Harvard’s shame (and Chicago’s)

65 thoughts on “Harvard’s shame (and Chicago’s)”

1. Kalb’s credentials here:
   http://ksgfaculty.harvard.edu/marvin_kalb
   Out of curiosity Helena in what subject did you obtain your Masters?

2. Helena, you are having the precise debate that you and others have called for. The M&W paper does not meet minimal academic standars, relying on secondary sources, one sided opinion pieces, and the like.
   So you got the open debate that you wanted, and these flaws are being exposed. You immediately launch into a barrage of ad hominem attacks against anyone who has pointed out the flaws of the “study.” You engage in the very sins that the “Israel lobby” is accused of.
   As for Marvin Kalb, how in the world do you get off saying he has “zero listed academic credentials.”? The very link you cite to says that Marvin Kalb “…is a Senior Fellow at the Shorenstein Center for the Press, Politics and Public Policy, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. He also serves as a Lecturer in Public Policy, and Faculty Chair for the School’s Washington Programs. For twelve years Kalb was the Founding Director of the Shorenstein Center, where he also taught and lectured as the Edward R. Murrow Professor on Press and Politics. ” Sounds academic to me.
   And of course, you could have actually gone to the Kennedy School of Government site and looked up their faculty listing, rather than a “speaker’s bureau” which may not be as inclined to focus on academic, rather than other professional, qualifications.
   Having an “open debate” does not mean cheerleading and puffery for poor research and one sided opinion pieces masquerading as scholarly research. The debate you wanted is going on Helena. And Mearsheimer and Walt are losing it. With good reason.

3. http://www.gwu.edu/~kalb/biography.html
   My apologies. Harvard’s page doesn’t list his academic degree, which as it happens is an MA from Harvard. I’ll see if I can dig up anything on his personal finances, maybe there’s something there.

4. This is indeed somewhat depressing. It is a further demonstration, I think, of what Judith Butler has described as the limitations on what it has become possible to say today, because of the way in which what one might say is heard. That is to say that there are certain topics now on which it has become far too difficult to articulate a position in such a way that it will not be heard as something else. Of course that absolves no-one of the responsibility of taking care and being responsible in what they say, and there is to my mind nothing to suggest that Mearsheimer and Walt have been anything but careful in what they have published. One may agree or disagree with the main thesis of the piece, or with details, or one might wish to emphasise some factors at the expense of others, but in some of the responses there seem to me to be a kind of mis-hearing, created in part of course by the political context in which the thesis is received, but also, unfortunately by the way in which it has entered the discursive field.
   Anything that enters the public sphere with advance notice of its potential for stirring up controversy is more or less pre-ordained to stir up more controversy than it is worth. The LRB has a distinguished record of stimulating agitated debate, not least on Israel – Palestine issues, but it has rarely, to my recollection, published work by such mainstream IR realists on the topic. This instantly places M & W in a new discursive context, and one which is almost bound to encourage those inclined to take issue with them to do so in rather more heated ways than they might have done were M & W to have published in a more specialist journal. To my non-IR specialist, unrealist eyes, their piece seems to offer a fairly unexceptional account of the nature of political lobbying but one which, by virtue of its exclusion of other factors, offers a less convincing explanation of the phenomenon they are trying to account for than I might wish for. This is not simply a matter of other quasi realist concerns such as the oil lobby, but also, I think, a matter of a very serious and genuine sense of cultural affinity felt in many parts of the United States for Israel and Israelis. This is a ‘soft’ cultural factor rather than a matter of conspiracy or even, for that matter, conscious action, and creates a readily understandable inclination towards sustaining a political environment that is generally quite favourable to Israel. That may be good for Israel, it may also, as M & W suggest, be bad for Israel in the long term or in a moral sense, and it certainly is bad for the Palestinians (very bad indeed), but I am simply not persuaded that Walt and Mearsheimer’s account is full enough.
   Now that I have been fool enough to venture my foot into these choppy waters, I can only hope not to be misheard in my turn, and suffer the loss of a foot to the teeth of gathering sharks.

5. May I also add, as someone who holds a doctorate in a subject that gives me precisely zero qualification to comment on such issues as this, that there seems to be a peculiar anxiety circling in this whole debate around the idea of academic credentials and academic standards. On the one hand there are complaints that the work does not meet academic standards (whatever they are, and in my experience, they are pretty elastic and variable from place to place and field to field) while on the other there is an often none-too-hidden mistrust of the academy altogether (not in posts here, I should add). As far as I can see the standards by which we ought to measuring contributions to the debate, whether they be the initial article, or subsequent critiques and other positions, are standards of truthfulness, plausibility and the like, which would hold equally for journalists as for academics, as they would for anyone trying to engage in discussion. Advanced academic degrees have their place and their value (as the holder of one I’d have to say that, now wouldn’t I) but they are neither qualifications nor disqualifications for any kind of participation in debate. We are all qualified to express an opinion, so long as we are prepared to listen and engage witgh contrary opinions and to adhere to some basic common notions around truth that might enable us to discern it, or elements of it at least, when we meet it. I, for example, must own up to recognising truths that I might prefer for partisan reasons to ignore in some of the critiques offered of the M&W piece, but that has nothing to do with academic credentials, be they mine, Walt’s, Helena’s, Kalb’s, Mearsheimer’s or anyone else’s.

6. May I also add, as someone who holds a doctorate in a subject that gives me precisely zero qualification to comment on such issues as this, that there seems to be a peculiar anxiety circling in this whole debate around the idea of academic credentials and academic standards. On the one hand there are complaints that the work does not meet academic standards (whatever they are, and in my experience, they are pretty elastic and variable from place to place and field to field) while on the other there is an often none-too-hidden mistrust of the academy altogether (not in posts here, I should add). As far as I can see the standards by which we ought to measuring contributions to the debate, whether they be the initial article, or subsequent critiques and other positions, are standards of truthfulness, plausibility and the like, which would hold equally for journalists as for academics, as they would for anyone trying to engage in discussion. Advanced academic degrees have their place and their value (as the holder of one I’d have to say that, now wouldn’t I) but they are neither qualifications nor disqualifications for any kind of participation in debate. We are all qualified to express an opinion, so long as we are prepared to listen and engage witgh contrary opinions and to adhere to some basic common notions around truth that might enable us to discern it, or elements of it at least, when we meet it. I, for example, must own up to recognising truths that I might prefer for partisan reasons to ignore in some of the critiques offered of the M&W piece, but that has nothing to do with academic credentials, be they mine, Walt’s, Helena’s, Kalb’s, Mearsheimer’s or anyone else’s.

