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I just found out about this while reading this weeks jewish week article. I can't believe you allowed that to be printed. Don't you priview the articles? wow!!!. This is overt antisimitism and the apology was no better. you should all be ashamed of yourselves.

I just found out about this while reading this weeks jewish week article. I can't believe you allowed that to be printed. Don't you priview the articles? wow!!!. This is overt antisimitism and the apology was no better. you should all be ashamed of yourselves.

Authors Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer
“We are not talking about a conspiracy”

Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer, authors of the book "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy," about how their groundbreaking book and ideas have been received.

February 14, 2008

The anti-lobbyists

“Let’s move over here – in the corner. It’ll be better for us to talk in private. Or else some people might get the wrong idea,” chuckles John Mearsheimer, a Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago and co-author of the incendiary book, “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy.” The controversial book’s co-author, Stephen Walt, an Academic Dean at the prestigious Harvard Kennedy School of Government, smiles and concurs as we all find comfortable seats in the back end, lounge corner of San Francisco’s Prescott Hotel.

“The wrong idea” according to the authors is the inaccurate labeling and smearing of their reputation as “Anti-Semites.” According to them and their supporters, they’ve unfairly earned this slander solely due to their detailed and systematic criticism of an “Israel Lobby” and its alleged actions in greatly influencing U.S. foreign policy in the volatile Middle Eastern regions of Israel and Palestine.

The Anti-Defamation League, which retaliated by publishing “The Deadliest Lies: The Myth of the Israeli Lobby” on the same release date as “The Israel Lobby,” lambasted the professors’ work as an “anti-Jewish screed: a relentless assault in scholarly guise.” However, talking to them in person and later observing their demeanor at a speech followed by question and answer session held at U.C. Berkeley, the two professors both appeared very calm, rational, collected and lacking the stereotypical, passionate vitriol and acidic anger unfortunately espoused by all parties associated with the endless “Israel-Palestine conflict.”

For anyone with even the slightest experience in dealing with the “Israel-Palestine” issue, whether that experience be academic, polemical, political, or even a friendly discussion over coffee, it becomes glaringly obvious the topic is contentious, divisive and, dare I say, explosive. To call it a “powder keg” of a situation would be a glorious understatement. I spoke with Mearsheimer and Walt regarding their controversial thesis, their critics and detractors, the stifling of academic dissent, foreign policy in the Middle East, and the resulting profound implications for the United State’s relationship with the Muslim World in the 21st century.

I guess life must have been boring for you guys, and you had nothing interesting going on. So, you decided to spice things up, right? What goes on in your head that makes you get up one day and decide, “You know what? I think we’re going to tackle the “Israeli Lobby.”

(Both laugh.)

WALT: We wrote this not because our lives were boring, but because we were concerned with what was happening with American foreign policy and specifically American Middle East policy. We felt there was an aspect that wasn’t get that much attention in the U.S; the influence of the “Israeli Lobby” was the elephant in the room that no one was willing to talk about. We believe this was having unfortunate affects on the U.S., other countries, and Israel itself, and no one, especially mainstream circles, would speak or write about it. We thought we were in positions of relative security and if we didn’t [talk about it], then no one else would.

MEARSHEIMER: Nevertheless, we fully understood we were grabbing the third rail, and pro-Israeli forces in the U.S. would come after us in a serious way. We’ve not been surprised by the reaction to our piece here in the U.S.

Ok, for the unacquainted, let’s become familiar with the central thesis of “The Israel Lobby,” lay it out for me and the readers. There’s this group you label the “Israel Lobby.” Who are they and why should we, as average Joe Americans, even care about them?

WALT: The Lobby isn’t a single organization. It is a loose coalition of different groups and individuals that actively work and try to move American foreign policy in a pro-Israel direction and try to maintain a special relationship with the U.S. and Israel. This group includes some predominantly Jewish American groups, such as AIPAC, the Anti Defamation League, The Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations. It also includes non-Jewish groups like Christian Evangelicals, such as Christians United for Israel. This is not a single organization, and they don’t agree on every issue, but they all want to maintain that special relationship. It’s an interest group like other groups we have in U.S.

Interest groups are part of American politics. So, there’s nothing illegitimate or wrong with what the Israeli Lobby is doing. But, like some other interest groups, when they have profound impact on U.S. foreign policy, they may be leading to foreign policies that aren’t in the interest of the country as a whole. So, Americans should be concerned about this and other interest groups if they are leading to policies that are contrary to the American national interest.

MEARSHEIMER: American should care about the Israeli Lobby, because it has a profound effect on the shape of U.S.– Middle East policy. We believe by and large that effect is negative. In other words, the Lobby is pushing policies not in the U.S. interest and not in Israel’s interest either. The best example of that is the Lobby’s influence has with regards to the occupation and the building of settlements in the West Bank. The U.S. has opposed settlement building since the Israelis first conquered the West Bank and Gaza strip in 1967. It has been the official policy of every president since Lyndon B. Johnson to oppose settlement building, but no president has been able to put any meaningful pressure on Israel to stop building settlements. The principle reason is due to the Lobby, which goes to great lengths to make sure no President can force Israel to do something that it doesn’t want to do. Since Israel doesn’t want to end the settlements, no President has been able to put an end to the settlement building.

What are the consequences that result from this? It is one of the main reasons why the U.S. is deeply hated in the Arab and Islamic world. It is one of the main causes of America’s terrorism problem. It is clear that Osama bin Laden and Khalid Sheikh Muhammad, one of the main architects of the 9-11 attacks, were deeply battered by American policies in the Occupied Territories [in Palestine.] So, we as Americans should care how the Lobby influences U.S.- Middle East policies, because it sometimes influences them in a way which is not in the best interests of the U.S.

However, doesn’t the publication of your book, the media publicity blitz surrounding it, the release of Jimmy Carter’s “Palestine: Peace not Apartheid,” and Norman Finkelstein’s very public criticism of Alan Dershowitz’s “Case for Israel,” all provide examples that a healthy debate about Israel does indeed exist and the Lobby is either ineffective or not as influential as you suggest?

WALT: Nobody believes that the discourse in the U.S. is 100% pro-Israel. That is completely impossible. Our point in the book and our publication of the book doesn’t contradict this, we contend that conversation and public discourse in mainstream media circles is overwhelmingly pro-Israel. It’s not to say occasionally you won’t have other voices out there. But the fact is we had trouble getting our original article published in the U.S., and we have had some coverage, but relatively little, regarding our book in mainstream media circles.

We’ve seen various efforts made to try and minimize the exposure by getting events cancelled when were supposed to speak about this, or having media arrangements fall through. So, it’s not to say you can’t occasionally get critical views out there, but the balance of coverage on the Middle East coverage is pro-Israel. But, if you look at the critical reviews of the book, the reviews in England have been uniformly positive. Generally, all across Europe as well. There have been a number of positive reviews in Israel itself. But the mainstream reviews in U.S. [is a different story], for example the Washington Post, the New York Times Sunday Book Review; the New Republic had a vicious attack comparing us to Osama Bin Laden and Ahmadinejad. So, getting favorable reviews, including in Israel, is relatively easy outside of the United States.

MEARSHEIMEHR: Based on reading our book, one would predict we would get hardly any positive reviews in the United States, and a lot of positive reviews outside of U.S., including Israel. That prediction has held up very well. We have been consistently slammed in the mainstream media inside The United States, and garnered lots of positive reviews outside the U.S., which is what the book would predict.

Is this proof of the New-Anti-Semitism? Is this the smoking gun evidence that the whole world is ganging up against Israel and American Jewry?

MEARSHEIMER: The fundamental flaw with that argument is that the book has received favorable treatment in Israel itself. One of the most positive reviews was written in Haaretz itself written by Daniel Levi who is an Israeli Jew. The most favorable review overall was written by an Israeli, Yuri Avnery. This is not to say that there are not people in Israel or U.S. who see our book as evidence of the The New Anti-Semitism. We don’t believe there is a New Anti-Semitism. We believe there is not a lot of Anti-Semitism in the U.S. or in Europe itself. And that charge is leveled at critics of Israel like us and Jimmy Carter, because it is an effective way of marginalizing and sidelining us. We are not Anti-Semites, Jimmy Carter is not an Anti-Semite, and the vast majority of people who like our book are not Anti-Semites, in fact many of them are Jews.

Briefly describe your initial journey towards publication at the Atlantic Monthly. Why did they ultimately reject the draft, and how did you find a publication home at London Review of Books?

