I’ve been meaning to put this link up for a while, but I just keep reading and rereading it and then I find I have some errand to run. In one fell swoop they show up both Walt and Mearsheimer’s whiny tactics as well as those critics of Israel who like to play the victim game. I have no issue with critics of Israel – heck, while I think we here at Jewlicious all love Israel, our love is not blind and we have criticized Israeli policies and actions on numerous occasions. Our criticism I think is balanced and not the result of flawed academia, spurious theories or just plain dumdassedness. For instance, you’ll never hear us mention an Apartheid wall or genocide or use the term “storm trooper” to refer to Israeli security forces. But I digress.

The Forward in this editorial takes certain critics of Israel to task, and rightly so. They even used the word “whine.” How awesome!

Lately, however, some of Israel’s critics have started learning a few tricks themselves — and rather than enriching the conversation, they are choosing to further muddy it… The trick follows a typical pattern. Step one: Publish your views in as provocative a manner as possible. Use words like “apartheid,” as Jimmy Carter did in his book, or paint Jewish lobbying efforts in darkly conspiratorial terms, as Walt and Mearsheimer did in a paper published last year. Step two: Dare the Jewish community to lash out at you, then whine about being victimized by bullies. Step three: Implore fair-minded liberals to line up behind you, forcing them to choose between endorsing your vision — however skewed — or becoming part of the censorship juggernaut… But that’s the genius of the victimhood game: If you’ve been rejected, you’ve won in the court of public opinion.

Walt and Mearsheimer’s crappy book is coming out soon. I’m not linking to it. But do note that on the cover is an American flag rendered in blue and white. What a couple of assholes.

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ck

Founder and Publisher of Jewlicious, David Abitbol lives in Jerusalem with his wife, newborn daughter and toddler son. Blogging as "ck" he's been blocked on twitter by the right and the left, so he's doing something right.

12 Comments

  • Made me think of ‘The Big Book of Jewish Conspiracies’ by David Deutsch and Joshua Neumann. I particularly suggest to read their conclusion on well poisonings to understand why some people feel the way they feel. I introduced this book to a university class I once taught on lies as a structural element of anti-Semitism, and the students very much enjoyed the bittersweet sarcasm.

  • CK, please look into the anti-Zionism of the Workmen’s Circle, the parent organization of The Forward newspaper. Call them on it. Comb their website. Phone them. Nobody realizes they are anti-Zionist! They have no right to be, either. It is a hijacking of the organization’s history!

    Remind them what Stalin did to the Bund.

  • JM,

    That is not entirely true, Abraham Cahan himself eventually was converted to the Zionist cause, mostly as a result of the Arab-led pogroms of the late 20s. That said, there were plenty of anti-Zionists in the day whose opinions (even if I disagree with them) were still well-founded and based on what they effectively thought was best for world Jewry. Most importantly, does JJ Goldberg really have responsibility and connection to the Workmen’s Circle? Umm, probably not.

    That said, Walt and Mearsheimer are big ol’ fucking assholes. Especially as they make a stink that Jewish organizations will not host their speeches. The Forward editorial really hit it spot on.

  • The editorial was great.

    But back in the seventies that organization had a firm pro-Zionist position. It had to insist on it, exactly because of those who disagreed with that. But it did insist on it.

    It is now anti-Zionist. And sneakily, too. Look into it. Phone them.

    The Forward is theoretically its own master, but of course it publishes out of the WC building. I double dare them to run a pro-Bush piece, demonstrating their hair-in-the-wind independence. Yeah, right.

    They are very Jewish-flavored. Yiddish, yiddish, yiddish. Then they dare to be anti-Zionist. And covertly! They don’t want to alienate anybody. They need the money.

  • The best coverage of Walt-Mearsheimer is on Haaretz’ Rosner’s Domain (which i highly reccomend for other reasons as well). He actually quoted this Forward article more than a week ago, and added many other important details about the book. It’s all here: http://www.haaretz.com/rosne

    [edit by TM: I’ve removed the concluding R in the URL – Rosner – because Ha’aretz’s website or server is infected with some virus]

  • Yoram, the best coverage of Walt and Mearsheimer is here on Jewlicious. It’s just that I think a couple of us have come to the same conclusion independently of each other that perhaps it’s better not to give them the shouting match they want this time.

  • Here, CK, a spurious theory from a dumbass:

    “The Arab affairs editor for the Israeli newsaper Ha’aretz, Danny Rubenstein, told participants at a United Nations conference in Brussels Thursday that Israel is an apartheid state.