7. Didn’t I just say that?

8. I wonder how Harvard’s conduct today compares with how it behaved during the McCarthy era?
   One aspect of this is that while Harvard disowns M & W they have not responded to Alan Dershowitz’s problematic writing. Norman Finkelstein has written some devastating critiques of Dershowitz’s recent books, charging the lawyer with plagiarism and other academic sins.
   I have heard worse stories, however. For example, Ian Lustick, a Zionist, tried to publish a book in the 1980’s comparing Israel with Algeria and Ireland using University of Texas publishing. The board of regents made a ridiculous effort to halt the publication which eventually failed. I have forgotten the details but at the end Lustick was required against his will to mention in the book that he was Jewish.
   Of course, in this situation Harvard did not offer to publish anything.
   I think Lamis Andoni has written about other acts of censorship by Harvard on this issue; I remember her writing about problems with Harvard in the 1990’s.
   I think American researchers are alarmed about the dangerous direction the U.S. is taking under the lobby/Israel’s influence and are turning more of their attention to this subject.

9. The difference is that when Dershowitz publishes a book, he publishes it through a variety of publishers. This “working paper” featured on ksg’s website. You might note that in the London Review of Books, no such disclaimer is attached.

10. The term pyrrhic victory springs to mind

11. Joshua, your The debate you wanted is going on Helena. And Mearsheimer and Walt are losing it.
    Wait a moment, friend! Unlike you, people who engage in reasoned debate and discussion usually make sure they take due time to read and consider the texts that are being discussed, and to consider any other ancillary evidence before they move toward formulating or expressions opinions.
    Your m.o. here, by contrast, seems absolutely typical of the attempts at discourse domination practised by the general Israeli Hasbara (propaganda) movement… You leap into any discussion I open here on Israel with unbelievable speed– do you have a life, I wonder? or does someone pay you to be there reading JWN at all hours of day and night? what a strange life you must lead, indeed!– and in many cases before you’ve even had time to finish reading (let alone giving due consideration to) the text or matter under discussion.
    Your tone gets pretty hostile and shrill, too. (As is generally the case with hasbara hacks.)
    So yes, sure, if you do a “Google News” search for Mearsheimer right now you’ll find all kinds of shrill, hasbara-type criticisms of it, none of which has any more substance than the kind of non-specific denunciation of the methodology that Marvin Kalb (!) voiced there. But don’t for a moment think this means that M&W “are losing the debate.”
    Their study arouses considerable interest not just among p.r. flacks but also in the IR theory community (oh, sorry, maybe I should spell out for you that that means “International Relations” theory.) It does so because their conclusions challenge one of the central tenets of the “realist” school of IR theory to which they belong, which holds that in general internal politcs don’t make that much difference to the actions and decisions taken by national leaders in the global arena, but one can safely assume that these leaders are acting purely in pursuit of their own nation’s interest…
    So yes, the theoretical issues they raise in their study are interesting, and deserve considerable and close attention. I’m confident that they’ll get it within their field. But for goodness’ sake don’t look for such from organizations like the Israel Hasbara Committee, or the New York Sun. And don’t assume that, because it’s only those shrillies that we’ve heard from yet, in the eight days since the study was first posted on the web, the debate is already on its way to being decided.
    It isn’t. It has barely begun.

12. A graduate of the City College of New York, Kalb has an M.A. from Harvard and was zeroing in on his Ph.D. in Russian history when he left Cambridge in 1956 for a Moscow assignment with the State Department.
    [Note: Many Jews of Mr. Kalb’s generation attended City College of New York, becase institutions such as Harvard (and, I believe, Oxford) had strict quotas limiting Jewish admission.]
    It appears to me that Marvin Kalb’s academic and journalistic credentials are every bit as good as those of people here.
    (1) B&B “won” on the immediate issue of the loan guarantees; but then (2) they were majorly punished by the Lobby in the 1992 election; and Bush I’s defeat in that election stood thereafter for the Clintonites and for Bush II as an object lesson in why they shouldn’t even dream of confronting the Lobby…
    So, you are saying that “the Lobby” defeated George H.W. Bush? Could you please provide some evidence of this. As I recall, the economy had a lot to do with Bush’s defeat.
    We are talking about the same George Bush who carried out the “neocon” program of defanging Saddam Hussein and defended Israel with Patriot missiles and air and ground missions in Western Iraq, aren’t we? Clinton? We are talking about the same Clinton who refused to follow “the Lobby’s” orders and take down Iraq yet went on to handily win a second term, aren’t we?

13. Oh dear, another case of someone not reading carefully. Just take it a word at a time, JES, through the end of my paragraph there.

14. Yes, I did read it through to the end, which was this:
    “But the Lobby’s ideological enforcers managed to get their view of things very “forcefully” across to all the pols…”
    I am still quite curious, and I would really appreciate any help you could provide in understanding exactly how these “ideological enforcers” got Bush and Baker kicked out of office (and why they didn’t bother to do the same for Mr. Clinton).

15. Helena,
    As I suspected, you respond to any critcism with a vicious personal attack.
    For the record, I am not a member of any “hasbara” organizations or a recipient of any such propaganda. My involvement in Israeli – Palestine matters largely consists of, a) membership in Americans for Peace Now, b) contributions to the New Israel Fund, and c) contributions to and initial consultations with the founders of the Shurush initiative (formally Jozoor microfinance), an organization providing microcredit finance to Palestinian entrepreneurs.
    The last time I called a congressman on the issue of Israel Palestine, it was to demand the release of Ibrahim Issa, son of the founder of Hope Flowers school, when the Israeli security apparatus inexplicably detained him. Interestingly, there was virtually no advocacy on his behalf from Palestinian NGOs, they’d rather campaign for “resisters” like Marwan Barghouti than people who seek genuine peace and coexistance.
    I call bullshit when I see it on either side. Whether its a Kahanist or someone like yourself.
    As for the M&W article, please do not give me patronizing lectures on IR theory. There is nothing academic or scholarly in the “working paper.” It is a collection of op-ed pieces, other opinion articles, and quotes wrenched out of context; and it clearly ignores the substantial counter-evidence on the other side. Nothing about nation-state interest theory or the like. I don’t think Graham Allison or anyone else will be rushing to revise their theories as a result of this.
    The sad thing is that you engage in the same tactics you decry of the “hasbara” activists. The ad hominem attacks and name calling of anyone who disagrees with you. The “glittering generalities” of your supporters. The list goes on.
    And what am I doing here? Again, responding to your request to join the conversation. What are your “Palestine uber alles” contributors doing here?
    If you want respect, Helena, you have to treat others with it. Simple as that.

