Thanks to Steve Clemons, who sees this as a way to pressure Barack Obama, who has said that he would not engage Hamas, we now have a list of “great Americans” who endorse talking to the terrorist organization Hamas, which is dedicated, via its charter, to the destruction of our ally Israel:

They all signed a letter at the time of the Annapolis Summit to President Bush and Secretary of State Rice that said that:

As to Hamas, we believe that a genuine dialogue with the organization is far preferable to its isolation; it could be conducted, for example, by the UN and Quartet Middle East envoys. Promoting a cease-fire between Israel and Gaza would be a good starting point.

While he didn’t sign our letter, Colin Powell has also said that Hamas should not be isolated and must be engaged.

The roster of American leaders who led the letter are:

BRENT SCOWCROFT, ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI, THOMAS PICKERING, CARLA HILLS, LEE HAMILTON, THEODORE SORENSEN, ERIC SHINSEKI, NANCY KASSEBAUM BAKER, and PAUL VOLCKER.

Others that are included on the roster of signatories are:

US AID Deputy Administrator HARRIET “HATTIE” BABBITT, former USIA Chief JOSEPH DUFFEY, former US Senator GARY HART, former US Senator LINCOLN CHAFEE, RAND Corporation Board Member and New America Foundation/American Strategy Program Chair RITA HAUSER, former Assistant Secretary of State JAMES DOBBINS, former State Department Policy Planning Director MORTON HALPERIN, former Deputy Ambassador to the UN WILLIAM VAN DEN HEUVEL, former Israel Foreign Minister SCHLOMO BEN-AMI. . .
former US Senator BIRCH BAYH, former Congressman and Corning CEO AMO HOUGHTON Jr., former National Intelligence Council Chairman ROBERT HUTCHINGS, Fletcher School Dean and former U.S. Ambassador STEPHEN BOSWORTH, former Assistant Secretary of Defense LAWRENCE KORB, former American Political Science Association President and Columbia University professor ROBERT JERVIS, Kings College Terrorism Chair and New America Foundation Senior Fellow ANATOL LIEVEN, former National Security Agency Director Lt. General WILLIAM ODOM. . .

Committee for the Republic President WILLIAM NITZE, Brookings Visiting Senior Fellow DIANA VILLIERS NEGROPONTE, Former CIA Deputy Director JOHN McLAUGHLIN, former US Ambassador JOHN MALOTT, former EU Commissioner for Foreign Relations CHRISTOPHER PATTEN, former National Intelligence Officer for the Near East PAUL PILLAR, former US Senator LARRY PRESSLER, former US Ambassador FELIX ROHATYN. . .

MIT Center for International Studies Director RICHARD SAMUELS, retired Marine Corps General JOHN J. “JACK” SHEEHAN, Princeton University Woodrow Wilson School Dean ANNE-MARIE SLAUGHTER, Former Congressman STEPHEN SOLARZ, former First USA Bank CEO and Adagio Partners CEO RICHARD VAGUE, Former US Senator and UN Foundation President TIMOTHY WIRTH, and former US Ambassador and AIG Vice Chairman FRANK WISNER. . .

former New Jersey Governor and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator CHRISTINE TODD WHITMAN, Nixon Center President and National Interest Publisher DIMITRI SIMES, former National Security Advisor to Vice President Al Gore LEON FUERTH, Brookings Senior Fellow PHILIP GORDON, former US Ambassador to NATO ROBERT HUNTER, former Malaysia Deputy Prime Minister ANWAR IBRAHIM, former CIA Deputy Director JOHN McLAUGHLIN. . .

former State Department Chief of Staff LAWRENCE WILKERSON, Lehman Brothers Managing Director THEODORE ROOSEVELT IV, former US Ambassador JOSEPH WILSON, former Chief Monitor of the Middle East Roadmap at the Department of State JOHN S. WOLF — among others.

Maybe the New York Times is getting religion (no pun intended) in the face of the financial ruin or perhaps the timing is mere coincidence.

Today, in a shocker, the Gray Lady reveals (a few decades too late) that the Palestinians are running a vicious propaganda campaign against—surprise!—the Jews (all of them, everywhere):

Hamas’s Insults to Jews Complicate Peace Effort

Ya think?

Such incitement against Israel and Jews was supposed to be banned under the 1993 Oslo accords and the 2003 “road map” peace plan. While the Palestinian Authority under Fatah has made significant, if imperfect efforts to end incitement, Hamas, no party to those agreements, feels no such restraint.

Since Hamas took over Gaza last June, routing Fatah, Hamas sermons and media reports preaching violence and hatred have become more pervasive, extreme and sophisticated, on the model of Hezbollah and its television station Al Manar, in Lebanon.

In case any of the NYT’s readers thinks that Hamas’s complaints are legitimate, and that its charter, a “deeply anti-Semitic document” [you get extra points for that, NYT!  ---ed.]  is just politics [e.a.]:

Mark Regev, spokesman for Mr. Olmert, called on “Arab leaders who are moderate and believe in peace to speak out more strongly against extremist elements.” He called the “incitement to hatred and violence standard Hamas operating procedure,” adding, “In Hamas education and broadcasting they turn the suicide bomber who murders the innocent into a positive role model, and they portray Jews in the most negative terms, that too often reminds us of language used in Europe in the first half of the 20th century.”

The “serious question,” he said, “is what ethos are they promoting?”

Why, they’re promoting “resistance” against the eternally evil Jew, dontcha know?  And there are lots of Americans who want the eternally evil Jews of Israel to negotiate with those who look forward to a second holocaust.

This innuendo about Samantha Power’s hostility to Israel should stop. It’s ugly, nasty, and unproductive.

A much more reasonable line of inquiry would be to ask both Ms. Power, who is devoted to internationalism and believes that much can be accomplished through international institutions, what she thinks of reports like this one, sponsored by the UN, which claims that anti-Israeli violence by the Palestinians is okay and perfectly understandable, because they are freedom fighters:

UN expert: Palestinian terror ‘inevitable’ result of occupation

The report by John Dugard, independent investigator on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for the UN Human Rights Council, will be presented next month, but it has been posted on the body’s Web site.

In it, Dugard, a South African lawyer who campaigned against apartheid in the 1980s, says “common sense … dictates that a distinction must be drawn between acts of mindless terror, such as acts committed by Al-Qaida, and acts committed in the course of a war of national liberation against colonialism, apartheid or military occupation.”

“While Palestinian terrorist acts are to be deplored, they must be understood as being a painful but inevitable consequence of colonialism, apartheid or occupation,” writes Dugard, whose 25-page report accuses the Israel of acts and policies consistent with all three.

If Power defends this report—or the mind-set that produced it—then there will be plenty of room to attack her, and her precious UN, for their grotesque moral equivalence.

