Jimmy Carter’s book against Israeli Apartheid likened to Mein Kampf, Protocols of Zion

July 17, 2008 on 9:52 pm | Friedrich Braun | Books , Jewish Diaspora , The Jewish Question | | Email This Post | Print this Post

In their book The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy, Mearsheimer and Walt repudiate the Protocols of Zion. They write:

“the notorious Protocols of the Elders of Zion, that well-known
anti-semitic forgery …” (p. 12)

“The infamous Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a tsarist forgery that
was exposed and discredited long ago …” (p. 146).

Yet the Israel Lobby have likened the writing of Mearsheimer and Walt,
on the Jewish Lobby, to the Protocols.

Now, Jimmy Carter is copping the same treatment.

The logic is:

A. The Protocols of Zion is a forgery.
B. Mearsheimer/Walt, and now Carter, make allegations like the Protocols.
C. Therefore (because the Protocols is a forgery) they are wrong.

There is a group of people on the “Far Right” - including Alexander
Baron, and now John Birdman Bryant - who ridicule me for arguing the
genuineness of the Protocols.

But the propagandists in the US media insist that if there is ANY Jewish
conspiracy, then it is the same Jewish conspiracy the Protocols describes.

That is, they insist that one not only repudiate the Protocols, but any
other book alleging Jewish conspiratorial action.

Benjamin Ginsberg, an American Jewish professor of Political Science at
John Hopkins University, wrote in his book The Fatal Embrace: Jews and
the State:

“The chief executive officers of the three major television networks,
and the four largest film studios are Jews, as are the owners of the
nation’s largest newspaper chain and most influential single newspaper,
the New York Times.”

This in itself is evidence of conspiracy. But this scholarly book never
reaches the public.

In the next email, I will give reasons why the proof that the Protocols
is a forgery is not really a proof at all.

(1) Mearsheimer/Walt book is “The New Protocols” - Abraham H. Miller,
Front Page Magazine
(2) Alan Dershowitz likens Mearsheimer/Walt book to Protocols, David Duke
(3) Jimmy Carter’s book against Israeli Apartheid likened to Mein Kampf
(4) The Protocols of the Elder Carter, by Philip Klein - American Spectator
(5) Mearsheimer/Walt, Carter recall accusations of the Protocols - John
Judis, New Republic

(1) Mearsheimer/Walt book is “The New Protocols” - Abraham H. Miller,
Front Page Magazine

The New Protocols

By Abraham H. Miller

FrontPageMagazine.com

April 3, 2006

http://frontpagemagazine.com/Articles/Printable.aspx?GUID={419A0F3A-7748-4DB
7-AC75-1E0D051F6ED4}
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=419A0F3A-7748-4DB7-AC75-
1E0D051F6ED4

Professors Stephen Walt and John I Mearsheimer’s recently disseminated
anti-Semitic screed has been ripped apart by both prominent scholars and
literary figures showing it to be an intellectual fraud being passed off
as serious scholarship. The scholarly issues surrounding the Walt and
Mearsheimer piece are now part of the public discussion. What has been
far and away less discussed is how it is possible for two scholars to
produce with the imprimatur of two great universities—an imprimatur
since withdrawn—a study that is so patently racist that David Duke, the
Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, displays it prominently on his
website. …

Walt and Mearsheimer will never create foreign policy, and outside of
academia, no one gives a hoot about their opinions or cares who they
are. Were it not for compulsory reading lists imposed on graduate
students, there would not even be an audience for their rather turgid
and repetitive writings.

By engaging in infamy and racism, they have accomplished what
academicians salivate after, some recognition that they are not
irrelevant. Indeed, they no longer are. Hate websites from Mecca to
Damascus and those of various racial supremacy groups from Sweden to New
Orleans will now make them relevant far beyond the mere fifteen minutes
of fame they craved. Anti-Semites have now found the new Protocols of
the Elders of Zion.

Abraham H. Miller is emeritus professor, University of Cincinnati. He
has written extensively on the Middle East for both academic and popular
venues.

(2) Alan Dershowitz likens Mearsheimer/Walt book to Protocols, David Duke

David Duke Claims to Be Vindicated By a Harvard Dean

By ELI LAKE, Staff Reporter of the Sun

New York Sun

March 20, 2006

http://www.nysun.com/national/david-duke-claims-to-be-vindicated-by-a-harvar
d/29380/

A paper recently co-authored by the academic dean of Harvard’s Kennedy
School of Government about the allegedly far-reaching influence of an
“Israel lobby” is winning praise from white supremacist David Duke.

