emptive defence of the Iraq War; he only a few weeks ago in a shameless justification of Israel’s bombardments of Lebanese civilians (‘War Fair’, New Republic, 31 July). In today’s America, neo-conservatives generate brutish policies for which liberals provide the ethical fig-leaf. There really is no other difference between them.

One of the particularly depressing ways in which liberal intellectuals have abdicated personal and ethical responsibility for the actions they now endorse can be seen in their failure to think independently about the Middle East. Not every liberal cheerleader for the Global War against Islamo-fascism, or against Terror, or against Global Jihad, is an unreconstructed supporter of Likud: Christopher Hitchens, for one, is critical of Israel. But the willingness of so many American pundits and commentators and essayists to roll over for Bush’s doctrine of preventive war; to abstain from criticising the disproportionate use of air power on civilian targets in both Iraq and Lebanon; and to stay coyly silent in the face of Condoleezza Rice’s enthusiasm for the bloody ‘birth pangs of a new Middle East’, makes more sense when one recalls their backing for Israel: a country which for fifty years has rested its entire national strategy on preventive wars, disproportionate retaliation, and efforts to redesign the map of the whole Middle East."

[daveg]

September is going to be a big month for Cincinnati lawyer Stanley Chesley. On September 5, Hillary Clinton, the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, will be at his home for a fundraising dinner, with a price tag of $2,300 per ticket, the maximum allowed by federal law. Chesley is no newcomer to the Clinton campaign - he helped raise millions for the Democrats during Bill Clinton's administration in the 1990s, and this March the former president was at Chesley's home raising $400,000 for his wife's campaign.

Ten day's after the Hillary event, Chesley will be in New York for the Jewish National Fund's annual conference, where he will be inaugurated as the organization's new president. And he won't be a stranger to this new job either, having been a member of the JNF's national boards for many years. He has also served on the boards of a host of other Jewish organizations including the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, Israel Bonds, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the American Jewish Committee, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and Hebrew Union College, where he serves as national secretary. His law firm - Waite, Schneider, Bayless & Chesley - represented the World Jewish Congress and the World Jewish Restitution Organization in Holocaust litigation in a series of cases involving Swiss and Austrian banks, the Hungarian Gold Train case and German payments for slave labor.

[Bill Pearlman]

Hey Alan: That's some line up you have there, Israel Shahak, Gore Vidal, and jeff Blankfort. Its a regualr murderers row. Kind of ranks up there with the good old father Coughlin, Lindbergh, silver shirt, bund days, don't you think.

[Alan]

Yeah Bill, except you forgot to mention that Blankfort is Jewish and Israel Shahak was also Jewish and a holocaust survivor and a guy who actually fought for Israel, unlike, say, YOU!

It's really incredible how chickenhawks like you are not ashamed to try to defame a holocaust survivor and someone who fought on Israel's side, simply for daring to spill the beans.

No wonder the people you represent are responsible for the incredible fact that most holocaust survivors in Israel live in dire poverty. Not to mention that your heroes, the Stern Gang, wanted to fight for the Nazis in WWII!

Should I go on Bill?

[bill Pearlman]

Guess what Alan, Blankfort is Jewish by an accident of birth. And just because you were somehow born Jewish, much like Phil Weiss.Doesn't mean your not capable of being a piece of shit anti-semitic scumbag. Shahak is a total psycho, and what proof do you have of his service in the Israeli military. Just because he said so. And yeah, I can see David Raziel and Yitzhak Shamir hobnobing in Berlin with Himmler. No, wait, that was the mufti of Jerusalem, and Rashid Ali. It was the Arabs that threw in with the Germans. It was the Palestinian Jews, and before 1948 that's what Palestinian meant. Who volunteered in great numbers for the British army.

[Alan]

Another Blankfort interview where he also discusses Chomsky:

http://peacepalestine.blogspot.com/2006/02/jeffrey-blankfort-interview-must-read.html

And here is Blankfort's study and criticism of Chomsky on a long paper that should be of interest to anyone who is puzzled by Chomsky's stance on the role of the Lobby:

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/May05/Blankfort0525.htm

[Gene]

Bill

Your Israel-first agenda would be a lot easier to read if you would post it in good English. It's not "Something your looking forward to Lester". It's "Something you're looking forward to Lester."