No, I’m not talking about Barack Obama’s pretty, meaningless, but inspiring words (the exact same unoriginal words used by Deval Patrick, offered up to him and to Obama by their mutual media strategist, David Axelrod, as I mentioned here yesterday).

I’m talking about the poison emanating from the mouth Ahmadinejad:

Also Wednesday, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon said that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s recent verbal attacks against Israel were unacceptable. …

The meeting [with Israel's UN ambassador Dan Gillerman] followed yet another verbal attack against Israel by Ahmadinejad .. .

“The world powers established this filthy bacteria, the Zionist regime, which is lashing out at the nations in the region like a wild beast,” the Iranian president told supporters at a rally in southern Iran.

In the hour-long conversation with Ban, Gillerman said it is “outrageous for a member state to use racial, Nazi like statements against another member state.”

He said that such expressions warranted the condemnation of Iran by the international community.

Ban, who agreed to meet on very short notice, said such statements are “unacceptable and unforgivable,” according to Gillerman. Ban vowed to deal with the matter soon but did not explain how he intended to do so.

Iran wants Israel to take the threat of military force off the table. Good luck with that!

But 25 German professors’ conscience didn’t explode when they wrote a manifesto suggesting that Germany owes Israel nothing more, because it was the Nazis who helped establish the Jewish state in the first place.

Really!

Seriously!

The aforementioned professors stated that Germany helped strengthen the burgeoning State of Israel by deporting 160,000 German Jews during the Nazi reign. These refugees ultimately ended up in Israel and bolstered its Jewish population at the Arabs’ expense.

Furthermore, noted the professors, Germany has paid its “debt to the Jewish nation” in full through its reparations agreement with Israel.

Not only was the deportation of German Jews a good thing, according to these professors, but apparently the “indelible stain” of the Holocaust can be—and has been—fully repaid. The Jews got their money, after all.

Whereas the Holocaust was an indelible stain on the annals of German history, they stated, Germany must now improve its relations with the Arab world by taking on a more balanced approach to its foreign policy and its treatment of Israel.

With “balance” like this—a headlong rush of Europeans into the arms of “the Arab world”—the tilt against the world’s Jews, half of whom live in Israel, seems to be growing.

Challenging times lead to innovation, and now technology is allowing individuals the world over to fight back against the trends that they see as dangerous.

Haaretz reports on a half-dozen bloggers around the world who are fighting the strong anti-Israel bias in their respective countries’ media by reporting only bad news about their own countries:

What began six months ago as a brazen attempt to counter a perceived anti-Israel slant in the Dutch media, has evolved into a network monitoring the media in eight countries across the world. The idea is simple: Beat press bias at its own game by advertising only bad news about one place.

Over the past months, seven activists from Israel and elsewhere have been exposing online readers to scandalous yet accurate reports from media in Britain (violent drunk teens), France (high homeless mortality), Norway (serial child molesters), Finland (sexual harassment in parliament), Sweden (soaring suicide rates), The Netherlands (menacing Muslim unrest), Mexico (rampaging flood victims) and Los Angeles (drive-by killings).

Clever, and I’m all for it.

The anti-Israel campaigns in the West—particularly in Western Europe—are conducting conducted via shaming. It’s an effective method.

It also works two ways, though, and it’s about time the show was placed firmly on the other foot. More, please.

[[ corrected ]] 

California congressman Tom Lantos apparently believes it’s now time to speak truth to faux-power***:

“Two generations after the Holocaust, I never thought - I could not even have imagined - that within the structure of the United Nations there would be some who would attempt to de-legitimatize the Jewish State, the State of Israel, founded and built by the remnants of European Jewry and by the hundreds of thousands of Jews expelled from Arab lands,” read Lantos’s International Holocaust Remembrance Day speech.

Lantos lamented the fact that the UN chamber was too often the setting for “shameless invective against Israel,” adding that he was “deeply grateful for the numerous principled statesmen of many lands who regularly stand up against this outrage.”

Where are these “principled statesmen of many lands who stand up against this outrage”? I wonder. I haven’t heard them speak out.

But never mind. There’s more from Lantos [e.a.]:

He went on to say that this point was highlighted in the Durban anti-Racism conference the weekend before the September 11, 2001 terror attacks.

“The United Nations was holding a conference meant to put an end to racism, a noble goal if ever there was one, but the occasion was hijacked by hate-filled and venomous leaders who perverted the noble idea of ending racism, and turned the conference into a lynch mob against Israel.

“As the situation galloped toward the surreal and the gathering veered away from its intended topics of ethnic violence, racism or slavery in many countries and toward condemnation of the one democratic state in the Middle East, it was sadly evident to me that this potentially history-making conference was becoming a travesty,” continued Lantos’s speech.

The congressman, whose mother was killed in Auschwitz, said that having experienced the horrors of the Holocaust firsthand, the Durban conference was the “most sickening and unabashed” display of hate for Jews he had seen since the Nazi period.

I’m grateful to Congressman Lantos, who is the chairman of the House Committe on Foreign Affairs, for his very speedy response—only six and a half years later—to the grotesque spectacle that was Durban.
One question: what’s he going to do about Durban II, which is in the planning stages?
——–
*** The UN is a useless organization, with no power and, in any case, no desire to use it even if it had power, even on behalf of good—or else it would have intervened in the many, many conflicts that have arisen since its establishment.

Nevertheless, it is among the “international institutions” favored by the left wing of the Democratic Party.

Michael Oren notes [$$ ?] that Israelis are feeling both stumped and betrayed by Bush’s mystifying new “policy” toward the Israelis and the Palestinians:

No wonder Israelis are stumped. While the old George Bush deemed the end of terror as imperative for peace and the containment of Iran as the prerequisite for eliminating terror, the new George Bush focuses on Israeli settlement-building and hesitates to confront Tehran. It is uncertain which of the two is visiting Israel today and what policies he may pursue. …

Presidential visits are always characterized as “historic,” but Mr. Bush’s trip to the Jewish state is marked by a lack of momentousness. Cross-signals and contradictory policies have clouded a celebration for one of Israel’s firmest friends. Israelis will greet Mr. Bush exuberantly, but his departure may leave them grappling with terror largely on their own.

Meanwhile, Walt and Mearsheimer are still pissing all over Israel and its American “false friends” who (conspiratorially, through the media and the power of money) insist that America support Israel without qualifications. This time they’ve added to the conspiracy Jewish voters, who are heavily represented in states with many electoral votes [e.a.].

Such pandering [by all presidential contenders] is hardly surprising, because contenders for high office routinely court special interest groups, and Israel’s staunchest supporters — the Israel lobby, as we have termed it — expect it. Politicians do not want to offend Jewish Americans or “Christian Zionists,” two groups that are deeply engaged in the political process. Candidates fear, with some justification, that even well-intentioned criticism of Israel’s policies may lead these groups to turn against them and back their opponents instead.

