| Author | Message | | Alpha | | Posted: Tue Aug 14, 2007 1:52 am Post subject: Email to Chicago Council on Global Affairs re: ban of M/W |
| Email to Chicago Council on Global Affairs re: ban of M/W
Date: Mon, 13 Aug 2007 13:58:41 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: Re: Marshall Bouton
To: mbouton@thechicagocouncil.org
Dear Mr. Bouton,
I would like to confirm if you were able to receive the following email that I just sent through to your assistant (Ms. Fugo):
Date: Mon, 13 Aug 2007 13:49:53 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: For Marshall Bouton
To: mfugo@thechicagocouncil.org
Dear Ms. Fugo,
Thank you for your time on the telephone moments ago. It is unacceptable for the Chicago Council on Global Affairs to have banned the September 27th, 2007 presentation by esteemed political science professors John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt about their new book which conveys the agenda for how the US got into the Iraq quagmire and is about to go to war with Iran as well for the same agenda.
Mr. Bouton might be interested in reading the following as well (Jeffrey Blankfort is an anti-Zionist Jew who lives in San Francisco and hosts a radio program there):
Forwarded:
From: "Jeff Blankfort"
Date: Sun, 12 Aug 2007 18:45:35 -0700
Subject: WSJ: Jewish pressure forces cancellation of Mearsheimer-Walt presentation.
"John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt were scheduled to use the Sept. 27 address to outline their upcoming book, “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy,” which is expected to be released by Farrar, Straus & Giroux early next month. But the president of the Chicago Council, Marshall Bouton, canceled the event under pressure from critics who were uncomfortable with the academics’ arguments, according to a letter drafted by Mearsheimer and Walt to the Council’s board."
San Francisco, New York, now Chicago. The Jewish Thought Police score another triumph against the First Amendment. Frankly, the line has long been indistinguishable between Jew and Zionist and will remain so until there is some evidence that those Jews who seriously resent the Jewish power structure speaking their name, publicly, loudly, and repeatedly, and in great numbers, condemn that Jewish power structure for what it is, not only an enemy of the non-Jewish peoples of the Middle East, but also to what is left of American democracy.-JB
http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2007/08/07/speechless-in-chicago/
August 7, 2007, 6:33 pm
Speechless in Chicago
Jay Solomon reports on controversy over a planned speech.
Wall St. Journal
The Chicago Council on Global Affairs has canceled a September speech on U.S.-Israel relations and Washington’s pro-Israel lobby by two prominent U.S. political scientists.
John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt were scheduled to use the Sept. 27 address to outline their upcoming book, “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy,” which is expected to be released by Farrar, Straus & Giroux early next month. But the president of the Chicago Council, Marshall Bouton, canceled the event under pressure from critics who were uncomfortable with the academics’ arguments, according to a letter drafted by Mearsheimer and Walt to the Council’s board.
These opponents of the event argued that the two political scientists could only address the Chicago Council if someone from the opposing side, “such as Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League, concurrently appeared on stage with the authors.
“One might argue that our views are too controversial to be presented on their own,” Mearsheimer and Walt wrote. “However, they are seen as controversial only because some of the groups and individuals that we criticized in our original article have misrepresented what we said.”
Mearsheimer, a political scientist at the University of Chicago, and Walt, on the faculty at Harvard, set off a political firestorm last year when they penned an article for the London Review of Books, called the “Israel Lobby,” that argued pro-Israel interest groups had distorted U.S. policies in the Middle East. They also argued that these groups played a central role in promoting the Bush administration’s decision to invade Iraq.
Since the original article appeared in March 2006, the two academics have appeared at a number of ventures to explain their views, such as the Council on Foreign Relations, the National Press Club and Georgetown University. But a number of leading Jewish-American organizations, such as the ADF and the American Jewish Congress, have consistently charged that Mearsheimer’s and Walt’s views are anti-Semitic and overemphasize the power of the pro-Israel lobby.
Mearsheimer and Walt deny being anti-Semites and said the charges are designed “to discourage respected organizations like the Council from giving us an audience.”
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Walt and Mearsheimer Cancelled by Global Council on World Affairs:
http://www.richardsilverstein.com/tikun_olam/2007/08/10/walt-mearsheimer-cancelled-by-chicago-council-on-global-affairs/
Here is a tiny URL for the above one:
http://tinyurl.com/yrkj2y
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
August 14, 2007
'This One Is So Hot': The Censorship of Walt and Mearsheimer
I now have a copy of the letter John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt sent to the board of the Chicago Global Affairs Council after it cancelled their September appearance there under political pressure. The letter follows, below.
A couple of comments. This is a sad business. Two distinguished profs who have both spoken at the Council before are disinvited regretfully/squeamishly by a respected professional friend, and informed that they might only speak if someone else comes to counter their statements. The old "context" argument used against Rachel Corrie and everyone else. Your views are too toxic to be heard unless we "balance" them.
Walt and Mearsheimer point out that Michael Oren spoke at the Council earlier this year on Middle East matters without "context." Oren is a neoconservative who made aliyah to Israel in the 70s and who served as an officer in the Israeli army. John Mearsheimer served as an officer in the United States Air Force. Let us be very clear about this: A former officer in the Israeli Army who lives in Israel (and has lately served in the Israeli Reserves) may hold forth about our policy in the Middle East, but a former officer in our Air Force has no place to do the same. You don't have to be a nativist to find this mindboggling. Mearsheimer and Walt are all for Oren speaking, they just want to be able to speak too. And just compare the literary and analytical work of Oren and Mearsheimer; there is no comparison. Oren is a polemicist, Mearsheimer a serious student of American policy. Deeply dispiriting. Where is Alan Dershowitz, to decry the censorship?
