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In the only public comment from either author of the controversial"working paper" that argued US policy toward the Middle East has been manipulated, contrary to US interests by a vaguely defined Israel Lobby, John Mearsheimer informs the Asia Times,"We fully recognized that the lobby would retaliate against us. We expected the story we told in the piece would apply to us after it was published. We are not surprised that we've come under attack by the lobby."
As with the"working paper" as a whole, it's unclear exactly what constitutes the"lobby" that has attacked the W/M Paper, which has come under vociferous criticism, mostly in the blogosphere but also from figures such as Marvin Kalb (who knew even Kalb was part of the"Lobby"?), for its factual inaccuracies and unsubstantiated sweeping assertions. It's also unclear how W&M have suffered"retaliation," unless, as has become so common among the contemporary academy's dominant voices, they're equating"retaliation" with public criticism of their academic work. And if, as Mearsheimer claims, the duo expected their piece to trigger an attack from the"Lobby," it's shocking that they produced a paper so riddled with factual errors and quotations whose full context undermines rather than supports their conclusions. I'd hate to see what criteria W&M apply to determining what constitutes"good" scholarship in personnel matters. When even Joseph Massad (half-heartedly) can't sign on to an anti-Israel diatribe, you know you're in trouble.
The most passionate response to the W/M paper comes from the Forward, which correctly notes that the paper's startling element comes not in its premise but its provenance:"Its authors are not fringe gadflies but two of America's most respected foreign-affairs theorists . . . Though it's tempting, they can't be dismissed as cranks outside the [academic] mainstream. They are the mainstream." Given that, the"flimsiness" of the work becomes even harder to comprehend.
In a lengthy editorial, the Forward concludes that"Mearsheimer and Walt join a long line of critics who dislike Israel so deeply that they cannot fathom the support it enjoys in America, and so they search for some malign power capable of perverting America's good sense. They find it, as others have before, in the Jews." Perhaps the AAUP's Joan Scott will want to gear up Committee A for the duo's public defense.
That is a serious deficiency in the W-M article, true enough: it invokes a concept of "the national interest" that it doesn't define. But a failure to define one's terms is a ubiquitous failing in contemporary discourse. It's hardly evidence of anti-Semitism.
Anyway, obviously those attacking W-M are not doing so by saying, "We have no clue what is in America's interest." They're saying that American and Israeli interests coincide. So they, too, are relying on some concept of a national interest.
It would be a great thing if this article provoked a discussion about how to define a nation's interest, and the conditions under which two nations' interest may coincide. But accusing the authors of writing a sequel to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion will not get us to that discussion.
Irfan Khawaja -
8/4/2006
Well, I agree that this article isn't going to function as the instrument of a good discussion. I didn't mean to imply that it was. I meant that it might happen contrary to the authors' intentions, since they not only don't know what an "interest" is, but have no interest in figuring it out. But that doesn't stop the rest of us.
I wonder if you take me to be asserting that the interests of Israel and the US are fundamentally divergent? That's the way your post reads. But I don't actually think that. I think there's both convergence and divergence.
But the reason for the convergence is not public opinion, as you glancingly note and then ignore. Imagine that tomorrow W-M's view were to become current in America. Imagine that 60% of Americans accepted it. That wouldn't change the fact that there is a convergence of interests between the US and Israel in many respects, notably security against a common enemy.
It would take a book to explain this, but the basic interest of a government is to protect the rights of its own citizens. Since both Israel and the US face a threat to those rights, and share a basic commitment to protecting those rights against that enemy, they both have a common interest. Obviously, there are divergences too, as there are with any alliance. But the content of rights doesn't bend with popular opinion, and so neither does the content of a national interest. A
That is the deepest criticism to be made of the W-M article (they give no determinate content to the notion of an "interest"), but unfortunately, it is also a criticism worth making of many of their critics.
The bottom line remains on my initial point, however: I have yet to see any cogent argument for calling the authors anti-Semites, whatever other problems their article has.
Irfan Khawaja -
8/4/2006
I happen to agree that the Walt-Mearsheimer paper is very badly argued. I was thinking of posting a critique of it on my own blog in the next few days.
Having said that, however, I find it equally troubling that so many of W-M's critics have pre-emptively decided to accuse them of anti-Semitism. Judith Apter Klinghoffer has done that right here at HNN, and the Forward editorial you cite insinuates that as a motive as well. What's remarkable in both cases is that (a) W-M's critics bypass any attempt at actual rebuttal of their article, and (b) their accusations and insinuations are based on blatant misreadings of the W-M article.
