John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, the authors of a controversial paper criticizing the role of the "Israel Lobby" in American foreign policy, are at work on a book-length version of their findings to be published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
The two, who have argued that it “is hard to imagine any mainstream media outlet in the United States” printing their work, first published their paper in the March 23 edition of the London Review of Books. A longer version was posted on the Web site of Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, where Walt is a professor of international affairs. Mearsheimer is a professor of political science at the University of Chicago.
The paper — which argues that America’s “unwavering support for Israel… has inflamed Arab and Islamic opinion and jeopardised not only US security but that of much of the rest of the world” — has sparked a wide range of responses among scholars, pundits and former diplomats. Some have called it the stuff of conspiracy theory and antisemitism, while others have praised it as a welcome foray into a subject often thought to be taboo. The debate played out again on September 28, when the London Review of Books staged a lively debate in Manhattan featuring Mearsheimer, Tony Judt of New York Univeristy, Columbia University’s Rashid Khalidi, onetime Israeli foreign minister Shlomo Ben-Ami and Clinton administration Middle East specialists Dennis Ross and Martin Indyk.
Many of the Jewish leaders troubled by the first incarnation of the Mearsheimer-Walt thesis were dismayed anew by word that it is to be republished as a book.
“They are saying what David Duke would be saying, what Pat Buchanan [both are strong critics of the Israel Lobby - eds.] would be saying,” said Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League. “The difference is that they have the patina of respectability, and now they will have another coat of it.”
Leave a comment