I'm upset. I tell myself that this just shows how afraid the other side is of the truth, but face it, they're winning. Last night my wife said at dinner that I am "paying a price" for my views on the Middle East. I have a long career as a journalist. I lost a blog-job earlier this year over these issues, I can't get paying assignments to write about these matters; and they are all that I care about, as my country fumbles through the aftermath of 9/11 and Iraq. I sense some of that same sorrow in the Walt and Mearsheimer letter that follows. At the peaks of their careers, they have devoted themselves to these policy issues out of some sense of duty; and they're not being allowed to speak. It appears from the letter that a friendship has ended: the authors' with Marshall Bouton. How long before the country wakes up from this madness?
August 5, 2007
[Addressed, individually, to board members of the Council, and to members of Council committees]
We are writing to bring to your attention a troubling incident involving the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. We do so reluctantly, as we have both enjoyed our prior associations with the Council and we have great respect for its aims and accomplishments. Nonetheless, we felt this was an episode that should not pass without comment.
On September 4, 2007, our book The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy will be published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux, one of the most highly respected publishers in the United States. Through our publisher, the Council issued an invitation for both of us to speak at a session on September 27, 2007. We were delighted to accept, as each of us had spoken at the Council on several occasions in the past and knew we would attract a diverse and well-informed audience that would engage us in a lively and productive discussion.
On July 19, while discussing the details of our visit with Sharon Houtkamp, who was handling the arrangements at the Council, we learned that the Council had already received a number of communications protesting our appearance. We were not particularly surprised by this news, as we had seen a similar pattern of behavior after our original article on "The Israel Lobby" appeared in the London Review of Books in March 2006. We were still looking forward to the event, however, especially because it gave us an opportunity to engage these issues in an open forum.
Then, on July 24, Council President Marshall Bouton phoned one of us (Mearsheimer) and informed him that he was cancelling the event. He said he felt "extremely uncomfortable making this call" and that his decision did not reflect his personal views on the subject of our book. Instead, he explained that his decision was based on the need "to protect the institution." He said that he had a serious "political problem," because there were individuals who would be angry if he gave us a venue to speak, and that this would have serious negative consequences for the Council. "This one is so hot," Marshall maintained, that he could not present it at a Council session unless someone from "the other side"—such as Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League—was on stage with us. At the very least, he needed to present "contending viewpoints." But he said it was too late to try to change the format, as the fall schedule was being finalized and there would not be sufficient time to arrange an alternate date. He showed little interest in doing anything with us in 2008 or beyond.
Several comments are in order regarding this situation.
First, since the publication of our original article on the Israel lobby, we have appeared either singly or together at a number of different venues, including Brown University, the Council on Foreign Relations, Columbia University, Cornell University, Emerson College, the Great Hall at Cooper Union, Georgetown University, the National Press Club, the Nieman Fellows Program at Harvard University, the University of Montana, the Jewish Community Center in Newton, Massachusetts, and Congregation Kam Isaiah Israel in Chicago. In all but one of these venues we appeared on our own, i.e., without someone from the "other side." As one would expect, we often faced vigorous questions from members of the audience, which invariably included individuals who disagreed in fundamental ways with some of our arguments. Nevertheless, the back-and-forth at each of these events was always civil, and quite a few participants said that they benefited from listening to us and to our interlocutors.
Second, the Council has recently welcomed speakers who do represent a "contending viewpoint," and they have appeared on their own. Consider the case of Michael Oren, an Israeli-American author, who appeared at the Council on February 8, 2007, to talk about "The Middle East and the United States: A Long and Complicated Relationship." Oren has a different view of U.S. Middle East policy than we do; indeed, he gave a keynote address at AIPAC's annual policy conference this past spring that directly challenged our perspective. We believe it was entirely appropriate for the Council to have invited him to speak, and without having a representative from an opposing group there to debate him. The Council has also welcomed a number of other speakers on this general topic in recent years, such as Dennis Ross, Max Boot and Rashid Khalidi, and none of their appearances included someone representing a "contending view."
One might argue that our views are too controversial to be presented on their own. However, they are seen as controversial only because some of the groups and individuals that we criticized in our original article have misrepresented what we said or leveled unjustified charges at us personally—such as the baseless claim that we (or our views) are anti-Semitic. The purpose of these charges, of course, is to discourage respected organizations like the Council from giving us an audience, or to create conditions where they feel compelled to include "contending views" in order to preserve "balance" and to insulate themselves from external criticism.
In fact, our views are not extreme. Our book does not question Israel's right to exist and does not portray pro-Israel groups in the United States as some sort of conspiracy to "control" U.S. foreign policy. Rather, it describes these groups and individuals—both Jewish and gentile—as simply an effective special interest group whose activities are not substantially different from groups like the NRA, the farm lobby, the AARP, or other ethnic lobbies. Its activities, in other words, are as American as apple pie, although we argue that its influence has helped produce policies that are not in the U.S. national interest. We also suggest that these policies have been unintentionally harmful to Israel as well, and that a different course of action would be better for both countries. It is not obvious to us why such views could not be included in the Council's schedule.