Thus Klinghoffer has likened the W-M article to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion--ignoring the fact that W-M go out of their way to distance themselves from that document. The Forward editorial claims that W-M blame "the Jews" for subverting America's good sense. But W-M's thesis is about the power of a political phenomenon, the Jewish lobby for Israel, not "the Jews" as an ethnic-religious group.
I can't help thinking that the so-called critics of W-M are playing right into the hands of the authors. W-M claim, falsely, that all criticism of Israel is stigmatized as anti-Semitic; no sooner do they make this absurd and dishonest claim, but critics rise to the fore to make equally dishonest and unfounded accusations (or insinuations) of anti-Semitism against them.
No progress is ever going to made in our thinking about the Arab-Israeli dispute until we change the norms that govern the debate itself. A modest proposal: (1) Don't make an accusation of anti-Semitism unless the evidence is clear. (2) Two wrongs don't make a right.
Irfan Khawaja -
8/4/2006
With all due respect, Professor Klinghoffer, that is not much of a response. And it certainly isn't one that bears out your claims about The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. You've made a serious, reputation-destroying charge, but you've produced not one iota of evidence that it actually applies to the authors. You haven't quoted a single passage from the W-M article that justifies a comparison to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. And precisely that--and no less than that--is what you owe your readership.
W-M's thesis is that there is a powerful pro-Israel lobby that influences American policy to the detriment of American national interest. The essential questions about this thesis are whether the influence is as strong as they claim, whether the influence is as detrimental as they claim, and whether there are other explanations for the perceived coincidence of interest between the US and Israel.
What you are saying is that no one can even entertain their thesis as a possibility without automatically buying into anti-Semitism. Nor can anyone offer the thesis unless they are an anti-Semite. This is not a legitimate objection. It's blackmail.
The sum total of the evidence you've offered of their bigotry is your claim that their thesis is similar to the Protocols of the Elders. Well, it isn't. I hate to break this to you, but the Protocols of the Elders of Zion does not discuss the relation between the pro-Israel lobby and American foreign policy. (Can I ask you pointblank if you've read it?) It discusses the relation between a non-existent cabal and a non-existent plot to rule the world. Unlike the cabal, the pro-Israel lobby actually exists, and unlike the cabal's plot to rule the world, the lobby does in fact have political interests that it aims to achieve. So unlike the cabal, the pro-Israel lobby is a legitimate object of empirical study. Your analogy to the Protocols fails.
Finally, the fact that there are planned rebuttals to the W-M piece doesn't excuse the wild accusation of anti-Semitism against them. And contrary to your presumptuous claim, the topic of anti-Semitism is something I not only am interested in exploring, but have explored at some length. Unfortunately for your argument, random accusations don't qualify as an legitimate "exploration," regardless of the religious affiliation of the accuser.
Irfan Khawaja -
8/4/2006
Well, I agree with part of that and disagree with part. But this is going to be my last post on this, because I'm going out of town for a few days.
On Lawrence Summers's distinction, yes, I do agree that there is such a thing as anti-Semitism in effect without the intention. I've seen many instances of it. But it takes a lot of evidence to accuse someone of culpably doing something that they have no intention of doing--whether it's anti-Semitism or anything else. So such claims can be made if the evidence warrants it, but I simply do not see that the evidence warrants it here. And I think that the accusation has become a reflex that simply disregards evidence.
As for your second paragraph, another way of saying what you say there is that we have learned in American discourse to tiptoe around the sensibilities of any ethnic group loud enough to get offended...by anything. This is true across the board: every ethnic group practices it. I don't deny that it's wrong to stigmatize people on the basis of ethnicity.
But I would say three things. First, it colossally overdone. Second the resort to ethnic offense stifles discussion of real issues. And third, there are real double standards involved. When it comes to Arabs, I think many people accept stereotypes that would not be acceptable if the same exact stereotypes were applied to anyone else.
On the third paragraph, I'm not denying that Israel faces threats and that Jews generally do. The remedy there is to defend Israel against those threats and fight real anti-Semitism. But you can't do that if you weaken the term "anti-Semitism" so that it applies to people like John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt. But on that point, as I said on my own blog, the person to read is Bernard Lewis.
E. Simon -
3/29/2006
I think there is much worth thoughtfully considering and discussing in what you have to say.
However, re: anti-Semitism - what do you make of the outgoing president of Harvard's comment to the that it is possible to be anti-Semitic in effect if not in intent? I think there is something to that when the context of certain existential details that may be incredibly important to the cultural memories of Jews or in Israel, whether articulately voiced by them or not, goes constantly ignored by a self-styled critic.
