| Author | Message | | Alpha | | Posted: Wed Oct 04, 2006 1:59 am Post subject: The Cooper Union 'Israel Lobby' Debate |
| From: Council for the National Interest Foundation <inform@cnionline.org>
Date: Oct 3, 2006 3:14 PM
Subject: The Cooper Union 'Israel Lobby' Debate
The Cooper Union "Israel Lobby" Debate
by Terry Walz, CNI Staff
October 3, 2006
Last week the London Review of Books did a great service to free speech in this country by enabling Prof. John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago to have a debate on the Israel Lobby that he thought would never take place. The event was titled "The Israel Lobby – Does it Have Too Much Influence on U.S. Foreign Policy?" and its main purpose was to debate the pros and cons of a paper Mearsheimer wrote with Prof. Stephen Walt of Harvard University called "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy." It was a perfect opportunity for the much criticized national media to report on a key issue in our foreign policy.
The debate took place in the famous hall of the Peter Cooper Union in New York City – the very hall where Abraham Lincoln effectively launched his presidency in 1860 by bravely speaking out against the extension of slavery in the U.S. The debaters included two well-known Israel proponents, Martin Indyk and Dennis Ross, an Israeli former cabinet minister Shlomo Ben-Ami, and two supporters of Mearsheimer's stance (if not views), Rashid Khalidi of Columbia University and Tony Judt of New York University. If anyone had any question about whether the Israel Lobby existed or not, the debate did much to establish its effectiveness if not define its character.
The moderator, Anne Marie Slaughter of Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson Center, sought to set the stage for the evening's agenda by suggesting that what America needed to hear was a debate on U.S. policy toward Israel, Israeli policy toward the Palestinians, and U.S. policy toward the Middle East in general. None of these subjects is discussed freely in the national media or in the halls of power in Washington, DC. These are the questions for debate that the Israel Lobby has effectively muzzled over the years.
Martin Indyk predictably led the attack against Mearsheimer by charging that a "Jewish cabal" that aimed to "bend" and "distort" the U.S. national interests to those of Israel did not exist, and that Mearsheimer's use of words and meanings were "tendentious" and "anti-Semitic." At the very least, he said, the argument for an "Israel Lobby" fed anti-Semitism. Both he and Ben-Ami worked hard the entire evening show that the paper on the Israeli Lobby written by Mearsheimer and Walt was a work of "shoddy scholarship" – and presumably on those grounds alone could be discarded.
But it was Tony Judt who fought them off by resurrecting the words of Arthur Koestler who once said it wasn't his fault "if idiots and bigots share my opinions" but it didn't make the opinion wrong. The Israel Lobby has too often grouped criticism of Israel and U.S. policy toward Israel under the rubric of "anti-Semitism."
Mearsheimer defended himself forcefully, though perhaps sticking too closely to his written word – as if published meant it bore greater truth – and at one point he turned almost dramatically to his two colleagues, Dennis Ross and Martin Indyk – the ultimate pro-Israel insiders – and told them, "you are in fact the core of the Israel Lobby."
The debate on foreign policy and national interest may have been too narrowly focused on the Israel Lobby, argued Rashid Khalidi, who said that on certain national issues, such as abortion, gun control and Israel, there was no debate at all. On Israel, why is that so? He wondered: Does it have anything to do with long-term American attitudes toward the Middle East, toward Islam? And was President Bush's abrupt turn after 9/11 to war against the Middle East, Arabs, and Islam merely feeding into the general anti-Muslim, anti-Arab, anti-Middle East paranoia?
Certainly the Israel Lobby warmly supported the move toward war in Iraq. Was this because Israel wanted the U.S. to deal with its "No. 1" enemy? No, the Israel Lobbyist debaters argued, because the No. 1 enemy has always been considered in Israel to be Iran. Dennis Ross said that it was President Bush's decision to make, not the Israel Lobby's – and view generally seconded by Ben-Ami – and added "if Gore were president, the war might not have happened."
Yet no one denied the fact that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee – the epitome of the Lobby – was one of the most powerful forces on Capitol Hill. Khalidi reminded the audience of the framing of the debate it does in Congress, from the resolutions it drafts, to the congressmen it harasses, to the candidates for public office that it vets. It works tirelessly to demonstrate that U.S. and Israeli interests are exactly the same.
Judt, who is Jewish himself, commented that most Jews saw no daylight between Israeli and the U.S. policies. And this is a result of the effectiveness of the Lobby. It has been easy to persuade Jews to think that any criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic by nature.
But to what extent is the current administration typical of U.S. government - Israel Lobby relations? Is the close collaboration between the Bush administration and Sharon-Olmert government typical of the relationship? Indyk believed that the current AIPAC leadership "straight-jackets" American policy toward the Palestinians, whereas in Israel, there is more of a willingness to negotiate. But can, in fact, the American government demand that Israel follow a particular policy it is opposed to? Indyk and Ross said no, but Judt argued that it was because the American government was unwilling to do to Israel what it has done in the past to any number of European states when it has objected to their policies.
The packed audience in the hall was often partisan, cheering for particular sides in this debate, but it seemed largely supportive of Prof. Mearsheimer and was kept in balance by the able hand of Dr. Slaughter. It was a travesty of news coverage that it was not televised, not even by C-Span, and no major media covered the event, including the major newspapers. Was this the Israel Lobby at work? There seems little possibility that this extraordinary event will ever be repeated, given the distaste of the Israel lobbyists of Walt and Mearsheimer, but it is badly needed in every major community in the country.
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London Review of Books Hosts NYC Debate on “The Israel Lobby”
By Jane Adas
http://www.wrmea.org/archives/December_2006/0612044.html
Last edited by Alpha on Tue Jan 30, 2007 3:40 pm; edited 1 time in total | |  | | Alpha | | Posted: Wed Oct 04, 2006 4:01 am Post subject: |
| September 29, 2006 Edition
Israel Lobby' Caused War in Iraq, September 11 Attacks, Professor Says
BY IRA STOLL - Staff Reporter of the Sun
September 29, 2006
URL:
http://www.nysun.com/article/40629
A tenured professor at the University of Chicago last night blamed the
"Israel Lobby" in America for both the Iraq war and the attacks of
September 11, 2001.
