Authors Debate Influence of Israeli Lobby on the PBS News Hour
Abraham Foxman, Director of the Anti-Defamation League and author of the book “The Deadliest Lies” and John Mearsheimer, a professor at the University of Chicago and co-author of the book “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy” discussed Israel’s influence on US foreign policy on the PBS News Hour tonight, October 9. 2007. This presentation is about as close to discussing this topic in the major US broadcast media as we have so far come.
CBS 60 Minutes recently refused to carry the story.
The PBS website described the programmed encounter as follows:
A year ago, two American political scientists created a firestorm of controversy when they wrote an article asserting that Israel has too much influence over American policy. Today, two new books reignite the debate.
“The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy” is co-authored by John Mearsheimer, a professor at the University of Chicago, and Stephen Walt, a professor at Harvard. Mearsheimer and Walt write that the support the United States gives Israel, a result of influence from the Israel lobby, creates a “strategic liability” for U.S. interests in the world.“The Deadliest Lies: The Israeli Lobby and the Myth of Jewish Control” is the work of Abraham Foxman, the Director of the Anti-Defamation League. Foxman claims that the Mearsheimer-Walt book is based on “half-truths, distortions and falsehoods.”
In this brief 10 minute debate, Mearsheimer attempted to discharge the notion that the Israel Lobby was more influential than any other major lobby, but stressed that its effect on America’s recent foreign policy in the Middle East has been critical. Foxman, by contrast, attempted to conflate the Israel Lobby with the entire Jewish community (rather than a right wing minority) to suggest that Mearsheimer and Walt’s book defamed Jews and perpetuating old “control” myths about the Jewish people that encouraged anti-Semitism. Yet, both agreed that the majority of American Jews were against the Iraq war and the invasion of Iran.
Here is a Mearsheimer bit on YouTube regarding Israel’s drumbeat for an Iran invasion called,
John Mearsheimer At Yearly Kos 2007
Question: How do you know this?
I should have linked but it was featured on some local lib sites. Try to find. Still, you have a point. I don’t recall how they obtained that information at this point. Get back if I find out something more.
Well, as it turned out, my source came up quickly with a Google search:
This is what I found out. Look at the last email, especially, but the other stuff is interesting as well, especially about Jimmy Carter opening up doors. The antiSemite swipe at him by the right wing obviously backfired.
’60 Minutes’ refusing to cover Mearsheimer/Walt book
Posted: Fri Aug 24, 2007 10:33 pm Post subject: ’60 Minutes’ refusing to cover Mearsheimer/Walt book
Date: Thu, 16 Aug 2007 15:21:18 -0700 (PDT)
From: “James Morris” Subject: Re: ’60 Minutes’ refusing to do a segment on the soon to be released Mearsheimer/Walt book To: patcohen@nytimes.com CC: “Kuzmarov, Sara” <KuzmarovS@cbsnews.com>, mbouton@thechicagocouncil.org, crose@bloomberg.net, yvega@bloomberg.net, charles.gibson@abc.com, brian.williams@nbc.com, mike_kirk@wgbh.org, newshour@pbs.org, jlehrer@newshour.org, jwoodruff@newshour.org, rsuarez@newshour.org, gifill@newshour.org, nightly@nbc.com, mfugo@thechicagocouncil.org, tbowman@npr.org, jnortham@npr.org, vohara@npr.org, seelyek@yahoo.com, mkelly@npr.org
Dear Ms. Cohen,
Thank you for your article which appeared in the New York Times today. You might be interested in the recent email exchange (included after your article below) that I had with Sara Kuzmarov (an associate producer in the office of Jeff Fager who is the executive producer for ’60 Minutes’) as ’60 Minutes’ is also refusing to cover the Mearsheimer/Walt book after it is released next month. With kindest regards, James Morris August 16, 2007 Backlash Over Book on Policy for Israel By PATRICIA COHEN
http://www.nytimes.com
“The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy” is not even in bookstores, but already anxieties have surfaced about the backlash it is stirring, with several institutions backing away from holding events with the authors. John J. Mearsheimer, a political scientist at the University of Chicago, and Stephen M. Walt, a professor at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, were not totally surprised by the reaction to their work. An article last spring in the London Review of Books outlining their argument — that a powerful pro-Israel lobby has a pernicious influence on American policy — set off a firestorm as charges of anti-Semitism, shoddy scholarship and censorship ricocheted among prominent academics, writers, policymakers and advocates. In the book, published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux and embargoed until Sept. 4, they elaborate on and update their case. “Now that the cold war is over, Israel has become a strategic liability for the United States,” they write. “Yet no aspiring politician is going to say so in public or even raise the possibility” because the pro-Israel lobby is so powerful. They credit the lobby with shutting down talks with Syria and with moderates in Iran, preventing the United States from condemning Israel’s 2006 war in Lebanon and with not pushing the Israelis hard enough to come to an agreement with the Palestinians. They also discuss Christian Zionists and the issue of dual loyalty.