There's a civilized way to have a discussion concerning issues of importance to minority or other historically disadvantaged groups in America that underscores what the larger society has come to acknowledge about its own glaring imperfections and outright wrongdoings in dealing with them. Such habits have been generally well-embraced by anyone attempting to gain traction or have a discussion on such issues that rise to a level of seriousness higher than the likes of what Howard Stern et al prefer. Emulating such behavior (the former) is the least that critics of Israel could do when addressing what they see as problems having to do with the poster children of historical mistreatment and their hard-won state.
But the point is that this is just an opener. I think it goes beyond polite conversation and to the realization that when Mathahir, Nuclear Nazi wanna-be Ahmadenejad, Hamas and the like feel so comfortable speaking so brazenly about their dreams, critics of Israel should take seriously into account that the country in question has good reason to take the kind of historical memory I've mentioned just as seriously, even today. Critics of Israel make the mistake of thinking the evils of the past - and the mistakes and ignorance that facilitated them - are dead and buried and seem to assume that they just can't be repeated as long as their own intentions seem good to them.
E. Simon -
3/29/2006
You can trust me; this is not the article that will serve as some kind of vehicle for that discussion more broadly.
But if you want to have such a discussion within the muddled context of the topic at hand and the hacks' treatment of it, I will say this - sympathy for Israel in the U.S. runs 60%. Solidarity with other English speaking nations is, similarly, taken as a given among the American populace. Hmmm.... However, I believe this could change if the nature of the governments of the U.K., Australia, New Zealand, etc. were to substantially change in nature.
I think what this illustrates is that a nation will tend to look favorably upon another nation that speaks the same language as it does, and/or shares fundamental principles of governance as the first nation.
And whether you take it to be a minor point or more significant, the differences in how Israel is governed compared to the U.S. pales in comparison to how the rest of the region - whose condition (whether self-perpetuated or otherwise) the authors presume we should "balance" our support of Israel against - is governed.
I think the proposition that should be taken seriously is that in a democratic country, such as the U.S., the people (by definition) determine the country's interest. Whether you or I or anyone else likes those interests or not, or think they are bad for the country, is probably beside the point.
But that is precisely the shortcut in thinking that not only the authors of the study but so many others who take this fuzzy road travel often enough so as to not be taken seriously by not only myself, or by other defenders of Israel, but by fence-sitters and the American public in general - (or at least not for very long in the last case).
So the question, as I see it, is not so much how we can define the terms that the authors fail in doing, but whether detractors of Israel ever have something substantial to say behind the hype, misinformation and context-absent idealism.
Let me know when this happens.
Robert KC Johnson -
3/28/2006
I agree that some of the reaction to the W/M piece (Alan Dershowitz comes to mind) has, in effect, played into the duo's hands. I also agree that AIPAC is a very powerful national lobby.
But I remain struck by how poorly argued the W/M piece is for figures of their prestige in the field of international relations--people, as the Forward correctly points out, can't simply be dismissed as MEALAC-style cranks. Their interpretation of the Iraq war as largely influenced by Israel seems to me wholly unsustainable based on the evidence now available, and their definition of the "lobby" is so amorphous as to be analytically useless.
They had to have known this thesis would be controversial: it surprises me, to put it mildly, that they were not more careful in their research (the context of at least two quotes in their article disproves the point they tried to make) and more impressive in their analysis.
E. Simon -
3/28/2006
And what, precisely, is the American national interest? Apparently some discrete, well-understood, easily defined, seal-of-approval winning... whatever.
Judith Apter Klinghoffer -
3/27/2006
1. The thesis that a Jewish group (in this case AIPAC) controls the world by influencing the global powers to put what's good for the Jews (in this case Israel) ahead of their own self interest is the central thesis of the Protocols. The fact the W-M tried to inoculate themselves from the obvious comparison by distancing themselves from it, is meaningless.
2. There have been numerous pointed rebuttals published. In fact, there is a planned major academic rebuttal on which I am cooperating and that is the reason I have not published a critic on it yet. Of course, I, along with my fellow Jews, know that pointed rebuttals will be of limited use. As it says in the Hagadah, "in every generation" as long as they are Jews and there is a Jewish state. It may be a fact you may not wish to explore but it is not one which is safe for me to ignore.
3. You may be intersted in a post on my blog which shows that M is fearful of democracy and bemoaned the coming withdrawal of the USSR from Eastern Europe. Maybe if Israel had a ruthless dictator, he would have liked it better.
Ralph E. Luker -
3/26/2006
I'm inclined to think that Irfan is correct about this, KC. The reactions to the article have been too predictable. They've not been willing to weigh evidence carefully. They've simply attacked an argument with which they disagree.
