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http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,1743767,00.html

US professors accused of being liars and bigots over essay on pro-Israeli lobby

Julian Borger in Washington
Friday March 31, 2006
The Guardian

An article by two prominent American professors arguing that the pro-Israel lobby exerts a dominant and damaging influence on US foreign policy has triggered a furious row, pitting allegations of anti-semitism against claims of intellectual intimidation.

Stephen Walt, the academic dean of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, and John Mearsheimer, a political science professor at the University of Chicago, published two versions of the essay, the Israel Lobby, in the London Review of Books and on a Harvard website.

The pro-Israel lobby and its sway over American policy has always been a controversial issue, but the professors' bluntly worded polemic created a firestorm, drawing condemnation from left and right of the political spectrum.

Professor Walt's fellow Harvard professor Alan Dershowitz - criticised in the article as an "apologist" for Israel - denounced the authors as "liars" and "bigots" in the university newspaper, The Harvard Crimson, and compared their arguments to neo-Nazi literature.

"Accusations of powerful Jews behind the scenes are part of the most dangerous traditions of modern anti-semitism," wrote two fellow academics, Jeffrey Herf and Andrei Markovits, in a letter to the London Review of Books. Critics also pointed out that the article had been praised by David Duke, a notorious American white supremacist.

Prof Mearsheimer said the storm of protest proved one of its arguments - that the strength of the pro-Israel lobby stifled debate on US foreign policy.

"We argued in the piece that the lobby goes to great lengths to silence criticism of Israeli policy as well as the US-Israeli relationship, and that its most effective weapon is the charge of anti-semitism," Prof Mearsheimer told The Guardian. "Thus, we expected to be called anti-semites, even though both of us are philo-semites and strongly support the existence of Israel."

He added: "Huge numbers of people know this story to be true but are afraid to say it because they would punished by pro-Israeli forces."

Soon after the publication of the article it was announced that Prof Walt would step down from his job as academic dean at the end of June. However, the Kennedy School and Prof Walt's colleagues said that the move had long been planned.

The Kennedy school removed its cover page from the online version of the article but said in a statement: "The only purpose of that removal was to end public confusion; it was not intended, contrary to some interpretations, to send any signal that the school was also 'distancing' itself from one of its senior professors."

"The University of Chicago and Harvard University have behaved admirably in difficult circumstances. We have had the full support of our respective institutions," Prof Mearsheimer said.

The article argues that the US has "been willing to set aside its own security and that of many of its allies" to advance Israeli interests, largely as a result of pressure from Jewish American groups such as the American Israeli Political Action Committee (AIPAC) allied to pro-Zionist Christian evangelists and influential Jewish neo-conservatives such as former Pentagon officials Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith and Richard Perle. It argues their combined influence was critical in the decision to go to war in Iraq.

Writing in the online magazine, Slate, the British-born journalist Christopher Hitchens criticised the authors' "over-fondness for Jewish name-dropping" and argued that the first occasion the neo-conservatives had a significant influence on foreign policy was to press the Clinton administration to intervene on behalf of Muslims in Bosnia and Kosovo.

No AIPAC officials would comment about the controversy on the record.

Yesterday Prof Mearsheimer said: "We went out of our way to say that the lobby is simply engaging in interest group politics, which is as American as apple pie."

yeah...lot of people are countering what they said.

My take on this is what ever happened to free speech?
It seems to me that anyone who doesn't buy into pro-isreali propaganda is automatically labelled anti-semetic or bigoted its so disgusting! What happened to there is more than one side to a story or issue....steups...i'm really beginning to believe these people running the world for real..........

No one is impugning their right to free speech. In fact they've drawn criticism from a wide variety of respected sources...Alan Dershowitz being among them...

For that reason I'm inclined to think that there's validity to the criticism, although myself I haven't studied the issue that hard. At cursory glance though, I took their numbers and situations as fact and don't have a problem with the article.

Nothing wrong with criticism, but the problem to me though is that anything that does not fall in line with the Zionist movement is citied as being bigoted or anti-semetic right off the bat. Criticism is wonderful, but it should go both ways. If someone wants to criticize the pro-isreali lobby, than why should they be branded as bigots or anti-semetic?

I agree...I just don't think that's the case in this instance...that they're being criticized simply for attacking the pro-Israel lobby

hmm interesting
maybe i need to re-read...