Although we find it somewhat unseemly to refer to our own careers, it is perhaps worth noting that we are both well-established figures with solid mainstream credentials. We are fortunate to occupy chaired professorships at distinguished universities, and to have been elected members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. We have both held important leadership positions at Chicago or Harvard, each of us serves on the editorial boards of several leading foreign policy journals (such as Foreign Affairs and Foreign Policy), and we have both done consulting work for U.S. government agencies. Given our backgrounds, the idea that it would be inappropriate for us to appear on our own at a Council session seems far-fetched.
Finally, and most importantly, we believe that the decision to cancel our appearance is antithetical to the principle of open discussion that underpins American democracy, and that is so essential for maximizing the prospects that our country pursues a wise foreign policy. In essence, we believe this is a case in which a handful of people who disagree with our views have used their influence to intimidate Marshall into rescinding the Council's invitation to us, so as to insure that interested members will not hear what we have to say about Israeli policy, the U.S. relationship with Israel, and the lobby itself. This is not the way we are supposed to address important issues of public policy in the United States, and it is surely not the way the Council normally conducts its business. This is undoubtedly why Marshall, who is a very smart and decent man, felt so uncomfortable calling us to say that the event had been cancelled. He knew this decision was contrary to everything that the Council is supposed to represent.
The Chicago Council is obviously under no obligation to grant us a venue, and we are not writing in an attempt to reverse this decision. But given the importance of the issues that are raised in our book, we are genuinely disappointed that we will not have the benefit of open exchange with the Council's members, including those who might want to challenge our arguments or conclusions. The United States and its allies—including Israel—face many challenging problems in the Middle East, and our country will not be able to address them intelligently if we cannot have an open and civilized discussion about U.S. interests in the region, and the various factors that shape American policy there. Regrettably, the decision to cancel our appearance has made that much-needed conversation more difficult.
Sincerely,
John J. Mearsheimer
R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science
University of Chicago
Stephen M. Walt
Robert and Renee Belfer Professor of International Affairs
Harvard
University
Posted at 08:37 AM in Politics, Culture, Religion, U.S. Policy in the Mideast
www.philipweiss.org
August 10, 2007
Walt and Mearsheimer Banned in Chicago
http://www.philipweiss.org/mondoweiss/
Unbelievable that Walt and Mearsheimer have been banned from speaking in Chicago:
http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2007/08/07/speechless-in-chicago/trackback/
Again proving the profs' argument about the strength of the Israel lobby. Where is Alan Dershowitz? Even he ought to decry this censorship, which is only forcing the discussion of an important issue underground-ish, to the blogosphere. I guess that is what the lobby wants. If the Global Council in Chicago dignifies the argument, well, then it could get on to the cover of Time. As one of the commenters says on the site linked above, this sort of behavior just builds the backlash.
Posted at 02:00 PM in Israel, Politics, Culture, U.S. Policy in the Mideast |
Comments
Report offensive comments to washwire@wsj.com
It has been the worst kept secret that Israel and all of its support groups have been influencing United States’ policy since the end of World War II. This has been true even if an Iraeli government position is in fact adverse to what should be the U.S. position. Anyone, ANYONE, who takes an adverse position is automatically an anti-semite and should not appear anywhere in any forum whatsoever. Even Alan Dershowitz, that supposed strong proponent of the Free Speech, promptly falls in line if the speech considered to be anti-Israeli. Years ago when Marlon Brando made a supposedly anti-semite comment on Larry King, one would have thought that war was declared. After he apologized on air, Saturday Night Live correctly commented that Mr. Brando after his apology was advised that he can work again in Hollywood. Israel is no longer a weak little nation. It is a powerful nation and should be able to take adverse comments. Why can’t it?
Comment by Art Robinson - August 8, 2007 at 1:58 am
America will never be able to get its policy in the Middle-East right as long as it is being dominated by the interests of AIPAC. Branding any dissent from the AIPAC party line as anti-Semitic is a short sighted strategy. What will happen when the American public wakes up the reality that they must blindly support the Israel’s every military and strategy position but are not allowed to question or criticize it? Worse, those who seek sincere, responsible discussion (like Messrs Walt and Mearsheimer) are prevented from doing so. All that needs to be said that can’t be said. I can’t see how the tone of the discussion, once it finally breaks through (and it’s just a matter of time), will only grow more shrill and emotional after years of being bottled up.
Comment by E. 66th and Lex - August 8, 2007 at 7:11 am
I can’t see how the tone of the discussion, once it finally breaks through (and it’s just a matter of time), will only grow more shrill and emotional after years of being bottled up.
Well said E.66th!
The censors have won every battle; I can’t help but wonder how much unspoken anti-semitism and bad will towards Israel this has engendered.
I suspect that once the genie is out, there will be a backlash against our current policies.
Comment by Chiguy31 - August 8, 2007 at 2:22 pm
One would hope that in our democratic society all points of view could be represented without the necessity of having them all represented at the same time.
Comment by Jessie K. Palmer - August 9, 2007 at 10:59 am
One would hope that in our democratic society all points of view could be represented without the necessity of having them all represented at the same time.
