German Press on the Israel Lobby Controversy

Last month two leading scholars on foreign relations, John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Stephen Walt of Harvard, published a "working paper" entitled The Israel Lobby in the London Review of Books. The paper opens a debate on a taboo question: what is behind America's uncritical support of Israel even when this is demonstrably against its own strategic interest?  The two authors knew they would accused of anti-semitism (and worse) by raising the issue, and they have not been disappointed. More than a month after its publication the paper continues to be at the center of a firestorm of controversy. The entry on Wikipedia has an excellent discussion of the paper itself as well as the current state of the controversy.

Germany is one of Israel's staunchest allies in Europe, and the response to the Mearsheimer-Walt paper has been rather muted. Spiegel published a fluff piece by its Schnappschuss writer Gregor Peter Schmitz.  Schmitz is concerned only about the "scandal" the paper has caused within the ivy gates of Harvard - there is no discussion of Mearheimer and Walt's actual arguments:

Das Papier detonierte wie eine Bombe. Robert Belfer, israelfreundlicher Geschäftsmann und großzügiger Harvard-Spender, forderte Walt auf, nicht unter dem Namen seiner Professur zu agieren - denn Belfer bezahlt die Professur. Alan Dershowitz nannte die beiden Forscher "Lügner" und "Fanatiker". Und warf ihnen gar vor, ganze Passagen von rechtsradikalen Websites übernommen zu haben.

Schmitz's article also contains inaccuracies - such as the claim that Walt has been forced out of his position as Dean of the Kennedy School at Harvard.  In reality, Walt was planning to leave long before his paper was published.

Robert Misik in the Tageszeitung has a more serious examination of the paper, but in the end he also implies that the authors are anti-Semitic, since they are propagating a hysteria concerning a "Jewish conspiracy":

Nein, die Rede von der "Israel Lobby" spielt natürlich auf die Mutter aller Verschwörungstheorien an: auf die des kosmopolitischen Juden, der, wo immer er sich befindet, alles tut, dass die Juden herrschen und die armen Nichtjuden unterdrückt oder ausgebeutet werden.

But a reading of the Mearsheimer-Walt paper does not support this conclusion: they do not point to a "conspiracy". The historian Tony Judt also refutes the notion that the paper points to a conspiracy in his New York Times op/ed piece "A Lobby, Not a Conspiracy". Judt's essay is worth reading in its entirety, but he also points to an article by Christoph Bertram in Die Zeit, which is perhaps the the best account so far of the Mearsheimer-Walt paper. Bertram is supportive of the authors' primary goal in publishing their working paper: to initiate an honest debate on America's real interests:

Man kann über viele dieser Thesen streiten, und das ist es auch, was die beiden Autoren anstreben: eine »offenere Debatte über die Interessen Amerikas«. Ob ihnen das allerdings gelingen wird, ist zurzeit wenig wahrscheinlich. Bisher haben sie zu Hause nur dreierlei geerntet: publizistisches Wegschauen, den wohlfeilen Vorwurf des Antisemitismus und den opportunistischen wissenschaftlicher Schludrigkeit. Es ist eben auch in Amerika nicht mehr so einfach, ein Tabu herauszufordern.

One hopes that a debate both here and in Europe will not be quashed by the attacks on John Measheimer and Stephen Walt.  As the Israeli peace activist Uri Avnery writes:

AMERICAN-ISRAELI relations are indeed unique. It seems that they have no precedent in history. It is as if King Herod had given orders to Augustus Caesar and appointed the members of the Roman senate.

Israel Lobby stephen walt john mearsheimer Israel

Comments

[Joerg]

Sueddeutsche printed today Tony Judt's op-ed "Doppelter Schaden -- Die USA und die "Israel-Lobby"":
http://www.sueddeutsche.de/sz/2006-04-28/feuilleton/artikel/HMG-2006-04-28-013-ak_vTnZp_af6rWtB56WdLQ/
but its not available online.
I have read it and it is excellent.

What Walt and Mearsheimer write is brave (unfortunately), but (also unfortunately) not new. Senator Fulbright said the same:

"Fulbright had earned the ever-lasting enmity of Israel and its friends as early as 1963, when his Foreign Relations Committee held hearings on foreign lobbies, including Israel's lobby. The hearings concluded that Israel operated "one of the most effective networks of foreign influence" in the United States. "
http://www.washington-report.org/backissues/0897/9708096.htm

You are a fan of Tony Judt, right?
The Globalist has a piece by Judt on Bernard-Henri Lévy's Tocqueville tour:
http://www.theglobalist.com/StoryId.aspx?StoryId=5272

[Jorg]

Walt und Mearsheimer responded to their critics:
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n09/letters.html

Criticsism of the response:
http://americanfuture.net/?p=1681

This guy links to a few more articles in the German press about Walt/mearsh.:
http://sebew.blogspot.com/2006/05/judt-israel-lobby-keine-verschwrung.html

[David]

Thanks, Joerg.

They do an excellent job of skewering Pipes for his outrageous comments. It is a scandal that someone like Pipes had any affiliation with Harvard - he embodies the absolute bottom rung in academic discourse. And he is a notorious coward.

[Cangrande]

Hallo,

fand durch Zufall diesen Blog (von David Vickrey, wie ich vermute? Aus den USA?). Dessen genauer Hintergrund ist mir zwar noch etwas unklar; aber jedenfalls ist die obige Eintragung über M-W und die dt. Presse interessant.

Mittlerweile hat sich auch der Journalist Rudolf Maresch mit der Studie von Mearsheimer und Walt bzw. mit den dahinter stehenden Sachverhalten auseinander gesetzt, und zwar in zwei längeren Artikel in "Telepolis":
"Der amerikanisch-israelische Komplex" (http://www.heise.de/tp/r4/html/result.xhtml?url=/tp/r4/artikel/23/23332/1.html) und 2Israel-Lobby in den USA" (http://www.heise.de/tp/r4/artikel/23/23361/1.html).

Auch ich selbst habe angefangen, ein wenig darüber nachzudenken: auf meiner Webseite "Drusenreich 5" u. d. T. "IN THE MACCHIA OF SPECIAL INTERESTS – A WELL OF CLEAR-CUT ANALYSIS?" (http://www.beltwild.de/drusenreich_fuenf.htm) sowie in Anklängen auch in meinen Blogeinträgen "Washington – Segesta – Athen – Tel Aviv: William Kristol und der peloponnesische Krieg.
" (http://beltwild.blogspot.com/2007/01/washington-segesta-athen-tel-aviv.html) und "MORAL'S OWN COUNTRY oder LASSET UNS EINANDER BRÜDERLICHE HÜTER SEIN!
" (http://beltwild.blogspot.com/2007/01/morals-own-country-oder-lasset-uns.html).