16. Now that you’ve edited my post, could you please answer my question?

17. Short version: they tried, but it was not their efforts that were decisive. As I wrote in the portion of the para that you chose to leave out. It was the economy that was more decisive– in ’92 and in ’96. Should have been in 2000, but wasn’t.
    Important thing, though: the perceptions and beliefs of political strategists. Much evidence in George Packer and elsewhere that the Clintonites and GWB attributed much greater political power to the Lobby, for unseating GHWB in 1992, than it deserved.
    Why don’t you go read my book for the longer version of this, re Clinton. (What? You mean that might actually take up your time and your sustained attention? But then how on earth could you keep up with your kneejerk-response, discourse-domination efforts here? Well, I’ll leave that to you to figure out… )

18. Joshua,
    I don’t think that you should have to explain yourself. The very suggestion (twice, I believe) that someone – even “the Lobby” – would bother to pay people to respond on JWN is simply ridiculous.

19. M&W aren’t losing the debate — they’re just not showing up.
    “I have discussed your inquiry with my co-author, Professor Mearsheimer,” he told the Sun.” We appreciate the invitation to respond to the comments, but prefer not to.”
    what a pity.

20. Why don’t you go read my book for the longer version of this, re Clinton.
    Thanks for the tip. I’ll check with my “the Lobby” handler to see if they’ll let me expense a used copy.

21. JES, as you accurately point out, AIPAC clearly lost the battle with the loan guarantees withheld at the behest of James “#@*$ the Jews, they don’t vote for us anyway” Baker (but remember criticism of Israeli policy isn’t necessarily antisemtic…)
    The idea that this swung the election is just silly. Perhaps the Bush I administration’s outright hostility to the Jewish community contributed to Clinton pulling down about 90% of the Jewish vote. But the Jewish vote has been consistently, and overwhelmingly, Democratic since the 1920s. Kerry pulled down about 76%, if I recall correctly.
    Anyway, the “Israel lobby” has been rebuffed on plenty of other policy initiatives. The sale of AWACs to the Saudis in the 1980s, the refusal to relocate the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, the cancellation of joint defense research projects, the recent demand (by “neocons” Wolflowitz and Feith, no less!) that Israel rescind weapons technology sales to China. Right now, the AIPAC supported bill to cut off all aid to the PNA in light of Hamas’s election, has stalled in Congress and may not even make it to a floor vote.
    The U.S. has a strong relationship with Israel. The U.S. will have a strong relationship with Israel for the forseeable future. The one thing that Congress regularly does is ensure that the aid bill passes, which cements that relationship. Congress also regularly passes bills requesting relocation of the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, which the administration promptly ignores. Otherwise, most of the “pro Israel” bills in Congress are non-binding resolutions praising Israel or condemning Palestine. Personally, I think they are worth nothing and just invite controversy. But they have no policy effect whatsoever.
    The U.S. is so pro-Israel because Americans overwhelmingly are in favor of a democratic state established by the Jewish people that has, since inception, been under seige by autocratic regimes and terrorism. Mearsheimer and Walt are free to try and convince people otherwise. But with what they have published, they are just preaching to those like Helena in the “amen corner.”

22. This is just some lingering neo con -ness from larry summers’ era. They’ll be back on track soon enough.

23. “We are talking about the same George Bush who carried out the “neocon” program of defanging Saddam Hussein”
    The Israeli lobby did try to defeat Bush. I think at one point the AIPAC president said Israel’s supporters would never forgive Bush for engaging in a public confrontation with the lobby. AT one point during the loan guarantee fight Bush complained in a television address that there were a thousand lobbyists on the other side of the issue lobbying congress.
    Bush tried to mend fences with the zionists during the 1992 presidential campaign to no avail.
    As for Clinton, he was losing the 1992 democratic primary until a massive influx of contributions organized by the lobby bailed him out. During that race a New Yorker posing as someone who was interested in contributing to AIPAC recorded a conversation with its president who discusses all of the “goodies” Clinton will give Israel. After the election, Mickey Cantor demanded that he be made Secretary of State as a reward for support zionists had given Clinton. When this demand was made public pressure from around the country led Clinton to reject this demand. During the Clinton administration the so-called “Arabists” were purged from the state department.

24. “The Israeli lobby did try to defeat Bush.”
    Which is, of course, a GOOD thing. I like defeating Republicans, don’t you?
    The Israeli lobby tried to defeat Bush because the Israeli lobby has always overwhelmingly supported democratic candidates. Although the numbers have slightly evened out over the past to election cycles.

25. America is a nation based on individual rights while Israel is a nation based on Jewish rights. We are very different in that way. Israel provides a VERY poor return for the money and political cover expended on it. The Harvard paper attempts to explain why we consistently over-invest in Israel. All Americans should honestly consider the issue.
    None of the Zionist/AIPAC posters want that issue considered.
    Israel must earn our support.

26. The pattern here imo is to CHERRY PICK those studies or news stories that support the Arabist worldview…it’s like a lawyer writing a brief…arguments that support his client’s position are spotlighted…adverse evidence is ignored.

