Daniel Levy’s review of the Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer book on the Israel lobby is posted on his blog Prospects for Peace. It’s the most thoughtful, measured, knowledgable, and, in my opinion, spot-on response to the book I’ve yet seen. Here’s how Levy himself summarizes his position, but the whole peice is a must read:
While I certainly take issue with the specific recent policy examples in the book (Iraq and Syria in particular), I am convinced that the relationship between the US, Israel and the lobby that speaks in its name needs to change for everyone’s sake, that this book contributes to a re-think and that the authors are not driven by prejudice.
8 responses so far ↓
1 greenmamba // Oct 10, 2007 at 4:25 am
W&M are rather particular about saying there’s nothing wrong with having a lobby, it’s very American etc etc. That’s sweet of them but if I was doing an interview, I’d ask about Endnote #1 in their original paper:
“Indeed, the mere existence of the Lobby suggests that unconditional support for Israel is not in the American national interest. If it was, one would not need an organized special interest group to bring it about.”
That bit of rubbish revealed rather clearly, a nasty bias; I expect it has been pointed out to them, hence change in attitude.
The US would do far better examining the increasing stranglehold of the Saudi Lobby because it’s quite obvious from the way State bosses Israel around that the Israel Lobby is quite limited.
(By the way, I gave just one example to show that W&M ARE biased. There are many others.)
2 Mike Nargizian // Oct 10, 2007 at 5:34 am
The whole Walt Mearsheimer issue is a complete red herring. First, there is anti-semitism in this country and certainly in Europe…. there’s prejudice everywhere, it’s just the degree, everyone is prejudice….
The Walt Mearsheimer show is a carefully orchestrated show and act…. I mean if one were going to design it you couldn’t draw it up any better…. not that it’s comparable by any means, but I mean even David Duke has dressed himself up to sound more understandable and believable and some of the points he make, regarding illegal immigration and minority set asides, hit home with the average person who might otherwise ever listen to him…..
So if you’re someone who would predisposed to think ill of Walt and Mearsheimer, particularly if you’re Jewish (my own prejudice right there) as Jackie Mason says about Liberal Jews…… you’re dying to find them not to be bigoted agenda driven guys, but good decent folks with whom you could simply disagree with…. it’s almost as if you want to believe they’re not haters of any degree… but reasonable people…. you always want the hater and extremist to like you and not think they’re evil…. somehow it makes a decent liberal person sleep better at night…..
Then you start to read their book and you see the great lengths they go to to point out “Jewish control” of the country and all the ramifications the “Jewish lobby” has caused to this country… and then you could almost subsitute the author for the Vanguard site in some sections… “Jews cause all wars” - “Jews control everything” (Protocols etc…)….. and you say wait a second I thought these guys were just going to write a prose on how the Lobby in Congress has gotten a little too powerful perhaps and has stifled alternate thought etc… but then you read how Joooos have controlled so much in this country dating back a century…..
You know it’s fuinny bcs Roosevelt was called Rosenfeld… and that’s the guy that wouldn’t even divert planes a few miles with Churchil to bomb tracks while Eichman sped the trains up out of Hungary to incinerate a few hundred thousnad Jews even though he knew Germany was losing the war….
It’s like you go from one extreme (a matter of opinion) AIPAC having a powerful successful lobby etc…. as well as the ADL etc… being a powerful voice in this country…. you ignore all the legitimate good cross cultural things the ADL does…. and you go to the other extreme you get the likes of Finkelstein and Walt and Mearsheimer…. coming at this end with a battering ram…. and a hard agenda (label that agenda however you like) and then you get even critics writing reviews that go out of their way to not label them anti-semitic catty around building a logical case and pointing to basically they have an agenda at best call it what you will…
Meanwhile you have these clowns glowing at the chance to ram the so-called “lobby” with trite old anti Jew labels with no care whatsoever… while of course giving the standard - we don’t fault the Jewish lobby - we don’t think all Jews - (while hitting every bell and whistle of Jew control) then pointing out it’s “Israeli policy”…. you know just enough appropriate disclaimers to float by…..
Then you have the ADL and others which often open their mouth too many times about things that don’t need to be critiqued basically having the Foxes in the hen house under “clever “”"academic”"” guise” and now they can’t do shit about them but engage them and carefully point out the flaws in their “”"logic”"”….
The logic or lack thereof is meaningless to the conversation…. they’re just feeding the sharks baby!! and they dam well know it, they want to batter “the other side”….
