The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy

By JOHN J. MEARSHEIMER and STEPHEN M. WALT

America is about to enter a presidential election year. Although the outcome is of course impossible to predict at this stage, certain features of the campaign are easy to foresee. The candidates will inevitably differ on various domestic issues-health care, abortion, gay marriage, taxes, education, immigration — and spirited debates are certain to erupt on a host of foreign policy questions as well. What course of action should the United States pursue in Iraq? What is the best response to the crisis in Darfur, Iran's nuclear ambitions, Russia's hostility to NATO, and China's rising power? How should the United States address global warming, combat terrorism, and reverse the erosion of its international image? On these and many other issues, we can confidently expect lively disagreements among the various candidates.

Yet on one subject, we can be equally confident that the candidates will speak with one voice. In 2008, as in previous election years, serious candidates for the highest office in
the land will go to considerable lengths to express their deep personal commitment to one
foreign country — Israel-as well as their determination to maintain unyielding U.S. support
for the Jewish state. Each candidate will emphasize that he or she fully appreciates the
multitude of threats facing Israel and make it clear that, if elected, the United States will
remain firmly committed to defending Israel's interests under any and all circumstances.
None of the candidates is likely to criticize Israel in any significant way or suggest that
the United States ought to pursue a more evenhanded policy in the region. Any who do
will probably fall by the wayside.

This observation is hardly a bold prediction, because presidential aspirants were already proclaiming their support for Israel in early 2007. The process began in January, when four potential candidates spoke to Israel's annual Herzliya Conference on security issues. As Joshua Mitnick reported in Jewish Week, they were "seemingly competing to see who can be most strident in defense of the Jewish State."

Mearsheimer and Walt; censored by the Jewish Lobby again

from the Wall Street Journal's blog

Jay Solomon reports on controversy over a planned speech.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."