One paper gets it, the other doesn’t (the other being the Israeli paper)

For some reason the Jerusalem Post is reporting the recent CAIR-Mearsheimer-Walt Hate-The-Jews Hate-The-“Jewish-Lobby” Fest as if these folks know about what they’re speaking. (You can find some of my previous articles on these two and their issues by going here).

From the Jerusalem Post:

In their public appearance in Washington Monday, a rare event in itself, the two found a supportive crowd and were even awarded by one of the activists with a pin carrying the slogan: “Fighting the Israel lobby.”

Walt, of the Kennedy School at Harvard University, stressed that he is not blaming all Jews in high positions in the US of being “some kind of secret cabal” and said he does not claim the activities of Jewish Americans in favor of Israel are disloyal or inappropriate.

Yet when talking about the people who influenced the administration to launch the Iraq war, the two scholars mentioned Paul Wolfowitz, Doug Feith, Elliott Abrams and David Wurmser, all Jewish officials in the administration. Later they added John Bolton, who is not Jewish, to the list.

Mearsheimer claimed Israel had planned the Lebanon war in advance and that it used the Hizbullah attack as a pretext to launch its war plan. He went on to say that Israel informed the US of its plans months before the war broke out.

“It now seems clear that Israel has been planning to strike at Hizbullah for months before the July 12 kidnappings and that key Israelis had briefed the administration about their intentions,” Mearsheimer said, “The available evidence indicates that the Bush administration enthusiastically endorsed Israel’s plans for war in Lebanon.”

But wait! Here is the Washington Post on the same story:

Walt singled out two Jews who worked at the Pentagon for their pro-Israel views. “People like Paul Wolfowitz or Doug Feith . . . advocate policies they think are good for Israel and the United States alike,” he said. “We don’t think there’s anything wrong with that, but we also don’t think there’s anything wrong for others to point out that these individuals do have attachments that shape how they think about the Middle East.”

“Attachments” sounds much better than “dual loyalties.” But why single out Wolfowitz and Feith and not their non-Jewish boss, Donald Rumsfeld?

“I could have mentioned non-Jewish people like John Bolton,” Walt allowed when the question was put to him.

Picking up on the “attachments” lingo, Mearsheimer did mention Bolton but cited two Jews, Elliott Abrams and David Wurmser, as “the two most influential advisers on Middle East affairs in the White House. Both, he said, are ” fervent supporters of Israel.” Never mind that others in the White House, such as national security adviser Stephen Hadley, Vice President Cheney and President Bush, have been just as fervent despite the lack of “attachments.”

And

…And, indeed, Walt seemed defensive about the charges of anti-Semitism. He cautioned that the Israel lobby “is not a cabal,” that it is “not synonymous with American Jews” and that “there is nothing improper or illegitimate about its activities.”

But Mearsheimer made no such distinctions as he used “Jewish activists,” “major Jewish organizations” and the “Israel lobby” interchangeably. Clenching the lectern so tightly his knuckles whitened, Mearsheimer accused Israel of using the kidnapping of its soldiers by Hezbollah as a convenient excuse to attack Lebanon.

“Israel had been planning to strike at Hezbollah for months,” he asserted. “Key Israelis had briefed the administration about their intentions.”

A questioner asked if he had any “hard evidence” for this accusation. Mearsheimer cited the “public record” and “Israeli civilian strategists,” then repeated the allegation that Israel was seeking “a cover for launching this offensive.”

In other words, just like with their apparent methodology for poorly researching their weak paper about the “Israel Lobby,” during this war they read some blogs like Juan Cole’s (he’s taken to regularly claiming that this war was pre-planned by Israel because the IDF had contingency plans in case of attack – that’s right, because armies never have contingency plans as to how they will fight their enemies 🙄 ), or some pro-Palestinian websites and decided that there is now a public record that the war was planned in advance. They then went to a CAIR conference to talk about Jewish influence on America that goes against America’s interests and supposedly influences it unduly. Read the entire Washington Post article to get the full flavor of this sad joke.

Let’s hope the only people who keep on inviting them to speak are the CAIRs of the world.

For those who don’t know, CAIR = the Council on American-Islamic Relations. Not very friendly people.