FT on Walt/Mearsheimer

From the FT:

Their scholarship has been derided and their motives impugned, while Harvard has energetically disassociated itself from their views. Mr Walt’s position as academic dean of the Kennedy School is in doubt.

Their scholarship has been derided
true

and their motives impugned,
not nearly as true as they’re making it out to be; M&W are understandably eager to play the “we discredited all criticism of us in advance because any criticism we receive validates our thesis and we predicted that we’d be shouted down” card, which is a cute trick but a trick nonetheless

Harvard has energetically disassociated itself from their views.
No; with the authors’ endorsement, Harvard made explicit the disclaimer that’s always implicit, that views belong to authors not institutions.

Mr Walt’s position as academic dean of the Kennedy School is in doubt.
False implication; Walt’s term is drawing to its previously-established close.

My comments on Walt-Mearsheimer once again:

http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2006/03/24/the-israel-lobby/

“Some of the critiques of the piece seemed to me to be useful (and indeed sound); but they’ve effectively been drowned out by diatribes like this one from the Anti-Defamation League which accuses Mearsheimer and Walt of engaging in “classical conspiratorial anti-Semitic analysis.””

Couldn’t the same thing be said about, say, the politics of certain investigations into “racial” genetics?

While leftists, rightists, and centrists hardly agree anything else, everybody seems to be mighty interested in controling discourse these days. There seems to be an emerging consensus that shutting people up premptively is a good thing. My question is, if that’s so, why has the frank expression of disagreement become so threatening?

Walt and Mearsheimer fundamentally argue two things:
1. The extent of America’s support for Israel is harmful to both America and Israel. 2. The strength of American support for Israel is explained by the activities of an amorphous “Israel lobby,” powered by Jewish money, Jewish organizations and their Christian fundamentalist allies. Their arguments for #1 have serious problems but at least have some sort of credible basis. Their arguments for #2 are extremely poor, largely consisting of bald assertions, scattered anecdotes, and a failure to think even moderately hard about causal mechanisms. What’s more making argument #2 is unnecessary for making argument #1.
If the authors insisted on having #2 be part of their paper, I don’t think a bullying pro-Israeli bias is necessary to explain why it only found a home in the perenially anti-Zionist LRB. As Jacob Levy points out, the failure of the authors to even engage in the debate they were supposedly trying to provoke suggests some problems with the quality of their arguments.

Finally, its a little hard to take Mearsheimer’s assertion that he has Israel’s best interests at heart as well as American ones, given the fact that in 2001 he argued that Israel could not survive with a viable Palestinian state as a neighbor:

http://mearsheimer.uchicago.edu/pdfs/P0010.pdf

So far as I can see, he’s never reversed his opinion on this, and it remains on his website. I think his argument about the two state solution is wrong (just as he was wrong that the Taliban state could not be overthown militarily), but it makes his rhetoric in the “Israel Lobby” two faced and shameful. His actual opinion, if we want to make his various arguments consistent, is that American interests require us to force Israel into a peace savement that will destroy it, not save it.

I’m in general agreement with rd but not with comment #12. Having read the link it seems to me that Mearsheimer was actually being quite sympathetic towards Israel – arguing that Israel would be completely jusitfied, on the basis of history, in seeing a Palestinian state as a grave security threat. I don’t think he was intending to imply a solution to the problem that would endanger Israel’s existance.

I think that where Walt and Mearsheimer get into trouble is in thinking that US support for Isreal is so obviously counter to US interests that the myriad of people who have influenced US policy on Israel must have also seen that this was blidingly obvious. Therefore they must have knowingly and actively decided to go against this rational view and backed Isreal. And the reason for such a lapse of realism is the Israeli Lobby.

But if one assumes that those responsible for US policy believed it to be in the interest of the US, even if they were wrong, then there is no need to posit any undue influence.

“The article has been drowned out because it’s badly argued…” tells us everything we need to know “about the opportunities for debate about the substance of the United States’ foreign policy concerning Israel.”
Bad arguments get drowned out.
Would that it were so.

raj’s corollaries to Yglesias’s Law:

Corollary No. 1: Any conversation that starts with the question of America’s Israel policy all-but-inevitably turns into a “shouting match” in which those who oppose the Israeli government’s policy–for whatever reason–are labeled anti-semitic.

Corollary No. 2: Any conversation that starts with the question of America’s Israel policy all-but-inevitably turns into a “shouting match” in which those who support the Israeli government’s policy in Gaza and the West Bank and those who support the Palestinian “government” (or whatever they want to call it) in Gaza and the West Bank, dredge up old rivalries in a “my side suffered worse than your side did” exercise. Apparently to try to prove that they are on the “moral high-ground.”