27. WmPeele
    This not about the “Arbist” vs. Israeli interests.
    It’s about American vs. Israeli interests.
    Stop trying to obfuscate the issue.
    America is not obliged to support Israel. We have an obligation to investigate political movements promoting the interests of other nations

28. Finally! Ever since Sept 11 there has been talk of “getting to the root cause” but it has taken ’til now for a creditworthy statement about the details behind the utter failure of US foreign policy in the ME which has motivated the violence against the US. The 9/11 Commission may a sideways reference to the need to adjust foreign policy in the ME as a disincentive to terror attacks. The M-W report is a breath of reality,
    Every day, in every way, there is additional circumstantial evidence of the force of truth behind the M-W study. Just one of many examples, in Forward Magazine March 10, 2006:
    “Thousands of lobbyists with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee flooded Capitol Hill Tuesday, holding almost 500 meetings with legislators and their staff, in which they urged members of Congress to endorse the bill” (that bans all non-humanitarian American assistance to the Palestinian Authority and prohibits official American contacts with the P.A. unless Hamas recognizes Israel and renounces terrorism).
    That’s spelled “THOUSANDS”.
    Levy wrote in Ha’aretz about what we see the commentaries, here, in the frantic attacks on Helena’s post or M-W personally:
    “The study is at its most devastating when it describes how the Lobby “stifles debate by intimidation” and at its most current when it details how America’s interests (and ultimately Israel’s, too) are ill-served by following the Lobby’s agenda.”
    The intimidation Levy refers to, of course, is implicit threats of political revenge against Congress members, and for the rest of the courageously outspoken, allusions to “anti-semitism” (whatever that is), the “oldest scapegoat of all”, and all that kind of utterly non-academic junk.
    Neither the NYT nor the Washington Post return a “hit” for any mention of this brave research publication, although in the past they have reported other writings of these notable and respected researchers. And the revision by Harvard just proves further the extraordinary fear Jews favoring genocide of the Palestinians can generate in this land.
    So, when will “My Name is Rachel Corrie” receive the Jewish leaders’ stamp of approval so we 100% Americans can see the play about one of our own victims of Israel?
    Proof of the pudding!

29. “the extraordinary fear Jews favoring genocide of the Palestinians can generate in this land”
    huh?

30. America is a nation based on individual rights while Israel is a nation based on Jewish rights. We are very different in that way. Israel provides a VERY poor return for the money and political cover expended on it.
    These may be the issues that need to be discussed. I don’t have any promblems with that. But Mearsheimer and Walt don’t really discuss them. They simply assert them. If you believe that this is not the case, then please provide some evidence.
    By the way, I don’t believe that there are any “AIPAC” posters here.

31. I’ve got news for the Israel Firsters. Walt and Mearsheimer’s viewpoint ain’t going to go away. How can it? The contradictions are so glaring. America doesn’t need Israel. America does “need” other parts of the Middle East. America’s eight or nine million Jews might feel “emotionally attached” to Israel, warts and all. I suspect that most of the rest of us – 290 million or thereabouts – would like to see them get their buns back to the 1967 borders (or if their “biblical imperative” means they have to go on helping themselves to Palestinian land and buggering the sons of Ham every which way, well that’s their lookout), would like to see the millions of dollars in aid go instead to American infrastructure, would like to see our Congress – and indeed our public discourse – liberated.
    The Walt and Mearsheimer piece is a single leucocyte. It won’t be the last one.

32. The reaction to date of the Israel lobby – among whom Kalb, Dershowitz, Congessman Engel and Robert Belfer are counted – proves the truth of Mearsheimer and Walt’s expectation that they would be accused of being anti-Israel and antisemitic. I expect that some supporters of Israel will continue to prove Mearsheimer and Walt’s point, as they have on this blog.
    I’m also sure that Helena is right when she says “(the debate) has barely begun”. Honest talk about the effect of Israel’s supporters on American foreign policy is going to happen sooner or later. It would be better if it came sooner rather than in the wake of a disastrous outcome of the policies promoted by the lobby.

33. There’s an interesting, and lengthy, account of the AWACS fight in Alexander Haig’s book _Caveat_. IIRC Haig devoted a chapter to it. It’s true that the Reagan administration ultimately prevailed, but it was a long, hard fight that Haig believed consumed an inordinate amount of Reagan’s political capital. From that chapter I got a lasting impression of the quite extraordinary strength of the Israeli lobby.

34. To: Wm. Peele:
    Rarely, if ever, do “pro-Israeli” advocates on the political scene acknowledge a distinction between the existence of geographic or political Israel itself, and the existence of Israel’s program of military occupation and oppression in the occupied territories.
    It is powerfully arguable that Israel’s behaviors in the occupied territories are genocidal in nature per the definition of genocide in the Convention against Gencocide.
    Therefore, one who exhorts “pro-Israel” without disclaimer of occupation, annexation, demolitions, land confiscation, agricultural strangulation by roads, walls and water deprivation, and the other many brutalities incidental to the occupation (the latest being deprivation of food) directly endorses Israel’s genocidal behaviors and may justifiably be characterized as “favoring genocide of the Palestinians.”
    One who works to suppress mention of or argument about Israel’s genocidal behaviors, especially in the context of US foreign policy, is very arguably an knowing and active facilitator of the perpetuation of those behaviors.
    These people are appropriateley, in my vocabulary, termed “genocidists” and it is perfectly moral and legitimate to passionately denounce their agenda to either commit or facilitate a contemporary genocide. They may or may not be Jewish, that’s their own business, but they have one much more relevant characteristic in common: they favor Israeli genocidal behaviors toward the Palestinians.
    No wonder “we” and “they” are hated.

35. The green shoots of a Belco Boycott coming through yet?

36. Rarely, if ever, do “pro-Israeli” advocates on the political scene acknowledge a distinction between the existence of geographic or political Israel itself, and the existence of Israel’s program of military occupation and oppression in the occupied territories.
    Strange, I’d have said the distinction is intentionally blurred by critics of Israel. I don’t have any problem with this distinction and neither do many other “pro-Israeli” commentators here. Which advocates have you in mind?

37. TimothyL
    “It is powerfully arguable that Israel’s behaviors in the occupied territories are genocidal in nature”
    You’re being silly. The Palestinian population under Israeli administration has been growing by leaps and bounds. The children are taller than their grandparents and the Palestinians have founded their own universities and hospitals. None of this occurred under the previous administrations of Jordon, Egypt, Britain or Turkey.
    “Brutalities incidental to the occupation”
    You are incorrect. These are acts in response to the Intifada and the occupation itself was a response to the Arab aggression of 1967. Before the Intifada, the situation was much more peaceful.
    Are your remarks a blood libel? Probably.
    War is a terrible thing, and it is the worst thing that people do. If the Palestinians don’t like war, they shouldn’t be starting them.
    It is testimony to the civilized and gentle nature of Israeli society that the Palestinian population grew even during the Intifada.

