A Walt-Mearsheimer reader: Three writers critique the Israel Lobby book

Three articles on the Walt-Mearsheimer book have been published recently, all three by Jewish writers as far as I know. Bottom line: they will not engage in the "anti-Semite-or-not" talk. They are all ready to admit that discussing the influence of the Israeli lobby can be a worthy thing to do, but are not impressed by the research done by the duo. Easier for me to identify with this short comment from the Atlantic Daily Dish: Except to see a great deal of praise for these clowns over the coming weeks by their fellow courageous, speaking-truth-to-power comrade[s].

Kemp

Geoffrey Kemp, director of regional strategic programs at the Nixon Center, and no stranger to Israel related issues, offered this analysis of the Walt-Mearsheimer book:
The authors try to cover some of the methodological issues in their introduction and make the point that official documents on contemporary events are difficult to come by. For this reason they rely on multiple source footnoting. What they have produced is a 350-page text with an additional 106 pages listing secondary sources. By my count there are 1,247 footnotes; only three refer to correspondence with a primary source and only two mention interviews with sources. I could find no references to any communication with key players in the U.S. government, the Israeli lobbies and Israel who might have had some interesting confidential comments on the matter in question. It seems that their research lacked extensive field work, including background interviews, especially among the Washington elite who make up both the lobby and its targets. This is not a trivial matter.

Nevertheless, the book raises important issues for American foreign policy that must be addressed and should be debated. And the fundamental issue today is not whether the Israel lobby has huge influence in Congress and upon the White House of course it does. The real question is whether the lobby has skewed American foreign policy in the Middle East in favor of Israel to the detriment of broader U.S. interests in the region.

The authors are not anti-Semitic. They make no inferences that the American Jewish community is working against American interests. To the contrary, they believe diversity in the community is growing and is positive. Certainly, they are often one-sided and unfair in their criticism of Israel, but they are not anti-Israel in the virulent sense one finds throughout the Muslim world and among European left-wing intellectuals.

Fishman

Ben Fishman of the Washington Institute, also writing for the National Interest Online, has a less forgiving tone to his article:
Despite well over one thousand endnotes and updated chapters on the lobby's role in influencing the Bush Administration's approach to Israel, Iraq, Syria, Iran and the Lebanon War of 2006, the book consistently misrepresents U.S. decision-making in the Middle East. Mearsheimer and Walt manufacture causal connections between the lobby's activities and American actions that Bush Administration insiders rebuke.

A close examination of the critical period of U.S.-Israel relations from 2001-2002, the period that motivated Mearsheimer and Walt's work on this subject, reveals that events on the ground in the Middle East drove the administration's policies, not the activities of the Israel lobby.

Perhaps the most pernicious claim that appears in The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy is that the lobby "was the principal driving force" behind the decision to invade Iraq. The origin of the Iraq War will likely be debated by historians for generations to come, but it is pretty clear that Mearsheimer and Walt greatly simplify a complex story by arguing that "a small band of neoconservatives" led the march toward war, which Israeli officials helped sell to the American public.

By the way, Dimitri Simes, publisher of The National Interest, and Stefan Halper, senior fellow at Cambridge University's Centre of International Studies, will air their views on the book on The National Interest 's website soon

Remnick

In the prestigious New Yorker, editor David Remnick offers observations on the national mood more than on the book itself:
Mearsheimer and Walt are not anti-Semites or racists. They are serious scholars, and there is no reason to doubt their sincerity. They are right to describe the moral violation in Israel's occupation of Palestinian lands. (In this, most Israelis and most American Jews agree with them.) They were also right about Iraq. The strategic questions they raise now, particularly about Israel's privileged relationship with the United States, are worth debating, just as it is worth debating whether it is a good idea to be selling arms to Saudi Arabia. But their announced objectives have been badly undermined by the contours of their argument a prosecutor's brief that depicts Israel as a singularly pernicious force in world affairs. Mearsheimer and Walt have not entirely forgotten their professional duties, and they periodically signal their awareness of certain complexities. But their conclusions are unmistakable: Israel and its lobbyists bear a great deal of blame for the loss of American direction, treasure, and even blood.

Taming the influence of lobbies, if that is what Mearsheimer and Walt desire, is a matter of reforming the lobbying and campaign-finance laws. But that is clearly not the source of the hysteria surrounding their arguments. The Israel Lobby is a phenomenon of its moment. The duplicitous and manipulative arguments for invading Iraq put forward by the Bush Administration, the general inability of the press to upend those duplicities, the triumphalist illusions, the miserable performance of the military strategists, the arrogance of the Pentagon, the stifling of dissent within the military and the government, the moral disaster of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, the rise of an intractable civil war, and now an incapacity to deal with the singular winner of the war, Iran all of this has left Americans furious and demanding explanations. Mearsheimer and Walt provide one: the Israel lobby. In this respect, their account is not so much a diagnosis of our polarized era as a symptom of it.

Today on Rosner's Domain:

What To Read: Comparing Clinton and Giuliani

Previous blog: Why is Senator Shelby holding the Iran divestment bill?

In Rosner's Mailbox: No right-winger gives a damn about what Walt and Mearsheimer say

Updated The Iran Time Saver: Features, opinions, interviews, studies

Updated The Hamas Time Saver: Features, opinions, interviews, studies