Comment by Jessie K. Palmer - August 9, 2007 at 10:59 am
“the president of the Chicago Council, Marshall Bouton, canceled the event under pressure from critics who were uncomfortable with the academics’ arguments, according to a letter drafted by Mearsheimer and Walt to the Council’s board.”
Well thank goodness we have Mearsheimer & Walt to explain exactly why they were canceled.
The point is that there is a qualitative difference between writing a book and having to answer questions face-to-face, and after all the press their paper has had, a serious debate is long past due.
Of course, after hearing Mearsheimer’s interview with Pajamas Media (See YouTube: John Mearsheimer At Yearly Kos 2007) and hear him defend the Iranian murder of American soldiers in Iraq as being “a very small percentage”–I can understand why they would want to avoid serious questions from people who know the subject.
Who are the ones who are really uncomfortable with their opponents’ arguments? Once again, M&W give themselves far too much credit.
Comment by Daled Amos - August 10, 2007 at 12:13 am
Proof again that THERE IS NO LOBBY! Don’t even THINK that anyone is trying to control what gets said about Israel and Middle East policy!
What could possibly have given M&W such a silly idea?
Comment by David G. - August 10, 2007 at 12:18 pm
Posters have mentioned the inevitable backlash to this kind of heavy-handed bullying. Well, look at the bright side: any backlash will be great for aliyah numbers, and Abe Foxman will have an easier time raising money.
Not everyone hates “antisemitism”.
Comment by Alana - August 10, 2007 at 1:16 pm
Daled Amos, I have yet to see any credible evidence that any American soldiers in Iraq have been “murdered by Iranian[s]”.
Unless you mean the shaped “Iranian IED” factory which turned out to be…in Iraq, run by Iraqis.
Perhaps you are confusing Iran and Iraq. Or perhaps you are making the mistake of listening to Dick Cheney.
Comment by agum - August 10, 2007 at 5:12 pm
Anyone who thinks this is good for any Jews, anywhere in the world, is crazy.
Comment by freespeechlover - August 10, 2007 at 6:03 pm
I suppose Foxmans denial of the armenian genocide isn’t controversial to these fellows.
Comment by lester - August 10, 2007 at 10:47 pm
Why are W&M fear a discussion? reminds me of Jimmy Carter - does “free speech” mean a monopoly?
On the other hand, it seems that too many educated Americans believe in conspiracy theories - probably it makes the world looks simpler. This particular “conspiracy” looks similar to those who claim to be abducted by aliens. Frightening indeed.
Comment by Maoz - August 11, 2007 at 3:36 pm
W&M fear a discussion? Isnt it the other way around? Its funny how the word conspiracy can get thrown around at even the most obvious of issues, and how some would insist theres no elephant in the room even if they were standing right next to one.
Comment by J. Bryce - August 11, 2007 at 10:06 pm
It seems that Walt-Mearsheimer, Carter, Jim Baker, Prof Polk are all part of a concerted, planned effort to weaken Israel internationally, and to even demonize it and the American-Jewish community. W-M’s arguments are false. They claim that Israel has always controlled US policy towards the Middle East. Ridiculous. Otherwise, please explain the huge amounts of American foreign aid that have gone to Saudi Arabia over the years [disguised as “foreign tax credits” for ARAMCO]. Please explain all of those retired US officials on the payrolls of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, etc. Please explain the huge weapons sales to Saudi Arabia by the United States. How about the funds –almost always being raised by a few dozen millions, so it seems– given to the “Palestinian Authority”??? Why is Prez Bush advocating another Arab-Muslim state, to be called “Palestine,” as a supposed solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict? Such a state would likely intensify the conflict with Israel. That hardly indicates friendship for Israel.
Comment by Elliott A Green - August 12, 2007 at 6:07 am
^ Sorry, you have a false argument. The U.S. isnt completely suicidal in neglecting its own own greater interests, it has tremendous strategic and economic interests tied to the region which includes protecting and supporting those Arab states that supply it and the rest of the world with energy. And it prefers those states to look after themselves as much as they can without direct U.S. military involvement - quite simple and elementary. And all arms sales to those Arab states have plenty of clauses and conditions (as well as technical limitations) that basically render them useless against Israel. In a conflict with Israel, how would they expect the U.S. to resupply them with spares and ammuntition? Their miltaries would grind to a halt in a few days of conflict without resupplies. The Israelis otoh, have managed to turn these latest arms sales into a huge windfall for them, they’ve exricated another $10 billion of miltary aid from the U.S. as recompense for what was already a virtual non-threat to them. Furthermore, U.S. influence and leverage in the region would have lessened substantially if those states got their weapons from elsewhere. Unfortunately many probably know these elementary facts yet use such arguments (Hasbara?) hoping to hook the clueless into agreeing.
As to Palestine having a state side by side to Israel, its a logical solution to defusing instability and extremism in the region - and this too if or when it happens, will have tremendous conditions imposed upon it basically making it far less of a threat than without statehood. Unfortunately - and as all Israelis know but dont like to admit - its not the security issue that is behind their opposition to a Palestinian state, its their Zionist ideology that considers “Judea and Samaria” indivisible parts of Israel… and damn the worlds laws and UN resolutions referring to them as “Occupied Territories” requiring them to be handed back.