What’s ironic is the same people that seem so interested in finding the “logical prose” in their book, bending over backwards etc… are the same people that will strongly proclaim any hard critique of Tariq Ramadan, a Muslim Brotherhood disciple if ever they’re was one, as an Islamophobe… or call ANY member of a southern Arizona town….. good and bad people…. racist for complaining that Mexican migrants are literally walking through their towns at night… or call any Fox commentator a bigoted right wing neocon…etc…..
The hypocrisy is so fing rich you could cut it with only a verrrrry sharp knife.
Mike
3 Mike Nargizian // Oct 10, 2007 at 5:50 am
Let me add 1 more thing -
I am partially Jewish but by upbringing Jewish and like most so-called “reformed” American Jews, whatever that term means…. I find the Hosetics as a group irritating…. particularly where I live… that I catch myself thinking in an irrational bigoted way about a situation….
The Supervisor of my town while campaigning went to someone’s house who bitched about “how he’s paying taxes to support “them” cause they don’t pay taxes”……
So being the Supervisor he asked him if he knew how much he paid in Real Estate Taxes etc… at first he tried to avoid the answer and then said about 3500/yr…… so the Supervisor then pointed out that the average house the Hosetic Summer community built pays over 4500/yr…. they slip in under a discount for condos cause most are not winterized… but since they’re knew and since the planning board are locals… the houses are assessed higher and end out paying more certainly per land acre - especially since their built in tight community areas with many more houses per acre - than the average full time member of the community…
What’s more - since they’re only here for 4 months a year approximately they use much less services water - sewer etc… than a full year local and they don’t send their kids to the public schools up here obviously as well….
So they’re paying the locals taxes, school especially, without using the school system and using much less water and sewer etc…..
So in actuality it’s actually the reverse they’re paying the taxes for many of the locals…
So while I certainly wouldn’t have said it as this less than intelligent hich did to the Supervisor - I thought it was at least partially true - while it’s not……………………
That’s prejudice… and don’t think for a second that the Walt Mearsheimer show is mainly battering ram hype with attached to “scholarship label” which has been proven to be very reckless shoddy scholarship at that…..
When Timmerman writes a book about the Jesse Jackson huckster show… it’s written with a lot more careful copious notation and documentation….. yet EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THESE LIBERAL ACADEMIA sitting they’re so impressed by these absolute huckser showboats…. would immediately find Timmerman to be a racist, right wing, closed minded bigot, with no black friends for sure…. without every considering any points he might document (carefully I might add) in his book…..
Yet at the same time sit there and clap at these 2 “so-called” brave scholars (excuse me while I laugh my ass off!!)…….. who wrote this rambling, shoddy, weak book…. that is powerful in just it’s name and the fact that it hits every “Joooooo control” tacitally believed even by regular people point that’s out there…….
You think I’m full of shit? Read Timmerman’s book and then read this joke of a bood and you tell me….
Mike
4 Pappe // Oct 10, 2007 at 7:06 am
About E-1. eeven NYT say what I said:
“West Bank construction site in the “E1” area. Israel has appropriated Palestinian and state land to build a road for Palestinians that would bypass Jerusalem.”
5 Pappe // Oct 10, 2007 at 7:06 am
Now we should askourself: A road from south west bank to north west bank:
Is it helping to create a palestinian state or not ?????
6 Lewis // Oct 10, 2007 at 3:20 pm
Have you read this one?
http://pajamasmedia.com/2007/09/walt_and_mearsheimer.php
7 Mike Nargizian // Oct 10, 2007 at 10:47 pm
Lewis -
What’s ironic is that a Lebanese Arab points out the obvious that this book is an obvious huckster weak joke of a book….. that’s just sitting on top of its title and touching the strings of every Joooo prejudice partially believed by even regular people….. BUT -
Liberal left wing Jews (not most but a good portion) will bend over backwards to find these guy legit “”academics”" (LMAO!!) that they can merely disagree with…. I mean after all they’re “educated” reasonable intelligent folks????
And then you get guys like Levinson and other “progressives” like Silverstein in Seattle that relish nothing more than to batter organized Jewry….. and show how “open minded” they are…
I can’t lump Levinson in with that guy… so forgive me for being presumptive…
Mike
8 Syria » Blog Archives » Must read review of Walt-Mearsheimer // Oct 11, 2007 at 9:08 pm
[…] Must read review of Walt-Mearsheimer Daniel Levy s review of the Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer book on the Israel lobby is posted on his blog Prospects for Peace. It s the most thoughtful, measured, knowledgable, and, in my opinion, spot-on response to the book I ve yet seen. Here s how Levy himself summarizes his position, but the whole peice is a must read: While I certainly take issue with the specific recent policy examples in the book (Iraq and Syria in particular), I am convinced that the relationship between the US […]
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