If this happened, trouble would arise on many fronts. Israel’s friends in the media would take aim at the candidate, and campaign contributions from pro-Israel individuals and political action committees would go elsewhere. Moreover, most Jewish voters live in states with many electoral votes, which increases their weight in close elections (remember Florida in 2000?), and a candidate seen as insufficiently committed to Israel would lose some of their support. And no Republican would want to alienate the pro-Israel subset of the Christian evangelical movement, which is a significant part of the GOP base.

What would Walt and Mearsheimer suggest as a solution to the vexing problem of the sinister influence of Israel, Zionism, and American Jews on the American voter, citizen, and imagination? Allow only a certain number of Jewish voters into polling places, perhaps? Or none at all?

There’s a fascinating (but very poorly edited) piece in the Science section of today’s New York Times, about the treacherous habit of self-examination after the fact: “The New Year’s Cocktail: Regret with a Dash of Bitters”:

Over the past decade and a half, psychologists have studied how regrets - large and small, recent and distant - affect people’s mental well-being. They have shown, convincingly though not surprisingly, that ruminating on paths not taken is an emotionally corrosive exercise. The common wisdom about regret - that what hurts the most is not what you did but what you didn’t do - also appears to be true, at least in the long run.

Yet it is partly from studies of lost possible selves that psychologists have come to a more complete understanding of how regret molds personality. These studies, in people recently divorced and those caring for a sick child, among others, suggest that it is possible to entertain idealized versions of oneself without being mocked or shamed. And they suggest that doing so may serve an important psychological purpose.

What the author, Benedict Carey, is trying to say here (but what he makes unnecessarily confusing by inserting shame into the equation) is that not blaming yourself (exclusively) for whatever went wrong helps you move on. He does describe—very gingerly—various coping strategies that people adopt for dealing with the past:

Researchers find that people think about past foul-ups or missed opportunities in several ways. Some tend to fixate and are at an elevated risk for mood problems. Others have learned to ignore regrets and seem to live more lighthearted, if less-examined, lives. In between are those who walk carefully through the minefield of past choices, gamely digging up traps and doing what they can to defuse the live ones.

Finally, he gently suggests that time heals all such wounds, if you allow time to do its thing:

With age, people apparently detoxified their regrets by reframing them as shared misunderstandings, a retrospective touching-up that in many cases might have been more accurate.

As for me, one of the best decisions I ever made was to bail on grad school. Every time I read stuff like this, I’m reminded of the fact that I have absolutely no regrets about my decision.

The Modern Language Association frequently helps out its critics with provocative session titles and left-leaning political stands offered by its members. …[I]n moves that infuriated the MLA’s Radical Caucus, the association’s Delegate Assembly refused to pass those resolutions and instead adopted much narrower measures. The [MLA] acknowledged tensions over the Middle East on campus, but in a resolution that did not single out pro-Israel groups for criticism. And the association criticized the University of Colorado for the way it started its investigation of Ward Churchill, but took no stand on whether the outcome (his firing) was appropriate.

Imagine that: in the name of academic freedom, academics who consider themselves “progressive” demand the right to promote one one point of view and to single out only one group for criticism.

The resolution as [Grover Furr] wrote it said that some who criticize Zionism and Israel have been “denied tenure, disinvited to speak … [or] fraudulently called ‘anti-Semitic.’” The resolution called this a “serious danger to academic study and discussion in the USA today” and then resolved that “the MLA defend the academic freedom and the freedom of speech of faculty and invited speakers to criticize Zionism and Israel.” The resolution made no mention of the right of others on campus to embrace Zionism or Israel or to hold middle-of-the-road views or any views other than being critical of Israel and Zionism.

The substitute resolution, adopted by a vote of 63-30 said:

“Middle East is a subject of intense debate,” ….[and that] it was “essential that colleges and universities protect faculty rights to speak forthrightly on all sides of the issue,” and urged colleges to “resist” pressure from outside groups about tenure reviews and speakers and to instead uphold academic freedom. Nelson’s resolution did not identify one side or the other as victim or villain in the campus debates over the Middle East and said that academic freedom must apply to people “to address the issue of the Middle East in the manner they choose.”

This was considered too even-handed by critics. But supporters from the health majority of MLA members who voted have got the right idea:

[T]hey argued that the MLA shouldn’t be picking sides, and that the principles behind defending Israel’s critics should apply to its supporters as well. One professor said: “Academic freedom is meaningless unless it applies to all points of view.” Another said that even if 95 percent of disputes over academic freedom and the Middle East relate to one side of the argument, the principle of academic freedom should be paramount, not helping those 95 percent over the 5 percent. [e.a.]

Really? Ya think? 

That the painfully obvious bottom line about freedom of speech (that it’s for me and for thee) needs to be spelled out to 33% of the members in good standing of the MLA is a sad commentary on the American academy.

The good news is that the hard-core ideologues on college campuses are finally being challenged. 

Am I obsessed with blasting Walt and Mearsheimer? You betcha.

The Economist ’s review pretty much explains why I’m so obsessed:

FROM the forged “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” in the 19th century to the charter of Hamas, the Palestinians’ Islamist movement, a common claim by anti-Semites has been that Jews trick great powers into needless wars. That is why an article published in March 2006 by two American academics, John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, caused such outrage. Writing in the London Review of Books, they argued that the activities of Israel and its supporters were the “critical” reason for America’s invasion of Iraq. George Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld may have thought that they were acting in America’s interests, but were in fact acting in Israel’s. Like previous American governments, the Bush administration had been turned by clever lobbying into what Lenin would have called Zionism’s useful idiots.

This startling thesis is, to say the least, provocative. Since it implies that American boys are dying in Iraq for the sake of Israel, the authors must have known that it would stir up painful questions about the true loyalties of American Jews and therefore attract fiery criticism. But there is no evidence that Mr Mearsheimer and Mr Walt were motivated by any anti-Jewish prejudice.

It’s a fool’s game to say that the authors were motivated by anti-Jewish prejudice. Their motivation is beside the point, and in any case unprovable (much like the authors’ thesis that the cabal-like not-cabal called the Lobby has “too much” power [how much is too much?] and “undue” influence [how much is due influence]?).

What matters is that in order to attract attention to their cause—which is to separate Americans from their sentimental attachment to Israel—Walt and Mearsheimer were willing, even eager, to bait Jews by making the most foul millennia-old accusations against them. They did this promiscuously, and with defiant disregard for the consequences.

What were they thinking?

Were they clueless? Or did they simply feel confident and optimistic about the friendly reception they would receive from Americans who, like them, think that the power of American Jews is a boil to be lanced?

To be continued, I’m sure … to my regret.