Comment by J. Bryce - August 12, 2007 at 8:40 am
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Here is the New York Times article on John J. Mearsheimer, a political scientist at the University of Chicago, and Stephen M. Walt, a professor at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, book on the Israel lobby.
Ed Corrigan
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
August 16, 2007
Backlash Over Book on Policy for Israel
By PATRICIA COHEN
http://www.nytimes.com
“The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy” is not even in bookstores, but already anxieties have surfaced about the backlash it is stirring, with several institutions backing away from holding events with the authors.
John J. Mearsheimer, a political scientist at the University of Chicago, and Stephen M. Walt, a professor at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, were not totally surprised by the reaction to their work. An article last spring in the London Review of Books outlining their argument — that a powerful pro-Israel lobby has a pernicious influence on American policy — set off a firestorm as charges of anti-Semitism, shoddy scholarship and censorship ricocheted among prominent academics, writers, policymakers and advocates. In the book, published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux and embargoed until Sept. 4, they elaborate on and update their case.
“Now that the cold war is over, Israel has become a strategic liability for the United States,” they write. “Yet no aspiring politician is going to say so in public or even raise the possibility” because the pro-Israel lobby is so powerful. They credit the lobby with shutting down talks with Syria and with moderates in Iran, preventing the United States from condemning Israel’s 2006 war in Lebanon and with not pushing the Israelis hard enough to come to an agreement with the Palestinians. They also discuss Christian Zionists and the issue of dual loyalty.
Opponents are prepared. Also being released on Sept. 4 is “The Deadliest Lies: The Israel Lobby and the Myth of Jewish Control” (Palgrave Macmillan) by Abraham H. Foxman, the national director of the Anti-Defamation League. The notion that pro-Israel groups “have anything like a uniform agenda, and that U.S. policy on Israel and the Middle East is the result of their influence, is simply wrong,” George P. Shultz, a former secretary of state, says in the foreword. “This is a conspiracy theory pure and simple, and scholars at great universities should be ashamed to promulgate it.”
The subject will certainly prompt furious debate, though not at the Center for the Humanities at the Graduate Center at the City University of New York, the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, a Jewish cultural center in Washington and three organizations in Chicago. They have all turned down or canceled events with the authors, mentioning unease with the controversy or the format.
The authors were particularly disturbed by the Chicago council’s decision, since plans for that event were complete and both authors have frequently spoken there before. The two sent a four-page letter to 94 members of the council’s board detailing what happened. “On July 24, Council President Marshall Bouton phoned one of us (Mearsheimer) and informed him that he was canceling the event,” and that his decision “was based on the need ‘to protect the institution.’ He said that he had a serious ‘political problem,’ because there were individuals who would be angry if he gave us a venue to speak, and that this would have serious negative consequences for the council. ‘This one is so hot,’ Marshall maintained.”
Mr. Mearsheimer later said of Mr. Bouton, “I had the sense that this phone call pained him deeply.”
Mr. Bouton was out of town, but Rachel Bronson, vice president for programs and studies at the council, said, “Whenever we have topics that are particularly controversial or sensitive, we try to make sure someone from another point of view is there.” In this case, she said, there was not sufficient time to set up that sort of panel before the council calendar went out. There are no plans to have the authors speak at a later date, however.
“One of the points we make in the book is that this is a subject that’s very hard to talk about,” Mr. Walt said in an interview from his office in Cambridge. “Organizations, no matter how strong their commitment to free speech, don’t want to schedule something that’s likely to cause controversy.”
After the cancellation Roberta Rubin, owner of the Book Stall, a store in Winnetka, Ill., offered to help find a site for the authors. She said she tried a Jewish community center and two large downtown clubs but they all told her “they can’t afford to bring in somebody ‘too controversial.’ ” She added that even she was concerned about inviting authors who might offend customers.
Some of the planned sites, like the Sixth & I Historic Synagogue, a cultural center in Washington, would have been host of an event if Mr. Mearsheimer and Mr. Walt appeared with opponents, said Esther Foer, the executive director.
Mr. Walt said, “Part of the game is to portray us as so extreme that we have to be balanced by someone from the ‘other side.’ ” Besides, he added, when you’re promoting a book, you want to present your ideas without appearing with someone who is trying to discredit you.
As for City University, Aoibheann Sweeney, director of the Center for the Humanities, said, “I looked at the introduction, and I didn’t feel that the book was saying things differently enough” from the original article. Ms. Sweeney, who said she had consulted with others at City University, acknowledged that they had begun planning for an event in September moderated by J. J. Goldberg, the editor of The Forward, a leading American Jewish weekly, but once he chose not to participate, she decided to pass. Mr. Goldberg, who was traveling in Israel, said in a telephone interview that “there should be more of an open debate.” But appearing alone with the authors would have given the impression that The Forward was presenting the event and thereby endorsing the book, he said, and he did not want to do that. A discussion with other speakers of differing views would have been different, he added.
“I don’t think the book is very good,” said Mr. Goldberg, who said he read a copy of the manuscript about six weeks ago. “They haven’t really done original research. They haven’t talked to the people who are being lobbied or those doing the lobbying.”