MEARSHEIMER: Stephen and I decided in early 2002 to think seriously about writing a piece on The Israeli Lobby and U.S. foreign policy. Then, in the fall of 2002, we were commissioned by The Atlantic to write that piece, and we began working on it. We were slowed down by the fact the Iraq war was about to take place. We couldn’t write about it while it was still happening, because the Lobby was involved in pushing that war. So, we didn’t get a draft of the piece to the Atlantic until the Spring of 2004. After they saw the initial draft, they were very happy with it and asked us to make a number of changes, which we did. We submitted the second draft in January 2005, and shortly thereafter they rejected it. We believe they rejected it because they came to believe the subject was too controversial and would cause problems.

Were you surprised when it was rejected?

WALT: We differed on this. I was more surprised than John was. But we were both disappointed. Again, we had no indication that they weren’t going to publish it, and they had seen all of our previous drafts and had been very positive about all of them. So, for them to suddenly discover at the last minute that the entire piece was unacceptable, and that they didn’t want us to re-write it to make it acceptable, was very disappointing.

MEARSHEIMER: So, the Atlantic rejected the piece, and of course, surely, they will never say they rejected it out of fear about how the Lobby would react to the piece, but rather how the piece was written. We don’t believe that’s the case. We believe they got cold feet. After it got rejected, we talked to a number of journals about the possibility of getting the piece published somewhere in the 2005.

By the early summer of 2005, it became clear it would be impossible to get it published in the United States. So, we put the article away and didn’t think it was possible to get it published in the U.S. Someone gave a prominent American academic a copy of the piece we had submitted to the Atlantic, and he knew the editor of the London Review of Books. He wrote to me and asked me if we were interested in publishing it there. We talked about it and thought it was an excellent idea, and we talked to them and made an agreement to submit it by January 2006, a new version of the article. They published it two months later in March 2006. I mean, it’s interesting to think had this academic not gotten hold of the final draft we submitted to the Atlantic, it would have never appeared.

I want to talk about this “stifling” of criticism. Let’s discuss this recent “Google” speech, where you were scheduled to appear, but according to you a Google representative at the last minute told you, “You can’t appear without having the other side represent,” and then they cancelled at the last second. In your opinion, is this “other side” really present?

WALT: As part of the publicity campaign for the book, our publicist began to setup various venues to come talk about the book. Three of those agreements were cancelled. We were cancelled at the Chicago Council of Global Affairs who had invited us to come and speak. The President of the Council got in contact with John and said, “In order to protect the institution, he was canceling the event. The subject was just too hot to cover,” and we can only appear there if they had someone who would represent the “other side,” and it was too late to get someone from the other side. I should mention they’ve had plenty of people who represent “the other side” speak at the Chicago Council and those people spoke on their own. Michael Oren, an Israeli American historian, for example has spoken on his own without someone else representing the other side.

MEARSHEIMER: Dennis Ross would be another good example. And we always say there is nothing wrong with this.

WALT: We think that’s fine. It’s entirely appropriate for Oren or Dennis Ross or lots of other people to come and speak there. They never said anything to us or our publicist about having someone there to debate us when were arranging everything. It was only after the cancellation, did they mention this. We had an agreement to speak at the City University of New York also in September, but that also fell through without an explanation. Finally, we were scheduled to speak at Google Headquarters here in Mountain View, California, which regularly hosts an author series where they bring authors on a variety of subjects to give talks. So, our publicist got an email the previous Friday late in the afternoon that the event had been cancelled and didn’t give us an explanation.

We were subsequently told that the decision had been made “very high up in the company,” and the Google representative said they had never seen an event like this get cancelled like the way they did. They said they would be interested in possibly rescheduling us, but we’ve never been able to reschedule the event, so clearly, it’s not going to happen. But, just to add a number of other places where we’ve spoken, such as the World Affairs Council in Dallas, the Hammer Museum, The City Club of Cleveland, all these people told us they had gotten emails, phone calls, or messages protesting our appearance and suggesting we be dis-invited. To their great credit, none of these places gave into that kind of pressure. In each of these places, we appeared without note-worthy incident; we had good discussions, they asked challenging questions. Some people agreed with us, some people disagreed with us a lot, but in all these places we had a very useful discussion and nothing bad happened at all.

I want you to hear some comments by your critics. George Schultz, Reagan’s Secretary of State, writes in the new book “The Deadliest Lies: The Myth of the Israeli Lobby...”

MEARSHEIMER: That book was scheduled to be published on exactly the same date as our book was published on September the 4th.

WALT: Publishers know when things are going to appear months in advance and once our publisher made it clear it was going to be on their Fall list, then they can start preparing “The Deadliest Lies,” which is a very thin book that didn’t involve much work, and thus it could be arranged to have it timed with the release of our book. I mean, there are no secrets in the publishing world. Nothing unusual about this.

MEARSHEIMER: The Abraham Foxman book [“The Deadliest Lies] and the George Schultz preface in the forward are not based on the book we wrote, “The Israeli Lobby,” because it hadn’t been published at that time. It was rather based on the article that was published [in 2006.]

Well, he writes in the forward, “…those who blame Israel and its Jewish supporters for U.S. policies they do not support - are wrong. They are wrong because, to begin with, support for Israel is in our [The U.S.] best interests. They are also wrong because Israel and its supporters have the right to try to influence U.S. policy. And they are wrong because the U.S. government is responsible for the policies it adopts.” If you both concede that what the Israeli Lobby does is within the confines of a democratic process, then isn’t Schultz’s critique valid? If the Lobby isn’t working democratically, then how is it abusing the process?

WALT: We make it very clear in our book that what the Israeli Lobby is doing is not an abuse of the Democratic Process, but we think all Americans have the right to organize around political causes they believe about. But the fact that it is legitimate activity doesn’t mean it is in the best interest of the country. Lots of other interest groups have skewed American policy in a way that is not good for the country as a whole. We never argue, and we don’t believe what the Lobby is doing is illegitimate, inappropriate, or not Democratic, it’s just that the effects are harmful to the United States.

Now, if George Schultz disagrees with us, then he can make that argument and we can have a debate on it. One of the reasons we wrote the book is to try and encourage debate. “Whether or not unconditional support for Israel is good for the U.S. or not? Was it making Americans safer? Was it Americans more popular around the world? Was it improving our relation with allies in The Middle East and elsewhere?” If all those are true, then, maybe, we’re wrong. We’re making the argument that unconditional support for Israel, as encouraged by the Israeli Lobby, has been deeply harmful.

I’d alert anybody who reads this article that they should go back and read page 112 of George Schultz’s memoirs called “Turmoil and Triumph” where he talks about his own involvement trying to do Middle East policy in the face of pressure from the Lobby. When he and President Regan were dealing with the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, he discovered Congress was about to vote a $250 million supplemental military aid package to Israel after the invasion of Lebanon, after [Israel] had used cluster bombs, after the Shatila-Sabra camp massacres. This is what he writes in his own memoirs:

“We fought the supplement and fought it hard. President Reagan and I weighed in personally making numerous calls to Senators and Congressman. The supplement sailed right by us and was approved by Congress as though President Reagan and I had not even been there. I was astonished and disheartened. This brought home for me vividly Israel’s leverage in our Congress. I saw that I must work carefully with the Israelis if I was to have any handle on Congressional action that might affect Israel, and if I were to maintain Congressional support for my efforts to make peace or progress in the Middle East.”

In 1982, and when he wrote his memoirs, he understood the Israeli Lobby was very powerful and he understood that it wasn’t good; it was interfering with what he and President Reagan wanted to do. But he understood it was too powerful to fight it. He might’ve forgotten that in 2006-2007, but that’s what he wrote in his own memoirs.

MEARSHEIMER: There’s no question that Israeli supporters in the U.S. have the right to push pro-Israeli policies. Their behavior in that regard is as American as apple pie. However, there is one form of behavior that many members of the lobby engage in that is antithetical to the American way of doing business. That is the proclivity for smearing critics of Israel. If you criticize Israeli policy, or the power of the Lobby in formulating, or influencing U.S. Middle East policy, you are almost certain to be called an Anti-Semite or worse. Smearing people has become one of the key tactics that large numbers of organizations and individuals use in the Lobby to deal with critics, and this is not as American as apple pie. This kind of behavior should be condemned.

Let’s switch gears and talk about an Arab-American professor at Columbia, Joseph Massad, who published a stinging criticism of your book in Al-Ahram. He suggests your thesis falls into a predictable trap, and I quote him, “…the attraction of this argument is that it exonerates the United States' government from all the responsibility and guilt that it deserves for its policies in the Arab world and gives false hope to many Arabs and Palestinians who wish America would be on their side instead of on the side of their enemies.” So, my question, after listening to this, does your thesis help exonerate the U.S. government from all its responsibility? Moreover, perhaps the U.S. is in fact using Israel, instead of Israel and its Lobby using the U.S, correct?