38. http://www.jameswolcott.com
    Wolcott’s just weighed in. His is a fairly broad church, big footprint blog over there. Translation: this will give the Walt-Mearsheimer piece a good updraught. Which is exactly what’s called for.
    And – bless his big heart – he’s taken the trouble to distill it right down to the essentials. Streamline it. Bite size it. Make it less doorstopperish, more palatable. Which will help no end in getting the word out.
    And of course his shrewd observations – see the next three paras – both sharpen the focus and do some heavy lifting in their own right.
    “As the Forward article points out, the majority of Jewish Americans don’t share AIPAC’s ultra-hawkishness. “Like many other American Jewish organizations, it supported the Iraq war. But 70% of American Jews oppose the Iraq war, according to a poll commission by the American Jewish Committee at the end of 2005.”
    “As the Mearsheimer-Walt study makes evident, such is the lopsided influence of AIPAC and other pro-Israeli lobbies–their ability to control the terms of the debate, and militarize every argument–that liberal sentiments and convictions of the majority of the Jewish community become irrelevant. Seizing at a ray of optimism, the authors conclude, “Although the Lobby remains a powerful force, the adverse effects of its influence are increasingly difficult to hide. Powerful states can maintain flawed policies for quite some time, but reality cannot be ignored for ever.”
    “Such innocence. Of course it can. This is America, after all, and in Bush Country reality can be put on hold indefinitely, until the next major distraction is staged.”

39. It is testimony to the civilized and gentle nature of Israeli society that the Palestinian population grew even during the Intifada.
    It is testimony to the unusually high birthrate of Palestinians, a chronic problem for Zionist planners.

40. You are digressing
    The LRB Mearsheimer/Walt article is fundamentally about Israel, not about the Israel Lobby or Jewish Lobby. The points it makes are that the US support “Isn’t rational” because the US primary interest is in oil and so on. If Mearsheimer/Walt felt that the US support for Israel was a good idea, they wouldn’t credit the Israel Lobby.
    The study acknowledges that US support for Israel became significant in 1973, yet fails to tell us what the Lobby did in 1973 that made it happen. Of course, it wasn’t the Lobby. It was the attempt in the 1970’s by the Soviet Union to gather in as many Arab states as Client States as possible. This included the attempt to overthrow the Jordanian monarchy by the Soviet-oriented PLO in 1970, that is “Black September”.
    Before the US had a policy of supporting Israel, Israel had a policy of supporting the US. Even in the 60’s, there were many votes in the UN where the only significant support for the US position was from Israel.
    By contrast, all the enemies of Israel have made a point of being anti-American. The Soviet client states of course were anti-US. The PLO was anti-US and even pro-Saddam. And the various Islamist formations (al-Queda and Hamas) have made a very strong point of being both anti-Israel and anti-US. This drives Israel and the US together. It isn’t the Lobby. Or rather, the Lobby is effective because it’s arguments are effective.
    But Mearsheimer/Walt are even worse. They falsely blame the 9/11 attacks on US support for Israel. Everybody knows the issue was the US-Saudi link. Bin Laden was miffed that the Saudi’s chose the US to defend them against Saddam rather than choosing bin Laden. But Mearsheimer/Walt imply that the US should abandon one of it’s allies because it got attacked. That’s a policy that can only lead to more attacks. When somebody attacks you, you have to punch them in the nose, not reward them. So much for “Realism”. Maybe if you were a true pacifist, you wouldn’t punch them in the nose, but you still would stand your ground and refuse to pay your enemies for hurting you.
    Mearsheimer/Walt even go so far as to malign Ben Gurion and to dismiss the Camp David offer by Ehud Barak. If they were really writing about the Lobby, why would this stuff come up?
    That’s why the “Scholarship” of Mearsheimer/Walt is dismissed.

41. I read the LRB piece. It is a gross exageration. AIPAC is, of course, a powerful lobby. But, frankly, the reason why Israel receives support are easy to understand:
    1. There are more than 60 million Christian Zionists who live in key electoral states. No politician can ignore them.
    2. Israel is a democracy.
    3. Israel faces enemies who claim the same idiology as those who face the US. Jihadists have many more enemies than Israel and those enemies include all of Europe, not to mention the US. Jihadist maps (e.g. that used by Pir Mubarak Gilani) show the part of the world ruled now and what is hoped for in 20 years (i.e. the entire planet). Israel’s demise would advance the Jihadist’s cause and thus serve to spur further Jihad. So a rational government planner could view Israel’s survival as rather important.
    4. Israel tests weapons of value to the US and provides substantial information to our spy agencies. Given the poor quality of what the US spy agencies have done, the US should be thankful for obtaining assistance.

42. The Lobby strikes back! And whodda thunk it, they’d hit the endowmeents first!
    Well the Lobby did that’s who:
    Eric Alterman notes
    As I noted earlier this week, it is impossible to criticize America’s Israel lobby, or even call attention to its actions–even the ones for which its top employees are not accused of spying– without being smeared as an anti-Semite, a crank, an isolationist, or more likely, all three. …Here are six such responses to the author’s paper, which is here, and I’m certain this is only the beginning. Note that the first one looks to go after the Kennedy School funding because “academic freedom does not mean that donors have to subsidize such drivel.”