Stephen Walt at a meeting with the Dallas Morning News editorial board [e.a.]:

[T]here is a conventional wisdom in the United States about the state of Israel that we are challenging. And that conventional wisdom tends to portray Israel in the most positive light. … We don’t love Israel.

You don’t say!

Walt again:

[W]hat policies should the United States be adopting vis-à-vis Israel and the other countries in the region, and in particular, what should the United States be doing when Israel’s conduct or actions are contrary not only to American interests, but to American values?

Now, hold on a minute. I thought international relations “realists” such as these esteemed “scholars” are interested only in a nation’s interests, not its morals.

Whatever. While Walt and Mearsheimer try to sort out their antipathy and hostility from their so-called “scholarship,” the rest of us will wait and see what President Hillary Clinton or President Rudy Giuliani—and their successors of the next few decades—”do” with regard to Israel.

Philip Weiss has read Walt and Mearsheimer’s book [emphasis in the title is in the original]:

‘The Jungle,’ ‘Silent Spring,’ ‘Unsafe at Any Speed’–And Now, ‘The Israel Lobby’

Walt and Mearsheimer’s book on the Israel Lobby is being published today. I finished it last night. I said before that it was historic, but I did not realize quite what it was till I put it down: a great work of American muckraking in the tradition of Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle (the meatpacking industry), Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (pesticides), and Ralph Nader’s Unsafe at Any Speed (Detroit). An overkill moral beauty aimed at an outrage, some day this book will be legendary and dated. [e.a.]

Legendary And dated? As in superseded by even greater works of moral beauty by the same authors, something like, say, Our Kampf? or perhaps Our Jihad?

But that’s putting the cart before the horse. Meanwhile, Wess dares to dream:

So [The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy] will be passed around, it will be taught. Serious people will press it on other serious people. Political aides will hand it to other political aides. It may have to wear brown-paper covers in Congress, at the State Department and at Hillels, but it will be read hungrily. Young progressive Jews will read it. Arabs will translate it into Arabic. It will go like lightning around Europe. Israelis will snap it up (the book is actually very respectful of Israel; it’s America that has the big problem), and someday it will come out in Hebrew. It will work on people. It will show what independent people ought to do when they form ideas, and others will chime in. A politician will finally speak out, with Walt and Mearsheimer as his or her role model.

I can hardly wait. And I’m not alone.

Michael Gerson had a few choice words for Walt and Mearsheimer:

Walt and Mearsheimer are careful to say they are not anti-Semitic or conspiracy-minded. But their main inference [sic]– that Israel, the Israel lobby and Jewish neoconservatives called the shots for Bush, Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, Stephen Hadley, Colin Powell and Donald Rumsfeld — is not only rubbish, it is dangerous rubbish. As “mainstream” scholars, Walt and Mearsheimer cannot avoid the historical pedigree of this kind of charge. Every generation has seen accusations that Jews have dual loyalties, promote war and secretly control political structures.

These academics may not follow their claims all the way to anti-Semitism. But this is the way it begins. This is the way it always begins.

Ron Rosenbaum called bullshit on Walt and Mearsheimer’s alleged “realism”:

To me, the real problem is not whether The Israel Lobby pleases this Grand Kleagle or that, or the one-sidedness of its depiction of Israel and its supporters, so much as the profound failure of the moral imagination that the book reflects. A failure to connect with the historical experience of Jews that motivates their support of Israel. A failure to empathize with the real danger the 6 million Jews of Israel face: the threat of a second Holocaust.

Leslie Gelb excoriated them for roiling the waters purely to gain vindication for their views about Iraq:

The inevitable last question is this: Why have two such serious students of United States foreign policy written so weak a book and added fuel, inadvertently, to the fires of anti-Semitism? The answer lies in their treatment of the Iraq war.

Mearsheimer and Walt should feel very proud, indeed, for their foresight in opposing the Iraq war. Their writings were more on target than anyone’s, and they are justifiably mystified about how the United States could have been so stupid and self-destructive. They appear to have reasoned that a mistake of this magnitude could have been fostered only by some irresistible force. And the only such force they can conjure from the landscape of the powerful is the Israel lobby, as embodied by neoconservative gladiators like Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle. In the authors’ words, “the lobby did not cause the war by itself. … But absent the lobby’s influence, there almost certainly would not have been a war. The lobby was a necessary but not sufficient condition for a war that is a strategic disaster for the United States and a boon for Iran, Israel’s most serious regional adversary.”

Their vitriol about the Iraq war — about being so right while others were so wrong — is so overwhelming that they minimize two key facts. First, America’s foreign policy community, including many Democrats as well as Republicans, supported the war for the very same reasons that Wolfowitz and the lobby did — namely, the fact that Hussein seemed to pose a present or future threat to American national interests. Second, the real play-callers behind the war were President George Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. They hardly have a history of being in the pockets of the Jewish lobby (more like the oil lobby’s), and they aren’t remotely neoconservatives. The more we know, the clearer it is that the White House went to war primarily to erase the “blunder” of the elder Bush in not finishing off Saddam Hussein during the Persian Gulf war of 1991.

The authors, however, are feeling so satisfied with themselves, if their remarks to the Los Angeles Times editorial board are any indication, that Walt now blames the limitations of language—”lobby” is a “crude” term, Walt admits—for their inability to get their point across.

In this formulation, it’s not their intemperate blanket condemnation of anyone who supports Israel that’s to blame for the hostile reaction to their so-called “argument”; rather, Walt suggests, Americans have been so thoroughly brainwashed by Israel supporters that we no longer have the language to describe such a magical group as the “lobby”—or, more precisely, “the Lobby,” as it was forever imprinted on the minds of those who follow such arcane debates.

What’s crude here is not just the insult “Lobby.” It’s Walt and Mearsheimer’s continued slippery reluctance to define this amoeba-like group that they claim has “too much power” (by what measure?) and is asserting undue influence over American policy against the national interest. This group, they say under skeptical questioning by the L.A. Times’s editorial board, is forever changing its shape and its dimensions to include this person or that; this organization or that; this group of people or that. And all the while, Walt and Mearsheimer keep insisting, they’re not talking about a “cabal,” so what’s the problem?

Here’s the problem: when you describe a group with the mystical powers of a “cabal” but keep insisting that it isn’t a cabal because you’re not referring to it as a “cabal,” it gives off the unmistakable odor of skunk, and weasel.

Read this exchange and see if you don’t agree [e.a.]

Mearsheimer: … if you have a policy of unconditional aid, if you have a policy where you can’t criticize Israel in the United States without getting smeared, you’re going to give that state a lot of room to get itself in trouble. And our argument again is that it would be better if that aid were conditional and we were allowed to have an open debate about Israeli policy and the Israeli-U.S. relationship.

Walt: That is, something similar to the debate that happens in Israel itself, where you have a very wide-open debate about what their policies are and whether they make sense, and where you find lots more people willing to take positions similar to ours than you would here in the United States.