The Palestine Liberation Organization mission to Washington is
distributing the paper, which also is being hailed by a senior member of
Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist organization.

But the paper, “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy,” by the
Kennedy School’s Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer of the University of
Chicago, is meeting with a more critical reception from many of those it
names as part of the lobby. The 83-page “working paper” claims a network
of journalists, think tanks, lobbyists, and largely Jewish officials
have seized the foreign policy debate and manipulated America to invade
Iraq. Included in this network, the authors say, are the editors of the
New York Times, the scholars at the Brookings Institution, students at
Columbia, “pro-Israel” senior officials in the executive branch, and
“neoconservative gentiles” including columnist George Will.

Duke, a former Louisiana state legislator and one-time Ku Klux Klan
leader, called the paper “a great step forward,” but he said he was
“surprised” that the Kennedy School would publish the report. …

A professor at Harvard Law School, Alan Dershowitz, whom the authors
call an “apologist” for Israel, said he found much of the paper to be
“trash.” He said, “It could have been written by Pat Buchanan, by David
Duke, Noam Chomsky, and some of the less intelligent members of Hamas.
An intelligent member of Hamas would not have made these mistakes.”

Those mistakes for Mr. Dershowitz include, for example, the assertion
that “There is no question, for example, that many Al Qaeda leaders,
including bin Laden, are motivated by Israel’s presence in Jerusalem and
the plight of the Palestinians,” which Mr. Dershowitz says “is just absurd.”

Mr. Dershowitz was particularly troubled by the claim in the paper that
Israeli “citizenship is based on the principle of blood kinship.” He
pointed out that the authors had conflated Israel’s law of return with
its criteria for citizenship. “That’s right from the neo Nazi Web sites.
Anybody can be a citizen of Israel. He confuses the law of return for
the criteria for citizenship. He never mentions that a Jew cannot be a
citizen in Jordan and Saudi Arabia,” Mr. Dershowitz said.

Mr. Walt said on this citizenship point last night that he wanted to
check into it. “We were not writing on Saudi Arabia and Jordan,” he said.

Mr. Dershowitz also objected to the paper’s claim that the 2000 Oslo
offer to Yasser Arafat would have created “Bantustans.” Mr. Dershowitz
said, “They should talk to President Clinton about that. The West Bank
territory would have been completely contiguous.”

“What he is saying is, ’some of my best lobbyists are Jews. Don’t
confuse what we are saying with the Protocols of the Elders of Zion,’”
Mr. Dershowitz said. “Sorry, but it sounds very similar to me. The only
difference is the Protocols are a forgery, but this is actually written
by two bigots.”

The authors attempt to distinguish their argument from that of classical
anti-Semites, writing at one point, “there is nothing improper about
American Jews and their Christian allies attempting to sway U.S policy
towards Israel. The Lobby’s activities are not the sort of conspiracy
depicted in anti-Semitic tracts like the Protocols of the Elders of
Zion.” At another point, the authors distance themselves from the
president of Iran by writing, “Israel’s survival is not in doubt - even
if some Islamic extremists make outrageous and unrealistic references to
‘wiping it off the map.’”

Yet the paper also refers to “the unmatched power of the Israel Lobby.”
It says, “Were it not for the Lobby’s ability to manipulate the American
political system, the relationship between Israel and the United States
would be far less intimate than it is today.”

“AIPAC, which is a de facto agent for a foreign government, has a
stranglehold on the U.S. Congress,” says the paper, which also accuses
“the Lobby” of “manipulating the media” and being “a critical element”
in the American decision to attack Iraq in March 2003.

A retired lecturer at Harvard, Martin Peretz, who is editor of The New
Republic, a magazine named in the report as one of those that “zealously
defend Israel at every turn,” said, “It is easier to attribute
disloyalty to Jews than to question the loyalty of Islamists. This is
really questioning the loyalty of Jews, that is what this is about.
Everyone is looped in, even people who are a little dicey about Israel
like Aaron David Miller and Howard Dean. This goes from the lobby in
capital letters, from Jerry Falwell to every left wing Jewish Democrat
in the House. It is the imagining of a wall to wall conspiracy and
therefore it’s nutsy.”

