bad timing for Israel bashers

The Forward steps up to make the case—again—against Walt and Mearsheimer. Only this time, they’ve read not just the professors’ juvenile article but their book as well:

The professors’ basic argument is that America’s support for Israel is an anomaly. Israel’s origins and behavior are so reprehensible, they wrote, that “neither strategic nor moral arguments can account for America’s support for Israel.” No, it’s all because of the influence of the “Israel Lobby.” There is, they cautioned, nothing illicit about lobbying. Lobbying is part of American democracy. But the Israel Lobby has “a stranglehold on the U.S. Congress,” controls key access to the executive branch and suppresses dissent throughout society. Its “not surprising” goal, they wrote, is to weaken Israel’s enemies to the point that “Israel gets a free hand with the Palestinians, and the United States does most of the fighting, dying, rebuilding, and paying.”

More shocking, considering the professors’ distinguished resumes — Walt was academic dean of the Kennedy School at Harvard, Mearsheimer a leading foreign policy expert at the University of Chicago — was their shoddy research. They invented historical facts.They twisted quotes. …

Most of the paper’s flaws survive in the book, but the longer format allowed the introduction of whole new stretches of substandard work.

The substandard work and shoddy scholarship will survive, because the professors’ charges are sensational—as they intend them to be, which the Forward makes clear. But they’re a long way from reaching their goal of freeing America from the immoral, reprehensible, dark influence of satanic Israel.

Rudy Giuliani said it best in his Foreign Affairs article:

America’s commitment to Israel’s security is a permanent feature of our foreign policy.

Well, “permanent” is a strong word. But a 10-year $30 billion commitment is pretty darn close.

The good professors’ timing is a wee bit off. But the work of anti-Semites is never done. Which is why I and people like me—who know that public anti-Semitism is the harbinger of humanity’s darkest impulses coming to the fore—will not rest until every one of their words and innuendoes has been revealed for the pernicious, evil scapegoating it is.

And we will mock Philip Weiss mercilessly.