Overall Mr. Mearsheimer said he thinks the response to their views will be “less ferocious than last time, because it’s becoming increasingly difficult to make the argument in a convincing way that anyone who criticizes the lobby or Israel is an anti-Semite or a self-hating Jew.” Both Mr. Mearsheimer and Mr. Walt pointed to the growing dissatisfaction with the war in Iraq, criticism of Israel’s war in Lebanon and the publication of former President Jimmy Carter’s book “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid” as making it somewhat easier to criticize Israel openly.
“This isn’t a cabal; this isn’t anything secretive,” Mr. Walt said.
American Jews who lobby on Israel’s behalf are not all that different from the National Rifle Association, the anti-tax movement, AARP or the American Petroleum Institute, he said, “They just happen to be really good at it.”
“It’s the way American politics work,” he continued. “Sometimes powerful interest groups get what they want, and it’s not good for the country as a whole. I would say that about the farm lobby and about the Cuba lobby.”
To the authors, dual loyalty is as American as Presidents’ Day sales and “Law & Order” reruns. As Mr. Mearsheimer explained: “People are allowed to have multiple loyalties. They have religious loyalties, loyalty to family, to an organization and you can have loyalty to other countries. Someone who is Irish can have a loyalty to Ireland.”
“The problem,” he said “is when you raise the subject of dual loyalty, many people tend to think of it in the context of the old anti-Semitic canard and making the argument that Jews are disloyal to the U.S.”
In print and in interviews both authors have stressed that they hold no animus towards Israel or Jews. “We think Israeli policy is fundamentally flawed,” Mr. Mearsheimer said, “just as we think American policy is fundamentally flawed.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: "Jean's Art"
Subject: comment on: Walt and Mearsheimer Banned in Chicago
Date: Sun, 12 Aug 2007 15:25:25 -0400
Well, my dear man, that is nothing new, is it?
B'Nai B'rith put out a little booklet a few years ago listing all the major colleges and universities in the U.S. Purpose? To show Jewish students (as well as stupid non-Jews) how to protest some speakers from taking part in campus discussions. Looks like that tactic is still working.
I saw that booklet myself while on a university campus and I know people who have them. it was very very disturbing. Students can discuss anything at all on campuses nowadays. But this was about Israel, and giving both sides of the issue which B'nai B'rith apparently did not want and went to great lengths to see it didn't happen.
Jews have leave to write about anything in the Israeli news including things very unflattering to Israel, but over here in the US, non-Jews are faced with threats to their freedom of speech if they do that. And then there is the ole catch phrase "anti-semitism" which is totally misused as meaning only Jews; in fact, there are more Semites in the M.E. that are non-Jews than are Jews.
So, it goes on and on. Stupid, yes. Dangerous precedent? Yes indeed. It can be stopped if enough people complain. When former President Jimmy Carter's book came out, you'd think he had murdered his grandma. But it's still a very popular book and we found that all of his descriptions of the brutal occupation were exactly what we saw several times over there and yes Israel has an apartheid system of government that has gone on for decades.
This will continue because not enough speak out - and while Jews are not monolithic, when it comes to Israel, most of them use aipac bouncers. Even though more Jews live in the US than in Israel, they choose Israel over the US across the board.
J
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Email to Jeff Fager (executive producer of CBS '60 Minutes'):
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2007 03:04:08 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: For Jeff Fager
Dear Mr. Fager,
I would like to know if '60 Minutes' has a segment in the works to interview respected political science professors John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt about their soon to be released book (it will be available on September 4th, 2007) which was expanded from their paper ( http://tinyurl.com/obe2j ) on the pro-Israel lobby and how it pushed US to attack Iraq and is doing similar to get US to attack Iran. If '60 Minutes' does not plan to do a segment about the Mearsheimer/Walt book, I would like to know why (I have a pretty good idea already though). The following currently can be found at www.amazon.com after doing an author search there for 'Mearsheimer':
Editorial Reviews
Book Description
The Israel Lobby,” by John J. Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Stephen M. Walt of Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, was one of the most controversial articles in recent memory. Originally published in the London Review of Books in March 2006, it provoked both howls of outrage and cheers of gratitude for challenging what had been a taboo issue in America: the impact of the Israel lobby on U.S. foreign policy.
Now in a work of major importance, Mearsheimer and Walt deepen and expand their argument and confront recent developments in Lebanon and Iran. They describe the remarkable level of material and diplomatic support that the United States provides to Israel and argues that this support cannot be fully explained on either strategic or moral grounds. This exceptional relationship is due largely to the political influence of a loose coalition of individuals and organizations that actively work to shape U.S. foreign policy in a pro-Israel direction. Mearsheimer and Walt provocatively contend that the lobby has a far-reaching impact on America’s posture throughout the Middle East—in Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, and toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict—and the policies it has encouraged are in neither America’s national interest nor Israel’s long-term interest. The lobby’s influence also affects America’s relationship with important allies and increases dangers that all states face from global jihadist terror.
Writing in The New York Review of Books, Michael Massing declared, “Not since Foreign Affairs magazine published Samuel Huntington’s ‘The Clash of Civilizations?’ in 1993 has an academic essay detonated with such force.” The publication of The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy is certain to widen the debate and to be one of the most talked-about books of the year.
About the Author
John J. Mearsheimer is the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science and the co-director of the Program on International Security Policy at the University of Chicago. He has published several books, including The Tragedy of Great Power Politics.