43. frankly, the reason why Israel receives support are easy to understand:
    1. There are more than 60 million Christian Zionists who live in key electoral states. No politician can ignore them.
    Funny, The LRB article I read makes this very point or nearly so. in the Democratic Party, the fundamentalist radicals (numbers grossly exaggerated) to the Democratic Party are truly “left behind” or has Hillary Clinton been invited to speak at Liberty U’s commencement.
    2. Israel is a democracy.
    Israel’s “democracy” what sort of interest does that actually serve. I know this is a reason often given, but that’s no reason, that is a slogan with very little connection to reality or real national interest. Mearsheimer and Walt discuss at some length. I guess that was omitted in the version you read.
    BTW – Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Morrocco, Algeria, the Emirates, Uzebekestan, Pakistan..can we telll Hugo Chavez the check’s in the mail? How much should we put Hamas down for?
    3. Israel faces enemies who claim the same idiology as those who face the US. Jihadists have many more enemies than Israel and those enemies include all of Europe, not to mention the US. Jihadist maps (e.g. that used by Pir Mubarak Gilani) show the part of the world ruled now and what is hoped for in 20 years (i.e. the entire planet). Israel’s demise would advance the Jihadist’s cause and thus serve to spur further Jihad. So a rational government planner could view Israel’s survival as rather important.
    Absurd. The Evil Empire of Al Qaeda..don’t appease them..this our generation’s Munich right. You don’t have to be a Jihadist, you don’t have to be Arab, you certainly can’t “be rational to conclude that Israel is a major source of our problems in the Middle East and ending their West Bank Occupation would be a severe blow to extremists in the region.”
    Michael Sheurer’s got a thought excercise for you. You could use a little exercise:
    The Palestinian election could have been the break in the Middle East that America has needed, but so far Washington’s bipartisan governing elite has kicked that gift horse squarely in the chops. .., the United States had a golden opportunity to show respect for a culturally compatible democratic process in the Muslim world and to detach itself from the snare of an endless war in which it has no interest. After 30-plus years of America exposing itself to steadily increasing danger and expense because of the infantile inability of Israelis and Palestinians to live together, we had a chance to walk away and let the cards fall where they may. True, it surely would not have been fair to both sides to do so; after all, the Israelis have a conventional army and a large, undocumented array of weapons of mass destruction, while the Palestinians have AK-47s, the less-than-mighty Qassim missiles, and a steady supply of martyrs and rocks. Life is always tough, however, and the elimination of one or both sides would have no discernible impact on life in North America.
    Sadly, the opportunity went a-glimmering because of the three standby myths that dominate what passes for thought among America’s bipartisan foreign policy, academic, and governing elites. The first holds that the survival of Israel and/or a Palestinian state is a central national-security interest for the United States..
    The first myth is insupportable in terms of the correct definition of national interests: that is, issues that are matters of life-and-death for a nation. If our elites’ favorite analytic frameworks of saintly-or-evil Israelis, or saintly-or-evil Palestinians, is avoided, and an effort is made to write down a list of the genuine U.S. national interests – not emotional, religious, or ethnic interests – that are at stake in the Arab-Israeli conflict, the result would be a completely blank sheet of paper. This little exercise simply shows that if both the Palestinians and the Israelis erased each other from the face of the earth tomorrow, it would have no notable impact on America. Indeed, that result would save a lot of U.S. money and get a lot of Americans out of harm’s way.
    
    
    4. Israel tests weapons of value to the US and provides substantial information to our spy agencies. Given the poor quality of what the US spy agencies have done, the US should be thankful for obtaining assistance.
    
    Again, both points addressed at length in the paper, not the one you read apparently.
    In point of fact, Israel doesn’t test arms for the US. We’re doing that all by ourselves. Here are a few facts on US arms transfers and security assistance not found in the M/W paper.
    Pesky things those facts. Perhaps that’s why you didn’t take the authors up on their challenge – “readers may disagree with our conclusions but the evidence upon which they are based is beyond serious dispute”
    No kidding. You can see in the phglegmatic responses, no higher testimonial of the paper’s credibiilty and trenchant power.
    Your argument reduced to little more than
    “We must support Israel because we support Israel”
    Is there more?
    I didn’t think so.
    

44. This swarming, this horror of “the other”…it’s bad, real bad. For them. And for us.

45. Joshua comments:
    Helen. The M&W paper does not meet minimal academic standars, relying on secondary sources, one sided opinion pieces, and the like.
    Having an “open debate” does not mean cheerleading and puffery for poor research and one sided opinion pieces masquerading as scholarly research. The debate you wanted is going on Helena. And Mearsheimer and Walt are losing it. With good reason
    
    Please note that Joahua’s response is bereft of any factual support. The notion that somehow reliance on secondary sources violates “minimal academic standards” is simply unfounded. But more daming, Joshua huffs and Joshua puffs but he does not cite a single instance of “one-sided opioion pieces” or “secondary sources” compromises the report in any way.
    The challenge remains unanswered and I submit unanswerable:
    Some readers will find this analysis disturbing, but the facts recounted here are not in serious dispute among scholars.  Indeed, our account relies heavily on the work of Israeli scholars and journalists, who deserve great credit for shedding light on these issues.  We also rely on evidence provided by respected Israeli and international human rights organizations.  Similarly, our claims about the Lobby’s impact rely on testimony from the Lobby’s own members, as well as testimony from politicians who have worked with them.  Readers may reject our conclusions, of course, but the evidence on which they rest is not controversial.
     
    Manifestly, Joshua’s dumbfounded and so Joshua hides behind the cheap shot, and for good measure closes with self-serving flourish, he declares himself the victor and defender of what?
    Brave bit of bootstrapping. How about some scholarship?
    I won’t hold my breath for all the mudslinging, when one of the Lobbyists joins issue, wake me up.
    If I’ve missed anything point it out please because this smear campaign is nothing if not formulaic, tiresomely predictable.
    PS to Vadim and Joshua:
    Helena’s point though imprecisely stated is unassailable.
    Marvin Kalb has no standing whatever to testify as to what we lawyers call “the ulimate facts” in plain english – he is not an expert in international relations, he an academic expert in the field of journalism.
    Now I am not one who in any way ascribes to the notiion that before academic experts the rest of us must bow in respectful silence. But Kalb has no academic credentials in this field. This is not journalism is it?
    Now if Kalb or Joshua or Vadim were ablke to show how exactly the M/W paper was fatally flawed, we should reaonably expect them to do so.
    They don’t. We won’t.

46. Lest we miss the irony that Joshua has so ingraciously supplied…
    Josh…why is it that, with a “primary source” but a mouse click away, you rely entirely on the “one-sided” slur taken verbatim and without attribution from “secondary sources”
    Academic standards anyone?
    Josh…my email’s above

47. The Primary Slime Paradigm – The Lobby’s Ad hominem in action
    We see in the venomous, unsupported attacks right here, what we might call, primary source evidence of the Lobby’s power.
    The Primary Slime Paradigm was on exhibit in pure form in MSNBC’s “reporting” on the subject – an appearance by Alan Dershowitz and David Duke telling us all about what’s the M/W paper all about.
    The Eternally Shrieking Victim v. Insufferably Smug Nazi “ANTI-SEMITISM!!!” v. “WHITE POWER”
    Missing in action – Mearsheimer/Walt..think there might be a reason for MSNBC’s choice? Think message might be “M/W..David Duke…Adolph Eichmann..”
    Can’t we see the pattern right before our eyes? Are we so blinded by the hyperbole that we cannot see the facts?
    Oh by the way, Forward interviewd Mearsheimer who confirmed that he could not find a major circulation periodical in the US for publication.
    Do you know how many US national circulation print media have reported on the study in the 8 days or so since it was released?
    TWO
    UPI, Christian Science Monitor.
    Now back to the echo chamber of Primary Slime, delivered by secondary sources

