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.