The Great Debate, Part 3

On September 29, 2006, The New York Sun's Ira Stoll headlined his article on the Great Debate, " 'Israel Lobby' Caused War in Iraq, September 11 Attacks, Professor Says." Stoll wrote, "Later, in response to a question from the audience, Mr. Mearsheimer claimed that the 'animus to the United States' of Qaeda terrorist mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed 'stemmed from U.S. foreign policy toward Israel.'" Using the word "claimed" is misleading; Stoll neglects to mention that Professor Mearsheimer was directly quoting from "The 9/11 Commission Report," as was the questioner, who had said, " On page 147 of 'The 9/11 Commission Report,' it states that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, mastermind of 9/11, says he attacked us because of our foreign policy bias towards Israel." Professor Mearsheimer happened to have a copy and responded by reading directly from "The 9/11 Commission Report," mentioning the page number 147 not once but twice: "By his own account, KSM's animus toward the United States stemmed not from his experiences there as a student, but rather from his violent disagreement with U.S. foreign policy favoring Israel." Stoll never mentions "The 9/11 Commission Report" in his article. Certainly this is not what The Lobby cares to see in print. Indeed, in "Without Precedent...The Inside Story of The 9/11 Commission" by Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton, Co-Chairs of the 9/11 Commission, there is much evidence that U.S. foreign policy bias towards Israel served to motivate the 9/11 attackers. However, Lee Hamilton had a difficult time getting even a scant mention of this in the final report. Some commissioners were afraid that "listing U.S. support for Israel as a root cause of al Qaeda's opposition to the United States indicated that the United States should reassess that policy. To Lee, though, it was not a question of altering support for Israel but of merely stating a fact that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was central to the relations between the Islamic world and the United States---and to Bin Laden's ideology and the support he gained throughout the Islamic world for his jihad against America." ("Without Precedent" p. 284.)

The Great Debate, Part 2

Most astounding in the Great Debate was the fact that the pro-Lobby debaters could claim with straight faces that the Lobby had not pushed for war with Iraq. This beggars belief. Indeed, one could easily compile a massive tome consisting of all the Lobby's op-eds, editorials, articles, and even books urging war with Iraq. Add to this the Lobby's radio and TV propaganda, and it was clear to long-time Lobby-watchers just who was behind this war. (See Patrick Buchanan's "Whose War?" in "The American Conservative" March 24, 2003.) President Bush has recently admitted that all his previous excuses for invading Iraq were erroneous but he claims it was necessary regardless because Iraq "was a threat." Of course Iraq was a threat...to Israel, certainly not to the US. Israelis had been hit by Iraqi missiles during the first Gulf war; Saddam was a strong supporter of Palestinian freedom. Professor Mearsheimer was not given adequate time during the debate to fully document his position, but it is all there in his paper. Also, see blog entries "Why Iraq? Parts 1-7" and "Faulty Intelligence Parts 1-3" January 2006.

The Great Debate, Part 1

In historic Great Hall at Cooper Union, NYC, where Abraham Lincoln bravely spoke out against slavery, Professor John Mearsheimer bravely spoke out against our enslavement by the Israel Lobby. The Great Debate, on September 28, 2006, revolved around the Mearsheimer/Walt paper on the Israel Lobby, published by The London Review of Books, which sponsored the debate. (See previous blog entries: March 2006 "The Lobby" and "WSJ Response.") The six debaters were Mearsheimer, Dennis Ross, Martin Indyk, Tony Judt, Rashid Khalidi, and Shlomo Ben-Ami. The enthusiastic audience of more than 500 overflowed the auditorium, and standing-room tickets were sold. The massive ticket line had extended around the block; it was history in the making. The pro-Lobby debaters employed the usual mud-slinging charges of anti-Semitism and bad scholarship which heretofore have so successfully served their goal of censorship. The Lobby-defenders also absurdly claimed that US presidents are immune to Lobby pressure and that it is impossible to influence Israel.