WALT: Professor Massad greatly overstates it when he says this exonerates the U.S. government from all responsibility. We understand that actors in the U.S. government are independent actors to some degree. You take the Iraq war where we believe the Israeli Lobby had a key role in pushing the U.S. to do this, but ultimately George Bush made the decision to invade. So, we wouldn’t let him or Vice President Cheney off the hook. We are not exonerating those people in the U.S. government. Any official or most officials in the government, and certainly people in Congress are shaped by the political and social forces that exist within American society. They always pay attention where the political support is going to be, and it’s quite clear, as we just saw from the George Schultz quote a moment ago, where the Secretary of State thinks policy ought to go in one direction [not giving Israel the supplementary aid] and President Reagan agrees and thinks it’s a terrible idea, but they get rolled by Congress as if they had not even been there.

So, I think the idea that the U.S. government would be pursuing the same policies vis a vis the Middle East the same policies it would be pursuing absent the Israeli Lobby and the political power of AIPAC, I think it is just wrong. It has been the official policy of every president, every president since Lyndon Johnson to not support the settlements but none of them ever do anything about it, and they are the Presidents. It’s because of an array of political forces that make it impossible for them to take action. Problem #2 is the dog wagging the tail argument, here the argument is that Israel basically is our tool, we give it orders, and it does what we want it to do in the Middle East.

MEARSHEIMER: That Israel is our Rottweiler argument.

WALT: I mean, if you look carefully at the record, there is not much evidence that it is the tool we are using to shape the Middle East. I’ll give you three examples. One is the first Gulf War of ’91 where the U.S. goes into throw Hussein’s Iraq out of Kuwait, Israel didn’t participate in the war, not because they didn’t want to, but if they had participated the Arab coalition would have fallen apart. So, we went to great lengths to keep them out. And then we had to defend them when the SCUD missiles starting coming to Israel. The second example is the Iraq War of 2003, here we are our knocking off an Israeli enemy, but the Israelis are not there doing it, it’s us doing it. They are on the sideline yet again. The third example is the Lebanon War in the Summer of 2006. We don’t like Hezbollah very much, and of course the Israelis don’t like them very much, but there is absolutely no evidence that we were pushing the Israelis to go after Hezbollah. More importantly, we certainly didn’t want the Israelis to go after Lebanon. If Israel was taking our orders in the Summer of 2006, they would have left Beirut alone. They would have done nothing to undermine the democratically elected government in Lebanon, which is something that Bush takes great credit for. We had helped put the government in power, and it was one of the big successes you could point to in Bush’s Middle East policy. If Israel was taking orders from us, they would’ve had a very different approach than us in Lebanon. It’s not that there isn’t some collusion, but the idea they are our obedient servant carrying out the wishes of American Imperialism in the Middle East is just dead wrong

MEARSHEIMER: Two quick points. The U.S. can’t use Israel to support its policies in the Middle East in a large part because it is radioactive, and by that I mean so unpopular in the region. We couldn’t use Israel in the first Gulf War or second Gulf War. My second point would be to focus on what happened after the Shah of Iran fell in 1979. Up until that point, the U.S. had relied heavily on the Shah to do much of its heavy lifting in the Middle East. After the Shah fell, the U.S. was deeply concerned that the Soviet Union might intervene in Iran, and number two that Iraq or Iran might try to dominate the region. In that case, we would need military forces in that region to deal with the problem did it arrive.

So, the United States, if we are to believe the story where Israel is our Rottweiler, then we should’ve been able to turn to Israel to replace the Shah. But, of course, we couldn’t do that, and instead we had to build the rapid deployment force, which is an over the horizon military capability. But we need bases in the Middle East to deploy equipment for the rapid deployment force should it have to come into the region quickly. None of the equipment for the rapid deployment force was put in Israel, because it was unacceptable for the U.S. to station or to put equipment in Israel. So, what we did is we developed a rapid development force of our own, and we deployed that equipment in Arab countries.

Why do these pro-Israeli groups have such a loyal and firm alliance with hawkish, Neo-conservatives and the Christian Right in recent years? This is, after all, the same Christian Right, if you read some of their ideology and dogma, who believe that the Second coming of Christ will end in either the mass slaughter or mass conversion of Jews in Israel.

WALT: The Israel Lobby is a heterogeneous group. They all want to maintain a special relationship with the U.S., but they don’t agree on everything. There are a number of prominent groups, such as AIPAC, the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish organizations, the ADL, the Zionist Organization of America. There are a number of moderate groups that support a 2 state solution as well. The Israeli Policy Forum, the Americans for Peace Now are just a few examples. Then, there is this movement of Christian Evangelicals known as Christian Zionists. The more influential and wealthier organizations have tended to be right of center and more hard-line. AIPAC for example is hard-line. The Zionist Organization of America is very hard-line, opposing a 2 state solution.

Wait, what exactly do you mean by “hard-line?”

WALT: Generally those who oppose a 2 state solution, or like AIPAC never endorsing it. And also, basically supporting the “Settlement” enterprise. Groups like Israeli Policy Forum believe in the 2 state solution and oppose the Settlement enterprise.

MEARSHEIMER: It’s marginally a function of how you think of the [President] Clinton parameters. The Clinton parameters would be a broad outline for a 2 state solution. Organizations like the Israeli Policy Forum, people like Dennis Ross endorse the parameters, I mean he helped craft them.

WALT: I think we argue this in our book, if you look at the major organizations they tend to be more right of center, but they have become more conservative over time, and become more aligned with the Likud party in Israel, more aligned at least politically with conservative movements here in the U.S. The Israeli Lobby has moved in a rightward direction over time. And, it has been strengthened by the Christian Evangelicals who believe, and I’m oversimplifying a lot here, but their view of Israel is shaped by their interpretation of Old Testament prophecy. They believe the re-establishment of a Jewish state in all of Palestine is foreordained in Biblical prophecy, and it is a key sign leading up to the Second Coming, the End of times.

Like a pre-requisite?

WALT: It’s a pre-requisite, it’s gotta’ happen. It’s one of several steps we have to go through. So, they oppose any form of Palestinian state, they oppose any withdrawl of the settlement enterprise, because they think that’s inconsistent with what the Bible has predicted.

MEARSHEIMER: What the Bible says is necessary for the End times to come about.

WALT: Now, as you said, obviously this image of what happens to Israel or the Jewish people is not optimistic. Either they die, are converted, or they get left behind. But, obviously, if you are Jewish you don’t believe any of that prophecy stuff, and therefore there has been a tactical alliance between these groups, because it strengthens the political influence of both hard-line organizations. To put it in crude terms, I think the Jewish groups don’t much care for the Christian Zionist’s other views, because they don’t think they’re true, and they’re happy to get their support on this foreign policy dimension. As we can see the support for our very confrontational policy with Iraq and Iran today, where the Christian Zionists have been very bellicose, as have members of the Israeli Lobby been as well.

MEARSHEIMER: An additional point to make is that Israel, itself, has been progressively moving to the right as well. If you look carefully at Israeli public opinion, there is little support for the Clinton parameters, which is the only meaningful way you can create a viable Palestinian state. The Israelis say they are willing to give the Palestinians a state and favor a 2 state solution, but when you see what the majority of the Israelis want to give the Palestinians it does not in any shape, way, or form add up to a viable Palestinian state. Basically, it would be a series of enclaves in the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip would be another enclave. These enclaves would not be territorially contiguous, not connected, and the Israelis wouldn’t give the Palestinians control of East Jerusalem. The point I’m trying to make is that the fact the Lobby is dominated by hard-line individuals is facilitated by the fact that it is a worldview that is largely reflected by a majority of Israelis.

Professor Mearsheimer, you and several academics recently convened in Chicago, Rockafeller Chapel, and you said academia is the only space where Israel is “treated as a normal country, where past and present actions are critically assessed,” and the place where public opinion on the matter is most accurately reflected. If that is the case, then how do we explain the abrupt denial of tenure of Israeli and Dershowitz critic Norman Finkelstein? [Finkelstein’s very public tenure controversy at DePaul University ended in September ’07 when the Board decided to reject his tenure bid, despite overwhelming support for Finkelstein by his peers, his students, and national and international scholars]

MEARSHEIMER: I said in my comments, academia “tends to be the one place,” where Israel is treated like a normal country. I think there’s no question that there is more criticism of Israel in the academic world and in college campuses, then there is in mainstream media. Nevertheless, the Lobby works very hard to influence the discourse on university campuses and goes to considerable length in influencing hiring and promotion decisions regarding critics of Israel. The Normal Finkelstein case is illustrative of this. Nobody disputes that the Lobby put considerable pressure on DePaul University to deny Finkelstein tenure. They will deny that the pressure had any effect on the ultimate decision to deny him tenure, but this is hard to believe.