Speaking to a crowd of hundreds at the Cooper Union, he was met mostly
with support from two other professors, Tony Judt of New York
University
and Rashid Khalidi of Columbia.
"The Israel lobby was one of the principal driving forces behind the
Iraq War, and in its absence we probably would not have had a war,"
said the University of Chicago professor, John Mearsheimer, at a forum
organized by the London Review of Books.
Later, in response to a question from the audience, Mr. Mearsheimer
claimed that the "animus to the United States" of Qaeda terrorist
mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed "stemmed from U.S. foreign policy
toward Israel."
This, Mr. Mearsheimer asserted, "Simply can't be discussed in the
mainstream media." He appeared to have forgotten the article that ran
on
September 20, 2001, on the op-ed page of the largest circulation
American newspaper, The Wall Street Journal, that began with the
sentence: "Is American support of Israel behind the hatred of this
country that p ervades the Arab world and that literally exploded into
the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on Sept. 11?"
In fact, Mr. Mearsheimer claimed, "There is a considerable amount of
evidence that there is a linkage between the two" - the two being
American support for Israel and the terrorist attacks of September 11.
The event last night at Cooper Union was a discussion of a paper issued
by the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University earlier this
year and published in an edited version in the London Review of Books.
The paper was authored by Mr. Mearsheimer and by an academic dean and
professor at the Kennedy School, Stephen Walt. It described what it
alleged to be a vast Israel lobby that included the editors of the New
York Times, "neoconservative gentiles," the Brookings Institution, and
students at Columbia. The "Lobby," the paper said, had the "ability to
manipulate the American political system," "a stranglehold on the U.S.
Congress," and was actively "manipulating the media."
The Kennedy School quickly distanced itself from the paper, removing
its
logo and printing a large disclaimer on the front cover of the paper.
A Brookings scholar and former American ambassador to Israel, Martin
Indyk, said at the Cooper Union debate that the paper "lowers itself to
the level of anti-Semitism" and was "very sloppy" in its scholarship.
A former foreign minister of Israel, Shlomo Ben-Ami, said at the event
that the term "Lobby" as used in the paper "is a cover for the Jews,
basically," and that there was an "element of scapegoating" in the case
made by Messrs. Mearsheimer and Walt.
Messrs. Khalidi and Judt both bemoaned the fact that America's
relations
with Israel were not debated more hotly and frequently.
"In American political discourse there is one side to this debate," Mr.
Khalidi said. "There are not two sides to this debate."
Mr. Judt said that the New York Times asked him whether he was Jewish
before publishing his opinion piece on the Walt-Mearsheimer paper. Mr.
Judt said he is Jewish, but he sought to distinguish himself from the
American Jewish community. "For many American Jews, there is no
daylight
between America's interests and Israel's interests, the two are one and
the same. We have to somehow unravel this connection," he said. He
tried
to draw a distinction between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism.
Mr. Indyk criticized the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act signed by President
Clinton as "counterproductive." He said it had split America from its
allies in Europe. The bill had been championed by the American Israel
Public Affairs Committee. Mr. Indyk also noted he had been criticized
by
pro-Israel groups in America while serving in the State Department. "I
have the scars to show it," he said.
Yet Mr. Mearsheimer said Mr. Indyk is "at the core of the lobby," along
with another Clinton administration State Department official, Dennis
Ross.
"That is ridiculous," Mr. Ross said.
He and Mr. Indyk made the point that the American government did not
always do what the so-called Israel lobby wanted.
Mr. Indyk, on his way out of the two-hour session, told The New York
Sun's Gary Shapiro that he thought the debate had been "vigorous." "It
exposed a lot of the flaws in Mearsheimer's paper," he said.
The start of the event was delayed by more than half an hour as those
who had tickets or who were invited guests were scanned by metal
detectors.
September 29, 2006 Edition > Section: New York
Tony Judt sides with Mearsheimer in debate vs Martin Indyk and
Dennis Ross
MondoWeiss: The Great Debate at Cooper Union Last Night
? Never Mind the Bollocks--Here Is Walt and Mearsheimer!
The Great Debate at Cooper Union Last Night
I got home quite late from the Israel lobby debate and am on deadline
for print, so I won't get around to a full report till later, but
thought it best to file a few impressions while the world is still
making up its mind...
The debate was diffuse. It had few dramatic moments. There were six
debaters with five different points of view, and the three men positing
the existence of the lobby had not coordinated their points ahead of
time and so were sorting out differences on stage. My friend Scott
McConnell of the American Conservative said that he missed the great
moment, the climactic clash, then reflected that maybe this is
something
that documentaries manage to create after the fact.
Yet: No one could leave the hall unconvinced that there is an Israel
lobby. The quarrel was over scope and character. If the Israel lobby is
the elephant in the room of American politics, here were six blind men
each naming a different part of it they had felt in the dark. Well
actually, four blind men. The three positing the existence of the lobby
were joined by Shlomo Ben-Ami, from the other side, in a spirit of
intellectual vigor and openness. All four speakers added to the
audience's understanding. The other 2, Martin Indyk and Dennis Ross,
longtime elephant-fattener-uppers, were determined to show the audience
that the elephant was a hamster. They failed.
The debate belonged to Tony Judt. He arrived late to the hall in a
turtleneck - everyone else was in ties - and might have been Mariano
Rivera, for his confidence and dispatch. He was the most imaginative
speaker, and imagination is required when you are describing a King
kong
sasquatch no one has seen and whose wranglers say doesn't exist. When
Shlomo Ben-Ami and Martin Indyk said that John Mearsheimer was
antisemitic for speaking of a collection of Jews who influence policy,
Judt demolished them by quoting Arthur Koestler when he became an
anticommunist and said that Just because idiots and bigots share some
of
his views doesn't discredit the views. The job of the social scientist
is to describe the true conditions of society; are these statements
accurate or not? That is the only issue. I'm paraphrasing. Judt was way
more eloquent.
Judt's second great moment was when he accused Indyk of being
"faux-naive" - a civilized way of saying, You're lying - when Indyk
kept
saying that the lobby was one small factor in an American president's
exertions of power. Here again, he used his imagination. Because when
you're talking about something about which there is very little
information, and those who know something about it are trying to deny
its existence, you need imagination. Anyway, Judt described the real
exercise of power. He said that when a small state defied an American
president, and the president wanted to do something about it, he had a
great number of seen and unseen ways of compelling that state to fall
into line, all sorts of bullying and pressure and fury. None of these
had been deployed in Israel's case, and lo and behold the settlements
had continued to expand, over four decades... Again I'm paraphrasing.