The executive director of the Committee for Accurate Middle East
Reporting in America, Andrea Levin, said yesterday that she would be
asking the Kennedy School to withdraw the paper because it failed to
meet academic standards. She said the paper relied too much on “new
historians,” a group of Israeli academics who have been critical of the
founding of Israel. She called them “a thoroughly discredited lot.” She
also said the authors wrongly say that her group organized a rally in
front of the Boston affiliate of national public radio.

One of the claims in the paper is that “The Lobby’s goals are also
served when pro-Israel individuals occupy important positions in the
executive branch.” To prove this point they point to a former Aipac
official, Martin Indyk’s high positions in the Clinton administration
and the fact that Dennis Ross left government service in 2001 to join
the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. This list of these
pro-Israel officials also included Mr. Ross’s former deputy Aaron
Miller, who they point out “has lived in Israel and often visits there.”

Mr. Miller, who wrote an opinion piece for the Washington Post in 2005
complaining that during the 2000 failed peace negotiations he helped
broker, American diplomats often served as “Israel’s lawyer,” differed
with Messrs. Walt and Mearsheimer. “The lobby has an important influence
but not control. On issues related to assistance for Israel there is no
question the organized Jewish community has a profound impact,” Mr.
Miller said. “The argument breaks down when he says the Jewish lobby is
somehow responsible for Iraq.” Mr. Miller added that the pro-Israel
lobby is not powerful enough to influence the executive branch in the
manner in which Messrs. Mearsheimer and Walt say.

Another way the authors say the Israel lobby exercises influence is
through think tanks. Under the subchapter heading “Think Tanks that
Think One Way,” the authors say, “Pro Israel forces have established a
commanding presence at the American Enterprise Institute, the Brookings
Institution, the Center for Security Policy, the Foreign Policy Research
Institute, the Heritage Foundation, the Hudson Institute, the Institute
for Foreign Policy Analysis, and the Jewish Institute for National
Security Affairs (JINSA).”

The president of the Hudson Institute, Herbert London, said the notion
that his institution had a standard line on American policy to Israel
“was patently absurd.” He pointed out that a senior fellow at his
institute was the former director of the National Security Agency,
William Odom, who has not only been a vociferous critic of Israel but
also the Iraq war.

“The Saudis want to express an opinion, I don’t object. People have the
right to express their opinions,” Mr. London said. “They don’t have
anything to say about how the Saudis try to influence opinion in think
tanks, universities, and corporations.”

In December of 2005 Harvard announced it had received a $20 million gift
from a Saudi prince, Alwaleed Bin Talal Bin Abdulaziz Alsaud.

A former executive director of the American Israel Public Affairs
Committee, Morris Amitay, who is quoted in the Kennedy School paper,
minimized the document’s significance. “I would be worried if Henry
Kissinger was saying this. But who are these guys?” Mr. Amitay said. “As
far as I’m concerned this is a tribute to the Jewish community. We
couldn’t do anything about Auschwitz, but look, we now control foreign
policy for a region of the world so vital to American interests.”

Meghan Clyne and Josh Gerstein contributed to this report.

(3) Jimmy Carter’s book against Israeli Apartheid likened to Mein Kampf

Jimmy Carter’s Kampf

by Jack Engelhard

Israel National News

Published: 12/08/06, 10:27 AM

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/6757

That was Borat, not Jimmy Carter, who urged a crowd of lounge lizards in
Tucson to join him in singing, “Throw the Jew Down the Well.” Carter has
the same message, but without the spoof.

That was Borat, not Jimmy Carter, who urged a crowd of lounge lizards in
Tucson to join him in singing, “Throw the Jew Down the Well.”

Carter has the same message, but (without the spoof) his narrative comes
in a book that’s just being released and is titled Palestine: Peace Not
Apartheid.

Apparently the written word is not enough, so Carter has taken his
grudge against Israel on tour. There he is with his brotherhood on
National Public Radio, NPR, where Israel-bashing is always welcome; and
here he is on C-Span; and he keeps on going and won’t stop until he’s
got us all signing up for Holocaust Part 2.

Historians tell us that Pharaoh was the first to stir up the multitudes
against the Jews, and we have it from Scripture that a new Pharaoh will
arise to torment us from generation to generation. Carter knows his
Bible and the part where Pharaoh says: “Come, let us deal craftily with
this people.”

So it shall be written, so it shall be done.

