The Israel Lobby | The Walt and Mearsheimer Essay That Started It All

by Mik Awake

Earlier this year, while the Florida Gators were making a heroic run at the NCAA basketball title, another kind of March Madness was boiling over on the op-ed pages of the most prominent American dailies.

Stephen Walt, dean of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, and John Mearsheimer, R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago, published an essay in the London Review of Books entitled “The Israel Lobby.” The 13,000-word article offered up a realist critique of U.S. foreign policy and sparked a trans-Atlantic shouting match that set scholars, bloggers, and political insiders ablaze long after its publication.

The central claim of the paper, which was backed by unimpeachable sources, was that the lobbying power of the American-Israeli Political Affairs Committee (AIPAC) was influencing American foreign policy to a degree that was detrimental to both American and Israeli interests.

Shortly after the article published, Walt’s fellow Harvard professor, Alan Dershowitz, publicly railed against their arguments, claiming that both Walt and Mearsheimer had “destroyed their professional reputations,” and had done nothing more than reiterate the biases of certain anti-Semitic websites. Dershowitz went so far as to challenge the authors to a debate: “I challenge Mearsheimer and Walt to look me in the eye and tell me that because I am a proud Jew and a critical supporter of Israel, I am disloyal to my country.”

The essay had struck a nerve––not only with the outspoken Dershowitz, but with others as well. Some used the essay as a springboard for their own agendas. Former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke came out in rabid support of the article, to which Walt responded, “I have always found Mr. Duke's views reprehensible, and I am sorry he sees this article as consistent with his view of the world.”

People debated the essay, and then people debated the debates on the essay. Personal attacks were leveled left and right. The New York Times, the Washington Post, the New York Observer, and the Wall Street Journal all ran opinion pieces. Foreign Policy devoted a special edition of their July/August issue to it. In typical curmudgeonly fashion, Christopher Hitchens, writing for Slate, called the paper unoriginal, “misleading,” and “creepy.” Mary-Kay Wilmers, editor of the London Review of Books, the publication that picked up the essay after it was rejected by the Atlantic Monthly, came out publicly in defense of the paper and its authors.

More so than those who were merely “for” or “against” the arguments put forward in “The Israel Lobby,” there seemed to be a more prominent dividing line: those who engaged with the article as a serious piece of policy analysis (put forward by two leaders in the field), and those who, baited by the anti-Semitic hook, allowed emotion to overshadow reasoned argument.

One of the more lamentable aspects of the ensuing firestorm was the extent to which Walt and Mearsheimer, self-proclaimed “philo-Semitics,” predicted the backlash in the paper itself:

No discussion of the Lobby would be complete without an examination of one of its most powerful weapons: the charge of anti-Semitism. Anyone who criticizes Israel’s actions or argues that pro-Israel groups have significant influence over US Middle Eastern policy – an influence AIPAC celebrates – stands a good chance of being labeled an anti-Semite. Indeed, anyone who merely claims that there is an Israel Lobby runs the risk of being charged with anti-Semitism, even though the Israeli media refer to America’s ‘Jewish Lobby.’

Rumors circulated that Walt, who surrendered his duties as the academic dean of the Kennedy School on the first of July, was pressured out of his post in response to the article. As a letter written by the Dean of the Kennedy School David T. Ellwood—which was re-posted on the website TPMCafe—readily attests, Walt’s decision to step down as academic dean was wholly unrelated to the publication of the paper. This brand of theorizing smacks of the kind of paranoid obsession that not only fueled many of those who supported the paper, but also many of those who came out against it.

The stature of the authors aside, “The Israel Lobby” is a provocative and well-argued critique of American foreign policy in the Middle East. Walt and Mearsheimer hail from the “realist” school of political theory. Realism holds that actors—in the form of sovereign nation states—and their overwhelming self-interest are the keys to understanding international relations, and, as Wikipedia further defines it, that: “each state is a rational actor that always acts towards its own self-interest, and the primary goal of each state is to ensure its own security.”

(It is interesting to note the amount of controversy generated in recent years by this particular school of thought. Besides Walt and Mearsheimer, one thinks of Samuel Huntington and his hotly-debated Clash of Civilizations.)

To read “The Israel Lobby” in this light should dispel many myths about the intentions of the authors, and indeed help one see more clearly the crux of their argument. What so few critics missed was that Walt, who is firmly ensconced in this realist school of thought, has in his most recent book, Taming American Power, had taken up an identical approach regarding American influence in the world. His question in that book, put rather crudely, is this: “Why does the world hate America so much? What means are our enemies using to combat our influence?”

As the ruckus over the Walt-Mearsheimer essay has revealed, our inability to see American foreign policy through the eyes of those who loathe our country is proving to be—in Iraq, Palestine, and elsewhere—a disastrous failing of the imagination.