Opponents are prepared. Also being released on Sept. 4 is “The Deadliest Lies: The Israel Lobby and the Myth of Jewish Control” (Palgrave Macmillan) by Abraham H. Foxman, the national director of the Anti-Defamation League. The notion that pro-Israel groups “have anything like a uniform agenda, and that U.S. policy on Israel and the Middle East is the result of their influence, is simply wrong,” George P. Shultz, a former secretary of state, says in the foreword. “This is a conspiracy theory pure and simple, and scholars at great universities should be ashamed to promulgate it.” The subject will certainly prompt furious debate, though not at the Center for the Humanities at the Graduate Center at the City University of New York, the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, a Jewish cultural center in Washington and three organizations in Chicago. They have all turned down or canceled events with the authors, mentioning unease with the controversy or the format. The authors were particularly disturbed by the Chicago council’s decision, since plans for that event were complete and both authors have frequently spoken there before. The two sent a four-page letter to 94 members of the council’s board detailing what happened.
“On July 24, Council President Marshall Bouton phoned one of us (Mearsheimer) and informed him that he was canceling the event,” and that his decision “was based on the need `to protect the institution.’ He said that he had a serious `political problem,’ because there were individuals who would be angry if he gave us a venue to speak, and that this would have serious negative consequences for the council. `This one is so hot,’ Marshall maintained.” Mr. Mearsheimer later said of Mr. Bouton, “I had the sense that this phone call pained him deeply.” Mr. Bouton was out of town, but Rachel Bronson, vice president for programs and studies at the council, said, “Whenever we have topics that are particularly controversial or sensitive, we try to make sure someone from another point of view is there.” In this case, she said, there was not sufficient time to set up that sort of panel before the council calendar went out. There are no plans to have the authors speak at a later date, however.
“One of the points we make in the book is that this is a subject that’s very hard to talk about,” Mr. Walt said in an interview from his office in Cambridge. “Organizations, no matter how strong their commitment to free speech, don’t want to schedule something that’s likely to cause controversy.” After the cancellation Roberta Rubin, owner of the Book Stall, a store in Winnetka, Ill., offered to help find a site for the authors. She said she tried a Jewish community center and two large downtown clubs but they all told her “they can’t afford to bring in somebody `too controversial.’ ” She added that even she was concerned about inviting authors who might offend customers. Some of the planned sites, like the Sixth & I Historic Synagogue, a cultural center in Washington, would have been host of an event if Mr. Mearsheimer and Mr. Walt appeared with opponents, said Esther Foer, the executive director. Mr. Walt said, “Part of the game is to portray us as so extreme that we have to be balanced by someone from the `other side.’ ” Besides, he added, when you’re promoting a book, you want to present your ideas without appearing with someone who is trying to discredit you. As for City University, Aoibheann Sweeney, director of the Center for the Humanities, said, “I looked at the introduction, and I didn’t feel that the book was saying things differently enough” from the original article. Ms. Sweeney, who said she had consulted with others at City University, acknowledged that they had begun planning for an event in September moderated by J. J. Goldberg, the editor of The Forward, a leading American Jewish weekly, but once he chose not to participate, she decided to pass. Mr. Goldberg, who was traveling in Israel, said in a telephone interview that “there should be more of an open debate.” But appearing alone with the authors would have given the impression that The Forward was presenting the event and thereby endorsing the book, he said, and he did not want to do that. A discussion with other speakers of differing views would have been different, he added. “I don’t think the book is very good,” said Mr. Goldberg, who said he read a copy of the manuscript about six weeks ago. “They haven’t really done original research. They haven’t talked to the people who are being lobbied or those doing the lobbying.”