Stephen M. Walt is the Belfer Professor of International Affairs at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, and was academic dean of the Kennedy School from 2002 to 2006. He is the author of Taming American Power: The Global Response to U.S. Primacy, among other books.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Product Details
Hardcover
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (September 4, 2007)
Language: English
-------------------------------------------------------
THE HIGH COST OF SUBSERVIENCE TO ISRAEL (by Paul Findley):
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2007/07/18/the-high-cost-of-subservience-to-israel-by-paul-findley.php
See the following URL for more about the 'A Clean Break' as discussed by Bamford on pages 261-269/318-321 of 'A Pretext for War' (the paperback version of 'A Pretext for War' includes an additional chapter about the AIPAC espionage case which the pro-Israel biased US media is not covering either for the most part - neither is the BBC!):
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2005/02/11/a-clean-break-from-james-bamford-s-a-pretext-for-war.php
Bamford also had the following 'Iran: The Next War' article for Rolling Stone magazine which mentions the AIPAC espionage case as well:
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/10962352/iran_the_next_war
Brit MP and Father of Commons Tam Dalyell exposed the 'JINSA crowd' initially in 'Vanity Fair' and via the articles linked at the bottom of the following URL:
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=03/05/13/179248
Even Colin Powell conveyed for Washington Post editor Karen DeYoung's new bio book about him that the 'JINSA crowd' was in control of the Pentagon - one can look up 'Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs'/JINSA in the index:
A War for Israel? Colin Powell seems to think so:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2006/10/08/a-war-for-israel-colin-powell-seems-to-think-so.php
Prominent Mideast analyst associated with AIPAC:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2005/08/31/prominent-mideast-analyst-associated-with-aipac-espionage.php
BBC: The War Party (if only Americans could see such a program!)
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4667039539703585825&q=%22The+War+Party%22
PS: Please take a look at the exchange with 9/11 Commission co-chair Lee Hamilton via the 'What Motivated the 9/11 Hijackers?' link at the upper left of the following URL which includes a transcript of the exchange with Hamilton:
The Gorilla in the Room is US Support for Israel
http://representativepress.blogspot.com/2005/08/gorilla-in-room-is-us-support-for.html
SCANDAL: 9/11 Commissioners Bowed to Pressure to Suppress Main Motive for the 9/11 Attacks:
http://representativepress.blogspot.com/2006/09/reviews-of-without-precedent-inside.html
You might also be interested in viewing the following youtube video short which has the moderator of the terrorism 'expert' panel trying to cut off the 'Q & A' at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books at UCLA this past April before the main motivation for 9/11 was conveyed:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7EB1FxENxQ
Additional at the following URL:
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
Israeli Interrogators in Iraq:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3863235.stm
Impeachment: The Conversation Continues (be sure to scroll through all the comments at the bottom of the following URL):
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/blog/2007/08/impeachment_the_conversation_c_1.html
Here is a tinyURL for the above one:
http://tinyurl.com/yo6u63
Last edited by Alpha on Thu Aug 16, 2007 8:45 pm; edited 2 times in total | |  | | Alpha | | Posted: Tue Aug 14, 2007 8:56 am Post subject: |
| Headlines for August 13, 2007
Monday, August 13th, 2007
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/08/13/1346218
- Chicago Group Cancels Speech Critical Of Israeli Lobby
Chicago Group Cancels Speech Critical Of Israeli Lobby
And the Chicago Council on Global Affairs has canceled an upcoming speech by two prominent critics of the pro-Israeli lobby in Washington. John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt were scheduled to speak on Sept. 27 to discuss their upcoming book, “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy." The Wall Street Journal reports the president of the Chicago Council, Marshall Bouton, canceled the event under pressure from critics who were uncomfortable with the academics' arguments.
To purchase an audio or video copy of this entire program, click here | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Thu Aug 16, 2007 1:03 am Post subject: |
| "Many Americans are convinced that military coercion serves our interest. They cite Libya, Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq, and now they are ready to bring Iran and Pakistan to heel with bombs."
August 15, 2007
The Peculiar Relationship
"No American President Can Stand Up to Israel"
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
"No American President can stand up to Israel."
These words came from feisty Admiral Thomas Moorer, Chief of Naval Operations (1967-1970) and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (1970-1974). Moorer was, perhaps, the last independent- minded American military leader.
Admiral Moorer knew what he was talking about. On June 8, 1967, Israel attacked the American intelligence ship, USS Liberty, killing 34 American sailors and wounding 173. The Israelis even strafed the life rafts, machine-gunning the American sailors leaving the stricken ship.
Apparently, the USS Liberty had picked up Israeli communications that revealed Israel's responsibility for the Seven Day War. Even today, history books and the majority of Americans blame the conflict on the Arabs.
The United States Navy knew the truth, but the President of the United States took Israel's side against the American military and ordered the United States Navy to shut its mouth. President Lyndon Johnson said it was all just a mistake. Later in life, Admiral Moorer formed a commission and presented the unvarnished truth to Americans.