Tim: Then why is the book called The Israel Lobby and not The Pro-Settlement Lobby or The Likudnik Lobby?

Mearsheimer: For the very simple reason that the lobby is not monolithic or homogeneous. There are groups inside the lobby that are opposed to settlements; there are groups inside the lobby that are in favor of settlements. Also you want to remember, we’re not arguing that this is a Jewish lobby. Despite our best efforts to make the case clear that this is the Israel lobby and not the Jewish lobby, people continue to talk as if we’re only talking about Jews.

Who’s in the lobby?

Tim: You mentioned the uh, the non…mono…lithicism of the lobby. And looking through the book, it’s weird to me to think that there’s some team that comprises Martin Indyk, Daniel Pipes, you know, I’m trying to think of a third…I mean, this is really a wide-ranging group of, you know, Abe…

Mearsheimer: Henry Siegman. Do you know Henry Siegman? He was head of the American Jewish Congress. But again, there’s no reason why people inside the lobby can’t be very critical of Israel. Let me give you an example: One of the best reviews of our book, one of the most favorable reactions inside the United States, came from M.J. Rosenberg, who used to work for AIPAC. He said very nice things about the book.

Nick: My, one of my, one of the things that confuses me as I read the book is that you are, you talk in these, often about the lobby. The lobby does this, the lobby does that. The lobby seems so broad as you’ve defined it that it’s hard for me to, to know if that’s a meaningful group that you’re talking about. The differences go broader than Martin Indyk…

Walt: Martin got his start working for AIPAC. He helped found the Institute for Near East Policy.

Nick: He falls clearly in the…

Walt: And that’s not to say that he hasn’t advocated positions, both in his official capacity and outside it, that John and I would agree with. He’s a two-state-solution person; he understands that getting this thing shut down is in everybody’s interest. We might disagree on some other issues. That said, he’s not someone who would ever say the United States should make its support for Israel conditional on ending the settlements. He’s never advocated that, he… [e.a.]

im: So that’s what defines your presence in the lobby, is unconditional support?

Susan Brenneman: Yeah, and not just support but by support you mean aid?

Stephen: Aid and diplomatic support. And again, you’ve got, the way we define it… I think we laid this out as clearly as… You’ve got to be actively working. It’s not just somebody who has an attitude toward Israel. You’ve got to spend some part of your daily life trying to advance that particular goal. I’d also point out, like all other interest groups, these are fuzzy groups, right? I mean, there are people who are clearly in the core: Abraham Foxman, nobody’s really going to argue whether he’s a member. But you’re going to have some people who are further out, to where you get to people who are clearly not in the lobby. And there are going to be some cases in between where you can argue back and forth, and they might change their minds. I acknowledge that the term “lobby” has a certain crude quality to it, but almost due to the limitations of language. One of the things we did was we often used phrases like “groups within the lobby,” “organizations in the lobby,” “organizations and individuals in the lobby…” Trying to underscore to the reader that this is not a monolith. This is not a Comintern that gives orders to the followers. That there are issues where they genuinely disagree.

These two still cannot explain what they mean by “the lobby,” and they blame the constraints of language. Get this: The phenomenon they discern is so unique that language cannot even properly describe it. But they know it when they see it, and they know it’s very bad for America!

And Philip Weiss is eager to spread the seed of these “scholars.”

The mind reels.

A gift especially for you, from the New York Times:

I wonder how much “they” paid for the ad, and who “they” are.

Matthew Yglesias has it bad:

Obviously, expressing willingness to hold diplomatic discussions with Iran’s leaders is a political blunder whereas running around the world threatening to attack them like Rudy Giuliani is politically savvy toughness.

How bad?

Pot-kettle-black bad. Beyond-ignorant-whippersnapper bad. Blindly-striking-out-with-any-weapon-at-hand bad [e.a.]:

So I suppose that by the same token, promising to expand NATO to include Israel — thus committing the United States to the armed defense of the borders of a country that lacks internationally recognized borders — also reflects the politically savvy toughness rather than, say, a dangerous ignorance of what NATO is or how it works or international relations more broadly.

His commenters call him out:

What’s this, is Mr. Yglesias now claiming that Israel doesn’t have internationally recognized borders? If Israel doesn’t have internationally recognized borders, how can Mr. Yglesias complain about Israeli settlements? Has Mr. Yglesias finally come to recognize that the so-called green line is a cease fire line, not a border? If the green line is not a border, as Mr. Yglesias is now claiming, then the settlements East of the green line are not illegal but subject to negotiation as to the final borders.

…

There have been hints in your posts all along, but with your statement that Israel is “a country that lacks internationally recognized borders” you have fully and finally revealed yourself: as someone who basically questions Israel’s very right to exist. Instead of reacting to the NATO proposal on the merits, you dismiss the entire country as a worthless aberration…

Commenter SoCalJustice provides evidence, through links, that the movement to ease Israel into NATO has been going on for a long time (as has the metamorphosis of NATO itself):

From a year and a half ago:

Italian Defense Minister Antonio Martino recently announced that in his opinion, the time has come to include Israel in NATO as a regular member, and he intends to raise the issue at the meeting of NATO defense ministers next week.

From last April:

Israel, NATO conduct Red Sea naval exercise

And from June:

Israel moves closer to NATO missions

Assistant NATO Sec.-Gen. John Colston sounds dangerously ignorant of what NATO is or or it works or international relations more broadly.

But, so far all I’ve seen is a nut (Friedman) and an Italian defense minister.

Here’s another one:

Admit Israel to  NATO

Ronald Asums, executive director of the German Marshall Fund’s Transatlantic Center in Brussels, served as deputy assistant secretary of state for European affairs from 1997 to 2000

Here’s NATO’s Deputy Assistant Secretary-General for Political Affairs and Security Policy Dr. Patrick Hardouin calling for expanded Israel-NATO ties about a year ago:

NATO: Israel ties must remain strong

Here’s Czech Deputy Prime Minister Alexandr Vondra and former Spanish prime minister Jose Maria Aznar calling for Israel (and Australia and Japan) to join NATO:

European leaders suggest Israel join NATO

There are several countries not exactly near the North Atlantic in NATO.

http://www.nato.int/structur/countries.htm

Turkey, Bulgaria, Greece, Romania - all closer to the Middle East than the Atlantic.

I’ve got a link of my own, from March 2007:

Supreme U.S. commander in Europe calls Israel ‘model state’

Gee, what’s going on here? I thought everybody knows that slavish, unconditional support of Israel such as (supposedly) Hillary Clinton’s is, “obviously, a disaster.” 

Well, whaddaya know? It turns out that there are people out there—people who play an active role in our national defense, foreign allies, people like that—who don’t consider Israel a liability. What a surprise, eh?

