Wednesday, April 05, 2006
Harvard's Kennedy School
Here's the gist, though I suggest you read it all.
Inept, even kooky academic work, then, but is it anti-Semitic? If by anti-Semitism one means obsessive and irrationally hostile beliefs about Jews; if one accuses them of disloyalty, subversion or treachery, of having occult powers and of participating in secret combinations that manipulate institutions and governments; if one systematically selects everything unfair, ugly or wrong about Jews as individuals or a group and equally systematically suppresses any exculpatory information -- why, yes, this paper is anti-Semitic.
Mearsheimer and Walt conceive of The Lobby as a conspiracy between the Washington Times and the New York Times, the Democratic-leaning Brookings Institution and Republican-leaning American Enterprise Institute, architects of the Oslo accords and their most vigorous opponents. In this world Douglas Feith manipulates Don Rumsfeld, and Dick Cheney takes orders from Richard Perle. They dwell on public figures with Jewish names and take repeated shots at conservative Christians (acceptable subjects for prejudice in intellectual circles), but they never ask why a Sen. John McCain today or, in earlier years, a rough-hewn labor leader such as George Meany declared themselves friends of Israel.
The authors dismiss or ignore past Arab threats to exterminate Israel, as well as the sewer of anti-Semitic literature that pollutes public discourse in the Arab world today. The most recent calls by Iran's fanatical -- and nuclear weapons-hungry -- president for Israel to be "wiped off the map" they brush aside as insignificant. There is nothing here about the millions of dollars that Saudi Arabia has poured into lobbying and academic institutions, or the wealth of Islamic studies programs on American campuses, though they note with suspicion some 130 Jewish studies programs on those campuses. West Bank settlements get attention; terrorist butchery of civilians on buses or in shopping malls does not. To dispute their view of Israel is not to differ about policy but to act as a foreign agent.
If this sounds personal, it is, although I am only a footnote target for Mearsheimer and Walt. I am a public intellectual and a proud Jew; sympathetic to Israel and extensively engaged in our nation's military affairs; vaguely conservative and occasionally hawkish. In a week my family will celebrate Passover with my oldest son -- the third generation to serve as an officer in the United States Army. He will be home on leave from the bomb-strewn streets of Baghdad. The patch on his shoulder is the same flag that flies on my porch.
Other supposed members of "The Lobby" also have children in military service. Impugning their patriotism or mine is not scholarship or policy advocacy. It is merely, and unforgivably, bigotry.
8 Comments:
By 
, at
Wed Apr 05, 04:16:00 PM:
I believe that Alan Dershowitz has debated these alleged academics and taken them apart. The danger, of course, is that with their lofty titles these "scholars" come cloaked in respectability. Their publication dishonors the institutions for which they work and makes them look at best like flawed scholars and at worst like partisan causists without a clear understanding of the conflict.
The Centrist
By 
Dawnfire82, at
Thu Apr 06, 12:58:00 AM:
I concur. It makes me feel almost guilty for appreciating "The Tragedy of Great Power Politics." (an IR book by Mearsheimer)
However, there's something to keep in the back of the mind; Jews in general are quick to cry anti-Semitism the same way that blacks like to cry racism and politicians cry partisanship. It doesn't matter if it's true if it brings negative attention to your opponent and sympathy to you.
By , at
Thu Apr 06, 05:38:00 AM:
dawnfire82:
But what if it is true?
A text that provides fallacious arguments emanating from scollars.
When schollarship takes on the appearance of an editorial then all scholars should rise up against the debasement of their profession.
I say they are just money grubbing capalists. The paper was written with Arab donors in mind. They want to get a bit of the Arab money floating around.
By , at
Thu Apr 06, 05:44:00 AM:
Ps:
it is drink more coffee time.
Capalists should read capitalists.
By Grumpy Old Man, at
Thu Apr 06, 09:13:00 AM:
The Mearshimer-Walt paper is a shoddy piece of work in many ways (ignores the Jewish refugees from Arab countries in Israel, a classic population exchange characteristic of late nationalism, for example), but the authors do stumble into a few truths:
1. Our level of support for Israel ($500 per capita plus, to a country with a European level economy) is extraordinarily high in both absolute and relative terms.