It isn’t really worth the effort. This kind of silliness has been going on ever since I was a sentient being paying attention, which preceded the 1967 war. Apparently, neither side wants peace, and so, as far as I’m concerned, a pox on both their houses.

[aeiou] Why do so many people spend so much time complaining that they can’t say what they like about Israel?

Why don’t they just out and say it? (The rate of gun ownership among American Jews is — so far — way below the national average.) What are they scared of?)

Is it because they would be too embarassed to say what they truly want to say about Israel? So they use the excuse of censorship to prevent their bigorty from showing? No one stops Pat Buchanan from speaking because he is not afraid to be seen as a bigot. So spit it out Henry.

As Daniel Levy, a former Israeli peace negotiator, remarked in Haaretz about the Walt-Mearsheimer controversy: “It would in fact serve Israel if the open and critical debate that takes place over here were exported over there [the US].”

The reason that the Israel lobby doesn’t want an open and critical debate is that it would not serve Israel’s interests as Israel’s governments permanently define them (i.e. including settler colonies in the West Bank and around Jerusalem, thinking of ways to remove the Arab minority from Israel etc). Of course, if Israel’s governments did not have these policies, then the suppression of debate would not be needed. There’s just no way in which “Let’s have an open debate about the advantages to the US of Jewish settlements in the land conquered in 1967” is going to turn out well for Israel’s policies. You might as well say that more open debate about protectionist sugar tariffs would be good for the US sugar industry. It wouldn’t.

Of course, the sugar industry (and steel etc) are quite capable of ignoring the public debate, where there are no intellectual defenders of the policies from which they benefit, and relying on their concentrated single-issue mobilisation to get the policies they want regardless of public and intellectual criticism. (Cf the CAP in Europe too) The Israeli lobby would be in the same position as the sugar lobby, that is get many of its policy objectives, even if there was much more – or even universal – public criticism of their policy objectives, since political organisation matters more than public criticism. But suppressing public criticism may seem more important to the Israel lobby, since they may feel more vulnerable than the sugar lobby if their effect on public policy was widely acknowledged to be achieved only by small group mobilisation.

Henry says: “I think that you’re over-generalizing about the intentions of the Israeli government here – and not acknowledging the very real internal currents of criticism within Israel”

Maybe. But both Labour and Likud governments have again and again expanded settlements and both Labour and Likud leaders discuss removing the Arabs from Israel. Israeli leaders accross the spectrum describe the Camp David offer, with its 100,000s of settlers staying on the land conquered in 1967, as a “generous offer”. Internal currents of criticism that include a zero-settler option just aren’t reflected in government policies. Even ‘Peace Now’ wants to keep settlements around Jerusalem. So, while this is a big subject, I think its possible you are overestimating the significance of dissent within Israel to colonising the West Bank and Jerusalem. There are lots of Israelis who dont want to colonise as much as those other Israelis. Very few who dont want to colonise at all (and, perhaps on shakier ground here, who dont want to remove some or all of the Arabs from Israel).

“Bullying Americans into a consensus on Israeli policy is bad for Israel and makes it impossible for America to articulate its own national interest.”

This says a lot in itself. How could a tiny country such as Israel be thought capable in any way of bullying the United States?

I mean, the W/M piece was bad, as was pointed out several times.

The W/M piece wasn’t bad. It was great, a tremendous breath of fresh air. As far as the reaction is concerned, quod erat demonstrandum indeed. Every article or editorial I have read in major newspapers has made David Duke its centerpiece. They address few of the particular facts in the article, such as the fact that in the US much of the supposedly objective commentary on the Middle East comes from institutions with very close ties to Israel indeed. An example is the AIPAC-founded WINEP.

I think that where Walt and Mearsheimer get into trouble is in thinking that US support for Isreal is so obviously counter to US interests that the myriad of people who have influenced US policy on Israel must have also seen that this was blidingly obvious. Therefore they must have knowingly and actively decided to go against this rational view and backed Isreal. And the reason for such a lapse of realism is the Israeli Lobby.

To the contrary, it’s very easy for us to convince ourselves that what we’re doing is for the best when it aligns with our interests. Where is the upside to opposing Israel in Congress? What it gets you is comparisons to David Duke.

I think it would be very interesting to see how the Anglophile lobby influences US foreign policy, even pushing it into decisions (like support for the UK in the Falklands War) in which supporting the UK is manifestly against American interests. Since I can confirm that almost all expatriate Brits in the USA have substantially divided loyalties, and I believe that the British Lobby doesn’t even have an official PAC, there is certainly prima facie evidence of a conspiracy there.