The power of the Israel Lobby over American foreign policy is considerable. In March 2006, two distinguished American scholars, John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, expressed concern in the London Review of Books that the power of the Israel Lobby was bending US foreign policy in directions that serve neither US nor Israeli interests. The two experts were hoping to start a debate that might rescue the US and Israel from unsuccessful policies of coercion that are intensifying Muslim hatred of Israel and America. The Israel lobby was opposed to any such reassessment, and attempted to close it off with epithets: "Jew-baiter, " "anti-Semitic, " and even "anti-American. " Today Israeli citizens who oppose Zionist plans for greater Israel are denounced as "anti-Semites. "
Many Americans are unaware of the influence of the Israel lobby. Instead they think of the US as "the world's sole superpower," a macho new Roman Empire whose orders are obeyed without question or the insolent nonentity is "bombed back to the stone age." Many Americans are convinced that military coercion serves our interest. They cite Libya, Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq, and now they are ready to bring Iran and Pakistan to heel with bombs.
This arrogance results in the murder of tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of men, women and children, a fate that many Americans seem to believe is appropriate for countries that do not accept US hegemony.
Coercion is what American foreign policy has become. Macho superpatriots love it. Many of these superpatriots derive vicarious pleasure from their delusions that America is "kicking those sand niggers' asses."
This is the America of the Bush Regime. If some of these superpatriots had their way every "unpatriotic, terrorist supporter" who dares to criticize the war against "the Islamofacists" would be sent to Gitmo, if not shot on the spot.
These Bush supporters have morphed the Republican Party into the Brownshirt Party. They cannot wait to attack Iran, preferably with nuclear weapons. Impatient for Armageddon, some are so full of hubris and self-righteousness that they actually believe that their support for evil means they will be "wafted up to heaven." [see
It has come as a crippling blow to Democrats that "their" political party is comfortable with Bush's America, and will do nothing to stop the Bush regime's aggression against the Iraqi people or to prevent the Bush regime's attack on Iran.
The Democrats could easily impeach both Bush and Cheney in the House, as impeachment only requires a majority vote. They could not convict in the Senate without Republican support, as conviction requires ratification by two-thirds of Senators present. Nevertheless, a House vote for impeachment would take the wind out of the sails of war, save countless lives and perhaps even save humanity from nuclear holocaust.
Various rationales or excuses have been constructed for the Democrats' complicity in aggression that does not serve America. Perhaps the most popular rationale is that the Democrats are letting the Republicans have all the rope they want with which to produce such a high disapproval rating that the Democrats will sweep the 2008 election.
It is doubtful that the Democrats would assume that men as cunning as Karl Rove and Dick Cheney do not understand the electoral consequences of a low public approval rating and are walking blindly into an electoral wipeout. Rove's departure does not mean that no strategy is in place.
So what does explain the complicity of the Democratic Party in a policy that the American public, and especially Democratic constituencies, reject? Perhaps a clue is offered from the Minneapolis- St. Paul Star Tribune news report (August 1, 2007) that Democratic Congressman Keith Ellison will spend a week in Israel on "a privately funded trip sponsored by the American Israel Education Federation. The AIEF--the charitable arm of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)--is sending 19 members of Congress to meet with Israeli leaders. The group, made up mostly of freshman Democrats, has plans to meet with Isreali Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and [puppet] Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. The senior Democratic member on the trip is House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, who has gone three times. . . . The trip to Israel is Ellison's second as a congressman. "
According to the Star-Tribune, a Republican group, which includes Rep. Michele Bachmann (R, Minn), led by Rep. Eric Cantor (R, Va) is already in Israel. According to news reports, another 40 are following these two groups during the August recess, and "by the time the year is out every single member of Congress will have made their rounds in Israel." This claim is probably overstated, but it does show careful Israeli management of US policy in the Middle East.
Elsewhere on earth and especially among Muslims, the suspicion is rife that the reason the war against Iraq cannot end, and the reason Iran and Syria must be attacked, is that the US must destroy all Muslim opposition to Israel's theft of Palestine, turning an entire people into refugees driven from their homes and from the lands on which they have lived for many centuries. Americans might think that they are merely grabbing control over oil, keeping it out of the hands of terrorists, but that is not the way the rest of the world views the conflict.
Jimmy Carter was the last American president who stood up to Israel and demanded that US diplomacy be, at least officially if not in practice, even-handed in its approach to Israel and Palestine. Since Carter's presidency, even-handedness has slowly drained from US policy in the Middle East. The neoconservative Bush/Cheney regime has abandoned even the pretense of even-handedness.
This is unfortunate, because military coercion has proven to be unsuccessful. Exhausted from the conflict, the US military, according to former Secretary of State and former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Colin Powell, is "nearly broken." Demoralized elite West Point graduates are leaving the army at the fastest clip in 30 years. Desertions are rapidly rising. A friend, a US Marine officer who served in combat in Vietnam, recently wrote to me that his son's Marine unit, currently training for its third deployment to Iraq in September, is short 12-16 men in every platoon and expects to be hit with more AWOLs prior to deployment.
Instead of re-evaluating a failed policy, Bush's "war tsar," General Douglas Lute, has called for the reinstitution of the draft. Gen. Lute doesn't see why Americans should not be returned to military servitude in order to save the Bush administration the embarrassment of having to correct a mistaken Middle East policy that commits the US to more aggression and to debilitating long-term military conflict in the Middle East.
It is difficult to see how this policy serves any interest other than the very narrow one of the armaments industry. Apparently, nothing can be done to change this disastrous policy until the Israel Lobby comes to the realization that Israel's interest is not being served by the current policy of military coercion.
Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions. | | | | | ©2002-2009 WarWithoutEnd.co.uk |