2. It's politically unwise to question US Israel policy, or its extent. If you do it, you'll get swarmed.
3. To use an avian metaphor, Israel is more albatross than eagle for our Middle East policy.
4. Thus our policy is based upon sentiment as much as realpolitik. The factual underpinnings for the sentiment are less substantial than advertised.
By Cardinalpark, at
Thu Apr 06, 09:40:00 AM:
Grumpy Old Man and others:
The core fallacy of the "Jewish Lobby" argument put forth by M/W is that it operates alone, in a vacuum. It is pure bullpuckey. Saudi exerts enormous political influence. The Council on American Islamic Relations exerts influence. They are competing lobbies. It is all legal and above board. There is nothing wrong with what AIPAC does, as long as it operates within the law.
Where it devolves in my view (and Cohen's) into antisemitism a la Dreyfus is when you question the loyalty and patriotism of Wolfowitz, Feith or any Jew who serves in this or any other administration. That slur seems to be uniquely reserved for Jewry around the world. That slur also is incoherent and foolish, insofar as it presumes Rumsfeld, Cheney, Bush and Rice are puppets of the mischievous Jews. I remember hearing the same type of garbage from Pat Buchanan during Rubin's terms as Treasury Secretary. During the Mexican crisis and NAFTA discussions, Buchanan would launch into some political attack on Rubin and mention his former leadership of Gold - Man Sachs, said with particular emphasis on Gold, and with such obvious antipathy.
One knows antisemitism and one has it directed at them. Cohen has every right to claim it in this case, as has Alan Dershowitz, by the way.
One last point, the logical extension of the Mearsheimer Walt argument, taken to its extreme, would be that a Jew cannot serve in executive government capacity because of actual or presumed divided loyalty. This is a historical slur that predates the formation of Israel. Is that anti-semitism? You decide. But it is most definitely...
HORSESHIT.
By Grumpy Old Man, at
Thu Apr 06, 04:31:00 PM:
There's a lot of genteel and not-so-genteel antisemitism in the whole "neocon plot" meme as an explanation for the war in Iraq, a variant on the old "dual loyalty" smear. Ironic, because I'm pretty sure that American Jews, on average, are less sympathetic to the war than most other religious and ethnic groups.
And nothing is more American than people of given heritages organizing to advance what they conceive to be the interests of their fellows (Greeks, Armenians, Irish, Arabs, Cubans all do this, for examle). The First Amendment allows this, and the most that can be said about it is that not every ethnic advocate's foreign policy views on every issuee is in the overall national interest of the U.S.
The problem arises with the fact that there is an organized pro-Israeli lobby (as the First Amendment permits), though not as broad and inclusive as Mearshimer and Walt suggest, which exists and is quite influential. Can one point to its existence and disagree with some or all of its positions, without being accused of antisemitism or (if you're Jewish) of "self-hatred?" That's where things get difficult.
Personally, I want Israel to live, in peace if possible, but I question whether the close patron-client relationsip that now exists is healthy for the US or for Israel. If I were in Congress I'd remember Charles Percy, and probably say nothing along these lines.
Some political scientists talk about "veto groups"--there's definitely one here.
By , at
Thu Apr 06, 10:23:00 PM:
From http://www.danieldrezner.com/mt/mt-comments.cgi?entry_id=2669:
I have been very disappointed in the reactions of otherwise smart people to this debate. The original article was sloppy, and its conclusions are questionable. But the most prominent responses -- Dershowitz, Cohen, etc. -- offer a crash course in common logical fallacies. A small sampling:
1) Guilt by association: Support for an argument from a dislikable person does not make the argument false. (David Duke also believes that the earth revolves around the sun, presumably.) Dershowitz's response paper on the Harvard website is a particularly sharp example of this logical fallacy, devoting many pages to showing how lots of bad/extreme people agree with the authors' claims. Death penalty opponents often make the same claim, asserting that since only "bad" countries (Iran, Syria) have capital punishment, then it must be wrong.