48. Oh by the way, Forward interviewd Mearsheimer who confirmed that he could not find a major circulation periodical in the US for publication.
    That is not at all what Mearsheimer is reported as saying in the Forward article referenced. What was actually stated in the article is as followed:
    “I do not believe that we could have gotten it published in the United States,” Mearsheimer told the Forward. He said that the paper was originally commissioned in the fall of 2002 by one of America’s leading magazines, “but the publishers told us that it was virtually impossible to get the piece published in the United States.”
    For all we know, after being turned down by this one, unnamed, publisher, Mearsheimer and Walt may not have even tried to get the paper published in the US.
    Further, when asked if the paper “may have been initially rejected by the American publisher because of poor research,” Mearsheimer conceded that “none of the evidence represents original documentation or is derived from independent interviews.” So, if the paper presents nothing new in terms of evidence or ideas, what makes it newsworthy for publication?

49. John, in the prior thread, I pointed out examples of how the study was just citing similar opinion and invective, and not pointing out research.
    The response was along the lines of “That’s just one example, it doesn’t disprove the entire article.”
    I do not have the interest to do a li(n)e by li(n)e refutation and exposure of the article. I will note that, as JES pointed out above, that Mearsheimer has conceded that it contains no original research.

50. US national circulation print media have reported on the study in the 8 days or so since it was released?
    Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe & LA Times have all run pieces. What gives? Could “The Lobby” be asleep at the switch?

51. Daniel Levy posted his Ha’aretz article yesterday at TPMCafe with the following additional remarks, referring to the M/W study

    So Pro-Israel that it Hurts
    By Daniel Levy | bio
    I want to share this piece that I have in today’s Haaretz about the new John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt study of “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy”. The tone of the report is harsh, it jars also for me. But the bottom line might read as follows: that defending the occupation has done to the American pro-Israel community what living as an occupier has done to Israel – muddied both its moral compass and its rational self-interest compass. The report does not represent a tipping point on the issue, though it should be a wakeup call. It is time to raise a number of issues about the approach of parts of the so-called pro-Israel lobby, including whether the Israeli and neoconservative interests are really aligned, their collaboration with the evangelical right, and their use of crass intimidation to stifle critical debate. The alternative approach should be a reinvigorated push for progress towards an endgame negotiated peace that would serve US, Israeli and Palestinian interests. You can read an important new interview with Palestinian President Abu Mazen here. My full article is below….

    Yes indeed it does hurt, the truth often does.
    Witness if you will the Lobby’s Little Minions here in force with their little poison darts of Lobby ad hominem talking points.
    So formulaic.
    So predictable.
    Three cheers for Professors Mearsheimer and Walt because knowing what you are talking about is one thing, having the courage to speak, stand up and be counted against such pernicious power is what it is going to take to put the “US” back in U.S. Mid-East Policy.

52. Let’s be clear about what brought us here folks and that is the unholy alliance between Bush Neo-cons, their Likudnik Sponsors in Jerusalem, and the TheoFascist “Christian” right wing.
    Daniel Levy is nobody’s fool.
    The Bush/Sharon/Bliar debacle in Iraq was the precipitating event, the Israeli agenda that calls on the US to act as its Big Brother surrogate in attacking Iran, those were efficient and proximate causes of the Shrieking Allan Dershowitz and the rest of these Eternal Victims.
    See Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm
    And for right wing partisans in this unholy alliance, front row seats for Jews in the Blood Letting on the plains of Aramaggedon
    Israel’s role in the Greatest Strategic Disaster in US History has largely been hidden thanks to the efforts of the Lobby and a compliant media. That is about to change, for as Dr. Mearsheimer leaves no doubt, The Israel Lobby in 48 pages only shows us “the tip of the iceberg” of Israeli duplicity and complicity in shaping the disastrous US policy in the Middle East.
    Israel’s right wing and America’s are afraid, very afraid
    Be very afraid.
    Assalamu alaikum Alan Dershowitz, Marvin Kalb

53. “the Lobby’s Little Minions”
    Just curious John. What connection does anyone here have with “the Lobby?”

54. John McCutchen:
    “So formulaic.
    So predictable.”
    So, if the response was formulaic, what was the formula? If it was predictable, what did you predict?
    You don’t even argue that being “Formulaic” or “Predictable” is a bad thing. So what are you saying?
    And what’s a ‘TheoFascist “Christian” right wing’ ? You may not like “Focus on the Family” or the Christian Coalition but that’s not enough to make them “Fascist”. Can you be serious? Fascist?
    As is widely known, the Bush II administration came into office with the desire to force regime change on Iraq. They felt that the 9/11 events gave them to political cover to do that. There is absolutely no scintilla of evidence that right wing Christian movements or the Likud were influential in this decision. It was the Bush administration all the way.
    Kuwait and Saudi Arabia had more to gain from the takedown of Saddam than Israel, and both are US allies.

55. John McCutchen,
    I never said that the LRB did not touch on the points I made. My main point is that their position is a gross exageration and I noted some of the various reasons why the US would honorably stand with Israel.
    On the other hand, if it is true that Israel’s friends in the US have a stranglehold over US policy, good for them. It means that the forces of sanity – and the opponents of Jihadism – are ascendant. And it hardly means that US policy suffers. If anything, support for Israel sends a real message to the Jihadis: namely, that we do not back down to terror.
    As for the reality of what shapes US policy, there are forces which hold all different views and there is power influence from a variety of groups, of which Israel’s friends are one. Saudi Arabia has no shortage of friends either, particularly in the State Department and, most of all, with the Bush family.
    The proposition that Israel is not a force for stability in the Middle East is absurd. The lack of stability in that part of the world is rather overwhelming with the relationship between Israel and Egypt and between Israel and Jordan being better than what goes on elsewhere in that region. Were Israel to disapear, the instability would remain and hatred of the West and the US would remain and the Jihad would receive a boost: success breeds immitation and support, as it were.
    As for Michael Sheurer, I take hims as being one person with an opinion. He is not a leading authority on that region. He is not even close. He is a former government functionary, of similar calibre to Richard Clark – again, no leading authority on that region.
    Now, to return to the topic of all of this: the issue with the LRB article is that it is a gross exageration and, hence, a gross distortion. Some of what it says is accurate but, taken together, it presents a complete picture contradicted by other facts, the most obvious fact being the tremendous influence of the Saudis – and particularly over the Bush family -.