Harvard professor Alan Dershowitz has already ripped Carter’s book by
chapter and verse, so that’s the place to go, Dershowitz, to find
point-by-point where Carter turns history on its head, truth inside out.
That’s where we find exactly how Carter casts five and half million
Israelis as villains against 300 million peace-loving Arabs.

Carter embraces Hamas, which openly calls for the destruction of Israel,
and Carter reminds us that the Israelis never want peace, never make
concessions. The fact that Israel gave up the Sinai and more recently
gave up Gaza - well, all that makes no difference once you’ve got your
mind made up and your heart is brimming with hostility, hatred and bigotry.

The credit for peace, by Carter’s definition, goes to someone like a
67-year-old grandmother who blows herself up on a suicide mission and is
then cheered by her family, friends and neighbors. Checkpoints to stop
such behavior are, in Carter’s terminology, “apartheid.” Along the TV
and speaking circuits, Carter seldom misses a chance to inventory his
grievances against the Jewish State and to promote his Mein Kampf, his
struggle to enlist the rest of us in joining his campaign to blow down
the single house the Jews built to spare themselves further pogroms and
genocides.

Carter’s Protocols have already, and quickly, found enough readers to
make it a best-seller. But Professor Kenneth W. Stein is not buying.
Stein, an associate of Carter’s for some 23 years, has now disassociated
himself from Carter, citing the book’s “factual errors” and “glaring
omissions” and “invented segments.” Stein adds that the book’s
“one-sided nature” is “meant to provoke.”

For some time, word circulated about a certain ex-president who actually
helped Yasser Arafat write his speeches in order to polish that mass
murderer into a more presentable figure for the American people.
Americans couldn’t stomach Arafat’s own kampf to “drive the Jews into
the sea,” so Jimmy Carter, it was said, changed that - only the words,
not the intent - to, “We want peace.”

Many of us found that hard to believe about an ex-president “who builds
homes,” and it is still difficult to prove, but now, with this book, we
can believe anything. The unintended subliminal message from the pages
of this updated Mein Kampf is that, with people like Jimmy Carter on the
prowl, the need for a strong Israel, supported by righteous Jews and
true Christians, is more urgent than ever.

That we Americans survived a man like this as president says much for
the strength of our country. Yes, we survived and so will Israel.

If you can’t read Carter’s book, read his lips, as I did on C-Span.

The man is an anti-Semite.

Go here to get the latest installment of The Bathsheba Deadline - Jack
Engelhard’s latest novel and Amazon.com’s first serialized novel. Part
11 is now available for download. Haven’t started reading it yet? Click
the link and scroll down - all previous installments are there and ready
to be downloaded.

17 Kislev 5767 / 08 December 06

(4) The Protocols of the Elder Carter, by Philip Klein - American Spectator

The Protocols of the Elder Carter

By Philip Klein

American Spectator

Published 3/9/2007 12:08:23 AM

http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=11126

Jimmy Carter likes Jews. Or at least that’s what he wants you to believe.

Speaking to a packed auditorium of over a thousand at The George
Washington University on Thursday, the poet, peanut farmer, and former
president was hell bent on convincing the audience that he’s pro-Semitic.

Carter opened his speech by discussing the efforts during his presidency
to help Soviet Jewish dissidents, to set up a commission to create a
Holocaust museum (”Elie Wiesel served as chairman”), and to broker the
Camp David peace accords between Israel and Egypt.

Of course, more recently, he has been in the news for writing a book
describing Israeli policy toward Palestinians as “apartheid.”

“I realize that this has caused some concern in the Jewish community,”
Carter said. But there’s no need to overreact, because he wasn’t
referring to policies within Israel, only policies in the Palestinian
territories. “Let me make clear that the forced segregation and
domination of Arabs by Israelis is not based on race and should give no
aid or comfort to those who attempted to equate racism with Zionism.”

Apartheid, of course, has a very specific connotation, and refers to a
policy in Africa of state-imposed racial segregation and oppression. The
United States withdrew from the notorious 2001 UN World Conference
Against Racism in Durban precisely because words such as “apartheid”
were being used to describe Israeli policies in an effort to equate
Zionism with racism. At the time, Carter criticized the Bush
administration for leaving the conference.