(Image from flickr.)

Comments

[Stella]

The Media's focus on Jews is on the half that are religious and committed to Israel.

What they keep hidden behind the curtain are the Leftist/Communist Jewish-dominated institutions that include George Soros Open Society and his 40 other institutions pushing agenda, Code Pink, the ACLU, National Lawyers Guild, NARAL, People for the American Way, A.N.S.W.E.R, NYTimes, half TV media, Human Rights Watch, Handgun Control International, Southern Poverty Law Center, NOW, Immigration Lawyers Project...and 50% of the donor money given to the DNC.

Quite possibly, the NYInquirer will do a follow up investigation of Soros and his powerful and mysterious far left organizations in the coming weeks, but I don't think that is the name of the game here.

[Mik]

As Stella reminds us, there is an interesting subcategory of reactions to this essay which came from Jewish writers and public figures--perhaps Soros is among them; I don't know--who are proud of their religion and heritage, but not of Israel's latest gambits in Palestine and Lebanon. Indeed, one of the links I included in this rundown of the controversy surrounding the Walt-Mearsheimer essay led to an op-ed piece in the NYTimes ("A Lobby, Not a Conspiracy") written by historian Tony Judt, who is Jewish. I quote a passage: "The damage that is done by America's fear of anti-Semitism when discussing Israel is threefold. It is bad for Jews: anti-Semitism is real enough (I know something about it, growing up Jewish in 1950's Britain), but for just that reason it should not be confused with political criticisms of Israel or its American supporters." I think one of the difficulties with thinking about the media's portrayal of Jewish people is separating what is criticism of Jewish people (which is usually always worthless and anti-Semitic) and what is criticism of Israel and its foreign policy decisions. So, to respond to your observation of not thinking that providing both sides of the debate carried on by Jewish people themselves is "the name of the game here" at the Inquirer, I would say it is very much the name of the game - to the point that we're already playing it.

[Mel Gibson]

Hey Stella — you attack George Soros the DNC and A.N.S.W.E.R. for being Jewish Communists, but you forget to mention the Trilateral Comission, The Illuminati and the Order of Freemasons. All Jews.
Also, I hear bagels have mind control devices in them. Why do you think there has been such an attack on low-carb diets these days in the Jew-controlled media? Think about it.

[Stella]

Oh, poor Mel, please re-read my post and you can see (you can see, can't you?)that I did not attack Soros.

I was simply pointing out that the Jewish Right is always held up to be mysterious, powerful, and sinister. The media always passing on stories about the mysterious, powerful and sinister Jewish Left.

If the Jews are subverting the world with their mind control bagel as you say,(also containing a camera and a Carl Rove subliminal message) do you really think the Jewish controlled press would be talking about it?

Think about it Mel. (you can think, can't you?)

[Mel Gibson]

So let me get your theory straight:
Jews control "half of the TV media," which only reports on powerful conservative Jewish groups, but not about powerful liberal Jewish groups.
What a theory! It is both original (the media is liberal) and insightful (there are both liberal Jews and conservative Jews). Wow, thanks! That really explains a lot about U.S. politics.

[Stella]

Mel, please hear me out (you can hear, can't you?) I am not interested in your silly banter. I come here to read and enjoy the writings. Not your writings.

You might have better luck at some chatroom where they are forever talking conspiracy theories.

[Mel Gibson]

Stella, I don't want to banter with you either. I just want to point out that you don't know what you're talking about.

[Stella]

Enjoy your bagel Mel, and its lingering message.

[Avi]

Stella, you mention that, "I was simply pointing out that the Jewish Right is always held up to be mysterious, powerful, and sinister. The media always passing on stories about the mysterious, powerful and sinister Jewish Left." Since when do the Jews now control the right and the left. What is it that the Jews don't control?

Mik - far from presenting a balanced look at what you perceive to be the issue and uproar surrounding this policy paper, your article itself is remarkably unbalanced and misses several key points. I will spare this forum my assessment (just as Fermat spared readers his proof of his famous last theorem), but I will urge everyone to read Dershowitz' rebuttal.

[Mekham]

In the academy today, politics of research are more important than the supporting evidence. John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt became academic pop stars when they used the internet to research and produce, under Harvard’s banner, a polemic blaming the Israel Lobby for skewing American policy away from Washington’s natural interests.

Now David Verbeeten has done research, not on internet blog, but rather in libraries and archives (imagine that!), and looked at U.S. policy going back to the Eisenhower administration. He shows how the White House and State Department played realpolitik and sought to align U.S. policy with the more numerous and oil-rich Arab states but, over time, successive administrations learned the hard way that Israel was a truer ally.

What’s really sad is that people will take a second mortgage to send their kids to Harvard or Chicago and, so long as their politics are correct for the academy, professors needn’t bother to do their homework.