Judt also got the last word of the night when he explained to a hungry
audience that knew in its bones it has been deprived, that this
discussion was an astoundingly rare one, and mind you it was organized
by the London Review of Books. Thus he gave the audience a real sense
of
how the U.S. discourse/policy works, which is what the evening was
after
all fumbling towards.
The most resonant moment of the debate was Judt's, too. He pointed out
that when he had endorsed the Mearsheimer-Walt thesis, in an article
for
an unnamed major North American newspaper, he was asked by the editors
whether he is Jewish, and told to stick that fact in the article.
(Otherwise they couldn't publish it, was implicit or explicit, I'll
have
to check my tape). The newspaper - obviously - was the New York Times,
in which Judt's op-ed taking Walt/Mearsheimer's side, appeared last
April, as I recall, to stunning effect. I say resonant, and damning:
Let's consider the lesson of this story: You can only speak out on this
issue if you're Jewish? Oh my god, how did we get here...
The other three intellectuals' knowledge was more limited. John
Mearsheimer deserves the greatest credit of all for breaking the seal
on
this discussion. But his actual knowledge of the lobby is drawn from
reports of people who have seen Kong in the jungle, and lived to tell.
So he read from one account or another of the lobby's existence, and
its
function in pushing for the Iraq war. Living in Chicago, he lacks
intimate knowledge of its workings. His best moment came when he said
that the U.S. ought to put pressure on Israel to come into line on
matters that are important to us and if it fails to do so, or chooses a
different course, the U.S. and Israel "should go their separate ways."
This was a clean and bracing view of the relations of states. While
ideal, in a realistic way, it certainly describes the usual behavior of
the U.S. when a small state defies it on a critical question. E.g., the
settlements. And the absence of democracy in the West Bank. We could
have frozen those settlements with a wave of the hand...
Rashid Khalidi was the emotional life of the debate. He spoke of the
lobby in more sweeping terms than Mearsheimer; he conveyed in a way no
one else was able the ways in which the pro-Palestinian view is
suppressed in the American scene. He got off the best line of the
debate. His neighbor Dennis Ross's mike wasn't working. Khalidi passed
him his own. "This is the first time that a Palestinian has ever
enabled
the Israeli side to narrate..." he said, in so many words. Laughter.
And
after that the audience waited on his words.
Enough for now. It was a fabulous night. We all left improved. The
London Review of Books had extended the boundaries of knowledge, and
freedom.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jeffrey Blankfort wrote:
Date 04/10/2006
17:59
Tony Judt Speech Shut Down by ADL and more
{Comment - JB} The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) which functions as part
of the larger Arab Defamation League otherwise known as the Israel
Lobby
AKA pro-Israel Lobby AKA Jewish Lobby AKA Zionist Lobby is more brazen
than ever in going after NYU Professor Tony Judt. Clearly the
discussion
of the power of the lobby and its influence over US policies and
politicians initiated last February by Professors John Mearsheimer and
Steven Walt has taken root and, to judge from this ADL action, is
obviously seen by the lobby as an increasing threat to its power
despite
the best efforts of a unique and unholy alliance of zionist attack dogs
and certain "left" pundits, plus all of the leading Marxist, Maoist and
Trotskyist groups, to bury it.
Those living in cities where the ADL has offices should call and
complain as well as write letters to editors and even, yes, members of
Congress, to complain about the ADL's latest attempt at censorship. You
might mention that in 1993, an investigation by the San Francisco
Police
revealed that the ADL was running what was probably the largest private
spying operation in the US which included every progressive, ethnic and
environmental organization, but particularly focused on those active on
the Arab-Palestinian issue and fighting apartheid in South Africa. It
turns out that the ADL spy in the San Francisco Bay Area, whose files
contained the name of about 10,000 individuals and 600 organizations,
was also spying on anti-apartheid activists and South African exiles
for
South African intelligence. For more information see www.adlwatch.org
{End}
Tony Judt Speech Shut Down by ADL
Wednesday, October 4th, 2006 in News by Matt Barganier|
Historian Tony Judt, a frequent contributor to the New York Review of
Books and director of the Remarque Institute at NYU, writes,
I was due to speak this evening, in Manhattan, to a group called
Network
20/20 comprising young business leaders, NGO, academics, etc, from the
US and many countries. Topic: the Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy.
The meetings are always held at the Polish Consulate in Manhattan.
I just received a call from the President of Network 20/20. The talk
was
cancelled because the Polish Consulate had been threatened by the
Anti-Defamation League. Serial phone calls from ADL President Abe
Foxman
warned them off hosting anything involving Tony Judt. If they
persisted,
he warned, he would smear the charge of Polish collaboration with
anti-Israeli anti-Semites (= me) all over the front page of every daily
paper in the city (an indirect quote). They caved and Network 20/20
were
forced to cancel.
Whatever your views on the Middle East I hope you find this as serious
and frightening as I do. This is, or used to be, the United States of
America.
http://www.antiwar.com/blog/2006/10/04/tony-judt-speech-shut-down-by-adl
U.S. House of Representatives approves new sanctions against Iran
JTA: House approves Iran sanctions Message
House approves Iran sanctions
http://jta.org/page_view_breaking_story.asp?intid=4933 The U.S. House
of
Representatives approved new sanctions against Iran.
The Iran Freedom Support Act, approved in a voice vote Thursday, would
extend existing sanctions, scheduled to lapse Friday, and expand them
to
include overseas companies that deal with Iran.
The Senate is due to consider the act, sponsored by Rep. Ileana
Ross-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), before Congress breaks Friday for midterm
elections.
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which led lobbying for
the
act, praised its passage.
"The passage of IFSA is an important step in further isolating the
radical regime in Tehran, and represents a unified American commitment
from both the administration and Congress toward ensuring that Iran
does
not obtain the world?s most dangerous weapons," AIPAC said in a
statement.