    “‘Today Israel is an apartheid state with different status for different communities,’ Rubenstein said, according to observers at the event, which is being held at the Euroepan Parlaiment. “

  • xisnotx: Ooh! You got me there! If Danny Rubensein says Israel is an apartheid state then it must be so! Man, I was schooled – good one xisnotx!

    Uh… but wait. By Danny Rubenstein’s expansive definition of apartheid, the US is an apartheid state. By Danny Rubenstein’s expansive definition of apartheid, France is an apartheid state. By Danny Rubenstein’s expansive definition of apartheid, the Ivory Coast is an apartheid state. By Danny Rubenstein’s expansive definition of apartheid, present day South Africa is an apartheid state. By Danny Rubenstein’s expansive definition of apartheid, Canada (!!) is an apartheid state. By Danny Rubenstein’s expansive definition of apartheid, Harvard University is an apartheid state. By Danny Rubenstein’s expansive definition of apartheid, the Lower East Side of New York is an apartheid state. By Danny Rubenstein’s expansive definition of apartheid, Iraq is an apartheid state. By Danny Rubenstein’s expansive definition of apartheid, the Palestine Authority is an apartheid state. By Danny Rubenstein’s expansive definition of apartheid, Richard Silverstein is an apartheid state. By Danny Rubenstein’s expansive definition of apartheid, yo big fat Momma (figuratively speaking) is an apartheid state.

    I could go on. But I won’t. The point is that the inaccurate use of such hot button terms serves only to inflame passions and actually prevents any kind of productive and rational discourse by compelling me to use terms like “dumbass.”

  • Here is a review from The New York Sun:

    http://www.nysun.com/article/61485

    In this latest iteration, the professors have tried to clean up their act– but only on the surface. The “Lobby” has been revised to the lowercase “lobby.” Gone in this new presentation is much of the inflammatory rhetoric– the verb “manipulate,” the term “stranglehold,” the accusation that AIPAC is a foreign agent rather than an American interest group. The new version of this argument, with its stamp of approval from Farrar, Straus and Giroux, may be more acceptable for sale at a Barnes & Noble near you, for open discourse in the New York Times, on National Public Radio, and at the Council on Foreign Relations.

    But from beneath the surface, try though the professors may have to suppress it, what Messrs. Mearsheimer and Walt themselves define as anti-Semitism manages to poke through. The professors write that “anti-Semitism indulges in various forms of stereotyping and implies that Jews should be viewed with suspicion or contempt, while seeking to deny them the ability to participate fully and freely in all realms of society.” They are at pains to emphasize that “the lobby is defined not by ethnicity or religion but by a political agenda.” Then they proceed to jump in and do exactly what they say anti-Semites do.

  • They are incredibly reckless in this regard. Their book is quite socially irresponsible (not a new thing for academia). Their whole theme, abandonment of friends for supposed secondary gain, i.e., the appeasement of a brutal terrorist killer culture, is explicitly amoral (and likely immoral as well for those of us not prone to moral relativism) as well as anti-American.

    They are using this book and likely their educational pulpits with students as a weapon, with the desired collateral damage of weakening the U.S. (Does anyone even need to ask anymore why Ivy professors might be against a strong United States?)

    Walt and Mearsheimer, through their arrogance, stupidity, and exportation of academia’s amoral tyranny, are tacitly working for our enemies.

    These professors are out of control, like a runaway locomotive, thanks to the cheerful support of opportunistic anti-Semites and the MSM (I’m not sure those two are entirely separable). They need to be stopped – however, accusations of anti-Semitism are a distraction and they know it.

    Walt and Mearsheimer have more in common with Arthur Neville Chamberlain than David Ernest Duke or Alfred Charles Sharpton.

    That said, as Abraham Foxman and many others observed, Walt & Mearsheimer’s faux-scholarship is “riddled with errors” that tend to slant it “in the exact same direction, thus we are dealing not with a little unfortunate carelessness but with a culpable degree of bias.”

    I submit again that their “carelessness and bias” is most likely knowing and deliberate, but not due to anti-Semitism. Its purpose is promoting appeasement and the weakening of America, at a cost to Israelis and Jews the professors are indifferent to and simply don’t care about, typical of Ivy professors who want their way, period.

  • Blogger Zombie beat me to creating a graphic of the Walt/Mearsheimer Jewish Lobby drek in the toilet, at Little Green Footballs. (Zombie: Walt and Mearsheimer, Right Where They Belong.)

    After thinking this over carefully, I don’t think these professors are really anti-Semitic. Read on.

    Walt and Mearsheimer are utilizing the same anti-Semitic tactics as despots who wish to distract their subjects from the malignant social ills that they themselves foster, but unlike despots who espouse Jewish conspiracy theories out of a combination of opportunism and actual hate, these professors have written their essay and book based on the former motivation, opportunism. Like bank robbers, their motivation for this outrage is primarily because “the Jews are there” and have proven useful as punching bags to countless others in history.