You suggest in your book that the image and framing of the issues has been skewed to reflect Israel as a “David” fighting a “Goliath” that is the Palestinians and neighboring Arab enemies. How much of this alleged symbolism is actually reflected in reality? How has this image been popularized and cemented in the mindset of American psychology?

MEARSHEIMER: There is no question that Israeli’s supporters have been very successful in conveying the message to most Americans that Israel is a David surrounded by an Arab goliath. Anyone who looks carefully at the history of the conflict quickly discovers that is not the case. To be more specific, Israelis won the 1948 war decisively, they won the 1956 decisively, they won the 1967 war decisively, and they won the 1973 decisively after suffering a massive surprise attack. All those victories were gained before massive U.S. aid came to Israel.

WALT: Up thru ’67 that’s exactly right. The U.S. was starting to provide significant military aid after ’67, but the aid goes up even more after the ’73 war.

MERSHEIMER: So, Israel won those 4 wars, and since then no Arab state has picked a fight with Israel for the simple reason they all understand Israel is the “Goliath” and they are the “Davids.” Today, Israel has the most powerful conventional army in the region by far. It’s the only state in the region that has nuclear weapons, it has a couple of hundred of them. It has a very close alliance to the U.S., which would surely come to its defense if its survival is threatened. It has peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan, and would have a treaty with Syria had it not walked away from the deal. So, Israel is not only the most powerful country in the region, but it also has peace agreement with some of its neighbors, two of them they have fought wars with in the past. And it would’ve have peace deals with 3 of its principle adversaries had they reached a peace deal with Syria.

The Saudis started in 2002 to push a peace initiative that would’ve brought peace between Israel and the Arab League, and they resurrected it again this year and pushed it again. This tells you that most of the states in the region are interested in reaching some sort of modus of endii with Israel. They understand it is very powerful and not going away anytime soon, therefore it makes sense to make some peace agreement. Israel is in excellent shape in terms of military balance. In terms of its dealings with its neighbors, it is in very good shape.

One might say what about the Palestinians? The Israelis have had opportunities to cut a deal with the Palestinians, especially during the 90’s Oslo Peace Process. But they have never shown any serious interest in allowing the Palestinians to have a viable state. If they could change their thinking on that conflict and bring themselves to evacuate almost all the West Bank, and allow for a Palestinian state, then we believe they would have good relations with the Palestinians as well.

WALT: You have to bear in mind the balance of power between the Israelis and the Palestinians. Israel, today, has the 29th highest per capita income in the world, now that’s not a poor country. Palestinians are deeply impoverished, unable to have a viable economy in the face of all of the obstacles presented now by Israel. The Palestinians have no army, no air force, no navy, they barely have an effective security force, and of course they are deeply divided internally. When any group of people is put into a situation like that, they are going to use any tactic available. Which is why of course the Palestinians have relied on terrorism. John and I both regard the use of terrorist tactics as deplorable, and the loss of innocent human life on either side is deeply, deeply regrettable. So, we’re not defending that. But, the point is that the Palestinians hardly pose an existential threat to Israel. It’s very much a one sided competition. The problem is for all of Israel’s considerable military power it still does not permit them to dominate the Palestinians to the point they won’t try to resist with any means they can come up with. But the idea that Israel is the vulnerable party here, and its various neighbors are all powerful has got reality turned upside down.

How does the Lobby skew this image, in your opinion, for the Average American psychology?

WALT: By constantly repeating how vulnerable Israel is, by constantly exaggerating the dangers that is faces. And, it does have security problems in addition to problems from terrorist bombings, it has problems with Hezbollah to the north. But the groups of the Lobby are hyping the exaggerated threat that Israel faces in trying to convince people its security is very precarious; that Israel might be destroyed anytime soon, that it faces a gigantic sea of enemies that aren’t interested in peace. But if someone looks carefully at the true military balance, or looks carefully at what Israel’s relations with its neighbors really are and what those neighbors have already offered, it suggests Israel is already quite secure in regards to its overall existence. Its survival is not in jeopardy. Its security can be significantly enhanced if it would reach a reasonable settlement with the Palestinians and take that whole problem off the table once and for a all.

MEARSHEIMER: The principle way that the Lobby creates this image of a beleaguered Israel is by working 24-7 to shape the discourse about Israel. The Lobby not only portrays Israel as a “David” surrounded by “Goliaths,” but it also goes to great lengths to silence those who argue that the opposite is the case.

Here’s a criticism. The U.S. is country with over 300 million people. We have blogs, the internet, op/ed publications, websites, liberals, republicans, and a diversity of opinions. How can a tiny minority of Jewish people, which is about 2 to 3% of our population, have that much influence? Is this some sort of conspiracy theory suggesting Jewish boogeyman who own the vast, diverse media we have in the United States?

MEARSHEIMER: We want to be absolutely clear we are not talking about a conspiracy. We are also not making an argument that pro-Israel groups control the media. Our argument is that the Lobby has to work very hard to shape discourse in the United States, because it does not control the media. Certainly, there are pundits and columnists and owners of newspapers who are naturally pro-Israel. There are many others that need to be reminded that criticism of Israel carries with it a significant cost. It’s there where the Lobby is great on what is written in the mainstream media in regards to Israel. Our argument is that they are very effective in that regard.

Let’s just talk about the discourse in the mainstream media about the Middle East. Where do you see evidence of Arab Americans writing columns in major newspapers? Where is the evidence of Arab Americans who are constantly on T.V. or on radio constantly criticizing Israel and defending the Palestinians?

Someone can say Fareed Zakaria is Muslim – [Fareed Zakaria is an influential and well known editor, columnist, and pundit]

WALT: He’s not Arab. He’s a South Asian Muslim. He does not take sides on Middle East questions very often. I think he understands this is a delicate issue, and particularly as delicate an issue for someone as prominent as he is who is known to be Muslim. Find me the Palestinian American columnist in the Times, The Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the SF Chronicle. They don’t exist.

MEARSHEIMER: What we have here in the United States is a one sided debate. We have pro-Israel forces and nothing else.

WALT: What you see of course is anytime a major media organization does publish something that is mildly critical they immediately get pressure put on them. For example, this past fall CNN ran a 3 part series on Muslim, Christian, and Jewish fundamentalism. The Forward, a Jewish newspaper, said it [CNN] suffered from an “unprecedented attack,” where organizations were putting pressure on advertisers that had bought advertising time. The whole purpose was not to stop the broadcast, because it already happened, but they wanted to put enough pressure on CNN that the next time a producer has an idea or a big story that is controversial, that producer is going to face an uphill battle. Or if a newspaper in Boston, Cleveland, San Francisco, pushes an article that is critical of the Lobby, if the editor gets 5,000 letters protesting about that, then they will think twice the next time that they let something like that appear.

If you do this long enough and over many years, plenty of reporters, editors, and columnists realize it’s too much trouble. “I’ll write about something else, or I’ll write something bland.” That isn’t control of the media as in the old conspiracy scene, that’s an interest group, like how a number of interest groups work, working very hard to try and make sure that their story gets reported, and the other side tends not to get reported. I say “tend” because every now and then you see something representing the other side appear in various places, but the point is you want to make sure the balance of coverage is on one side.

MEARSHEIMER: I want to add another dimension to this. It is widely recognized in the U.S. that the Lobby has a powerful influence on U.S.-Middle East policy. If you look at almost all the critical reviews of our book, virtually all of the critics admit that the Lobby is powerful. Nevertheless, when you read American news accounts of U.S.-Middle East policy, you hardly ever see any discussion of the Israel Lobby’s presence, much less influence, in the shaping of the U.S. policy.

WALT: Not never, but it’s rare. It’s rare you find someone who is writing about Middle East policy who will devote a couple of paragraphs to the role that pro-Israeli forces are playing in shaping that policy. Even though everyone in Washington knows that they’re very influential.

Let’s talk about Iraq. You, unlike many academics, underplay the role of oil and oil lobbies in the Iraq War. If not oil, then what was the motivating reason for the pre-emptive attack, and how does/did Israel benefit from the attack on Iraq and the toppling of Saddam Hussein?

MEARSHEIMER: With regards to the question of oil, there is hardly any evidence that oil was driving the Iraq war. Except for Kuwait, none of the oil producing states favored the war. And even though Kuwait favored the war, it didn’t push the U.S. hard to attack. Saudi Arabia was opposed to the war, as were the other oil producing states in the regime. There is hardly any evidence that I’m aware of that the oil companies which were pushing this war. The oil companies wanted to cut a deal with Saddam, so they could help him develop his oil fields, move his oil around the globe, and make lots of money in the process. The basic problem is there is not a lot of evidence to support the idea that oil was driving this war. What we believe was driving this was war was 1) The Israeli Lobby, and 2) the fact that George Bush and Cheney after 9-11 believed it was necessary to topple Saddam to win the war on terrorism. It’s a combination of them pushing this war to make this happen.

