The washington post on walt/mearsheimer
When it first mentioned the controversy over the paper by Walt and Mearsheimer, the Washington Post titled it Of Israel, Harvard and David Duke. I thought it was an excellent title for it showed the appeal the paper had to people outside the mainstream.
With its second print article on the subject Report on Effect of Israel Lobby Distorts History, Critics Say , the Post has omitted Duke’s opinion. It’s a shame. In fact the article, reported by a Michael Powell has presented Mearsheimer/Walt in a rather favorable light.
For one thing after quoting some of the critics of “The Lobby” Powell tells us
And they are not without academic support. Juan Cole, a professor of Middle Eastern studies at the University of Michigan, suggests the authors make commonplace points — that U.S. Middle East policy is driven disproportionately by those who favor Israel, and that this lobby resorts to all manner of vile accusations to discredit opponents.
How credible is the paper? Well it has academic support. From Juan Cole no less. How vile is the Israel lobby? It discredits its opponents! And it’s successful at it too.
They unsuccessfully shopped their article — which pointedly relies on much Israeli scholarship — here before the London Review of Books published it in March. An academic, footnoted version was posted on the Kennedy School Web site — but as the controversy raged, the Harvard logo was removed.
So in two (non-consecutive) paragraphs a news story in the Washington Post dismisses the critics of Walt and Mearsheimer and it offers up circumstantial proof that they’re right!
(Over at the Corner, Tim Graham notes that the article shows a closeness that the Post has with Noam Chomsky - 2 appearances in 3 days.)
Actually the Washington Post tread here before, 3 years ago, in an article “Bush and Sharon Nearly Identical On Mideast Policy” “
The Likudniks are really in charge now,” said a senior government official, using a Yiddish term for supporters of Sharon’s political party. Neumann agreed that Abrams’s appointment was symbolically important, not least because Abrams’s views were shared by his boss, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, by Vice President Cheney and by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. “It’s a strong lineup,” he said.
Mickey Kaus was quick to pick up on this and noted presciently
On the other hand, imagine the potential for conspiratorial anti-Semitic mischief if the war goes badly and sub-rosa Web-fed resentment focuses blame on the unpublicized Likudnik factor.
Jefferson Morley on the electronic side of the Washington Post has picked up on the controversy. In his first, Global divide on Israel Lobby Study, he takes the unfortunate tack of quoting extensively from the Islamic/Arabic press lauding “The Lobby” and finally hitching onto Christoper Hitchens anti-Israel stance. The second Israeli Lobby Controversy grows deserves credit for citing a Jerusalem Post report on the acquisition of an American company by an Israeli that the US has cancelled.
However it also gives the editor who published the piece to argue something to the effect of, “I can’t be antisemitic because I’m Jewish.”
Weak.Very weak.
Eliot Cohen on the Post’s op-ed page has an excellent comeback “Yes. It’s antisemitic“
First Cohen cites a number of mistakes in “The Lobby”
It is indeed a wretched piece of scholarship. Israeli citizenship rests “on the principle of blood kinship,” it says, and yet the country has a million non-Jewish citizens who vote. Osama bin Laden’s grievance with the United States begins with Israel, it says — but in fact his 1998 fatwa declaring war against this country began by denouncing the U.S. presence in Saudi Arabia and the suffering of the people of Iraq. “Other ethnic lobbies can only dream of having the political muscle” The Lobby has — news to anyone advocating lifting the embargo on Fidel Castro’s Cuba. The Iraq war stemmed from The Lobby’s conception of Israel’s interest — yet, oddly, the war attracted the support of anti-Israel intellectuals such as Christopher Hitchens and mainstream publications such as The Economist. America’s anti-Iran policy reflects the dictates of The Lobby — but how to explain Europe’s equally strong opposition to Iranian nuclear ambitions?
So it’s a sloppy piece of work, but does that make it antisemitic? Yes. Why?
If by anti-Semitism one means obsessive and irrationally hostile beliefs about Jews; if one accuses them of disloyalty, subversion or treachery, of having occult powers and of participating in secret combinations that manipulate institutions and governments; if one systematically selects everything unfair, ugly or wrong about Jews as individuals or a group and equally systematically suppresses any exculpatory information — why, yes, this paper is anti-Semitic.
Eliot Cohen has exposed the sloppiness of the Walt/Mearsheimer paper. Stripped of its pretensions, it is not a valid academic examination of a controversial topic but a series of unfounded assumptions assigning blame for policies that its authors do not approve of.
There are of course those who believe that the Lobby is non-controversial and that the criticism of it is a sign of the potency of the Lobby.
And excellent and thorough debunking is here.
Technorati tags: John Mearsheimer, Stephen Walt, the Lobby, Israel, AIPAC.
Crossposted on Israpundit and Soccer Dad.
