Prophets in Their Own Land

How to go from respected academic to anti-Semite-in one simple step

By Michael C. Desch is Professor and Robert M. Gates Chair in Intelligence and National Security Decision-making at the George Bush School of Government and Public Service, Texas A&M University.

John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt’s London Review of Books essay “The Israel Lobby,” and the heavily footnoted working-paper version posted on the John F. Kennedy School of Government website, have generated a tsunami of commentary. This is not surprising given their thesis: a small group of Israel’s supporters inside and outside of government have a disproportionate influence over American foreign policy toward the Middle East, and this works to the detriment of U.S. security. As with many prophets in their own lands, they have received a much fairer hearing abroad-ironically even in Israel-than they have at home.

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One might wonder why the “The Israel Lobby” was published in a British rather than an American magazine. Things began promisingly enough when The Atlantic Monthly commissioned Mearsheimer and Walt to write the piece in 2002. After submitting the first draft in May 2004, they worked closely with the editors on the substance and organization. There was some discussion about how big a role the story of the Israel lobby should play, and the authors acceded to The Atlantic’s request to pare down that part of the argument and submitted the final draft in January 2005. Despite a long letter from the editors outlining their dissatisfaction, Mearsheimer and Walt still aren’t sure why The Atlantic declined to publish the piece. Whatever the reason, to the magazine’s credit someone associated with it played an indirect role in getting the piece published in the LRB. It appeared online March 16.

The first significant press coverage came in the New York Sun, a neoconservative paper backed by wealthy Israel supporters Conrad Black and Michael Steinhardt. Reporter Eli Lake wrote the article around an interview he did with white-supremacist David Duke, not normally a regular source for the Sun, who not surprisingly claimed “The Israel Lobby” vindicated his long-held anti-Semitic views.

Lake’s colleague Meghan Clyne followed up four days later with an extended interview with Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowitz, who among other smears insinuated that Walt and Mearsheimer cribbed some of their choicest quotes from neo-Nazi websites. (Most of the Sun’s readership likely missed the irony that Dershowitz himself has been accused of this form of plagiarism in his book The Case for Israel.) Between the Sun and the Harvard Crimson arose an almost daily drumbeat of criticism.

These two charges-that “The Israel Lobby” gave aid and comfort to extremists like David Duke and that it parroted material on anti-Semitic websites-quickly made their way into the national media through two articles in the Washington Post, one running under the incendiary title “Of Israel, Harvard, and David Duke.” The Post also ran an opinion piece by Bush administration Defense Policy Board member Eliot Cohen pointedly entitled, “Yes, It’s Anti-Semitic.” This set the tone for much of the early discussion of the piece in the American media.

Writing in U.S. News and World Report, longtime White House insider David Gergen, like Captain Renault in “Casablanca,” professed to be shocked to learn that the Israel lobby is working to “tilt U.S. foreign policy in favor of Israel at the expense of America’s interest.” But Mearsheimer and Walt quote a candid speech that Bush intelligence adviser Philip Zelikow gave on Sept. 10, 2002 in which he said that Iraq was an imminent threat to Israel, not America. It was, he said, “the threat that dare not speak its name,” because it was not a “popular sell.”

On March 24, The Forward reported that officials of major Jewish organizations were trying to avoid “a frontal debate with the two scholars, while at the same time seeking indirect ways to rebut and discredit the scholar’s arguments.” These included demands by some Jewish donors to Harvard to distance the university from the piece. (There is no evidence these worked, as the decision to remove Harvard’s logo from the working paper was made with Walt’s approval.) Certain neoconservatives also lobbied financial backers of prominent journals to have Mearsheimer and Walt dropped from their editorial boards. Finally, there were thinly veiled appeals to other Jewish colleagues to exclude Mearsheimer and Walt from conferences and other scholarly activities so as to “leave them marginalized and isolated.” This bare-knuckled maneuvering by lobby members shows why most people in the U.S. steer clear of criticizing the U.S.-Israeli relationship publicly.

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Groups like the Anti-Defamation League and CAMERA and individuals like Alan Dershowitz promised detailed rebuttals of Mearsheimer and Walt’s logic and evidence. So far, they have failed to identify any significant errors of fact and interpretation. They are left with impugning the integrity of the authors and the legitimacy of the whole line of inquiry. Dershowitz labels Mearsheimer and Walt “bigots.” Anti-Defamation League National Director Abraham Foxman characterizes the piece as “conspiratorial anti-Semitic analysis.” Congressman Jerrold Nadler, a staunch supporter of Israel, dismisses it as “a repackaging of old conspiracy theories.” New Republic publisher Martin Peretz declares it “the labor of obsessives with dark and conspiratorial minds.” Even as he conceded much of their argument, columnist Christopher Hitchens found it “smelly” with the odor of anti-Semitism.

Those charges are demonstrably false. In the fall of 1991, Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann, Germany’s leading public-opinion specialist, was due to return to the University of Chicago for a faculty appointment when Commentary revealed that as a graduate student in Nazi Germany she made anti-Semitic remarks in her dissertation and in the Nazi newspaper Das Reich. Noelle-Neumann never denied these charges, and she and her defenders at the university argued that her comments ought to be seen in the context of the times. Mearsheimer, then chair of the political science department, along with Walt and a few other colleagues, publicly called on Noelle-Neumann to provide a fuller explanation of her behavior along with an unconditional apology for her anti-Semitic comments. This stand is hardly one bigots or anti-Semites are likely to have taken.

And that position was not an aberration. Friends and colleagues understand that Mearsheimer and Walt are acutely aware of the long and painful history of anti-Semitism and in no way intended to give aid and comfort to Israel’s enemies. It is not surprising, therefore, that they would rally to the authors’ defense. Brandeis University professor Robert Art’s reaction was typical: “I have known John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt for over twenty-five years. I consider both good friends and valued colleagues. Neither John nor Steve is anti-Semitic, and both are strong supporters of Israel. It is a cheap shot to call them anti-Semitic and enemies of Israel. As an American Jew, I would never associate with individuals who hold such views.”

Despite having no truck with anti-Semitism, Mearsheimer and Walt understood that critics would level that accusation. As Tony Judt recently explained in Ha’aretz, the charge of anti-Semitism is “now the only card left” to the Israel lobby to respond to criticism. But this organized tactic of shutting down serious discussion rather than engaging the argument on its merits is illegitimate. As George Orwell reminds us, “If liberty means anything, it means the right to tell people what they don’t want to hear.”
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June 19, 2006 Issue
The American Conservative