Sunday, April 30, 2006
One thing you can say in favor of Walt and Mearsheimer, the birds like them. They've managed to bring to light every creepy-crawly previously hiding under rocks from one side of the ocean to the other and beyond.
Witness the spectacle of NPR quoting infamous anti-semite and Mother Sheehan supporter as just another expert: Paper on Israel Lobby Sparks Heated Debate:
"You can't imagine how pleased I was," Findley says. "I think I can pose as a foremost expert on the lobby for Israel, because I was the target the last three years I was in Congress."
Findley is a fierce critic of Israel's policy toward the Palestinians [Is that all, really? -S]. Findley's lobby group, the Council for the National Interest, published a full-page ad in The New York Times calling for the Israel lobby to be brought under control...
As something of an addendum, Juan Cole has had to pull his absurd online petition in support of the paper (but of course, it's only Ariel Sharon he's against...) apparently due to overwhelming scorn and ridicule. [Update from the comments: Mike points out that Cole has simply moved the petition. (Top signatory as I type, "Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Former lecturer of traffic and transportation at Tehran's University of Science and Technology (Elm-o Sanaat University).") Why is this such a silly petition? Because whether W&M's piece is anti-Semitic or not is as much a matter for debate and opinion as anything else, but typical of the academic Left, Cole would rather put a mob together to shut down one opinion as unacceptable than actually see the issue dealt with from uncomfortable angles.]
Finally, aside from the birds, it's the op-ed columnists that should be sending W&M a commission. Here's another good one in the Hartford Courant: Israeli Lobby Isn't Actually Mysterious
The issue is whether the cause is just. The public opinion polls in America are clear. The Jews, the Catholics and the Protestants are overwhelmingly supportive of Israel - with enough quibbles about the particulars to keep the Israeli Lobby busy for decades to come, because no one, not even those crafty Jews, controls American foreign policy.
Update: And further, here, by Benny Morris in The New Republic: And Now For Some Facts
Update: Lynn B. has some comments and links you should see, as well as some of the names left on the now deactivated petition. heh.
Cole hasn't pulled sh**....
He redid the Petition to be "troll proof"... and there's 478 signatures from College Professors so far.
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/875967959?ltl=1146245862
Thanks, see my update.
The petition has some interesting elements indeed. A visitor concerned about academic freedom might read the blurb at the top of the webpage then proceed to the signature box without reading the petition's text, not scrolling down. Usually petitions are underscribed.
This petition for redress is addressed to the "Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations". Does this conference account for all Jewish people's speech and conduct? Do they stand as the Herod or Sanhedrin of the American Empire? I see that the ADL is a member of the group. But what of the indivduals named? Alan Dershowitz teaches at Harvard and responded to the poaper on a Harvard website, why not address said institution? One might argue the chosen addressee for the petition is ironic in that it defends a paper that can be read to assert a Jewish conspiracy of control. The conference stands here as a kind of "American Lodge of the Learned Elders of Zion." One or more critics avered the defended paper sounds like the Protocols, an analysis the paper's authors predicted with an anticipatory claim their paper was nothing of the type.
"In particular, they were smeared as “anti-Semitesâ€. This epithet was hurled at them by the Anti-Defamation League, Eliot A. Cohen, Alan Dershowitz, Representative Eliot Engel, Richard L. Cravatts, and many others."
Christopher Hitchens noted
http://www.slate.com/id/2138741?nav=tap3
"over-fondness for Jewish name-dropping" in the subject paper. But I suppose it is appropos in the context of a petition directed to a Jewish organization asking them to denounce Jews it somehow governs.
Supplying the Merriam-Webster definition of anti-semitism smacks of condescension.
"No paper about other ethnic lobbies’ impact on foreign policy (e.g. Cuban-Americans, Irish-Americans or Armenian-Americans) would have elicited such over-heated and patently unfair charges of racism."
Charges of racism, fascism, communism, etc. is common in American discourse. Pro illegal-immigration people use it currently. Plenty of papers on Israel and its supporters don't elicit over-heated claims. So why does this one?
"We fear that the real motive in the brandishing of the serious charge of “anti-Semitism†so readily at any discussion of the US relationship with Israel is an attempt to chill public debate and to discourage the critical evaluation of American Middle East policy and of Israeli policy in the region."
But it is not brandished at "any" discussion. The petition here dislocates attention from the paper's conspiratorial tone to, ironically, a charge of of some kind conspiracy in suppressing the airing alternative viewpoints. I suspect the ultimate motive of Mr. Dershowitz is that he was a target in the very paper to which he responded. Can't a guy defend himself and state an opinion? Dershowitz found the paper to have an anti-semitic tone. To appreciate this one would have to have a familiarity with anti-semitic narrative styles, like those deployed in the "Protocols.." In another irony, some charge the paper with sounding like the Protocols , an accusation the paper anticipates by implying it is not at all like the Protocols. Curious, I have read no other paper criticizing Israeli policy which felt in had to preemptively attack such an interpretation.
"Such a misuse of the word “anti-Semitic†is profoundly anti-democratic. Democracy requires free public debate of all issues affecting the public weal."
It may or may not be erroroneous but it is not anti-democratic, profoundly or not. The irony of the internal contraditions in these successive sentences is sharp.
"We also fear that an impression is being created that elements in the American Jewish community are hostile to academic freedom of speech and inquiry, and are hostile even to the first amendment of the US constitution."
Well. The insinuation of Jews being against American values is hardly new. In yet another irony the paper defended can be easily read to assert that Jews in their support of Israel are against American interests. If that is the impression is that the fault of the Jews or a fault in the perceiver of that impression? Dershowitz is against the first amendment? Is there one Jew (or anyone) stating the paper should be censored? The only advocacy of censorship around this issue I presently see is this very petition.
"We call upon the Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations forthrightly to condemn the smearing of Professors Mearsheimer and Walt, and of other academics who subject Middle East policy issues to critical inquiry, as “anti-Semites.â€"
The text of the petition ends on an arrogant note: the implicit assumption that academics who take different views than the paper's authors and their supporters "Middle East policy issues to critical inquiry." An fair phrasing would read academics "who take different viewpoints." The petition implicitly alleges that the neutral "critical inquiry" can only produce results congruent with the viewpoints of those who take a position similar to the paper's authors.
What a piece of work. Thank you for linking the petition and having a blog where entertaining academic brouhahas are discussed!
There's sure no shortage of them is there?
Thanks for an excellent comment.
Leftists will simply say that Hitchens didn't disavow the paper and only averts from it where his sentiments for support of the "illegal war" are stepped on. Hitch has plenty bad to say and add to the paper while making some good points about it.
You should read Richard Cohen's support of the paper which is rather sickening to me. His support goes over the top almost in a way in my opinion, that puffs himself up as the "good smart Jew" who shows Bandar and co. how independent and cool he is. Something I would seriously doubt he is.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/24/AR2006042401396.html
His picture here -
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/col/rcohen/
Mike:
I trust you read Hitchens's letter to the NYT as well as his response to Meirsheamer & Walt in Slate. As to how the "left" will attack Hitchens, just wait until a few of them discover that his mother and grandmother are Jews and he recently visited western Poland in search of his roots.
As for the list of signatories, has nutty Norm Finkelstein signed yet?
I was vaguely aware that Hitch had Jewish roots however, I don't know what that has to do with the left's critique of his Slate critique as I wrote abvoe. Basically they'd say "so he basically agreed with the paper with some minor quibbles, but what can you expect with his neo-con support for this illegal war"
No, I haven't read his letter to the NY Times. Do you have a link?
Mike