“The driving force for the terrible oppression and persecution in
Palestine comes from a minority of Israelis and their desire to
confiscate and colonize Palestinian lands,” Carter said Thursday. A
trade of land for peace would be acceptable to most Israelis, he said,
“but not to a minority of the more conservative leaders who have
intruded into Palestine and who are unfortunately supported by AIPAC and
most of the vocal American Jewish communities.”

Following the publication of his book, Carter has received a lot of
criticism, both for his inflammatory title, numerous errors, and failure
to include footnotes or citations. Outside GWU’s Lisner auditorium,
about a dozen protesters held signs, passed out flyers, and chanted:
“Carter Is A Liar.”

In an op-ed for the Los Angeles Times, Carter elaborated on why he’s
been criticized: “Book reviews in the mainstream media have been written
mostly by representatives of Jewish organizations who would be unlikely
to visit the occupied territories…”

Lest anybody get the wrong idea from such comments, in his speech to GWU
students, Carter was sure to explain that he doesn’t buy into old
stereotypes.

“I am personally familiar with the management of major news
organizations,” he said, naming Cox Enterprises, Knight-Ridder, and
Gannett. “I have never claimed, nor believed, that American Jews
controlled the news media.”

In the question and answer period, one student asked Jimmy how he felt
about the 14 members of the Carter Center advisory board who resigned in
protest over his book. Though Carter said he regrets their decision to
resign, he was gracious to them: “They all happen to be Jewish
Americans, I understand the tremendous pressures on them.”

One questioner asked Carter how he thinks the United States should deal
with an emboldened Iran.

“After the Shah fell, I was still president, and we established very
quickly diplomatic relations with Iran,” he reminded the audience. “They
opened an office in Washington, and we opened an office in Tehran, and
it was those members of our ambassadorial staff who were taken hostage.”
He failed to specify that 52 Americans remained captive for 444 days.

Carter said his policy during this period “was that we should have
diplomatic relations and discussions with Iran, if not with a full
ambassador there, at least with a large staff so we could communicate
with each other, and I think that would still be the preferable approach
to Iran, and also, by the way, to Syria.”

Who can argue with success?

Another questioner asked Carter why he refused to debate the content of
his book with figures such as Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz and
former Ambassador Dennis Ross, especially given that one of the supposed
aims of his book was to provoke debate.

“I don’t see any reason for me to debate a man from Harvard who knows
very little of anything about present circumstances in the West Bank,”
Carter responded. He also provided the audience with some
autobiographical details.

“I’ve never been afraid of debates,” Carter said. “As a matter of fact,
when I was a peanut farmer I debated the President of the United States
three times…and, of course, I debated my challenger, President Reagan.”

God Bless the Gipper.
Philip Klein is a reporter forThe American Spectator

Copyright 2008, The American Spectator

(5) Mearsheimer/Walt, Carter recall accusations of the Protocols - John
Judis, New Republic

Split Personality

By John Judis

The New Republic Online, February 8, 2007

http://www.carnegieendowment.org/publications/index.cfm?fa=view&id=19028&pro
g=zgp&proj=zusr

Is there a growing trend among American intellectuals (and former
presidents) toward anti-Semitism? That is what a number of recent
articles, essays, and speeches–the latest on “The Poisoning of America”
from Malcolm Hoenlein, the executive director of the Conference of
Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations at the Herzilya
conference–would suggest. Some of these statements stop short of saying
that Tony Judt, Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer, Tony Kushner, and
Jimmy Carter (to name some of the best-known targets) are anti-Semites.
Instead, they say that what they have written is anti-Semitic or
encourages anti-Semitism. In The Wall Street Journal last year, Bret
Stephens, a member of the editorial board, suggested that Walt and
Mearsheimer’s essay on the Israel lobby “may not be anti-Semitic in
intent [but] may yet be anti-Semitic in effect.”

What these charges are meant to do is to raise the warning flag of
anti-Semitism over certain opinions, placing them beyond argument–in a
realm consigned to social pathologies. Who would argue, for instance,
over the “history” contained within The Protocols of the Elders of Zion?
In “Progressive Jewish Thought and the New Anti-Semitism,” a paper
published by the American Jewish Committee, Alvin H. Rosenfeld writes of
the critics of Israel interviewed for Radicals, Rabbis and Peacemakers:
Conversations with Jewish Critics of Israel, “[They are] not driven by
anything remotely like reasoned historical analysis, but rather by a
complex range of psychological as well as political motives that subvert
reason and replace it with something akin to hysteria.”