Ahmadinejad squares off with the foreign policy establishment
From: ECONORTH@aol.com Date: Thu, 21 Sep 2006 13:02:00
IRAN LEADER RELISHES 2nd CHANCE TO MAKE WAVES
By DAVID E. SANGER NY Times | September 21, 2006
When President Bush and his advisers decided to allow President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad of Iran into the country to address the United Nations,
their strategy was simple: containment. There would be no visits to
other cities where he could denounce Washington or question Israel's
legitimacy. There would be no opportunities, beyond his speech to the
General Assembly, to turn questions about his nuclear intentions into
repeated diatribes about America's nuclear arsenal.
It turned out that Mr. Ahmadinejad had a Plan B.
The scope of his determination to dominate not only the airwaves but
the
debate became evident yesterday evening, when he entered a hotel
conference room on the East Side with a jaunty smile, a wave and an air
of supreme confidence.
Over the objections of the administration and Jewish groups that
boycotted the event, Mr. Ahmadinejad, the man who has become the
defiant
face of Iran, squared off with the nation's foreign policy
establishment, parrying questions for an hour and three-quarters with
two dozen members of the Council on Foreign Relations, then ending the
evening by asking whether they were simply shills for the Bush
administration.
Never raising his voice and thanking each questioner with a tone that
oozed polite hostility, he spent 40 minutes questioning the evidence
that the Holocaust ever happened - "I think we should allow more
impartial studies to be done on this," he said after hearing an account
of an 81-year-old member, the insurance mogul Maurice R. Greenberg, who
saw the Dachau concentration camp as Germany fell - and he refused to
even consider Washington's proposal for Russia to provide Iran with
nuclear reactor fuel, and take it back once it is used.
(Without the capacity to enrich fuel on its own soil Iran would be
unable to make fuel suitable for a nuclear weapon.) He traced the
history of 50 years of unfilled deals with the United States, Germany,
France and others - skipping over the Iranian revolution and the
hostage-taking that followed - and concluded, "How can we rely on these
partners." His solution? The United States should shut down its own
fuel
production and "within five years, we will sell you our own fuel, with
a
50 percent discount!"
He settled back into his seat with a broad smile that some in the group
described as a smirk. The decision by the council's president, Richard
N. Haass, to invite Mr. Ahmadinejad to the session touched off a rare
outcry protest in an organization whose meetings are usually as staid
as
the portraits of long-forgotten diplomats on its walls.
Mr. Haass, who ran the policy planning branch of the State Department
during Mr. Bush's first term, first had to fend off senior
administration officials who had argued that he should not give Mr.
Ahmadinejad the legitimacy of a hearing - especially with the likes of
Brent Scowcroft, who served as national security adviser under
President
Bush's father, or Robert D. Blackwill, who directed Iraq policy at the
White House under Condoleezza Rice.
"It's fair to say that Dr. Rice thought this was a bad idea," one
senior
State Department official said. "A really, really bad idea." So did
leaders of several Jewish groups, whom Mr. Haass invited - and who
promptly asked if the council would have invited Hitler in the 1930's.
"
Some of us considered quitting to make it clear how offensive this is,"
said Abraham H. Foxman, the national director of the Anti-Defamation
League, who was one of the Jewish leaders whose attendance Mr. Haass
sought. But after a flurry of phone calls, including with Elie Wiesel,
the writer and Holocaust survivor, they decided against a mass
resignation - particularly after the council made the session a
"meeting" rather than a dinner. (There were light hors d'oeuvres on the
side; Mr. Ahmadinejad never touched them.) "It is more offensive to
break bread with the guy," Mr. Foxman said. "I thought dinner was
crossing the line."
But the council pointed out that it had served as host for many world
leaders equally skilled at repressing dissidents, developing suspected
weapons programs, shutting down a free press and denouncing Israel.
"We've had Castro," said Lisa Shields, the council's communications
director, ticking off the gallery of leaders Washington considered
rogues. "We've had Arafat, and Mugabe. We've had Gerry Adams."
The greeting yesterday evening was not exactly overwhelming. There were
no introductory handshakes, no diplomatic niceties. All of the
Americans
who were invited to attend, including four journalists, were members of
the council. Iran's effort to bring in television cameras was
deflected,
apparently because the council feared that the session would be used
for
political purposes in Iran, where Mr. Ahmadinejad is presumably eager
to
show that even if President Bush refused to meet him, he got his
message
across.
In fact he did - meeting academics in the morning and religious leaders
at midday, and speeding from the council meeting for another television
interview. He did most of this without leaving the Intercontinental
Hotel on 48th Street in Manhattan. The council would not say how many
of
the invitees had refused to attend. But members said they knew of more
than a half-dozen, from the publisher Mort Zuckerman to the former
Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright.
It is unclear why some declined. A few claimed scheduling conflicts,
rather than moral objections. The handful who had a chance to quiz the
Iranian president went out of their way, within the limits of
diplomatic
etiquette, to make clear to Mr. Ahmadinejad that they thought his
characterizations of Israel and the Holocaust were repugnant and that
his nuclear strategy was self-defeating. He gave no ground.
When Martin S. Indyk, a former American ambassador to Israel, told Mr.
Ahmadinejad that Iran "did everything possible to destroy'' efforts to
bring peace between Israel and the Palestinians, the president said,
"If
you believe Iran is the reason for the failure, you are making a second
mistake.'' Why, he asked, should the Palestinians be asked to "pay for
an event they had nothing to do with'' in World War II, saying that
they
had nothing to do with the systematic killing of Jews - if those
killings, he added, had happened at all. "
In World War II about 60 million people were killed,'' he said at one
point, when pressed again on his refusal to accept that the Holocaust
happened. "Two million were military. Why is such prominence given to a
small portion of those 60 million?''
A few minutes later, he asked a question himself: "In the Council on
Foreign Relations, is there any voice of support for the
Palestinians?''
Mr. Ahmadinejad's habit of answering every question about Iranian
policy
with a question about American policy was clearly wearing on some of
the
members, but at the end they acknowledged that he was about as skillful
an interlocutor as they had ever encountered.
"He is a master of counterpunch, deception, circumlocution,'' Mr.
Scowcroft said, shaking his head.
Mr. Blackwill emerged from the conversation wondering how the United
States would ever be able to negotiate with this Iranian government.
"If
this man represents the prevailing government opinion in Tehran, we are
heading for a massive confrontation with Iran," he said.