Overall Mr. Mearsheimer said he thinks the response to their views will be “less ferocious than last time, because it’s becoming increasingly difficult to make the argument in a convincing way that anyone who criticizes the lobby or Israel is an anti-Semite or a self-hating Jew.” Both Mr. Mearsheimer and Mr. Walt pointed to the growing dissatisfaction with the war in Iraq, criticism of Israel’s war in Lebanon and the publication of former President Jimmy Carter’s book “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid” as making it somewhat easier to criticize Israel openly. “This isn’t a cabal; this isn’t anything secretive,” Mr. Walt said. American Jews who lobby on Israel’s behalf are not all that different from the National Rifle Association, the anti-tax movement, AARP or the American Petroleum Institute, he said, “They just happen to be really good at it.” “It’s the way American politics work,” he continued. “Sometimes powerful interest groups get what they want, and it’s not good for the country as a whole. I would say that about the farm lobby and about the Cuba lobby.” To the authors, dual loyalty is as American as Presidents’ Day sales and “Law & Order” reruns. As Mr. Mearsheimer explained: “People are allowed to have multiple loyalties. They have religious loyalties, loyalty to family, to an organization and you can have loyalty to other countries. Someone who is Irish can have a loyalty to Ireland.” “The problem,” he said “is when you raise the subject of dual loyalty, many people tend to think of it in the context of the old anti-Semitic canard and making the argument that Jews are disloyal to the U.S.” In print and in interviews both authors have stressed that they hold no animus towards Israel or Jews. “We think Israeli policy is fundamentally flawed,” Mr. Mearsheimer said, “just as we think American policy is fundamentally flawed.”
James Morris wrote:
Dear. Ms.Kuzmarov, Thank you for your reply. Mr. Fager’s decision was a predictable one. Especially with the pro-Israel bias in the ‘American’ press/media for the most part. There is no valid reason for ’60 Minutes’ not to cover such (other than putting the interests of Israel ahead of America’s).
Sincerely,
James Morris
“Kuzmarov, Sara” <KuzmarovS@cbsnews.com> wrote:
Dear Mr. Morris,
Thank you for your interest in “60 Minutes”.
We have considered your segment idea, but have decided not to pursue it at this time.
Sincerely,
Sara Kuzmarov
Sara Kuzmarov | Associate Producer | 60 Minutes | 212-975-8018 | cell 917-509-3037 |
http://www.itszone.co.uk/zone0/viewtopic.php?t=77703
As Ray McGovern has recently observed, one of the odd things about Mearsheimer and Walt’s book is that it makes no mention of the clearest example of the clout that the Israel lobby has in Washington: the American cover-up of Israel’s attack on the USS Liberty.
Israel came up with a bogus story that the attack was accidental, and the manufactured conventional wisdom in the US is that it is not clear whether it was deliberate or not. However, a recent story by the Chicago Tribune makes it clear that there is little doubt that the attack was indeed deliberate. The only thing that is not clear is why the Israeli government decided to attack the Liberty.
What clearer evidence can there be that our country’s foreign policy is controlled by a foreign lobby than that when a foreign country deliberately attacks one of our ships, killing 34 servicemen and wounding at least 173, our country not only does nothing to punish the attacker, but actually hushes the attack up?
No one can disagree with your last comment as Israel has always been an exception to standards of behavior that even nondemocratic countries often try to follow. Fear of the Lobby goes deep.
As for Mearsheimer and Walt’s slighting of the incident, well who can respond to that except them.
What would bother me quite a bit is to learn that American fighter jets were involved.