Is the Israeli Lobby Too Powerful?

Foreign Policy Scholars Banned From Discussing the Issue in Chicago

 

By Gene J. Koprowski

Saturday, Sept. 8, 2007

 

 

    CHICAGO -- Former White House national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski recently praised the authors of the just released book, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy for courageously opening up a “much-needed” public debate on the influences behind America’s international agenda.

    So why won't the Chicago Council on Global Affairs let the authors of that book continue the debate?

    That's a question increasingly being asked here now, as the Council, one of the better known think tanks in Chicago, has cancelled a speaking engagement scheduled for September 27 by Professors John J. Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Stephen M. Walt of Harvard University.

    The book, released this week by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, was to be a subject of a forum this month at the council, a non-partisan organization, founded in the 1920s, as President Wilson was pressing for the League of Nations, and greater international cooperation, to hold public forums on international trade and foreign affairs.

    The book is critical of the U.S.-Israel relationship, which it claims is fostered by Christian fundamentalists and American Jewish organizations. The book also argues that the U.S.-Israel relationship is not in the “national interest” of the U.S., and that an array of foreign policy entanglements in the Middle East could have been avoided if the U.S. had not been unduly influenced by Jerusalem.

Council president Marshall Bouton said that he thought the group’s forum was not an appropriate one for the authors, and that their opinions needed to be countered by an “opposing viewpoint.” Bouton said in a statement that pro-Israeli groups had not pressured him into his decision.

    But, the authors think otherwise, and are claiming censorship. In a letter sent to all members of the board of the council, Professors Mearsheimer and Walt said they believed “political pressure” was behind the decision to rescind the offer to speak.

    "Council President Marshall Bouton phoned one of us and informed him that he was cancelling the event," wrote the professors, in their missive to the board, a copy of which was read by Bannedmagazine.com. "He said he felt ‘extremely uncomfortable’ in making the call and that his decision did not reflect his own view on our book. Instead, he explained, his decision was based on the need to protect the institution."

    From whom the institution needed protection is not entirely clear. Professors Mearsheimer and Walt are well-known academics and authors, and previously penned a 35,000 word article, which was the basis of their new book, for the London Review of Books, and are well-known in intellectual circles. The book has been criticized by major Jewish groups, including the American Jewish Committee, whose spokesman Todd Winer, said the book was flawed by "shoddy scholarship" and did not present any new ideas.

    Winer also denied the claim that the authors were being censored, calling that a "stretch."

    The controversy has garnered national media attention. The Chicago Tribune has reported on it, as has this week’s edition of The New Yorker. The coverage has been focusing on the question of whether Israel bears some of the burden for convincing the Bush Administration to topple Saddam Hussein in Iraq, and may be behind efforts to convince the White House to take out Iran’s nuclear facilities.

    The authors, moreover, argue that any debate involving U.S. foreign policy and Israeli influence quickly descends into charges of anti-Semitism, though David Remnick defended the pair in his piece in this week’s edition of The New Yorker as "serious scholars, and there is no reason to doubt their sincerity."

    Writes Remnick, "In Mearsheimer and Walt’s cartography, the Israel lobby is not limited to AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. It is a loose yet well-oiled coalition of Jewish-American organizations, 'watchdog' groups, think tanks, Christian evangelicals, sympathetic journalists, and neocon academics."

    Bouton said he is now "embarrassed" about the controversy, and blames "miscommunication" between his staff and the publicists of the book’s publisher in New York City for the mishap, saying that he never wanted Mearsheimer and Walt to appear without a "counterpoint" being presented.

    Bouton also said that his staff had tried to find a leading authority on Israel-U.S. relations to speak in the forum with the professors, but that they were unable to do so.

    Though the controversy over the book is garnering national attention – Brzezinski commented on the tome in a recent issue of Foreign Affairs – the scrap over the cancelled speaking engagement has, until now, been mostly a local issue.

    That may change, shortly, however.

    The national director of the Anti-Defamation League, Abraham Foxman, is publishing a book that offers a counterpoint to Mearsheimer and Walt. The forthcoming book is called, The Deadliest Lies: The Israel Lobby and the Myth of Jewish Control. The title will be released this month by Palgrave Macmillan, and is likely to continue the controversy.

 

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