In fact, on the main issue speeding the two countries toward
confrontation, Iran's nuclear program, the president was unwilling to
discuss specifics. He insisted that he was fully cooperating with the
International Atomic Energy Agency, even though it had pages of
questions his government refused to answer. Instead, he steered the
whole conversation toward Iran's rights under the Nuclear
Nonproliferation Treaty, ignoring an effort by Ashton B. Carter, a
Harvard professor, to get him to answer whether the nuclear effort was
worth the cost to Iranian society.
"The U.S. doesn't speak for the whole world,'' Mr. Ahmadinejad
responded, noting that at a meeting of nonaligned nations in Cuba over
the weekend "118 countries defended the right of Iran to enrich.''
And as he left, it was with a jab to his hosts. "At the beginning of
the
session, you said you were an independent group,'' he said. "But almost
everything that I was asked came from a government position.'' Then he
smiled, thanked everyone and left the room with a light step.
Last edited by Alpha on Thu Oct 05, 2006 6:03 pm; edited 1 time in total | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Wed Oct 04, 2006 7:35 pm Post subject: |
| http://www.forward.com/articles/scholars-land-a-book-deal-for-attack-on-israel-lob/
Scholars Land Book Deal for Attack on ‘Israel Lobby’
Farrar, Straus and Giroux to Publish Work by Walt and Mearsheimer
Gabriel Sanders | Tue. Oct 03, 2006
John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, the authors of a controversial paper criticizing the role of the “Israel Lobby” in American foreign policy, are at work on a book-length version of their findings to be published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
The two, who have argued that it “is hard to imagine any mainstream media outlet in the United States” printing their work, first published their paper in the March 23 edition of the London Review of Books. A longer version was posted on the Web site of Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, where Walt is a professor of international affairs. Mearsheimer is a professor of political science at the University of Chicago.
The paper — which argues that America’s “unwavering support for Israel… has inflamed Arab and Islamic opinion and jeopardised not only US security but that of much of the rest of the world” — has sparked a wide range of responses among scholars, pundits and former diplomats. Some have called it the stuff of conspiracy theory and antisemitism, while others have praised it as a welcome foray into a subject often thought to be taboo. The debate played out again on September 28, when the London Review of Books staged a lively debate in Manhattan featuring Mearsheimer, Tony Judt of New York Univeristy, Columbia University’s Rashid Khalidi, onetime Israeli foreign minister Shlomo Ben-Ami and Clinton administration Middle East specialists Dennis Ross and Martin Indyk.
Many of the Jewish leaders troubled by the first incarnation of the Mearsheimer-Walt thesis were dismayed anew by word that it is to be republished as a book.
“They are saying what David Duke would be saying, what Pat Buchanan would be saying,” said Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League. “The difference is that they have the patina of respectability, and now they will have another coat of it.”
Duke, a former leader of the Ku Klux Klan, was an enthusiastic supporter of the paper and claimed that his views had been “vindicated” by it. With figures like Duke in mind, Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice president of the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, worried that Mearsheimer and Walt’s scholarly credentials could serve to further embolden fringe groups. “We shouldn’t underestimate the damage — and the potential damage — of this paper and the legitimacy it gives to the haters,” he said.
Some were especially troubled by the fact that it was Farrar, Straus and Giroux that had decided to acquire the book. The publishers of Isaac Bashevis Singer and Bernard Malamud — and a host of contemporary Jewish writers — FSG is commonly regarded as one of the country’s most distinguished publishing houses.
“The imprimatur of being published by FSG is hard to match,” said Samuel Freedman, a professor at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. “When a publishing house with its credibility and its reputation acquires a conspiracy theory, it can’t help but make that conspiracy theory look more valid than it deserves to look.”
Many commented on the irony of how a scholarly paper that wore as a badge of pride its purported exclusion from mainstream American media outlets has now been embraced by the most elite of American book publishers.
That the two scholars were shut out from the American mainstream was, according to David Harris, executive director of the American Jewish Committee, “a disingenuous claim from the start. It was a way to try and market themselves as victims of the ‘all-powerful group’ they were writing about. It fed into their own conspiratorial notions.”
But not all were dismayed by news of the book. Philip Weiss, a journalist who has written about the Mearsheimer-Walt paper for both The New York Observer and The Nation, said that an expanded version of the thesis would be a welcome addition to an overdue debate. “I think there’s a lot of interest in these ideas,” Weiss said. “The conversation’s just begun.”
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Judge says "ample cause to believe" AIPAC pair were foreign agents
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2006/08/11/irmep-aipac-espionage-case-dismissal-gambit-fails.php
--------------------------------------
PRO-ISRAEL LOBBY IN US UNDER ATTACK:
http://www.upi.com/InternationalIntelligence/view.php?StoryID=20060
Intl. Intelligence
WASHINGTON, March 20 (UPI) -- Two of America's top scholars have published a searing attack on the role and power of Washington's pro-Israel lobby in a British journal, warning that its "decisive" role in fomenting the Iraq war is now being repeated with the threat of action against Iran. And they say that the Lobby is so strong that they doubt their article would be accepted in any U.S.-based publication.
Professor John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago, author of "The Tragedy of Great Power Politics" and Professor Stephen Walt of Harvard's Kenney School, and author of "Taming American Power: The Global Response to U.S. Primacy," are leading figures American in academic life.
They claim that the Israel lobby has distorted American policy and operates against American interests, that it has organized the funneling of more than $140 billion dollars to Israel and "has a stranglehold" on the U.S. Congress, and its ability to raise large campaign funds gives its vast influence over Republican and Democratic administrations, while its role in Washington think tanks on the Middle East dominates the policy debate.
And they say that the Lobby works ruthlessly to suppress questioning of its role, to blacken its critics and to crush serious debate about the wisdom of supporting Israel in U.S. public life.
"Silencing skeptics by organizing blacklists and boycotts -- or by suggesting that critics are anti-Semites -- violates the principle of open debate on which democracy depends," Walt and Mearsheimer write.
"The inability of Congress to conduct a genuine debate on these important issues paralyses the entire process of democratic deliberation. Israel's backers should be free to make their case and to challenge those who disagree with them, but efforts to stifle debate by intimidation must be roundly condemned," they add, in the 12,800-word article published in the latest issue of The London Review of Books.