WALT: I would add to that, of course, the people who pushed for this believed it would benefit the U.S. and benefit Israel as well. They believed it would launch a process of political change throughout the Arab-Islamic world that would make the terrorism problem go away, enhance America’s overall strategic position by gradually creating a lot of countries that were Pro-American, and finally enhance Israel’s strategic position by creating a bunch of countries that were willing to make peace. They were tragically wrong on all counts. How would this war benefit Israel? The war didn’t benefit Israel, of course, it’s been a strategic disaster for Israel. It’s created a failed state nearby [Iraq], and it has enhanced the position of Iran, which is a country Israelis worry about even more than they worried about Saddam. This underscores a point we make in our book and make all the time is that the Israel Lobby in pushing for unconditional American support for Israel, and in some elements, pushing for hair-brained schemes like invading Iraq, it has been bad for the United States and unintentionally bad for Israel, too. It’s incorrect to see the Lobby as always pro-Israel. A lot of what they are supporting is very bad for Israel.

Seymour Hersh of the New Yorker posits the U.S. is engaged in “The-Redirection,” whereby the U.S. and Israel are aligning themselves with moderate Arab dictatorships against Iran, Syria, and Hezbollah. As professors of international relations and critics of the Israel Lobby, what blowback would this have, if any, on US-Muslim world relations?

MEARSHEIMER: The basic problem is that the strategy is not going to work. The fact is that Israel is radioactive in the region. The fact that Israel, the U.S., and Arab countries are going to form a right alliance against Iran and maybe Syria and Hezbollah is not going to work. Those Arab countries are going to be unwilling to reach an alliance with the Israelis and U.S. as long as the Palestinian issue continues to fester. One of the principle reasons for Condoleeza Rice is pushing for solution to a Palestinian problem now is because she understands now she can’t put together an anti Iran coalition without shutting down the Israeli - Palestinian conflict. But, there is no serious hope that conflict is going to be shut down anytime soon. That’s why you can’t put that balancing coalition against Iran together. In the populations of countries like Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia, there is a significant amount of sympathy towards Iran, and a significant amount of animosity towards U.S. and Israel.

WALT: One of those reasons those countries wont jump into bed fully with us on this, is because they are potentially fragile regimes and they worry about what their populations think if they were to try doing something like that. Second point to remember is Americans sometimes think we would be much better off if we had more democracy in the Middle East, and probably that’s true if you take a very long term view of it. But right now it’s false to imagine rapid democratic transitions in places like Egypt, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere. You would end up in countries that were very anti-American, because they don’t like the support we’ve given Israel and they also don’t like our support we’ve given to those ruling regimes as well.

MEARSHEIMER: One important piece of evidence that highlights how it’ll be impossible for the U.S. to put together that coalition is to see what happened during the Lebanon war in 2006. Initially, the Arab governments in Jordan and Egypt were very critical of Hezbollah, which is consistent with the policy that the Americans are trying to pursue. But, it quickly became clear to the leaders in Jordan and Egypt that the people in their societies sided with Hezbollah against the United States and against Israel. Therefore, the leaders in Jordan and Egypt had to turn on a dime and become critical of the U.S. and Israel and support Hezbollah.

Let’s close it with this final question and talk about U.S.-Muslim relations in regards to Palestine. Why is this issue, the Palestine issue, above all other issues at the forefront of the Muslim world’s anger against U.S. foreign policy? How does U.S. relation with Israel and the Lobby undermine or help our relations with the Muslim world in this regard?

WALT: For many people in the Muslim, Arab world there is a fundamental question of justice. What they see happening to the Palestinian people is a great injustice, although there were terrible crimes against Jewish people in history, and those crimes may justify the creation of a Jewish state. You can even argue on balance that it is ok to create a Jewish state in Palestine. John and I both thing it was a good thing. But, that act, creating a Jewish state in Palestine, involved the infliction of great crimes against the local residents – the Palestinians. Until there is some compensation and they are given a state of their own, and effort is made to compensate them and acknowledge what happened to them, the moral balance has not been equated.

Second, the entire episode resonates with the whole history of Western interference and domination of that region. It’s seen as another case where Western powers have inflicted great harm on Arab or Islamic peoples. So, it has a particular salience for people elsewhere in that region. Thirdly, it makes the U.S. look deeply hypocritical. The United States likes to talk about human rights, it likes to talk about democracy, it likes to talk about national self-determination. But here, by giving Israel nearly unconditional support, even as Israel continues its 40-year, 4-decade campaign to colonize the West Bank and previously Gaza, and for us to be supporting that enterprise the way we have is seen as deeply contrary to all the things the U.S. claims to stand for. That drives a number of people in the Arab-Muslim world, at least, makes them very angry. The fact we are so hypocritical and inconsistent with our own professed values.

MEARSHEIMER: It is the longest ongoing occupation in modern history.

WALT: It’s still ongoing; there are others like the British occupation of India that lasted much longer. Of all occupations that are currently happening, and there aren’t that many, it’s certainty the longest, continuing occupation that is still happening.

If one takes the looking glass theory and sees that they are looking back at there self in this case.

America and the the world at large does not believe that Sir Gandhi has a racist tong or thought in his statement.

No person in there fair mind even would ever belive the idea that his statement was anti-Semitic or that Sir Gandhi was even trying to pull a rasit card out.

To accuse people of that idea is shameful and degrading. Who is abusing who?

To act that way is like a child throwing a fit.

To try and control humans by using large groups to hunt after humans is abuse and like a gang.

The way Sir Gandhi was treated showes how un-civil and that no tolerance was allowed him as a human who was not trying to degrad any human but who in turn was persecuted for trying to teach to be soft and a bit more kind.

Thank You

Why is it that there can be discussion and even criticism within Israeli regarding their military policies but to speak to the issue in this country is to be labeled an anti-Semite? If you've read any of Dr. Gandhi's writings or followed his work, you would know that he truly follows in the footsteps of his grandfather who said, "An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind." And Gandhi didn't let anyone off the hook. He was the most demanding of those of his own faith, standing firm in his belief and in his very life that we humans must follow the way of non-violence iin every moment and circumstance. Nothing whatsoever, not having been the victim of terrible violence or anything else, is an excuse for perpetuating violence or war on another.

I'm dismayed at the condemnation of Dr. Gandhi, and will continue to pray that this episode provokes more thoughtful, open discussion about the sad, dismaying and ongoing crisis in the Middle East.

I'm shocked to see that you've buckled under the complaints from the Zionists while 1.5 million Palestinians starve at the hand of the Israeli Zionists and cannot find even one candle to light the night for the innocent Palestinian children in who cry enelessly at night in the darkness.

Genocide cannot be 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza; it has to be 6 million Jews at the hand of the Nazis. Now I get it!

Karma will rule, and the Zionists will reap what they have sown, whether it be in this sojourn, (lifetime), or the next. Mark my words!

Janet

Well, at least they "apologize". But I notice that Mr. Gandhi is STILL listed under "on faith Panelists".

So, I guess the same people who howled for Imus' head, and got their britches bunched up by the recent Hillary - Obama remarks, have opted for ???????? consequences for more egregious posting that THEY sponsored.

And what lesson should we take from the fact that They "apologize", but he suffers no consequences?

Richard Senturia, Director
Citizens for a Just and Lasting Peace in the Middle East
231 S. Bemiston, suite 800
Clayton, MO 63105
richardsenturia@hotmail.com

Well, at least they "apologize". But I notice that Mr. Gandhi is STILL listed under "on faith Panelists".

So, I guess the same people who howled for Imus' head, and got their britches bunched up by the recent Hillary - Obama remarks, have opted for ???????? consequences for more egregious posting that THEY sponsored.

And what lesson should we take from the fact that They "apologize", but he suffers no consequences?

Richard Senturia, Director
Citizens for a Just and Lasting Peace in the Middle East
231 S. Bemiston, suite 800
Clayton, MO 63105
richardsenturia@hotmail.com

Recently, the grandson of Mahatma Gandhi resigned from the University of Rochester-based Peace Institute he is heading due to inflammatory comments he made about Jews and Israel in an online forum at the Washington Post.

The comments had to do with Arun Gandhi stating that Israel and Jews are the ‘“biggest players” in a culture of violence.’ He writes further that the ‘Jewish identity "has been locked into the holocaust experience — a German burden that the Jews have not been able to shed. It is a very good example of (how) a community can overplay a historic experience to the point that it begins to repulse friends’ and that "The holocaust was the result of the warped mind of an individual who was able to influence his followers into doing something dreadful. ... The world did feel sorry for the episode but when an individual or a nation refuses to forgive and move on, the regret turns into anger." (quoted from Reuters)

Because of the anger Arun Gandhi stirred among people, particularly Americans, he was compelled to resign from him post and to issue a public apology. I do not agree with his resignation, his public apology, nor the negative flak he drew from people who called him a bigot and a host of other negative adjectives.