I think there’s a discussion on HNN in which Tony Smith, author of Foreign Attachments: The Power of Ethnic Groups in the making of US foreign policy, discusses the British influence in US foreign policy versus that of organised ethnic groups.

Donald Johnson: “Take away the Palestinian issue and our alliance with Israel wouldn’t bother us any more than, say, our alliance with New Zealand.”

I guess the Maori don’t count.

Yeah, my impression was that the Maori weren’t kept on a small portion of New Zealand and not allowed to return. But nice kneejerk reaction there, Louis–I was expecting it from someone, but thought it would come from someone defending Israel’s record.

Donald Johnson: “If you have actual information about New Zealand’s current oppression of the Maoris, something which approximates what’s going on in the West Bank, then you’re right.”

The oppression of the Palestinians is fairly unique since it involves the expulsion of about half the population. The more conventional colonial model involves retaining the population within the newly conquered territory but reducing them to a Caliban status. (Maoris, Algerians, American Indians, all of Subsaharan Africa, etc.)

That’s true, but we are in the post-colonial period.

That’s one of the most important characteristics of the period we live in, if not the most important. Read this, for example, that’s 1970. That’s one idea that’s totaly uncontroversial now. Having this kind of colonialism now is like if the Massachusetts government began burning witches or something.

‘I have not seen the word ‘Judeo-fascism’ in the mainstream press’

I don’t think it was ever used in the WWII era either, which I don’t think is a complete proof of the non-existence of anti-semitism in Nazi germany.

Western bigotry agaisnt muslims is usually religious, western bigotry against Jews is either racial or, more commonly in modern times, conspiratorial.

Different things are different from each other, not everything is either a matter of simple right and wrong, or two perfectly balanced equal and opposite sides.

There’s no such thing as ‘conspiratorial bigotry’.

Does the phrase ‘Protocols of the Elders of Zion’ mean anything at all to you?

I don’t think the ‘Protocols’ thing is more significant than countless anti-Arab and anti-Islam newspaper articles we read every day; all that ‘Eurabia’ stuff, all that ‘if we don’t do something we’ll soon live under sharia law’ stuff. In fact, it’s exactly the same.

They argue that pro-Israel individuals and organizations have a stranglehold over American politics, academia, and the media.

Well, the fact that pro-Israel mobilisation dominates politics is just interest group mobilisation, like the Cubans (who almost forced us into nuclear war in the 1960s). Re. academia, there is evidence of mobilisation by right-wing jIsrael lobby groups to harrass academics who criticise Israel, cf Massad at Columbia. Re. the media, the US media discussion of the Israel-Palestine conflict is radically truncated compared to other parts of the world, it ranges almost entirely from full-throated-Israel-is-right (Peretz) to agonised-Israel-is-right (Friedman), with little or no Israel-is-wrong that you would find in e.g. British newspapers of both left and right. Where is the persistent critic of Israel among US news commentators and how does this compare in numbers with the those on the other side? This is quite unlike US media pluralism in general. And there is Israeli lobby mobilisation to put pressure on media for this purpose.

And they contend that this all-encompassing Lobby was a key factor in driving America to invade Iraq (hello? what ever happened to oil?)

That elements of the Israel lobby were a key factor does not rule out other factors, like oil. And the bureaucratic infighting over the invasion of Iraq was in fact driven by AIPAC affilated appointees (Wolfowitz, Feith), not to mention advisors to Netanyahu at an earlier stage. I dont know of any oil lobbyists calling for an invasion of Iraq, but maybe you can point to one.

and, worse, that America’s close relations with Israel has provoked the wrath of Al Qaeda. (Despite the fact that Israel/Palestine has never been central to their ideological grievances.)

Palestine has always been central to their ideological grievances. Bin Laden’s first public statement is about Palestine (see Messages to the World). And, to name just one other example, the first World Trade Center bombing was accompanied by a numbered list of demands which includes in its entirety:
1. Stop all military, economical, and political aid to Israel. 2. All diplomatic relations with Israel must stop. 3. Not to interfere with any of the Middle East countries interior affairs.

[You’ve got to love the ‘economical’ aid!]

If David Duke’s endorsement of this scholarship doesn’t drive that point home, I don’t know what would.

That’s no argument at all, as I hope you realise.

The Israeli lobby is just another example of a small organised group imposing negative externalities on the rest of US civil society, and in that sense just like the oil lobby, farmers, the Cuban lobby etc.

