Old Canards of Jewish Control & Undue Influence: Messrs. Walt & Mearsheimer Strike Again

Under the rubric of academia, the two professors have lengthened their initial arguments against the 'Israel Lobby' into a full-length book. The shoddy scholarship remains. "The book does not include any interviews with current or former government officials about the lobby's influence on foreign policy. Although the book appears to contain much documented research, its authors fail to capture the realities of policy formation and present a series of letters, statements and rallies by supporters of Israel as evidence of the lobby's manipulation of Washington. Their description of American foreign policy is often inaccurate or misleading, and their overall thesis is contradicted by central figures in their story."-Ben Fishman-see article below
Walt and Mearsheimer reference two serial distorters of reality and virulent anti-Zionists, Noam Chomsky and Norman Finkelstein to bolster their arguments. Chomsky, who was dubbed by the late Arthur Schlesinger Jr. "an intellectual crook," once made this outrageous statement: "The Hebrew press is much more open than the English language press, and there’s a very obvious reason: Hebrew is a secret language, you only read it if you’re inside the tribe. Like most cultures it’s a tribal culture.”--- Noam Chomsky, in a speech to the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign (delivered by live video to MIT), October 11, 2002; published as “Anti-Semitism, Zionism and the Palestinians,” Variant (a Scottish arts magazine), winter 2002
And Finkelstein “can’t imagine why Israel’s apologists would be offended by a comparison with the Gestapo. I would think that, for them, it is like Lee Iacocca being told that Chrysler is using Toyota tactics.”---Norman Finkelstein, “Canadian Jewish Organizations Charged with Stifling Campus Debate,” Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, May/June, 1992, by John Dirlik
So much for academic rigor and serious scholarship.
David Brumer



The Lobby - David Remnick (The New Yorker)
Mearsheimer and Walt are not anti-Semites or racists. They are serious scholars, and there is no reason to doubt their sincerity.
But their announced objectives have been badly undermined by the contours of their argument - a prosecutor's brief that depicts Israel as a singularly pernicious force in world affairs. Their conclusions are unmistakable: Israel and its lobbyists bear a great deal of blame for the loss of American direction, treasure, and even blood.
Where many accounts identify Osama bin Laden's primary grievances with American support of "infidel" authoritarian regimes in Islamic lands, Mearsheimer and Walt align his primary concerns with theirs: America's unwillingness to push Israel to end the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. (It doesn't matter that Israel and the Palestinians were in peace negotiations in 1993, the year of the first attack on the World Trade Center, or that during the Camp David negotiations in 2000 bin Laden's pilots were training in Florida.) Mearsheimer and Walt give you the sense that, if the Israelis and the Palestinians come to terms, bin Laden will return to the family construction business.
It's a narrative that recounts every lurid report of Israeli cruelty as indisputable fact but leaves out the rise of Fatah and Palestinian terrorism before 1967; the Munich Olympics; Black September; myriad cases of suicide bombings; and other spectaculars.
There is scant mention of Palestinian violence or diplomatic bungling, only a recitation of the claim that, in 2000, Israel offered "a disarmed set of Bantustans under de-facto Israeli control." (Strange that, at the time, the Saudi Prince Bandar told Yasser Arafat, "If we lose this opportunity, it is not going to be a tragedy. This is going to be a crime.")
Nor do they dwell for long on instances when the all-powerful Israel lobby failed to sway the White House, as when George H. W. Bush dragged Yitzhak Shamir to the Madrid peace conference



Missing the Point - Ben Fishman

The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt consistently misrepresents U.S. decision-making in the Middle East. Mearsheimer and Walt manufacture causal connections between the lobby's activities and American actions that Bush Administration insiders rebuke. The book does not include any interviews with current or former government officials about the lobby's influence on foreign policy. Although the book appears to contain much documented research, its authors fail to capture the realities of policy formation and present a series of letters, statements and rallies by supporters of Israel as evidence of the lobby's manipulation of Washington. Their description of American foreign policy is often inaccurate or misleading, and their overall thesis is contradicted by central figures in their story. The writer is a researcher and special assistant to former Ambassador Dennis Ross at the Washington Institute. (National Interest/Washington Institute for Near East Policy)

See also Understanding the U.S.-Israel Alliance: An Israeli Response to the Walt-Mearsheimer Claim - Dore Gold (Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs)

and Two Professors Fail to Clean Up Their Act - Ira Stoll (New York Sun)

and Stand With Us' illuminating expose below
WALT AND MEARSHEIMER NEW: Materials from Stand With Us

Shoddy Scholarship, Distorted Facts and Faulty Analysis
“The ‘facts’ presented by Mearsheimer and Walt suggest a fundamental ignorance of the history with which they deal, and that the ‘evidence’ they deploy is so tendentious as to be evidence only of an acute bias.” 1
– Benny Morris, Historian
“Walt/Mearsheimer’s paper, complete with footnotes that misstate primary sources and ignore others, is worse than embarrassing. It is academic malpractice. No one contests their right to their opinions, but they are not entitled to their own facts – nor to pass them off as the conclusions of ‘scholars.’” 2
– Rick Richman, Editor of “Jewish Current Issues”
“[Walt and Mearsheimer] quote only those people who basically have this point of view and don’t take a serious look at anything in a more profound way. It is masquerading as scholarship . . . I would say this is an effort to take a point of view and give it academic legitimacy.” 3
– Dennis Ross, Former U.S. Envoy to the Middle East
“Not only are these charges wildly at variance with what I have personally witnessed in the Oval Office over the years, but they also impugn the loyalty and the unstinting service to America’s national security by public figures… . As a Christian, let me add that it is also wrong and unfair to call into question the loyalty of millions of American Jews who have faithfully supported Israel while also working tirelessly and generously to advance America’s cause, both at home and abroad. They are among our finest citizens and should be praised, not pilloried.” 4
– David Gergen, Director of the Center for Public Leadership at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and editor-at-large at U.S. News & World Report.
“The Israel Lobby” is a biased work that fails to meet basic academic standards.
1. Benny Morris, “And Now for the Facts,” The New Republic, May 8, 2006.
2. http://www.jewishpress.com/print.do/17970/The_%27Israel_Lobby%27_And_Academic_Malpractice.html
3. http://www.nysun.com/pf.php?id=29470
4. http://www.usnews.com/usnews/opinion/articles/060403/3edit.htm