The question about Arun’s comments was whether his statements were really a result of his bigoted thoughts or was he just candidly stating a fact without regard for political correctness and without bothering to hold on to hypocritical proprieties? I would like to think it is the latter for Gandhi speaks true about the Israeli state.

In the past decades or so, Israel has built up its nuclear armaments to supposedly protect itself from threats from the Arab nations surrounding its borders. Interestingly, none of its Arab neighbors harbor nuclear weapons (except lately, when Iran has been reportedly trying to build a nuclear plant for power generation, so its president says). Despite this, Israel brazenly defies the UN calls for the non-proliferation of nuclear arms. Israel has also invariably used force and violence against the Palestinian nation for years now. Although it is true that the Palestinian Liberation Organization and the Hamas have been staging “terroristic” attacks against Israel for a long time, this does not justify the Jewish State’s action to place the whole Palestinian Nation under attack and under economic embargoes and sanctions.

For years now, Palestinians have been living in terror because of the periodic attacks Israel stages against Hamas. Like every war, the casualties always include innocent civilians—hundreds, if not, thousands of them. Israel’s actions have also driven tens of thousands of Palestinians into abject poverty, hunger, and the disruption of every day life. It has also resulted in the marginalization and negative labeling and treatment of Palestinians living in Israel. The breach in the border separating Egypt and Palestine highlights the oppressed status of the Palestinians, and how a lot of them are suffering from poverty and hunger because of the Israeli (with consent from the USA) imposed embargoes. When the wall was broken, thousands of Palestinians rushed across Egypt to secure supplies for themselves to ensure their survival, valuable supplies that the Israeli government has denied them.
The sad thing is, the USA has condoned all these. We have not heard the American government speak against the atrocities Israel is staging against Palestinians. We have not heard anyone call Israel a terrorist (to my mind, the Israeli government has been a bigger terrorist than those who leveled the World Trade Center because they have caused more deaths among Palestinians than the deaths caused by the Islamic revolutionaries at the WTC. This does not mean I condone the attacks against the WTC. It was a dastardly act. I am only railing against the hypocrisy of it all). Attacks have not been made against Israel for holding weapons of mass destruction. I can only shake my head in disbelief at how, for instance, the Bush government legitimized its attack against Iraq because it supposedly keeps weapons of mass destruction but has not done the same with Israel. And we know how the Bush government fell flat on its face because it has not found any WMDs in Iraq and how Iraq has fallen into chaos because of American intervention.

The case of Arun can be likened to the story of the innocent little boy pointing out the nakedness of the emperor while none of the people, not even the emperor’s close associates, bothered to tell him the truth.
America is so caught up in its hypocritical ways that it immediately condemns Arun for his statements, although, Arun’s statements resoundingly ring of truth. Have Americans reacted the same when its media labeled Muslims as terrorists? Have statements against Muslims resulted in resignations among high placed university men? None that I know of because America regards Israel as its friend and therefore it is impervious to its shortcomings. It is therefore, guilty of hypocrisy. Arun's guilt lies in his brutal honesty. Like all truths, the truth Arun wrote hurts.
I visited the Holocaust museum in Washington DC and the Jewish Museum in New York some three years ago. The museums were touching testaments to the atrocities suffered by Jews under the Arian regime of Hitler. The museums evoked pathos for the victims and anger against the perpetrators of violence. However, several decades after, Israel is no longer the aggrieved party; instead, it in itself has become an aggressor--an aggressor that could be likened to her tormentors in the past. And it seems very few realize this and for the few who realize it, Americans only have condemning words for them.

Arnie

Where is the original post? If there is freedom of speech, how can you just edit entries of respected intellectuals?

Sincerely,

Paul Crames

Dear fellow Americans and seekers of peace everywhere:

Regarding Arun Gandhi’s remarks about Jews-
And his ouster therefore:
We do not need another Holocaust
Nor Do we need another Gandhi Martyrdom

I only wish I stood in a position wherefrom I might reject the resignation of Arun Gandhi from his position as chairman of the his Institute for Non-violence at the University of Rochester.

I herewith encourage him to withdraw his resignation, which was obviously under fire, and to resist peacefully the avalanche of pious, pro-Semitic sentiment that has worked his cruel institutional undoing as a voice of peace and sanity in the perennially-warring world of religion and religious zealots.

Gandhi’s surrender “under fire” is reminiscent of the media’s banishment of American odds-maker, “Jimmy the Greek” for his utterly-true but politically untimely mentioning that blacks in America have selective breeding during slavery to thank for their clearly superior (over American Caucasian counterpart athletes) athletic abilities.
Why is Gandhi being skewered and dishonored for uttering, for the sake of peace, the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth?
Why in fact has he been driven to recant any of his Jan. 7 essay? Why has he, himself in his January 12 “Apology” stated: “ I do not believe and should not have implied that the policies of the Israeli government are reflective of the views of all Jewish people. Indeed, many are as concerned as I am by the use of violence for state purposes, by Israel and many other governments.” ?
In fact Gandhi did not attribute militancy to “all Jews” or “all” of Israel, but his comment was clearly both fair and true in implication because if all Jews are not in favor of Israel’s hard line policies in Palestine, virtually all of those in favor of those hard-line policies are in fact Jews. The same goes for the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 and every year since: Israel was established with pre-meditated (massive) bloodshed. The original settlers, despite the vote of the League of Nations granting them their national raison d’etre, knew the inhabitants of the ceded territories would immediately attack them when the grant was accepted and immigration begun, and the settlement of Israel was begun with the heart, mind and intent of the acquisitive warrior.

Israel was perhaps settled by Israeli’s but the State of Israel was established by its affluent Jewish supporters in America. Without the millions of dollars granted Israeli settlers and soldiers, without the grants of weapons and military vehicles, advisers and munitions, from 1948 through and including 2008, Israel, America’s puppet Jewish settlement in the Middle East promised land (shared by both Jewish and Christian Biblical mythologies and religious dogma), there would be no Israel and no violence in the Middle East (save perennial squabbles over subterranean oil deposits, mostly our fault too), and on this virtually unassailable ground, Gandhi’s thesis and assertions were quite simply true.

Gandhi didn’t even mention the recently-verified (by bin Laden himself reportedly) that the attack on America on 9/11/01 was clearly the result of America’s alliance with Israel, and who is historically-challenged enough today to gainsay the causal nexus between our current war in Iraq (and insipient financial collapse) and that attack on 9/11?

But along with the truth of his assertions, there was the collateral fact that his sooth-sayings were also “stereotypical”, and what is more, stereotypical shots at religious sacred cows are and will remain taboo until the inviolable halo of “religion” is removed from people who largely use their religious beliefs as cause(s) de guerre.

Israel is at war, constantly, with its neighbors because it seized an opportunity born of Europe’s (and perhaps the world’s) guilt and compassion over the holocaust. But more non-Jewish than Jewish people were slaughtered by the horrors of Hitler’s Axis of evil during the same period; they were simply not slaughtered for “religious” or ethnic reasons.

But the Holocaust was, as Gandhi quite cogently put it, over a half century ago. To maintain a sense of “victimhood” and unrelenting defensive and offensive militancy from 1938 through 2008 is reminiscent of the idiocy parodied by Mark Twain in Huckleberry Finn, where a new comrade of the young protagonist is killed by a family foe in a feud the origins and reasons for which were no longer known.

The ouster of Gandhi for telling the truth of Israel’s perennially militant stand in the world is hypocritical at best, both from the standpoints of his affiliations with Rochester and the “On Faith” page of the Washington Post. Shame, shame on (all three of them): University of Rochester’s President , Joel Seligman and On-Faith’s Sally Quinn and Jon Meacham for disloyalty and cowardice beyond the call of duty.

I note that it’s no longer possible from the “main page” of the Washington Post “On Faith” blog even to scroll down to Gandhi’s January 7th commentary on Israel and the Jews. Readers of Michelle Boorstein’s January 26 coverage of Gandhi’s forced resignation have to research the matter of Gandhi’s so-called “anti Semitic” assertions indirectly by meandering through the plethora of principally Jewish protests currently bombarding the ramparts of the Post’s and University of Rochester’s blogs.

I don’t accuse Gandhi of cowardice, however. I think he retreated not because it was the “just” thing to do, but rather because it was the peaceful thing to do. He was true to his (and his grandfather’s) form and walking his walk. But having said that, I think his retreat and apology are both morally wrong and counter-productive in the cause of peace. Even the Dalai Lama in his book on happiness concedes that, even though it is essential to love your neighbors even when they are your enemies….sometimes it is necessary to do what is required to defend yourself and your loved ones from attack. I am herewith attempting to do for Arun Gandhi what he appears to be unwilling to do, justly, for himself.