2) Non-sequitur: Pointing out that Walt and Measheimer failed to mention other lobbies (Cuban, Saudi, etc.) or the sins of other groups (Iran, the Palestinians) in no way disputes the paper's argument that the Israeli lobby is powerful and that supporting Israel is not in our best interests. Likewise, just because I neglect to detail the (plentiful) logical flaws of Walt and Mearsheimer's article here doesn't mean my arguments against its critics are invalid. Changing the subject merely evades the original argument; it does not defeat it.
3) Straw man: Nowhere in the original article can I find accusations of "occult powers," "disloyalty, subversion, or treachery," or evidence of the authors "selecting everything that is unfair, ugly, or wrong about Jews" (Cohen, Washington Post, 5 April). These would be easy arguments to defeat, but they are not contained in the original article. In fact, the authors explicitly refuse to generalize about Jews as a group, noting that "not all Jewish-Americans are part of the Lobby, because Israel is not a salient issue for many of them" and that the Israel lobby "also includes prominent Christian evangelicals."
4) Ad hominem: The basic charge of anti-Semitism proves nothing (and, I should note, is impossible to prove). Even if the authors were anti-Semitic, it does not make their argument wrong. Name-calling is a cheap tactic, not an argument. Calling me "anti-New York" doesn't disprove my argument that the Knicks suck.
5) False choice: Questioning U.S. support for Israel is not tantamount to concluding that the U.S. "no longer ha[s] a vital interest in the continued survival of the only democracy in the Middle East" (letter, London Review of Books, 6 April). The choice is not (necessarily) between supporting Israel unconditionally and condemning it to death. The authors argue that Israel would do just fine on its own; where is the contrary evidence?
6) Reductive reasoning: Dershowitz claims that the existence of terrorism in Europe and elsewhere proves that U.S. support for Israel is not the cause of its "terrorism problem." This presumes that if one terrorist act was unrelated to Israel, then they must all be unrelated. But there is no reason to believe this -- the presence of another motive in one case does not refute the existence of anti-Israeli motives in other cases.
7) Unpleasant implication: Ruth Wisse writes in the Wall Street Journal (22 March) that the authors' argument "heaps scorn on American judgment and values." This may upset people but it does nothing to disprove the argument itself. Just because one does not like the implications of an argument does not mean it is false (see: Evolution vs. Creationism).
8) Appeal to authority: We all love Dan, but being Mearsheimer's colleague at Chicago does not strengthen his argument that the paper is "piss-poor, monocausal social science." Cohen's appeal to a phony authority here is especially awkward considering that Mearsheimer, as Chicago's preeminent IR scholar, probably had some influence over Drezner's recent tenure denial. Is there a personal motive here? I have no idea -- I don't know how Mearsheimer voted, nor do I have any reason to doubt Drezner's objectivity. But anyone citing Drezner as an authority must address this potential credibility problem.
9) Hasty generalization: neither Walt nor Mearsheimer have ever written a word about the Israeli lobby over the course of their lengthy careers, and all of a sudden they are anti-Semites? No. One data point does not demonstrate a trend.
Of course, just because these critics have employed logical fallacies does not mean their arguments are wrong, either. But it does mean that Walt and Mearsheimer's critics have not made a strong case, despite apparent presumptions to the contrary.
Sadly, for all the heated replies the article has generated, I have seen none that engage the central claim of the authors, which is that the current level of support for Israel is not in the U.S. national interest. A few, but only a few, contest the argument that U.S. politicians are deterred from altering policy toward Israel in large part due to the political influence of domestic pro-Israeli actors. Most simply scream "anti-Semitism," which is a lazy scholar's way of dodging these central questions.
It is unfortunate that instead of engaging the debate, Cohen et. al chose to smear the authors with hysterical charges that only trigger emotional responses and inhibit a reasoned discussion. They lend support to Walt and Mearsheimer's assertion that those who raise the issue are met immediately with accusations of bigotry. Dershowitz and others are famous for their diatribes, but I expected better of Eliot Cohen. Shame on him for helping to muddy the waters.