56. Remember Bush searching high and low in his office for those WMDs? Funny wasn’t it?
    I’d say it’s high time we were treated to another little presidential jape: as in, “where’s that Full Spectrum Dominance? Nope, not under here. Is it here? Sure as hell isn’t in Iraq. Wonder where it could have gone?”
    And just for the record, anyone happen to know: which one of our loathsome little neocon creeps was it that secreted that slimy concoction?

57. It’s possible to be skeptical about the omnipotence of the Israel lobby and still acknowledge that the mainstream discussion of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict is extremely one-sided in the US. In my experience, both in talking with friends and in reading the mainstream press, very few Americans know the Palestinian side of the issue. I’ve talked to people who seem to confuse Israeli Arabs who can vote in Israel with the Palestinians on the West Bank who can’t, people who think that Deir Yassin is the only massacre Israelis have ever committed (and probably most Americans don’t even know about that one), people who don’t know why there is any moral issue regarding the settlements (why shouldn’t Jews live on the West Bank, one friend said, totally unaware that West Bank Palestinians can’t move into Israel proper). And when I mention that the majority of civilians killed in the current fighting are Palestinian, one friend commented ” I wonder how many were suicide bombers?”
    That’s the image of the conflict people who rely on the American press have–crazed bloodthirsty Arabs with very little to complain about vs. the brave little democracy Israel. I think there are a number of reasons for this–it isn’t just the power of the Israel lobby. It’s a confluence of things–Israel and the US are allies (often partners in crime in the more unsavory aspects of the Cold War), Christian fundamentalists think God wants us to unquestioningly support Israel no matter what, liberal Americans often seem to think criticism of Israel equals antisemitism, and so forth. Without these factors the Israel lobby wouldn’t have much success.
    That’s the problem with the notion of an all powerful Israel lobby. One doesn’t have to believe in that to recognize that the American attitude towards the Israeli/Palestinian conflict is biased, irrational, and immoral.

58. This link for an article that covers the controversy may be interesting to some here
    War of Words Over Paper on Israel
    http://insidehighered.com/news/2006/03/27/israel
    The above link contains a link to a detailed response here :
    #44: Pseudo-Scholarship on Israel From Harvard*
    *

59. Donald Johnson, I agree.
    People must learn to lobby as well as or better than the Israel Lobby. The Israel Lobby’s tactics were adapted from previous political activities, mostly of a progressive nature. That knowledge needs to be revived in the interest of peace.
    What baffeld me during the last US Presidential election was the suspension of peace movement activities. Tactics need to be adopted which will not be susceptable to such demobilisation at the most crucial time. The efforts of the peace movement should double and redouble during an election time.

60. See http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=21798 for a sample of The Lobby at work.
    This Lobby borrows from both sides. It uses the techniques of the progressive mass movements of the past as well as those of the persecutors of those movements.
    I picked up this article on Google news in the section I have set up with the heading “communist” (because I am a communist). I do not usually expect to get assailed by Zionists there. But the Israeli Lobby is energetic enough to get everywhere.
    It needs to be matched, and surpassed.

61. M. Hasan,
    Thanks for the reference. While I don’t agree with everything in the Jewish Virtual Library piece, it is certainly the best point-by-point rebuttal of the Mearsheimer-Walt paper that I have seen. I think that this could serve as the basis for serious discussion if people were interested.

62. Dominic, you are quite right about both things. The national, as opposed to local, US peace movement behaves strangely and suicidally during election times. The “Lobby” is very interesting because it is an example of how much (well-endowed) activism can do even against the common-sense natural, national, capitalistic interests of a nation. (Although in the Bush era, acting wildly against the national interest or even the capitalists’ longterm class interest is the usual thing.)
    The Lobby & Israel remind me of Melville’s (as well as the biblical) Ahab:
    “Now, in his heart, Ahab had some glimpse of this, namely; all my means are sane, my motive and my object mad.”
    If only people pressed for reasonable objects so strongly.
    Steven Plaut is a comical character. He does things like have his associate(s) infiltrate a pro-peace list pretending to be a half dozen sockpuppet troll characters, some of them Arabs who love everything Israel has done to them. And then accidentally sends emails talking about the three stooges psyop to the whole list! A few more like him, and the Israel Lobby would self-destruct.

63. John R,
    I would only disagree with the words “well-endowed”.
    I don’t think lobbying is ever a matter of money. It is a matter of organising people. Organised masses of people don’t need external supplies of money to do their business. If money is required, they can raise it.
    People need to be convinced of this truth, in my opinion. Political change is made by determined people, not by money (or by the passage of time, one must add).
    You may say, the menace of withdrawal of funds will have an effect, but it may be the reverse of what is intended. The withdrawal of the Harvard logo from the “Lobby” document has only validated its argument.
    The effect of money is to convince people that money is the indispensible fuel of politics. I think that is another myth, and a very powerful one in the USA. It is a myth that serves capitalism very well. For the bourgeoisie it is a wish-fulfillment as much as an assertion. If money can buy anything, then capitalists must rule. If money rules, then you can’t challenge the rich.
    But time and again organised masses of people have challenged the rich and won, and they continue to do so.

64. Donald Johnson,
    Now, I am well aware of the Palestinian position. I think most Americans have a pretty good idea what the Palestinian Arabs claim about their circumstances. The issue, to most Americans, is one of interest and morality. And, most Americans are not corrupted quite as much by oil money – as Europeans and universities are – which allows gross distortions of Israel and its people to be printed and advocated.
    By the way, the Israelis, contrary to what you write, have actually allowed rather large numbers of Palestinian Arabs to move to Israel proper. If that has stopped, it just may have something to do with the very large number of Israelis killed by Jihad Kamikazes.

65. 2006-03-31 GU on Iraq and the neocons http://inplainview.monitor.us.tt/comm.InterUK06.htm

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