Some people need to get out more. Rudy Giuliani isn’t one of them.

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.

The lament of “realists” Walt and Mearsheimer, who have been cruelly denied their right to speak in Chicago in support of their upcoming book, for which Farrar Straus & Giroux paid them close to $1 million:

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.

Why do these two shitballs keep apologizing if they’ve done nothing wrong?***

——————-
*** I’ve written way too many posts about these reprehensible so-called scholars and am too lazy to link. If you’re interested, do a search.

Posted: Sun, 03 Jun 2007

The British teachers’ union vote to encourage a boycott of Israeli academicians has been followed in quick order by a similar vote by Britain’s largest trade union, Unisom, which has threatened an economic and cultural boycott of Israel.

In a preamble, the motion “notes that, during 2006, Israel invaded Lebanon and Gaza, withheld tax revenues form the Palestine Authority and refused dialogue with the elected Authority following the democratic elections of January 2006, resealed the borders of Gaza, expanded illegal settlements in the West Bank, and continued the construction of the illegal Apartheid Wall.”

It accused the government of Prime Minister Tony Blair of adopting “a consistent stand in support of the Israeli government throughout the shameful events of 2006, even joining the U.S. in failing to call for a cease-fire amidst worldwide condemnation of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon.”

Now the Israeli parliament is debating a consumer boycott of all British goods, according to The Times (London):

The proposed Bill is aimed at punishing Britain for recent threats from its largest trade union and UCU, the university lecturers’ union, to boycott Israel for occupying Palestinian land. The prospect of a boycott has prompted concern among the Israeli public. Leading commentators denounced the moves as anti-Semitic. Now a group of politicians has promised a harsh response, calling for Israel to begin its own boycott against Britain.

According to some Israeli critics, the government hasn’t done enough to counter the growing threats, says the Jerusalem Post:

The scheduled governmental meeting comes as some in the Foreign Ministry have said privately that Israel has not done enough over the last few months - as various groups in Britain debated boycott and divesture - to protest these moves, and to persuade the British government to register its opposition loudly and publicly as well.

Livni spoke to British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett about the matter on Friday and said that Israel viewed these steps “gravely” and that they stood in complete opposition to the good relations that exist between the two countries.

That’s the drama that’s taking place on the world stage. Via Normblog, Shalom Lappin gives a preview of what will happen behind the closed doors of academia as a result of the boycott vote, which requires follow-up votes—not to Israelis but to British Jews [e.a.]:

Several people have suggested that the boycott resolutions of the UCU and other unions are ineffective, and so need not be taken seriously. It is true that these resolutions have not interfered with institutional scientific cooperation between Israel and Britain. However, it would be foolishly insouciant to treat them as unimportant. The primary purpose of the boycott campaign is not to change Israeli government policy but to undermine the legitimacy of Israel as a country. It aims to isolate, not its political leaders and policy makers, but its people as a whole. It is, then, a form of branding which seeks to mark a group of people as social outcasts. The main damage that it does is to provide cover for acts of blatant discrimination against Israeli academics, committed by individual researchers acting as journal editors, conference organizers, tenure or appointment consultants, and in similar roles. We have seen several high profile cases of such individual boycott actions within the UK over the past seven years. This trend is likely to gather momentum if the boycott campaign continues unchecked.

In the end, the boycott is a far greater threat to the Jewish community in Britain than it is to Israeli academics. The latter will sustain robust research and teaching careers through a multitude of international connections that do not involve British institutions. Boycott actions constitute, at most, an unpleasant inconvenience for them. Alternative venues for publication and joint research can, in most cases, be easily arranged. However, British Jewish academics (and British Jews in general) will increasingly find themselves facing a stark choice. Either they endorse the boycott campaign and dance to its tune (as a number of prominent Jewish public figures have noisily done), or they face the prospect of being identified as Israel’s supporters, with the public exclusion that this entails. Cowering in fearful silence will offer increasingly limited protection against a movement determined to make the Israel-Palestine conflict the defining issue on which one’s claim to moral and political decency depends. In a polarizing environment of this sort, the fabric of normal collegial relations and academic life begins to unravel. This emerging dilemma is a reflection of the increasing isolation into which the British Jewish community at large is being forced.

Thus does anti-Zionism become politically correct—the only right way to think and behave. And via this soft totalitarianism hysterical, terrified, cowardly British leftists try to appease the Muslim masses at home in Britain. Brilliant strategy!

Moralizing anti-Israel “realist” Stephen Walt is on the road trying to pre-sell his upcoming screed to Jews:

Walt — who penned the ["Israel Lobby"] paper with co-author John Mearsheimer — had come to hawk the book-length version of their findings to be published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, in September.

“Both I and my co-author are pro-Israel,” [uh-huh --ed.] he said on Tuesday evening, in front of the audience gathered at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in New York. “Our book does not question Israel’s right to exist [how decent of you  --ed.], and we make clear that lobbying for Israel is as American as apple pie.”

Really? Here’s what I wrote about that in March 2006, when I first mentioned these two poisonous flame-throwers, whose conspiratorially copy-styled “Israel Lobby”-with-a-capital-L tells you all you need to know about their not-so-subtle insinuations:

Let others give this the fisking it deserves. I will simply note that the professors’ logic skills are called into question by the first assertion they choose to footnote and the text of that citation:

…Other special interest groups have managed to skew U.S. foreign policy in directions they favored, but no lobby has managed to divert U.S. foreign policy as far from what the American national interest would otherwise suggest, while simultaneously convincing Americans that U.S. and Israeli interests are essential identical. (1)

Here’s the opener of footnote 1:

Indeed, the mere existence of the Lobby suggests that unconditional support for Israel is not in the American national interest. If it was, one would not need an organized special interest group to bring it about [emphasis added]. But because Israel is a strategic and moral liability, it takes relentless political pressure to keep U.S. support intact.

Now, in May 2007, Walt says that “lobbying for Israel is as American as apple pie,” but in their paper, Walt and Mearsheimer suggested that the mere existence of the “Lobby” indicates that it’s not in the American interest.

Can I have some extra scoops of vanilla with that pie? And hold the cinnamon!

Walt seems to be trying to soften his paper’s grotesque scapegoating of Israel as the source of all of America’s troubles with the Muslim world.

Walt made his remarks at the Jewish Book Council’s “Meet the Authors” program, a sort of speed-dating for the literary set, in which each presenter is given two minutes to expound on his or her book before an audience of event coordinators from around the country.

Well, the joke is on Walt, because Jewish book groups are notorious in the book world for inviting tons of speakers and bringing in big audiences, who consistently fail to buy books at the event.

May that embarrassing tradition continue.

There is a great unsolved mystery that is nagging at me. When Tony Judt and other deeply-concerned-about-their-brethren, non-anti-Semitic Jews suggest that Israel should become a bi-national state, where should all those newly stateless Wandering Jews go?