My intention in broaching this controversy is not to argue on behalf of
Walt, Mearsheimer, or Judt. I think Walt and Mearsheimer do exaggerate
the influence of the Israel lobby and define the lobby in such an
inclusive way as to beg the question of its influence. I also don’t
share Judt’s hopes for a secular democratic state on what is now Israel,
the West Bank, and Gaza. But I think that, in characterizing these views
as anti-Semitic, or as contributing to anti-Semitism, Rosenfeld and
other critics are attempting to suppress an important debate on American
foreign policy toward Israel and the Middle East. And they have also
fallen prey to a contradiction within their own thinking.

Anti-Semitism has appeared in many guises–from the religious
anti-Judaism of Medieval times to the racial and conspiracy theories of
twentieth-century Europe. (For a recent discussion, see Walter Laqueur,
The Changing Face of Anti-Semitism). The term itself dates from the late
nineteenth century, and it could be seen to include the imputation to
Jews of certain undesirable traits and practices and the imputation to
Jewish leaders of international designs that would undermine the
societies in which they lived. The classic anti-Semitic text is the
Protocols, which describes a fictional conspiracy by Jewish leaders to
take over the world. In the United States, anti-Semitism generally took
a less malignant form than in Europe, but, in the 1890s, some Populist
Party members believed that Jewish bankers were secretly in charge of
the economy, and, in the late 1930s, some isolationists believed Jews
put their loyalty to their own people above their loyalty to the United
States.

The critics of the new anti-Semitism label two kinds of views to be
anti-Semitic. First, they argue that, by attributing inordinate
influence to the Israel lobby–and therefore to American Jews–and by
describing that influence as being contrary to (or not necessarily
consistent with) the American national interest, Walt and Mearsheimer
and their supporters are dredging up older anti-Semitic conspiracy
theories. “Accusations of powerful Jews behind the scenes are part of
the most dangerous traditions of modern anti-semitism,” wrote historian
Jeffrey Herf and political scientist Andrei Markovits in a response to
Walt and Mearsheimer.

Second, the critics argue that, by voicing overly negative views of
Israel itself–or by calling for Israel’s replacement by a secular
democratic state–Judt and others are contributing to anti-Semitism. The
critics are not deterred by the fact that some of these authors,
including Judt, are Jewish. Brandeis sociology professor Shulamit
Reinharz, writes that many of these authors “would say that they are
simply anti-Zionists, not anti-Semites. But I disagree, because in a
world where there is only one Jewish state, to oppose it vehemently is
to endanger Jews.”

What of these charges? Walt and Mearsheimer do suggest significant
influence by some Jewish leaders over American foreign policy. That
certainly recalls the accusations of the Protocols. But the Protocols
were a pure fabrication, while Walt and Mearsheimer’s case is based upon
a reality that most people who study Washington concede: The
“pro-Israel” lobby, led by AIPAC, exerts enormous influence over U.S.
policy toward Israel. Walt and Mearsheimer extend that influence to
policy toward the entire Middle East and to the decision to invade and
occupy Iraq. That’s a mistake, in my opinion, but it’s an arguable case.
What would make their argument similar to the older anti-Semitism would
be a claim that the Israel lobby controls, rather than influences,
foreign policy and that its reach extends to all regions and not merely
the Middle East.

Walt and Mearsheimer’s critics also draw an analogy between their views
and older charges of “dual loyalty.” But what distinguished these older
charges was the large element of pure fantasy. Jewish bankers getting
together secretly to plot the future of the world? International
socialism as a Jewish plot? Walt and Mearsheimer take the argument
beyond where I would do so by tossing Jewish neoconservative
intellectuals and policy-makers into the same “lobby” as AIPAC, but
there is no question that there is a powerful lobby, run and funded by
American Jews, that looks out for the interests of Israel.

AIPAC’s staff and officials claim there is no contradiction between
representing the interests of Israel and those of the United States, but
that’s at best an arguable point. Certainly, AIPAC has found itself
defending Israeli policies–such as the invasion of Lebanon in 1982 and
the rapid expansion of settlements in the West Bank in the late 1980s,
or the 1993 Oslo Accords, or even the most recent Israeli offensive in
Lebanon–that, in the opinion of many Americans and Jewish-Americans,
were not in the interest of the United States. I am not arguing that any
of them necessarily were, merely that there are bound to have been
differences. American and Israeli interests are not linked together in a
logical equation; they are real-world entities whose priorities have
sometimes diverged. And when they do, any organizations or individuals
that want to represent the best interests of Israel, or the policies of
the Israel government, will be torn by the problem of dual loyalty.

