Mitchell Plitnick and Chris Toensing appear to arrive at more or less the same conclusion as David Bernstein, from a different place, though (they start by congratulating M&W for their scholarly courage and actually give them credit for caring for Israel...):

"The influence of the Israel lobby should neither be underestimated nor overstated. It is not some omnipotent force that can turn the world’s sole superpower against its own perceived interests. The lobby derives its strength, in some measure, from being largely unopposed in Washington. Israel will remain a strong US ally, for many reasons, for the foreseeable future. But that need not mean that the US cannot pressure Israel into the compromises required for a just peace with the Palestinians. This can happen if a counterweight to the Israel lobby is built. But such a counterweight is only effective if it understands what its opponent can and cannot accomplish. In this task, the Mearsheimer-Walt paper is a good foundation upon which rational discussion can build."

http://merip.org/mer/mer243/plitnick_toensing.html

So what exactly does the anti-Israel lobby want to "honestly debate"?

There really aren't that many issues when it comes down to it: should this tiny country be left without arms? Should Hamas and Fatah be armed with F-16's too? Should the oil-rich Arab League get ALL the benefits of the Western and industrialized world's need for petroleum, and remove the pittance we send to Israel? Should we force Israel to accept 4 million Arab "refugees"? Should we attack Israel ourselves?

OR WHAT?

Gevalt. There are days I want to scream.

Let's see now. The US, according to those arch-realists M&W, should---like France, England and the former USSR--- finally recognize where its true interests lie.

And end up like France, Britain and the former USSR?

Though to be fair, it does seem perfectly logical to support the Arabs. Even a perfect idiot (or two) can see that.

And one ought to savor especially the part about M&W "caring for Israel." Simply delicious!!

But that need not mean that the US cannot pressure Israel into the compromises required for a just peace with the Palestinians.

Just what do you mean by this, Noga?

Does that mean discarding the Arab League's behaviour over the past 60 years (the context to the present situation the Palestinians find themselves in), the zero sum game of the Muslims and forcing the Israelis back to indefensible armistice lines of 1949 for the kill?
Or do mean dismantling the State once and for all to provide a "just peace" to the Arabs?

Cynic: I hardly take this recommendation seriously, for the same reason you specified. I thought it interesting that the M&W theory could be neatly dismantled from within the anti-Zionist camp and get to the same conclusion as David Bernstein's, except that it is dressed in language hostile to Israel. I say "anti-Zionist" and not "Left" because the Mssrs. W&M are clearly not of the left. Just peace for anybody is not high on their list of priorities. They clearly think that the US should cosy up to the Arabs because it makes better sense to their way of viewing mostly economic American "Interests". That's the kind of thinking I associate with Jim Baker and Bush pere, staunchly conservative and averse to the introduction of such notions as loyalty and ethics into political calculations.

That opposition to Israel based on a Realist calculus of national interests was around from Israel's founding. Secy of State John Marshall was a leading exponent of this view. And he was far from alone, especially in the State Dept. As I understand it, they argued and argue that the Arabs are far more important because they have oil, occupy a critical geopolitical position on the globe, have 300 million people, and tons of influence.

Irael has...

Well there was the moral imperative, but that was strongest when the Holocaust was a fairly recent memory. And now some people think that conscience dictates opposition to Israel. Israel has long been the "bad guy."

That fact that Israel is the "only democracy in the Middle East" means little when people are focusing on the justice of its founding in the first place. Also, some sincerely feel that Israel isn't really a full democracy...as stupid as that view is. And there's the occupation. In any case, the US doesn't make a practice of supporting democracies qua democracies. At times, yeah, but not always. Weren't Allende and Mossadagh democratically elected? How many dictators has our government happily supported? I think our State Department has preferrd stability over democracy in many countries, especially during the Cold War.

One thing that I have learned over the Internet (and nowhere else, strangely enough), is that Israel is a hi-tech powerhouse. Motorola is only one American company that has benefitted from Israeli know-how. So that's one big advantage Israel offers that the Arabs don't.

But I guess W&M aren't thinking of that. Many people don't. So the whittling away at affection and regard for Israel will put Israel in a very tenuous position because, frankly, there are few hard national-interest arguments in favor of staying a close ally to Israel.

And that is depressing.

Joanne,
You mention Motorola but it was an Israeli who came up with the EPROM making it so much more economical to update elctronic circuits in situ than, replacing the board. It was two Israelis who came up with Intel's 8088 to provide IBM with the processor for their first PC, and so on enriching America and Americans in ways unimaginable some 40 years ago.
The wealth provided by Israeli research be it IT, Medical, Agricultural, Defense etc., seems to be unknown to most Americans, many who can only complain about the "Aid" given under Carter's peace iniative with Egypt.
Pity that they have not been enlightened about the research from Haifa's Technion which aided the sending of pictures from Mars, the Stent that keeps the blood of so many Americans flowing and other medical advances to keep them on their feet.
Now what have they got from the Arabs?
The ability to ride in their cars and a frightening experience of air travel nowadays?

Noga,

Did I understand you to way that W&M are not on the left because they do not desire "just peace"

Obviously, they do not want justice for Israel, but I am more interested in your broader point, that the left stands for "just peace"

I would have thought that the hallmark of the left is standing for the idea that the rights of the oppressed are to be privileged above the rights of, well, the privileged. For example, property expropriation is routinely carried out against the wealthy by leftist regimes with no differentiation made between cases where property was acquired justly and unjustly. (I am not arguing that such distnctions would be easy to make, only that there is never an attempt to do so)

In Israel, of course, both Jews and Palestinian Arabs were, by and large, penniless refugees in the late 1940's. Jews built a prosperous economy. Arabs did not. Yet Leftists continually decry the "injustice" of Arab poverty side-by-side with Jewish prosperity. As though disparity was definitionally unjust.

I could go on, but it seems to me that only centrists like you want just peace. Leftists want goods and privileges for those who own fewer gooda under the status quo, with no regard for justice except as a cant term.

Dana:

I'm hardly an expert on what is a Left. When I speak of a "Left" I mean the "Decent Left" (as per Michael Walzer's now famous article, here: http://www2.kenyon.edu/depts/Religion/Fac/Adler/Politics/Waltzer.htm). The kind of Leftist thinking that produced the Euston Manifesto. The kind of thinking typified by Hannah Arendt, when she wrote about Robespierre, that justice is indivisible and equally deserved by those who live in grand palaces as well as those who live under bridges.

That's what I meant when I spoke of the Left and the notion of just peace.

There is, of course, the indecent Left (AKA "Ultra" Left, Far Left, or, as a friend once called it somewhat charitably "The Rococo Left), which is the Left you speak of. I define such a Left as dogmatic, quite ignorant of history, and anti-human rights. Often it is also antisemitic to such an extent that makes it hard to differentiate from neo-Nazi ideologies.