[bill Pearlman]

point taken, Gene, I do these things fast and don't proof read. because unlike Joechem, Alan, Cooper, and a few others who evidently have all day to contemplate this stuff. Some of us have to work. ( after all, I have to keep those contributions to AIPAC flowing )

[David]

Alan, here's an interesting little exchange where Blankfort gets to defend himself against a questioner who feels he has been somewhat unfair to Chomsky--
Justin Podur, "Noam Chomsky, Jeff Blankfort, and Me"
http://www.killingtrain.com/node/394

[Arie Brand]

I found Goldberg's comments on Walt and Mearsheimer quite unconvincing.

What does he accuse W.& M. of?

1. That they have followed a deceptive publishing strategy.

2. That they are guilty of "shoddy research. They invented historical facts. They twisted quotes."

Let's look more closely at this.

W.& M.s alleged publicity campaign:

Though some critics have charged W.& M. with the innocence, if not the naivete, of the dove, Goldberg sees only the "wisdom of the serpent" there. I get the impression that we have a huge quantity of sour grapes here. If W.& M. have deliberately followed the strategy to attract maximum publicity for their views that Goldberg ascribes to them I say: chapeau. One needs the "wisdom of the serpent" to escape the smothering activities of the Israel lobby.

"Shoddy research"

And now that "shoddy research". We have been continuously assured by W.& M.'s opponents that their work abounds with that. But surprisingly few examples of this have been given. Goldberg's piece is no exception here.

He claims a) that W.& M. have wrongly pictured Ben Gurion's attitude to a possible division of Palestine by only quoting part of one of his speeches b)misquoting a "Forward" article on Wolfowitz c)giving the wrong picture of Israel's present stance towards Syria. That's it. As we will see it doesn't amount to much.

Ben Gurion:

Goldberg says:

" David Ben-Gurion was cited as having stated in 1937 that he opposed the partition of Palestine into Jewish and Arab states — drawn from a famous speech in which he went on to say that, nonetheless, partition was the best that Zionism could hope for and should be seized with open arms."

W.& M. were right in ignoring the disclaimer that Ben Gurion diplomatically inserted in his speech. He WAS opposed to the division of Palestine at the time he publicly made these remarks. It is well known that at very much the same time, in 1937, he wrote to his son Amos:

"I am an enthusiastic advocate of the Jewish State, even if it involves partitioning Palestine now, because I work on the assumption that a partial Jewish State will not be the end but the beginning ...The formation of a State, even if it is only a partial State, will be the greatest increase of strength we could have today, and it will constitute a powerful lever in our historic effort to redeem the country in its entirety."

My immediate source for this quote is Michael Neumann's book "The Case against Israel" (p.59) but I have encountered it quite a few times and so, of course, has Goldberg. Claiming that W.& M. should have taken Ben Gurion's diplomatic disclaimer in the speech they quoted into account as an indication of his real convictions, reeks of bad faith.

Wolfowitz:

Goldberg says:

"Paul Wolfowitz was said to have been described by the Forward as “the most hawkishly pro-Israel neocon in the administration — this from a 2002 article citing the “hawkishly pro-Israel” image as conventional Washington wisdom that was proved wrong that week, when Wolfowitz was booed by a pro-Israel crowd for defending Palestinian rights."

But what did the original Forward-article say? It was this:

"the chilly reception given to the man dispatched as President Bush's personal representative to the rally, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz. Known as the most hawkishly pro-Israel voice in the Administration, Wolfowitz was greeted with a chorus of boos when he referred in his speech to Palestinian suffering and the eventual creation of a Palestinian state."

I find the construction that Goldberg now puts on this rather disingenuous. He did not then explicitly present the lip service Wolfowitz paid to "Palestinian suffering" as proving that he was mistakenly seen as the most "hawkishly pro-Israel voice in the Administration".

Syria:

Goldberg says:

"One whole chapter is devoted to Syria, which is supposedly quarantined by Washington because Israel wants it so. In fact, as the Israeli press has reported extensively, Israel’s military, intelligence and political leadership has endorsed peace talks with Syria almost unanimously for more than a year, but the Bush administration has vetoed the idea because of Washington’s hostility toward Syria. But Mearsheimer and Walt deliberately chose to ignore these details, evincing the same sort of tunnel vision they claim to deplore."

In a recent article Uri Avnery points to the gap between appearance and reality as far as Israel's attitude to Syria is concerned. The alleged desire for peace with Syria is belied by its willingness to go along with American policy. Avnery wrote:

"The question is: why is Israel taking part in this game?