Rosenfeld, Harris, and others are on firmer ground in arguing that some
criticisms of Israel itself are anti-Semitic. Some European and Middle
Eastern commentators simply identify Jews with Israelis and ascribe to
“Israelis” the same kinds of evil conspiracies that they would have
earlier attributed to “Jews”–for instance, secretly blowing up the
World Trade Center while letting the blame for the deed fall on Islamic
radicals, or infecting Arabs with AIDS. But what also bothers the
critics of the new anti-Semitism are Jewish intellectuals like Judt,
Kushner, or poet Adrienne Rich, all of whom harshly criticize the
Israeli state, compare its policies in the occupied territories to South
Africa’s in the Bantustans or even Hitler’s in Germany, call for a
secular democratic state, or criticize Zionism itself. These kinds of
views, Rosenfeld writes, “recall older versions of anti-Semitism.”

But the harsh denunciation of Israeli policies can be offensive without
being anti-Semitic. It’s not uncommon in political argument to dredge up
past evils to dramatize what are believed to be present ones. American
administrations constantly evoke Hitler and the Nazis to characterize
their current enemies. Indeed, Rosenfeld et al. are engaged in the same
kind of hyped rhetoric when they identify Walt and Mearsheimer with
David Duke or with Nazis, or when, like the American Jewish Committee’s
David Harris, they equate Walt and Mearsheimer’s views with those of
people who imagine “Jews as inoculators of AIDS in the Arab world or
contaminators of Palestinian water sources.”

The same can be said of Judt’s argument for a democratic secular state
or for arguments against Zionism itself. These have been, and should
remain, arguable subjects among Jews as well as non-Jews. As Rosenfeld
acknowledges, many of these arguments can be found in Israel itself. For
instance, in Bernard Avishai’s important book, The Tragedy of Zionism,
published in 2002, he argued that the “romance of Zionism harmed–and
may yet wreck–[Israel’s] chances to survive as a democracy.” If
anything, Judt’s position for a secular democratic state is utopian. It
hopes for too much. But, in its folly, it also reflects the same
universalist tradition in Jewish thought that contributed to American
Jewish support for civil rights. In other words, it might be foolish to
think that Jews and Palestinians could coexist in the same state, but
it’s not anti-Semitic.

There is a paradox that haunts these charges of anti-Semitism. On the
one hand, Rosenfeld, Harris, and others want to deny that American Jews
and American Jewish organizations like AIPAC suffer from dual loyalty in
trying to influence U.S. foreign policy. It’s anti-Semitic or
contributes to anti-Semitism, they say, to make that charge. On the
other hand, they want to demand of American Jewish intellectuals a
certain loyalty to Israel, Israeli policies, and to Zionism as part of
their being Jewish. They make dual loyalty an inescapable part of being
Jewish in a world in which a Jewish state exists. And that’s probably
the case. Many Jews now suffer from dual loyalty–the same way that
Cuban-Americans or Mexican-Americans do. By ignoring this dilemma–and,
worse still, by charging those who acknowledge its existence with
anti-Semitism–the critics of the new anti-Semitism are engaged in a
flight from their own political selves. They are guilty of a certain
kind of bad faith.

These controversies over anti-Semitism come, too, at a predictable and
particularly unfortunate time in the discussion of U.S. foreign policy.
The last time a similar brouhaha arose was in the 1970s, when Jewish
peace organizations in the United States challenged Israel’s occupation
of Gaza and the West Bank. At the urging of the Israeli government,
organizations like Breira were run out of town by their traditional, and
more subservient, brethren. Partly as a result, the United States
acquiesced in Israeli policies that, in the long run, have benefited
neither the United States nor Israel. The same thing could happen again.
A debate has already begun over U.S. policy toward Iran in which AIPAC
and the Israeli government have expressed interest in the United States
stopping at nothing to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.
Fears of a new Holocaust–made more plausible by the very real
anti-Semitism of Iran’s president–have been sounded. What policies are
in the interest of the United States? And of Israel? These are difficult
questions, but they are not made easier to answer when critics of Israel
and of the Israel lobby in the United States are charged with anti-Semitism.

John B. Judis is a senior editor at The New Republic and a visiting
scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

–
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