    Anti-Semitism is a distraction from the real issues here. Walt and Mearscheimer know full well there is no super-powerful “Jewish Lobby”, that the pro-Israel lobbyists have competing counterparts representing many other causes and countries, and that the pro-Israel lobby is not particularly remarkable in this environment. They know full well that the misrepresentations of fact, omissions, things taken out of context, logical errors, etc. in their prior paper and this book are indeed risible, the trash produced by dilettantes, not by serious researchers.

    But they don’t care.

    What would make them produce such garbage?

    Fear, and the standards of (mis)conduct that come right from the halls of academia with which they’ve lived their lives, notably amorality and betrayal of friends when some self-interest is served. (For professors, it’s usually money and status.) They are clearly enthralled with university culture and attempting to export that pathologic “culture” to the rest of the world.

    What is the “gain” here? In the main, I do think the reason d’atre of their book is one of appeasement and surrender to Islamofascism.

    A few hundred million insane bloodthirsty Arabs and other followers of the death cult of Islam calling for Death to Israel and Death to America: what better way to appease them than writing a book that the authors hope will cause the U.S. to hang Israel out to dry in the face of genocidal maniacs, groups and countries like Hezbollah, Hamas, Ahmadinejad, Syria and Iran?

    In fact, they are not anti-Semites. Rather, they are equal opportunity amoralists. If the Islamofascists were chanting “Death to Mexico! Death to America!”, Walt and Mearsheimer would undoubtedly craft conspiracy theories that might justify allowing Osama and his minions to relocate from Waziristan to Acapulco.

    University professors are renowned for turning on their friends, students and colleagues at the drop of a hat, if they see a personal gain in doing so. They could care less about ruining careers and lives. See for example, “Academic Tyranny: The Tale and the Lessons”, Robert Weissberg, Review of Policy Research, Vol. 15 no. 4 P. 99-110, Dec. 1998, and especially “Authorship: The Coin of the Realm, The Source of Complaints” by Wilcox, Journal of the AMA, Vol. 280 No. 3, July 15, 1998 that describes how stealing of others’ work and career-ending professorial retaliation against those who complain is common at Walt’s university, Harvard. Of course see http://www.thefire.org as well.

    So, Walt and Mearsheimer wrote this book in all its faux-academic glory in the cowardly and academic-culture-inspired hope of spearheading a U.S. betrayal of its friend, Israel, in their hope that this will satiate the Islamofascists’ appetite for blood and “honor.”

    They are incredibly reckless in this regard. Their book is quite socially irresponsible (not a new thing for academia). Their whole theme, abandonment of friends for supposed secondary gain, i.e., the appeasement of a brutal terrorist killer culture, is explicitly amoral (and likely immoral as well for those of us not prone to moral relativism) as well as anti-American.

    They are using this book and likely their educational pulpits with students as a weapon, with the desired collateral damage of weakening the U.S. (Does anyone even need to ask anymore why Ivy professors might be against a strong United States?)

    Walt and Mearsheimer, through their arrogance, stupidity, and exportation of academia’s amoral tyranny, are tacitly working for our enemies.

    These professors are out of control, like a runaway locomotive, thanks to the cheerful support of opportunistic anti-Semites and the MSM (I’m not sure those two are entirely separable). They need to be stopped – however, accusations of anti-Semitism are a distraction and they know it.

    Walt and Mearsheimer have more in common with Arthur Neville Chamberlain than David Ernest Duke or Alfred Charles Sharpton.

    That said, as Abraham Foxman and many others observed, Walt & Mearsheimer’s faux-scholarship is “riddled with errors” that tend to slant it “in the exact same direction, thus we are dealing not with a little unfortunate carelessness but with a culpable degree of bias.”

    I submit again that their “carelessness and bias” is most likely knowing and deliberate, but not due to anti-Semitism. Its purpose is promoting appeasement and the weakening of America, at a cost to Israelis and Jews the professors are indifferent to and simply don’t care about, typical of Ivy professors who want their way, period.

    There is a term for deliberate and knowing falisification in academia for any secondary purpose:

    Academic Fraud.

    Walt and Mearshiemer have placed themselves in the same league as Finkelstein, Chomsky, and other academic fabricators.

    Charges of anti-Semitism are a distraction from their motivations. Charges of academic incompetence are not highly credible considering the experience, resources and positions of these professors.

    Charges of deliberate academic fraud are, I believe, closer to reality, and perhaps hold the key to successful challenging of this dangerous charade.

    – ERIS