THE CENTRAL figure in this play is Ehud Barak. His connection with Syria didn't start yesterday. Eight years ago, during his short and calamitous term as Prime Minister, he played with the idea of making peace with Syria. He negotiated with Hafez al-Assad and - surprise, surprise - the parties arrived at the threshold of an historic peace agreement. The Golan would have been restored to Syria, the settlers removed, another important Arab country would live in peace with Israel.

And then the whole thing fell apart. The pretext was that the old Assad wanted to dip his long feet in the waters of the Sea of Tiberias, instead of stopping a few hundred yards away from it. But the real reason concerned the feet of Barak himself: they got cold. He escaped at the very last minute, and started the irresponsible adventure of Camp David.

I called him, at the time, a "peace criminal" - a serial political offender against peace. After failing at Camp David - because of his overweening arrogance and appalling contempt for Arabs - he invented the mantra: "We have no partner". So it was not he who failed, and not the conference which he initiated without proper preparation.

No. It is the partner that has failed. "

Altogether, the basis for Goldberg's condemnation of W.&M's work is surprisingly weak. I am waiting for more informed, and less partisan, critics.

[bill Pearlman]

Arie, You remind me of Claude Rains in Casablanca, " lets round up the usual suspects" Come on Michael Neumann, Uri Avnery. Why not lay a few quotes from Khalid Meshal out there. Normal people in negotiations where the stakes are has high as this like to have a few safeguards. I know you never met an Arab tyrant you didn't love but Assad was a snake. Even looked like one. Not to mention being a member of a minority sect, the Alawites, and a close ally of iran. So, Israel wanted a few safeguards so he couldn't mass the Syrian army up on the Golan and put a strangle hold on Israels water supply. Sounds asbsurd to a guy like you because the Arabs are a bucnh of happy go lucky skip though the tulips lads who wouldn't hurt a fly. But, some other people were a little skeptical, don't know why>

[Arie Brand]

Bill here are a few examples of your style of "arguing':

"I know Israeli universities, ( I guess including the people that got blown up at Hebrew University ) are just full of, whats the term. zio-nazi's and Arab universities are just full of pacifists who if not for the jackboot of Zionist oppression would be full of students engaged in utopian pursuits"

and:

"Sounds asbsurd to a guy like you because the Arabs are a bucnh of happy go lucky skip though the tulips lads who wouldn't hurt a fly. But, some other people were a little skeptical"

There is a name for this style of argument: it is called "Reductio ad absurdum".

About "Zio-nazis" and universities:

I have a tale for you about real nazis and a university.

The University of Leiden is the oldest university of the Netherlands. It was bestowed on the city by Prince William I of Orange as a reward for its heroic resistance against a Spanish siege, one of the first dramatic episodes in Holland's eigthy-year war of independence against Spain.

How did it fare under the German occupation?

In November 1940 its Professor Eduard Meijers, one of Holland's most prominent jurists, was dismissed from his position on the direct orders of the German/Austrian "Reichskommissar" for occupied Holland, Seyss Inquart. Reason cited: his 'non-aryan' origin.

At this the then Dean of the juridical faculty, Professor Rudolph Cleveringa, gave a public speech in which he protested against this dismissal and highlighted Professor Meijer's great scholarly qualities.At the end of his speech his audience of colleagues and students sang the national anthem.

The next day Cleveringa was arrested by the German "Sicherheitspolizei". The students decided to go on strike after which the occupation authorities closed down the University for the duration of the war.

Sounds familiar? I hope it does.

A biographical footnote: Professor Meijers survived Westerbork and Theresienstadt to lay, after the war, the foundation for the new Dutch civil code. Professor Cleveringa survived various periods of imprisonment and lived to a ripe old age.

[Arie Brand]

P.S. In case you are slow of comprehension, Bill, I think I should add that the logic by which the forces of oppression, whether German or Israeli, act is much the same. Shut down places where young people might come together and receive the information, plus the motivation, inspiring them to act against their oppressors.

[bill Pearlman]

No Arie, I caught your ever so subtle analogy. Israel is Nazi Germany which I guess makes the Palestinians the Jews. And Jenin is the Warsaw ghetto, ( quite the disparity in casualty rates but no matter ) And Gaza is really identical to Aushwitz. And the nakba is the worst thing that has happened in human history. And if not for the impositition of the Western imperialist Polish Khazar nazi state of israel it would be paradise there. Like the garden of Eden and the holocaust never really happened but if it did we deserved it. Have I got it right?

[Arie Brand]

Once again: reductio ad absurdum, Bill. Can't you find another trick?

[bill Pearlman]

Arie, just want to make sure I understand the real story