The article focuses strongly on the role of the "neo-conservatives" within the Bush administration in driving the decision to launch the war on Iraq.
"The main driving force behind the war was a small band of neo-conservatives, many with ties to the Likud," Mearsheimer and Walt argue." Given the neo-conservatives' devotion to Israel, their obsession with Iraq, and their influence in the Bush administration, it isn't surprising that many Americans suspected that the war was designed to further Israeli interests."
"The neo-conservatives had been determined to topple Saddam even before Bush became president. They caused a stir early in 1998 by publishing two open letters to Clinton, calling for Saddam's removal from power. The signatories, many of whom had close ties to pro-Israel groups like JINSA (Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs) or WINEP (Washington Institute for Near Eastern Policy), and who included Elliot Abrams, John Bolton, Douglas Feith, William Kristol, Bernard Lewis, Donald Rumsfeld, Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz, had little trouble persuading the Clinton administration to adopt the general goal of ousting Saddam. But they were unable to sell a war to achieve that objective. They were no more able to generate enthusiasm for invading Iraq in the early months of the Bush administration. They needed help to achieve their aim. That help arrived with 9/11. Specifically, the events of that day led Bush and Cheney to reverse course and become strong proponents of a preventive war," Walt and Mearsheimer write.
The article, which is already stirring furious debate in U.S. academic and intellectual circles, also explores the historical role of the Lobby.
"For the past several decades, and especially since the Six-Day War in 1967, the centerpiece of US Middle Eastern policy has been its relationship with Israel," the article says.
"The combination of unwavering support for Israel and the related effort to spread 'democracy' throughout the region has inflamed Arab and Islamic opinion and jeopardized not only U.S. security but that of much of the rest of the world. This situation has no equal in American political history. Why has the U.S. been willing to set aside its own security and that of many of its allies in order to advance the interests of another state?" Professors Walt and Mearsheimer add.
"The thrust of U.S. policy in the region derives almost entirely from domestic politics, and especially the activities of the 'Israel Lobby'. Other special-interest groups have managed to skew foreign policy, but no lobby has managed to divert it as far from what the national interest would suggest, while simultaneously convincing Americans that U.S. interests and those of the other country - in this case, Israel -- are essentially identical," they add.
They argue that far from being a strategic asset to the United States, Israel "is becoming a strategic burden" and "does not behave like a loyal ally." They also suggest that Israel is also now "a liability in the war on terror and the broader effort to deal with rogue states.
"Saying that Israel and the U.S. are united by a shared terrorist threat has the causal relationship backwards: the US has a terrorism problem in good part because it is so closely allied with Israel, not the other way around," they add. "Support for Israel is not the only source of anti-American terrorism, but it is an important one, and it makes winning the war on terror more difficult. There is no question that many al-Qaida leaders, including Osama bin Laden, are motivated by Israel's presence in Jerusalem and the plight of the Palestinians. Unconditional support for Israel makes it easier for extremists to rally popular support and to attract recruits."
They question the argument that Israel deserves support as the only democracy in the Middle East, claiming that "some aspects of Israeli democracy are at odds with core American values. Unlike the US, where people are supposed to enjoy equal rights irrespective of race, religion or ethnicity, Israel was explicitly founded as a Jewish state and citizenship is based on the principle of blood kinship. Given this, it is not surprising that its 1.3 million Arabs are treated as second-class citizens."
The most powerful force in the Lobby is AIPAC, the American-Israel Public affairs Committee, which Walt and Mearsheimer call "a de facto agent for a foreign government," and which they say has now forged an important alliance with evangelical Christian groups.
The bulk of the article is a detailed analysis of the way they claim the Lobby managed to change the Bush administration's policy from "halting Israel's expansionist policies in the Occupied Territories and advocating the creation of a Palestinian state" and divert it to the war on Iraq instead. They write "Pressure from Israel and the Lobby was not the only factor behind the decision to attack Iraq in March 2003, but it was critical."
"Thanks to the lobby, the United States has become the de facto enabler of Israeli expansion in the Occupied Territories, making it complicit in the crimes perpetrated against the Palestinians," and conclude that "Israel itself would probably be better off if the Lobby were less powerful and U.S. policy more even-handed."
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Mearsheimer replies to the irate "Israel Lobby"
Letters - The Israel Lobby - From John Mearsheimer & Stephen Walt.
We wrote 'The Israel Lobby' in order to begin a discussion of a subject that had become difficult to address openly in the United States (LRB, 23 March). We knew it was likely to generate a strong reaction, and we are not surprised that some of our critics have chosen to attack our characters or misrepresent our arguments. .... Must Read !!!
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n09/letters.html
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n06/print/mear01_.html
Iran: The Next War (for Israel):
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2006/07/28/iran-the-next-war-for-israel.php
Additional at following URL:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2006/03/17/u-s-middle-east-policy-motivated-by-pro-israel-lobby.php
US Support of Israel PRIMARY MOTIVATION for the tragic attacks on the World Trade Center in 1993 and on 9/11:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2005/08/05/the-gorilla-in-the-room-is-us-support-for-israel.php
Bamford discusses 'A Clean Break'/war for Israel agenda on MSNBC's 'Countdown with Keith Olbermann':
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2006/08/07/bamford-discusses-a-clean-break-on-msnbc-s-countdown.php
The following article is right in accordance with the 'A Clean Break' agenda as 'A Clean Break' was written for Netanyahu is apparently going to replace Olmert soon:
?Honor First?; the liberation of Lebanon :
http://informationclearinghouse.info/article14620.htm
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The Lobby and the Israeli Invasion of Lebanon:
Their Facts and Ours
by James Petras
www.dissidentvoice.org
August 29, 2006
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Aug06/Petras29.htm
Israel's attack on Lebanon resulted in 9/11:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2006/07/17/israel-s-attack-on-lebanon-resulted-in-9-11.php
AIPAC, JINSA and similar have prevented Israel's treacherous attack on the USS Liberty from ever being investigated fully (with the survivors testifying before Congress) because traitorous AIPAC hacks like John McCain have helped to keep the USS Liberty cover-up perpetuated in service of a foreign government:
http://www.ussliberty.org
http://rense.com/Datapages/usslib.htm | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Thu Oct 05, 2006 6:01 pm Post subject: Tony Judt Speech Shut Down by ADL and more |
| Jeffrey Blankfort wrote:
Date 04/10/2006
17:59
Tony Judt Speech Shut Down by ADL and more
{Comment - JB} The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) which functions as part
of the larger Arab Defamation League otherwise known as the Israel
Lobby
AKA pro-Israel Lobby AKA Jewish Lobby AKA Zionist Lobby is more brazen
than ever in going after NYU Professor Tony Judt. Clearly the
discussion
of the power of the lobby and its influence over US policies and
politicians initiated last February by Professors John Mearsheimer and
Steven Walt has taken root and, to judge from this ADL action, is
obviously seen by the lobby as an increasing threat to its power
despite
the best efforts of a unique and unholy alliance of zionist attack dogs
and certain "left" pundits, plus all of the leading Marxist, Maoist and
Trotskyist groups, to bury it.