That question had been keeping me up nights as I wondered how I could fit my deep distress for the stateless Palestinians into my Leftist-and-deeply-sympathetic-to-Israel worldview.

Now I can report that I am finally at peace. I am sure to be able to sleep well tonight, for the first time in years, because I found the answer.

China, it seems, is a nation of philo-Semites—at least they’re philo about the Jews’ enviable talent for making money:

SHANGHAI — Showcased in bookstores between biographies of Andrew Carnegie and the newest treatise by China’s president are stacks of works built on a stereotype.

One promises “The Eight Most Valuable Business Secrets of the Jewish.”

Another title teases readers with “The Legend of Jewish Wealth.” A third provides a look at “Jewish People and Business: The Bible of How to Live Their Lives.”

Also:

Positive stereotypes about Jews and their supposed business prowess have given the Jewish community iconic status in the eyes of the Chinese public.

Israelis: get thee to Shaghai! (again)

p.s. The writer who filed this report for the WaPo, Ariana Eunjung Cha, helpfully explains that

[i]n the United States, where making broad generalizations about races, cultures or religions has become unacceptable in most circles, the titles of some of these books might make people cringe. Throughout history and around the world, even outwardly innocuous and broadly accepted characterizations of Jews have sometimes formed the basis for eventual campaigns of violent anti-Semitism.

I’m curious about who the intended audience for this remark is. (Ms. Enjung Cha lists her credential as “Washington Post Foreign Service.”)

Broad generalizations about Jews—albeit via code words: “neocon,” “Likudnik,” “cabal,” “AIPAC,” “influence,” “agent,” “dual loyalties,” and “New York money people” come immediately to mind—are all the rage. Particularly on the left, and particularly in the leftosphere.

John Judis and Matthew Yglesias might want to take note of this. But then they may be caught up in the War on Martin Peretz, which is so much more important.

Jimmy won’t debate him, so Alan Dershowitz goes on the attack:

Listen carefully to what Carter says about the media: the plight of the Palestinians is “not something that has been acknowledged or even discussed in this country.” …

He then goes on to say that the only reason his book–which has been universally savaged by reviewers–is receiving such negative reviews is because they are all being written by “representatives of Jewish organizations” (demonstrably false!).  So much for the media.

Now here is what he says about politicians:

“It would be almost politically suicidal for members of Congress to espouse a balanced position between Israel and Palestine, to suggest that Israel comply with international law or to speak in defense of justice or human rights for Palestinians.” …

Each of these claims is demonstrably false, as I have shown in detail elsewhere. …

[T]he big story that the media and political figures in America have missed is how grievously they, themselves have been insulted and disrespected by our self-righteous former president.  Carter is lecturing The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, CNN, and the major networks about how they are incapable of reporting the news objectively because they are beholden to some Jewish cabal.  He is telling Pulitzer Prize winning writers such as Tom Friedman and Samatha Power that they did not deserve their prizes.  He is telling George Will that his reporting is controlled by his Jewish bosses (sound a little bit like Judith Regan?).  And he is denying that Anderson Cooper is capable of filing an honest report from the West Bank. 

As far as our legislators are concerned, he is accusing Barack Obama, John McCain, Hillary Clinton, and Patrick Leahy of being bought and paid for by the Israeli lobby. 

At the bottom, Carter is saying that no objective journalist or politician could actually believe that America’s support for Israel is based on moral and strategic considerations and not on their own financial self-interest.  Such a charge is so insulting to every honest legislator and journalist in this country that I am amazed that Carter has been let off the hook so easily. 

Dershowitz may be surprised. I certainly am not. It’s this same premise that’s at the foundation of Walt and Mearsheimer’s “Israel Lobby” paper too, as I have said before.

Back then, I quoted David Verbeeten’s detailed study of the power of AIPAC, which I urge anyone with an interest in this matter to read. He acknowledges the influence of AIPAC, but says that it’s the pro-Israel sympathies of the American people that drive politicians to allow that influence:

Groups such as AIPAC may not be able to determine executive policy, but they are at times able to constrain or modify it, especially through those institutions sensitive to the pulse of the American people—such as the U.S. Congress, which controls federal allocations. Knowing that for four decades, a plurality if not majority of Americans sympathized with Israel (Table 3), congressmen and senators are inclined to back the Jewish state.

Verbeeten elaborates on the American people’s natural sympathy for Israelis:

Support for Israel is the expression of an emotional and ideological attachment to the Jewish state on the part of diverse segments of the American people. It is a reflection of “a widespread fund of goodwill toward Israel that is not restricted to the Jewish community.”[30] In the words of scholar William Quandt:

The bond between the United States and Israel is unquestionably strengthened because of the congruence of values between the two nations. Americans can identify with Israel’s national style … in a way that has no parallel on the Arab side. Neither the ideal of the well-ordered Muslim community nor that of a modernizing autocracy evokes much sympathy among Americans. Consequently, a predisposition no doubt exists in American political culture that works to the advantage of the Israelis.[31]

This is what’s so pernicious about Jimmy Carter (and also the reason he will fail to gain converts to his cause). In a What’s the Matter with Kansas?-type attack, he is trying to persuade the American people that they’ve got the totally wrong idea about Israel.

Only, Carter is not only willing but eager to use the nastiest anti-Semitic canards to gain attention for his foul accusations, and he’s doing it with Saudi money, says Dershowitz:

It now turns out that the shoe is precisely on the other foot.  Recent disclosures prove that it is Carter who has been bought and paid for by anti-Israel Arab and Islamic money.

Journalist Jacob Laksin has documented the tens of millions of dollars that the Carter Center has accepted from Saudi Arabian royalty and assorted other Middle Eastern sultans, who, in return, Carter dutifully praised as peaceful and tolerant (no matter how despotic the regime). And these are only the confirmed, public donations. 

Judgment is coming for James Earl Carter, Jr., and I hope he gets his on earth.*** He will certainly have deserved it.

————–

*** I noted with the appropriate amount of Schadenfreude that Carter was totally marginalized during the Washington, D.C., part of the pomp and circumstance surrounding Gerald Ford’s death. Even Tom Brokaw got to speak at the National Cathedral, but not Jimmy Carter. He got to give a euolgy in Michigan, I hear. If there were cameras there, I’m not aware of it.

Whether you call them Christians or Christianists, some of his co-religionists love love love Israel:

A leading Evangelical US pastor has announced plans to hold a “night to honor Israel ” in every major American city as part of an Evangelical political campaign.

Pastor John Hagee, a Christian leader from Texas, was given an award by the Knesset Christian Allies Caucus during a ceremony jointly held with the World Jewish Congress Monday night, to “honor our Christian allies.”

