Storm Over "The Israel Lobby"

Free discussion may be one of the pillars of democracy, but as we've learned to our misfortune in the case of America's intervention in Iraq, sometimes there's too little of it, or debate is uninformed, or distorted, muffled or even suppressed by the powers that be. Two American professors now seem determined to stir up a fruitful discussion about the United States government's other important relationship in the Middle East, the long-standing one with Israel.

You're going to be hearing a lot more about John Mearsheimer, a political scientist at the University of Chicago, and Stephen Walt, a professor at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. Their new book The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy is already attracting controversy, weeks ahead of its Sept. 4 publication date by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

A main reason for the advance interest is that Mearsheimer and Walt already created a storm when they published the core of their thesis in an article in the London Review of Books last year. Basically, they contend that pro-Israel groups have exercised disproportionate influence on U.S. foreign policy, and that this has not always served U.S. interests, or, for that matter, Israel's. Although some praised their work as valuable and courageous, others, notably pro-Israel groups, accused the authors of anti-semitism.

For a quick preview, here's the London Review piece, and Michael Massing's assessment of the article and the controversy in the New York Review of Books.

Already, the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, showing considerably less courage than Mearsheimer and Walt, have cancelled an invitation for the duo to speak on the subject apparently after receiving pressure over the new book. As Walt told the New York Times this week, one of the points in the book is precisely that the question of the Israel lobby is something of a taboo topic in the United States.

Citizens are still free to purchase a copy. In fact, would-be readers have already made it a best-seller. With advance orders pouring in, The Israel Lobby is already No. 135 on Amazon's list of top sellers. (It went up four places just as I was writing this blog tonight Cairo time.) Scrolling through Amazon's list, I reckon that The Israel Lobby has become the best-selling book on the Middle East right now, even though nobody actually owns their copy yet. Mearsheimer and Walt may disagree with their critics, but they have to thank them for fueling the controversy, helping them sell more copies and widen the debate over the Israel lobby.

By no coincidence, one of Mearsheimer and Walt's vocal critics, Abe Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, is publishing his own book with Palgrave Macmillan, also on Sept. 4, entitled, The Deadliest Lies: The Israel Lobby and the Myth of Jewish Control. At last count, it's Amazon.com sales rank was No. 14,808.

--By Scott MacLeod/Cairo