Those living in cities where the ADL has offices should call and
complain as well as write letters to editors and even, yes, members of
Congress, to complain about the ADL's latest attempt at censorship. You
might mention that in 1993, an investigation by the San Francisco
Police
revealed that the ADL was running what was probably the largest private
spying operation in the US which included every progressive, ethnic and
environmental organization, but particularly focused on those active on
the Arab-Palestinian issue and fighting apartheid in South Africa. It
turns out that the ADL spy in the San Francisco Bay Area, whose files
contained the name of about 10,000 individuals and 600 organizations,
was also spying on anti-apartheid activists and South African exiles
for
South African intelligence. For more information see www.adlwatch.org
{End}
Tony Judt Speech Shut Down by ADL
Wednesday, October 4th, 2006 in News by Matt Barganier|
Historian Tony Judt, a frequent contributor to the New York Review of
Books and director of the Remarque Institute at NYU, writes,
I was due to speak this evening, in Manhattan, to a group called
Network
20/20 comprising young business leaders, NGO, academics, etc, from the
US and many countries. Topic: the Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy.
The meetings are always held at the Polish Consulate in Manhattan.
I just received a call from the President of Network 20/20. The talk
was
cancelled because the Polish Consulate had been threatened by the
Anti-Defamation League. Serial phone calls from ADL President Abe
Foxman
warned them off hosting anything involving Tony Judt. If they
persisted,
he warned, he would smear the charge of Polish collaboration with
anti-Israeli anti-Semites (= me) all over the front page of every daily
paper in the city (an indirect quote). They caved and Network 20/20
were
forced to cancel.
Whatever your views on the Middle East I hope you find this as serious
and frightening as I do. This is, or used to be, the United States of
America.
http://www.antiwar.com/blog/2006/10/04/tony-judt-speech-shut-down-by-adl | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Sat Oct 07, 2006 1:48 pm Post subject: |
| Israel Shamir wrote:
The Great Manhattan debate on the Lobby:
an additional report by Shamireaders’ own Dan of New York
(with a few great new discoveries among them Khalidi’s saying that the
Mearsheimer/Walt paper overestimated the influence of The Lobby on
foreign policy but also underestimated its influence on domestic policy
such as The Patriot Act. This is exactly a point we were doing all
along: the Jewish Lobby’s primary goal is not Palestine, but your
freedom.):
On the way to the Israel Lobby debate at
Cooper Union, we saw an
anti-war rally with some sort of disturbance going on as a dozen young
people ran around on the little island on Sixth Avenue across from the
old site of the Peppermint Lounge. The twist to the rally was that it
was a corny parody of a 60’s antiwar rally played out by some actors.
So
fake out: just another corporate tourist skit for Manhattan’s
relentless
disneyfication.
Two friends were with me; one was deathly ill but insisted on coming.
And there was indeed a Nunc dimittis cast to the unprecedented event,
exemplified by several moribund looking octogenarian gents in blue
blazers who hobbled out at the end presumably to hail a cab to a
funeral
home: "Now, may Thy faithful servant depart..."
The Israeli team, Indyk, Ross, and Ben Ami incarnated the truth of
Mearsheimer’s self-evident thesis. Indyk, for his career trajectory
from
Aipac research director to ambassador to Israel. Ross for his role as
Israel’s lawyer at Camp David, and the Israeli Ben Ami for
debating an
American domestic issue. One of his absurd stratagems was to reproach
Mearsheimer for having left out Israel from his forty-page paper on the
American Israeli Lobby, evidence of "shoddy scholarship." As they sat
there I could imagine Indyk doing his velocirapter "stare of death" and
menacing the mild unflappable Mearsheimer: "What is the audience going
to believe? Us or the evidence of their own eyes?"
For connoisseurs and mavens of bullshit and squid ink there were a few
choice delicacies
to savor spread on wry. After Ben Ami’s vehement and
otiose complaint (So what are we? Chopped liver?), my favorite of these
was Ross’s contention that 9/11 couldn’t possibly have anything to do
with Israel since at that time the Peace Process was proceeding so
successfully that Arabs had no grievance against the US for its
alliance
with Israel. He grinned broadly like a winning game show contestant as
he extruded this pearl of pilpul to the groans of some in the audience.
Some people can’t take a joke. They really should have laughed but they
probably read the New York Times and take the shell games of discourse
management seriously.
The "Israelis," – which I think is the best term of art with which to
absolve Indyk and Ross of the charge of dual loyalty –represented the
"good cops" and the "human face" of Zionism, the Labour left, hence the
hair-splitting nano pilpulism as opposed to the heavy metal large bowel
rage of a Dershowitz or Perle. The latter would have found it a bit
trickier (but surely possible) to object "indykgnantly" to the term
"cabal" in the paper since Perle himself, (aka the "Prince of
Darkness--the antonomasia he enjoys) and his cohorts in the Pentagon
indeed referred to themselves as "The Cabal." These guys are basically
deadpan schizophrenic comedians:
"What? You think that’s funny? This
soi-disant "Cabal" is one example of Mearsheimer and Walt’s clincher:
The Lobby boasts of its power and vilifies and smears anyone who points
out its power. Indyk, Ross, and Ben Ami’s basic line was whatever on
earth you meant by The Lobby, it’s not us so you’re an anti-Semitic
boob
and we have little else to say. This posture was quite entertainingly
acrobatic for the grotesque contortions they had to assume, rather like
imagining Benny Morris delivering a eulogy at Deir Yassin in a red
dress
and stiletto heels.