The “On Faith” blog was purportedly established to create a clearing house and open forum for sharing eclectic and creative ideas and views on religion. To quote from Quinn’s and Meacham’s own mission statement, the purpose of the blog on which Gandhi expressed his views included: (the exchange of views ….)

“From the nature of evil to religious reformation, from the morality of fetal stem-cell research to the history of scripture, from how to raise kids in multi-faith households to the place of gays in traditional churches -- of the asking of questions, to paraphrase Ecclesiastes, there shall be no end.

Well, it appears that Gandhi has discovered that there in fact “shall be …an end”…that is a point at which free expressions of religious ideas are no longer found “tolerable”, either in the peaceful institution of his own foundation or among his allies in the media or University.

I detest, rebuke and renounce all those actions and expressions which have culminated in Arun Gandhi’s forced resignation from his position and candid quest for peace. This event smacks of fascistic theocracy and embodies the odiously-evolving of religious institutions in our collective midst in terms recently portrayed by Philip Pullman’s trilogy, “His Dark Materials” ( including, most recently, the movie, “The Golden Compass”). The University of Rochester, Gandhi Institute, and “On Faith” bloggers are all acting in concert as the evil and oppressive “Magisterium” in Pullman’s brilliant and prescient fictional accounting of a world progressively reducing itself to an oligarchy of fascistic religious fundamentalists--and a concomitant intellectual peasantry of masses afraid to oppose—or even to question them.

I am (the writer hereof) no more an anti-Semite than Arun Ghandhi is. And Arun Ghandhi is in no way or degree an anti-Semite. Being anti-Zionist is not being anti-Semite. Israel is a Zionist state. Zionism is a matter of unjustified and aggressive war and conquest based on religious mythology. Knowing and stating such truth does not make me an anti-Semite. Knowing and stating that Israel, with its American-manufactured and financed armaments is the most militant and aggressive state in the Middle East, having the greatest stockpile of weapons of mass –and minor—destruction does not make either me or Gandhi’s comments consonant with such truths…anti-Semitic.

The end of Arun Gandhi’s January 7th comments are essentially my own, and so I will close with them, primarily in order to cleanse them of the diluting taint of his subsequent –unwarranted--apology therefor.

Well, with your superior weapons and armaments and your attitude towards your neighbors would it not be right to say that you are creating a snake pit? How can anyone live peacefully in such an atmosphere? Would it not be better to befriend those who hate you? Can you not reach out and share your technological advancement with your neighbors and build a relationship?
Apparently, in the modern world, so determined to live by the bomb, this is an alien concept. You don't befriend anyone, you dominate them. We have created a culture of violence (Israel and the Jews are the biggest players) and that Culture of Violence is eventually going to destroy humanity.
Accordingly, about both the Jewish Holocaust and the martyrdom of anyone named Gandhi for telling the truth, I say the same thing—
NEVER AGAIN !
Robert R. Schoch*

*Robert R. (Dusty) Schoch
607 Overbrook Drive (parcels)
P.O. Box 5743 (letters; insured parcels)
High Point, NC 27262
Phone: (336) 887 3119
Fax: (336) 887 1227
E-Mail: Rschoch@triad.rr.com
Cell: (336) 847 4777
Robert R. (Dusty) Schoch is an attorney, inventor (author of Milton Bradley’s “Crack the Case”), designer (United Features Syndicate-licensed “Snoopy’s Dream Machines”) and manufacturer (D.C.S. International, Inc.), Inventor’s representative and broker of toys, games and other inventions (President and C.E.O. of I.D.E.A.S. , “Invention Design Enhancement And Sales”) and writer (novels, essays, screenplays) living in High Point, N.C. BA (English) degree, UNC Chapel Hill, JD (law) U. of Ala., Tuscaloosa. Dusty is founder and scribe of the B.E.A. (“Barristers et al”) a N.C.-based, politically-independent foreign policy think tank. He is also co-editor (foreign policy) of Democratswrite.com through the contact link of which readers are invited to correspond with him.

________________________________________

No, Jon and Sally, what is "regrettable" is your "apology," which smacks of the fruit of pressure applied by the Zionists on your editors, such as the outrageous letter from Judea Pearl to Mr. Graham, using Daniel Pearl's death as a spin-source for Zionism.

What is regrettable is the Zionist/Jewish fatah against Mr. Ghandi and Joel Seligman's removal of Mr. Ghandi from the M.K. Ghandi Institute, which Mr. Ghandi founded and which will now, presumably, be run by Jews.

The lesson is: criticizing Zionism brings retribution every bit as quickly as criticizing Mohammad.

The lesson is: the Jews and the Arabs are all Semites. They have more similarities than differences. They and the world needs to re-connect to this genetic reality.

The future vision that Mr. Ghandi longs for could be, for instance, a return to the golden era of Andalusian Spain in the 15th Century when the Jews and Muslims lived together and produced one of the most wonderful cultures in human history. After all, the Semites are, arguably, the most intelligent of the human races.

But the only vision that is extant seems to flow from the Holocaust, which has led indirectly to Israel and its hundreds of nuclear warheads and its nuclear submarines prowling the Gulf and threatening world peace -- which is what Mr. Ghandi was saying.

i find it frightening that mr gandhi was forced to resign for his comments.

his intent was not to foster conflict, but to encourage forgiveness.

clearly an effort wasted.

Why don't you host a conversation on the difference--or similarities--between anti-semitism and anti-zionism?

Regards,

SLY

This ridiculous over-reaction to Mr. Ghandi's relatively mild comments is the case in point. I mean, he actually RESIGNED over this?!!

While the point he was trying to make may have come across as a bit offensive, and oblique, I find it hard to doubt Mr. Ghandi's well-meaning intentions. I mean, how many of you folks out there have started an institute dedicated to creating peace?

I certainly haven't.

Why is it if anyone says anything even mildly critical of the modern state of Isreal and its relationship to the Holocaust, people lose their minds? Suddenly, so and so is labeled an antisemite, or a bigot, and the reasonable dialogue is just shut down once again, and we remain stuck in us-against-them war-think.

Firstly, I think all reasonable people can agree that the Holocaust 1) did factually occur, and 2) was an epic atrocity against not just Jews, Catholics, Gypsies, Homosexuals, and the disabled, but all of humanity.

Yes, the Holocaust was a horror of unfathomable proportions, but it happened 50 or so years ago. What is more relevant now is how do we create PEACE TODAY in the middle east and the world at large?

Global peace starts with regional peace. Regional peace like in the middle east requires leadership by both individuals and nations alike.

The question for Isreal -- and even more so for the United States -- should be, how can we take the initiative in shaping a culture of peace, instead of perpetuating the cycle of violence and vengeance?

By focusing one's energies on being outraged at Mr. Ghandi's remarks, is frankly, off-topic. The world needs plenty of fixing, and Mr. Ghandi is hardly what I would call one of its major problems.

I think that Mr. Arun Ghandi was neither off the mark nor outside the scope of the his position.

There is insight lacking. This insight is not of the variety of positions taken by all parties involved. What is the point in expounding these?

What he is indisposed of is fundamental flaw in all of this (and no one can himself excuse himself the obligation):

THE ELDERS BELIEF IS, WHOLEHEARTEDLY, THAT CHRISTIANITY IS DESTROYING/CONTROLLING/HIGHJACKING NOT JUST JUDAISM BUT JEWISH BLOODLINE DESTINY

Hitler did not start this, he recognized it. He was not the only one. It has been going on for some time. Don't tell me about AIDS and the colonial slave trade unless you are building this case.

There is never an exception to Justice on the grounds of prior belief.

And let us not talk about two religions in the context of one another except in the real relationship they have. We have been through that, and it is not our faith. What makes wrong, wrong?

Your comments about Arun Ghandi's post were myopic and journalistically irresponsible. Religious discussions do generate heat and sometimes that's precisely what the topic requires. We all have to get past the heat and into the discussion. His clarification was more than appropriate and your public dismissal of his response is a disgrace to your role as his colleague and to your position.

I dont agree with Arun Gandhi's views that Israelis should not defend themselves. However, there is a difference between defending oneself, and humiliating and degrading others. The responses on this forum clearly show that many people are smug that they have humiliated and destroyed Arun Gandhi. There are still others who want to extract the last ounce of blood, and are not yet satisfied. perhaps they would be satisfied if Arun gandhi was given the death penalty.

Instances such as these re-inforce the perception, real or otherwise, that the jewish peole close ranks, and act as one block whenever anyone says anything against them, whether right or wrong. They have used the sledgehammer here so that in future no one else will even think of expressing a dissenting opinion- simply out of fear. It is just NOT possible that not one jewish person thinks that what happened to Arun Gandhi is unfair.