Addressing the conference by a satellite-linked screen, Hagee delivered an emphatic speech, declaring: “It’s time for us Christians in America , from coast to coast, to speak up for Israel.”

He added that his organization aimed to hold “every congressman and senator accountable for their position on Israel.”

This is likely to create even more distance between traditional American liberals and Israel, of course. Like me, they’re sure to be way less than comfortable about an alliance between Christians who believe in a divine right of the Jews to the land of Israel and Jews who believe in that same divine right.

But I love to imagine Jimmy Carter squiriming over the fact that his co-religionists didn’t get his “message.”

Jimmy Carter writes a letter to “Jewish Citizens of America” and tries to defend his indefensible use of anti-Semitic canards during the promotional tour for his book. Too bad he can’t help himself and slyly repeats them:

I made it clear that I have never claimed that American Jews control the news media, but reiterated that the overwhelming bias for Israel comes from among Christians like me who have been taught since childhood to honor and protect God’s chosen people from among whom came our own savior, Jesus Christ. An additional factor, especially in the political arena, is the powerful influence of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which is exercising its legitimate goal of explaining the current policies of Israel’s government and arousing maximum support in our country. There are no significant countervailing voices.

Mr. Carter finds it a problem that there is an “overwhelming bias for Israel” in America, so he has set out to overturn it.

He smooths the way for all those—the world over—who are eager, for their own reasons, to delegitimize Israel. I’m sure they will give it their best shot. Only, he isn’t content with that. He wants “Jewish citizens of America” to prove their loyalty by getting on board for his all-American effort to turn on Israel.

Take your letter, Jimmy Carter, and shove it. Then take your hairshirt and rub yourself raw with it. Harder! Harder! Go ahead and bleed for that Maker of yours. I’m sure He will appreciate your efforts.

The rest of us will go back to our see-no-evil, hear-no-evil, speak-no-evil overwhelming bias for Israel.

I have no doubt that the uber-punitive Christian former president of the United States James Earl Carter thinks he means well when he brings the little-known cause of the long-suffering Palestinians to the attention of the world in a book called Palestine Peace Not Apartheid.

Carter may have the best intentions toward the Palestinians; he certainly does not mean well when it comes to Israeli Jews or, for that matter, American Jews. Let’s leave aside the question of why Carter chose this particularly sensitive moment in geopolitical upheaval to publish an aggressively provocative and vicious attack on Israel. Let’s just focus on why he lied about the “facts” he printed—about which Dennis Ross, whose work Carter stole and misrepresented in order to publish those “facts,” had this to say on the Situation Room last Friday evening:

ROSS: I haven’t had a chance to read [Carter's book] yet, but I looked at the maps and the maps he uses are maps that are drawn basically from my book. There’s no other way they could — even if he says they come from another place. They came originally from my book.

BLITZER: We’re going to put them up on the screen on the wall behind you. But the whole notion, what’s the big deal if he lifted maps from your book and put them in his book?

ROSS: You know, the attribution issue is one thing, the fact that he’s labeled them as an Israeli interpretation of the Clinton idea is just simply wrong. The maps were maps that I created because at Camp David and then with the Clinton ideas, we never presented maps, but we presented percentages of withdrawal and we presented as well criteria for how to draw the lines. So after I left the government, when I wrote this book, I actually commissioned a mapmaker, to take those and produce them for the first time.

BLITZER: And then he put virtually the same map in his book without saying this came from you. I want you to listen to what he said specifically about this. Listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CARTER: I’ve never seen Dennis Ross’ book. I’m not knocking it, I’m sure it’s a very good book, but my maps came from an atlas that’s publicly available. And I think it’s the most authentic map that you can get.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: You heard his explanation how– would you say your maps wound up in his book.

ROSS: Well, the reality is the place he got it from, had to get it from mine. I published it before, number one. Number two, you would think that if you wanted to write about the facts of what went on, you would go to a book where a participant actually wrote them and then developed the maps in light of what we had put on the table. Now, again, if the purpose is to say, you’re presenting facts, then you should present facts. To say that his map is an Israeli interpretation of the Clinton ideas is simply not true. These were the Clinton ideas. If he were to say that…

BLITZER: On that point, he’s told me that he understands better what happened at Camp David, where you were one of the principal negotiators, than the former president himself. I want you to listen to this exchange that we had the other day, right here in THE SITUATION ROOM.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CARTER: I hate to dispute Bill Clinton on your program, because he did a great and heroic effort there. He never made a proposal that was accepted by Barak or Arafat.

BLITZER: Why would he write that in his book if he said Barak accepted and Arafat rejected it?

CARTER: I don’t know. You can check with all the records, Barak never did accept it. (END VIDEO CLIP)

ROSS: That’s simply not so.

BLITZER: Who is right, Jimmy Carter or Bill Clinton on this question which is so relevant as to whether or not the Israelis at Camp David at the end of the Bill Clinton administration accepted the proposals the U.S. put forward?

ROSS: The answer is President Clinton. The Israelis said yes to this twice, first at Camp David, there were a set of proposals that were put on the table that they accepted. And then were the Clinton parameters, the Clinton ideas which were presented in December, their government, meaning the cabinet actually voted it. You can go back and check it, December 27th the year 2000, the cabinet voted to approve the Clinton proposal, the Clinton ideas. So this is — this is a matter of record. This is not a matter of interpretation.

BLITZER: So you’re saying Jimmy Carter is flat wrong.

ROSS: On this issue, he’s wrong. On the issue of presenting his map as an Israeli interpretation of the Clinton ideas, that’s simply not so.

Rick Richman at Jewish Current Issues, in a lengthy, detailed post, explains why Carter had to lie: because it was only by twisting the facts that he could substantiate his extravagant claim—the underlying argument of his book—that it is the Israelis, not the Palestinians, who are and always have been the intransigent obstacle to peace (hat tip Power Line):

But notice that while the map is in identical to Ross’s in almost every respect, Carter has significantly altered its title. Carter calls his map not an illustration of the Clinton Parameters by the U.S. Ambassador who developed them, but rather the “Israeli Interpretation of Clinton’s Proposal” (emphasis added) — as if it were simply one side’s “interpretation.” He also omits Ross’s explanatory note, which made it clear the map “actually understates the Clinton ideas by not showing an additional 1 to 3% of territorial swaps to the Palestinians” (emphasis added).

I know I shouldn’t breathe more life into this—that in all likelihood even the minimal attention it’s likely to get from this lonely blog will be counterproductive, because more controversy only serves Carter’s purpose: it draws attention to his un-Christian cause—which, as Jeffrey Goldberg notes in the Washington Post, is to dismantle American evangelicals’ support for Israel.

Why is Carter so hard on Israeli settlements and so easy on Arab aggression and Palestinian terror? Because a specific agenda appears to be at work here. Carter seems to me