Amidst all the lies, pilpulisms, schizophrenic comedy, academic
negotiations, and discourse management, Mearsheimer was outstanding for
his simple clarity and his calm under Indyk’s stare of death. It seemed
miraculous that this provincial professor (actually he’s a Brooklyn
boy)
should stand up to the Scarlet A accusation and Indyk’s Spielbergian
special effects with such serene bemused sangfroid.
The first question posed by the moderator had been "Was the paper
"anti-Semitic?" While the reaction was not
quite the gale force shit
storm Dershowitz would have unleashed, the turds began flying and so
besmeared, Mearsheimer soldiered on, without benefit of either
psychological intensity, death stares, or glib verbal prestidigitation.
And he had in fact been a soldier, an American soldier who came to
academia
through his own long march and who perhaps spoke from his
conviction that American soldiers should not sacrifice their lives for
Israel. And there was also the fact that he spoke the truth and in
doing
that the Holy Spirit was his advocate and our consoler. Perhaps he was
"wise as a serpent"; he was
certainly "gentle as a dove."
Tony Judt, the only noteworthy American Jew to endorse the paper in
print, towards the end of the debate compared The Lobby to the Irish,
Poles, and Cubans perhaps to palliate the outrage that had taken place.
Rashid Khalidi was swift on the uptake with what appeared to
me at
first
another negotiation when he asserted that he thought the
Mearsheimer/Walt paper overestimated the influence of The Lobby on
foreign policy but also underestimated its influence on domestic policy
such as The Patriot Act. He might have gone on to discuss The Military
Commissions Act passed three days ago by congress that has effectively
abrogated habeas corpus and the Bill of Rights for the infinite
duration
of the perpetual war against evil, extremism, and olive trees. RIP:
American Republic.
Khalidi also got the biggest laugh of the evening since the audience
seemed disinclined to bust a gut over the Israeli’s schizophrenic
schlock. When Ross’s microphone wouldn’t work, Khalidi passed him his
own, quipping, "this is the first time a Palestinian has ever had the
chance to give the opposition permission to narrate." The big laugh was
for the recognition of the late Edward Said’s poignantly abject
petition
for the Palestinian to be granted "permission to narrate." I thought it
was interesting that Phillip Weiss of The New York Observer, in his
self-absorbed and aptly titled column "Mondoweiss", bleached the phrase
into "enable to narrate" and so missed the poignancy of the point. In
retrospect, the joke brings a tear with a smile since the Palestinians
still don’t have permission to narrate their way far beyond a few
beleaguered and expensive academic courses.
In any event, with the passage of the Military Commissions Act,
Americans can enjoy greater solidarity with the Palestinians and their
outlaw status. Now we are subjects of a not so benign global hegemony
based on fear, terror, and torture administered by a new "unitary"
executive. How did this happen? Who did this to us? Why? (rhetorical
questions, folks: I’m a comedian too). The bill passed without
opposition and only perfunctory kvetching from chatting class hacks and
other MSM. The campuses are all chill and laid back and like,
"whatever." Indeed, the noteworthy opposition came from Arlen "Single
Bullet Theory" Spector who enjoyed doing a few soft shoe turns and
exhibiting his concern for the chilling effect the bill might have for
civil liberties. Then he voted for the bill anyway, expressing his
confidence that the courts will pilpul in perpetuity over it.
At the end of the last chapter of The Prince entitled "Exhortation to
Liberate Italy from the Barbarians", Machiavelli speaks of "the
barbarous tyranny that stinks in the nostrils of us all." Here in the
erstwhile republic most folks don’t smell a thing but a few of us are
breathing through the mouth as we watch and pray and narrate without
permission.
Dan from New York
PS. We need translators from French to English! | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Sat Nov 25, 2006 11:00 am Post subject: |
| Zionist Groups Seek to Stifle Jewish Historian
Over Anti-Israel Stance
Historian in free speech row over Jewish article
Sarah Baxter
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,176-2460107,00.html
::nobreak::A LEADING British historian has sparked a row about free speech in America after an article criticising Israel prompted a backlash from Jewish groups and the cancellation of meetings where he was due to speak.
Tony Judt, a liberal Jew and former kibbutznik, was accused of calling for the destruction of Israel after he wrote an article in The New York Review of Books in 2003, and in The Sunday Times, arguing for the creation of a secular bi-national state of Jews and Palestinians.
More than 100 leading academics signed a letter in last week’s New York Review of Books protesting at the suppression of Judt’s talks.
The former Oxford history don, who has been professor of European studies at New York University for 20 years, again became a magnet for criticism this year when he defended an essay written by Stephen Walt of Harvard and John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago which criticised the “Israel lobby” in America.
Judt was due to give a talk on the subject of the lobby at the Polish consulate in New York last month, but it was cancelled at an hour’s notice after two Jewish organisations, the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee, signalled their displeasure.
“The phone calls were very elegant but may be interpreted as exercising a delicate pressure,” said Krzysztof Kasprzyk, the Polish consul-general.
Judt said: “It is a very sensitive issue for Poles. They are uniquely vulnerable because the country has a long history of moral ambivalence towards Jews.”
The historian also withdrew from a lecture on the Holocaust at a Catholic college in New York after learning that it was to be picketed by Holocaust survivors dressed in pyjamas.
The academics’ letter supporting Judt — whose latest book, Postwar: A History of Europe since 1945, was well received and was Cherie Blair’s holiday reading this summer — said: “The Polish consulate is not obliged to promote free speech. But the rules of the game in America oblige citizens to encourage rather than stifle public debate.”
Judt intends to hit back with a lecture on December 4 in New York on self-censorship and free speech in open societies. “I’ve been accused of being a self- hating Jew, a conspiracy theorist and an anti-semite,” he said. “It’s absurd but it is an echo of what is said to non-Jews when they criticise Israel.”
He contrasted the lively debate about his views in Israel to the reaction in America, where he has been accused of advocating a “genocidal liberalism” that would lead to the slaughter of Jews.
Abraham Foxman, director of the Anti-Defamation League, admitted that a member of his staff had rung the Polish consulate, but denied that he had sought to cancel Judt’s talk. “We are perturbed by his views but not enough to prevent him from speaking,” Foxman said. | | | | | ©2002-2009 WarWithoutEnd.co.uk |