I believe in the saying, Might is Right. But only if might is used for "right" reasons (as in fair, just).

If only they were fair and just, they would have more supporters to back them.

http://www.science.co.il/hi/Turkish/

I ALWAYS SAY PEOPLE SHOUDL SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES AND DEFINE THEMSLEVES.

A TURKISH JEW SPEAKS FOR HIMSELF.

Turkish-Jewish Friendship
Over 500 Years
Turkish Jews - Brief History
A shorter version of this article was published in Turkish Times, May 1, 2001.

In 70 C.E. the Roman army invaded Jerusalem and expelled the Jews from Judea and Samaria (see brief history of the Jewish people). Some of these Jews reached Spain and established thriving communities there. The most famous famous person to emerge from Spanish Jewry is Moshe Ben Maimon (Rambam), a scientist, physician and a Torah Scholar.

In the 15th century the Jews in Spain faced strong pressures to convert to Christianity and many yielded to this pressure and became Christians. In 1492 the king of Spain, Ferdinand, issued an edict to expel from Spain all remaining Jews who did not convert to Christianity.

Sultan Beyazit II welcoming Jews to Ottoman Empire in 1492
(painting by Mevlut Akyildiz).
When the news of expulsion reached the Ottoman Empire, the Sultan (Emperor) Beyazit II issued a decree to welcome the Jews. A significant portion of those expelled thus came to Ottoman Empire and settled mostly in European parts of the Empire. The Turkish Jews are also identified as Sephardic Jews. This derives from the word Sepharad which in Hebrew means Spain.

Since 1492, through five centuries, the Ottoman sultans and the modern day Turkish Republic, welcomed the Jews and offered them a safe haven from persecution in the European countries. The Ottoman Empire at its zenith became one the largest empires in World History covering most of Mediterranean basin region extending from North Africa to Eastern Europe. It has been suggested that one of the characteristics that extended the domination of the Ottoman Empire was its allowance of religious freedom for the different nationalities and minorities under its rule. While many European nations expelled, persecuted or tried to convert the Jews under their dominion, the Turkish people of the Ottoman Empire, remained as an outstanding example of tolerance of different nationalities with different religions.

The presentation above sometimes sounds unusual to strangers who may have heard Turkey only in the context of conquests of the Ottoman Empire. Indeed Turkish people have been throughout history a nation with a strong army and strong national feelings. Yet, the Turkish history is also full of stories of humanity and tolerance. In war time they are a strong nation to avoid confrontation with, but they also know to become friends beyond the war times and zones. This, in my personal opinion is a consistent pattern of Turkish behavior in all of their extensive history through centuries.

The history of the Ottoman Jews is rich with mutual complementary cultural influences. The Jews coming from Spain established the first printing presses that had just emerged as a most important tool of the modern culture. Many Jewish doctors served in the courts of Ottoman sultans and in the Ottoman army (see Sephardic house archives for detailed lists with names). Jews engaged in commerce enhanced trade between countries of the region for the benefit of all. The religious freedom allowed the flourishing of famous rabbis that produced outstanding works of comments on the Old Testament.

Until World War I the Land of Israel also known as Palestine, remained under the rule of the Ottoman Empire. During this period the Jewish population in this region lived as loyal subjects of the greater Ottoman Empire (see brief history). After World War I, the British Empire gained control of Transjordan and Palestine which ended in 1948 with the declaration of independence of the State of Israel.

In pre World War II times Turkish government issued a decree prohibiting entry visas to Jews escaping the Nazi regime (for one of the best accounts of this period see Bali's book in the books section). Yet some Turkish diplomats in foreign countries worked hard to help Jews escape from deportation to concentration and death camps. Yad VaShem, Holocaust Memorial Institute in Israel awarded the medal of "The Righteous Among the Nations" to the Turkish ambassador Mr. Selahattin Ulkumen, for saving Jews of the Greek island Rhodes while risking his own life. One of the tragic cases took place in 1942. A ship named Struma carrying 769 Jewish refugees arrived in Istanbul. Its passengers were not granted permit to land and had to sail back to the Black and it was sunk by an explosion probably by a submarine (see full story).

In contrast to the policy of entry prohibition against refugees, the Turkish government decree left the doors open to Jewish scientists who came to Turkey. By first hand account I have heard stories of Turkish scientists honoring their German Jewish teachers who escaped to Turkey and taught in universities in Istanbul.

During World War II, the Sephardic communities in Turkey and Bulgaria were the only communities that did not suffer the Nazi Holocaust, thanks to the wisdom of the leaders of these countries. In contrast, nearly the entire Sephardic Jewish community of Greece was killed during World War II by the Nazi death machine.

After World War II, while the British rule tried to prevent the movement of the Jewish refugees into Israel, the modern day Turkish republic allowed its Jewish citizens freely to emigrate to Israel. The current population of Turkish-Jews in Israel is estimated as about 100,000, though a precise figure is difficult to obtain. This represents a relatively small community in the general population of about 6 million in Israel. The major wave of emigration from Turkey to Israel took place between 1940-1950. This migration from Turkey was not a result of a desire to escape from Turkey but rather emanated from the national desire to return to the homeland of our forefathers as each day three times a day we prayed to return to Jerusalem.

My own personal appreciation of Turkish attitude to Jews was shaped slowly. Like any minority in any country, sometimes isolated events of differential treatment are raised. Yet, as I became more knowledgeable and could compare cultures and countries around the globe with the passing of age and experience, we became much more appreciative of the benevolence of the Turkish people who harbored the Jewish people through incredibly barbaric times in the annals of European history. In retrospect of what we know of European history today, we owe Turkish people a great debt of gratitude for saving the lives of thousands of Jews. As Turkish-Jews we preserved our national identity as the descendants of the Biblical Israelites, yet to this day we also feel ourselves as Turkish and identify with the Turkish People.

Today Turkey is one of the most favorite countries for Israeli tourists, thanks to its natural beauty and famous hospitality of its people. The number of Israeli tourists visiting Turkey each year is estimated in the hundreds of thousands. This tourist travel has extended the ties of friendship between Israel and Turkey to the general population, outside of the small community of Turkish Jews. Concomitantly, the trade between Turkey and Israel has greatly expanded in all spheres of economic activity from food commodities to hi-tech products. There are also many joint scientific and commercial activities between the two countries.

Both Turkey and Israel are unique in the Middle-East as the only countries with democratic regimes and democratic culture with multi-party systems. As it is well known, Middle-East is highly volatile with intra-Arab (Iran-Iraq war, Iraq-Kuwait Gulf War, Lebanese civil war, etc.) and Arab-Israeli conflicts. I hope that continuing the centuries old tradition of strong ties between Jews in Israel and Turkey may help promote greater stability in this region. The close ties of friendship and tolerance between the Turkish and Jewish People throughout the centuries is proof that Moslems and Jews can live together with mutual respect, and should serve as an example for our Arab neighboring countries with whom we yearn for a peaceful coexistence.

From a complementary perspective, the Arabs want to project the Israeli-Arab conflict as a religious conflict. We as Turkish Jews know that this is an improper use of religion in the fight of Arabs against Israel. In all the generations of Jewish life in Turkey we never saw a single Moslem Turk trying to kill a Jew in the name of Allah, whereas this is a common occurrence here. As the recent events show this conflict is not going to end anytime soon.

For further information about the history of Sephardic and Turkish Jews see bibliography and links page.

Copyright © 1999-2008 Israel Hanukoglu. All Rights Reserved.

Turkish-Jewish Friendship
Over 500 Years

Turkish Jews - Brief History
A shorter version of this article was published in Turkish Times, May 1, 2001.

In 70 C.E. the Roman army invaded Jerusalem and expelled the Jews from Judea and Samaria (see brief history of the Jewish people). Some of these Jews reached Spain and established thriving communities there. The most famous famous person to emerge from Spanish Jewry is Moshe Ben Maimon (Rambam), a scientist, physician and a Torah Scholar.

In the 15th century the Jews in Spain faced strong pressures to convert to Christianity and many yielded to this pressure and became Christians. In 1492 the king of Spain, Ferdinand, issued an edict to expel from Spain all remaining Jews who did not convert to Christianity.

Sultan Beyazit II welcoming Jews to Ottoman Empire in 1492
(painting by Mevlut Akyildiz).
When the news of expulsion reached the Ottoman Empire, the Sultan (Emperor) Beyazit II issued a decree to welcome the Jews. A significant portion of those expelled thus came to Ottoman Empire and settled mostly in European parts of the Empire. The Turkish Jews are also identified as Sephardic Jews. This derives from the word Sepharad which in Hebre