People who think that Israeli right-wingers and their supporters in the US tricked the US into attacking Iraq may be right to a degree, I don’t have any problem with this analysis.
Obviously it doesn’t have much to do with “the Jews”.

If someone thought it had nothing to do with the Jews, why would they connect it to AIPAC, Clinton’s jewish advisors, as part of one undifferentiated Lobby?

What do the Afghan courts, Hizb ut Tahir, rioting french youth, and the Saudi government have in common that would cause a rational non-bigoted person to make them all part of one simple story?

Where did I change your position by 180 degrees? I said that Islamophobia is very visible in the mainstream and anti-Semitism is not there at all and I’m still saying that.

No you didn’t, you said ‘There’s no such thing’.

Now you are arguing about relative quantities, presumably in the hope that if enough additional anti-semitic bigotry is produced, it will somehow neutralise the existing anti-islamic bigotry.

Things dont work that way, bigotry feeds on bigotry, both extremes grow stronger and the sensible middle shrinks.

I haven’t read the paper straight through, but a big part of the Israel lobby (and the part I’m personally familiar with) are Christian evangelicals. And they (or the majority rightwing faction) support Israel because it’s all part of their interpretation of the Book of Revelation and the Book of Daniel and a few other stray apocalyptic Biblical passages.

So is criticizing the alliance composed of right-wing American Jews and rightwing American fundamentalist Christians supposed to be antisemitic? Just wondering. I’m oversimplifying, of course. There is also the kneejerk Israel-supporting but otherwise liberal (leaving aside his pro-torture stance, which I think is linked to his views of the Mideast) like Alan Dershowitz. But mostly the lobby seems to be an influential group of rightwingers of both Christian and Jewish extraction with the same sort of political influence the rightwing Miami Cubans have or had.

And by the way, in my personal NYC area circles, whatever the cause may be, the coverage of the I/P conflict is so one-sided that numerous otherwise well-informed people are astonishingly ignorant of the Palestinian case. People don’t know why Jews shouldn’t settle the West Bank, why the Arabs simply couldn’t give up a little land when there are so many Arab countries, they’ve never heard of any Israeli massacre except some vague recollection of Deir Yassin or maybe Sabra and Shatila (which was done by Lebanese anyway) and they often still think the Palestinian refugee problem was entirely the fault of the Arabs. But they know all about Arab antisemitism and suicide bombing. Funny how one-sided that picture is–and these again are well-educated friends, some of them liberal.

But that’s the AIPAC guy saying, bragging about his influence and describing how he operates – if you don’t like it, take it up with him; why blame those who quote him?

One fundamental presupposition of the paper is that the United States close relationship with Israel is counter to US interests. If this supposition is wrong, does the rest of the material mater?

The vast majority of Christian faiths in the United States support the Jews because Judaism is viewed as a valid faith while Islam is not. Revelations actually has very little impact on the practicing Christian faiths and the lives of individual believers. The fact that it is brought up as a reason for anything Christians do, Fundamentalist or not, suggests an ignorance about the beliefs and practices of significant portion of the country.

I’m wondering if you guys out east get a different version of the New York Times than those of us in the midwest do.

Being an avid daily reader – ok, I think the NYT’s sports writers are easily the best in the business – I can’t recall a single pro-Israel article in 2006.

A long Magazine article about how well accepted the former Taliban propaganda minister is at Yale.

Lots of wonderful press in Arts & Leisure about the play “My Name is Rachel Corrie”. And another article about just how terrible the architecture of the “Separation Fence” is.

Pompous, and in my mind deeply flawed analysis, about how the Hamas victory will improve the chances for “peace”.

And last Sunday, on page 6 of the first section, a story on how nasty the settlers of a West Bank community are to a newly elected Knesset member from their town, who wants to resettle them to the west.

But nothing that could be considered even mildly neutral with regards to Israel.

Maybe the Times is edited differently in New York because of all those, you know, Jews who live there. So I’m sure one of you guys out east will be able to tell me about some of the numerous pro-Israel articles in the New York edition.

But here in “flyover country” I can’t recall any at all.

—-

I have to say though, that anytime Chomsky, Dershowitz, Hitchens and Massad agree that a paper on Israel is deeply flawed, it must really be a dreadful piece of work.

Michael Neumann says: it’s doesn’t matter what it is, what matters is that it is, indeed, counter to US interests…

Well, I say it does matter because people are afraid to say what they think, afraid of this anti-anti-semitism brigade. Dershowitz and other demagogues need to be confronted and shamed out of the mainstream media into the fringe where they belong.