Israel Lobby Debate Grows More Civil

When it comes to international affairs, Harvard academics are often associated with a single phrase. For Joseph S. Nye, Jr., it’s “soft power,” for Samuel P. Huntington it’s “the clash of civilizations,” and for Francis Fukuyama, now at Johns Hopkins, it’s “the end of history.”

Perhaps, then, it is not surprising that the Kennedy School’s Stephen M. Walt and the University of Chicago’s John J. Mearsheimer have become synonymous with one phrase—“The Israel Lobby”—a phrase that has come to symbolize their allegation that U.S. foreign policy reflects Israeli interests more than it does American ones.

Though it is much to soon to say if Walt and Mearsheimer’s contributions will equal those of Nye, Huntington, or Fukuyama, the duo’s paper certainly rivals any of the previous essays in terms of the controversy it has generated.

The authors have been rebutting their critics since early May. First they did so back in the pages of the London Review, and this month, they did battle in Foreign Policy magazine, which devoted its cover to the Israel lobby debate.

Though the tone of the debate was vitriolic immediately after the essay first appeared, the discussion has taken on a new tone. And only now—after the critics have spoken, Walt and Mearsheimer have responded, and the essay has been the subject of lengthy commentaries in various publications—is it possible to gain a rough sense of the essays’s influence.

The spotlight has finally shifted away from the men and onto their argument, prompting academic inquiries into the substance of their claims rather than squabbling over footnotes and sourcing.

Precisely because they are no longer the focus of the debate, their profiles have risen and they have come to be identified as the authorities on the subject of the Israel lobby.

ROUND ONE

Walt and Mearsheimer's central thesis is that a pro-Israel slant pervades American foreign policy toward the Middle East, and that it is the result of a powerful pro-Israel lobby comprised of a “loose coalition of individuals and organizations.”

In their 83-page study, the professors argue that the lobby exercises its power through its control of editorial pages and magazines, think-tanks, political contributions, and through its powerful lobby groups—most notably the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).

Through these levers, they argue, the lobby successfully played a leading role in the invasion of Iraq, and is now agitating for an similar attack on Iran.

The response to the essay was both swift and strong.

In interviews shortly after the essay was published, Frankfurter Professor of Law Alan M. Dershowitz repeatedly called the authors “liars” and “bigots,” adding later, in a published rebuttal, that Belfer Professor of International Affairs Walt and Mearsheimer’s essay was “filled with distortions.”

In that paper, Dershowitz focused his criticisms on discrediting the sourcing and scholarship of the paper rather than addressing its core thesis.

Dershowitz predicted in an interview that the essay would be a “career-ending move,” adding that in one particular case where a quotation was allegedly taken out of context, the authors had “probably drawn the quotation from neo-Nazi sources.” And if they “had mangled the quotation themselves,” he said, they had “committed a fireable offense.”

Other critics were more restrained.

Longtime New Republic editor-in-chief Martin Peretz, an erstwhile lecturer on Social Studies, wrote in his magazine that the essay is “academic paraphernalia,” and that the authors know “little about reality.”

Kennedy School Professor of Public Service David Gergen deemed the essay “unfair” in a piece in U.S. News, writing: “Over the course of four tours in the White House, I never once saw a decision [that] tilt[ed] U.S. foreign policy in favor of Israel at the expense of America’s interest.”

YOUR PORTAL TO CONTROVERSY

But as time has passed since the initial publication, the vitriol of the original criticisms has faded, replaced with a more nuanced and collegial discussion. This was evidenced by the debate in Foreign Policy magazine, where three scholars assembled to criticize Walt and Mearsheimer, and one rose to defend them.

The three who criticized them did so to varying degrees.

Aaron Friedberg, a Princeton professor and former aide to Vice President Dick Cheney, attacked the pair harshly, using much the same tone of language as the early critics.

But David Ross, former President Clinton’s chief negotiator at the 2000 Camp David negotiations, seemed more concerned with discussing the limits of the lobby’s power—questioning Walt and Mearsheimer’s linkage of the lobby’s power to Iraq and Iran.

Shlomo Ben-Ami, the Israeli foreign minister during the time of the Camp David talks, took a more historical approach. Recounting years of the region’s history and America’s involvement in it, Ben-Ami directly rebutted Walt and Mearsheimer’s central thesis. He argued that U.S. support for Israel was strategic and historical, and not attributable to the power of the pro-Israel lobby.

Both Ross and Ben-Ami seemed more concerned with refuting Walt and Mearsheimer’s claims about the Israel lobby’s power than discrediting them by punching individual holes in their arguments. In his rebuttal, by contrast, Dershowitz had selected individual quotations that Walt and Mearsheimer had used and attempted to show how they had taken them out of context.

What’s more, the debate in Foreign Policy featured a very prominent former U.S. government official taking sides with Walt and Mearsheimer. Zbigniew Brzezinski, the national security advisor under former President Carter, agreed that domestic pro-Israel lobbies are powerful, and that their influence was felt acutely at peace negotiations between Israel and Arab nations that were brokered by the U.S.

Away from the pages of Foreign Policy, Walt and Mearsheimer also received unexpected support in their criticism of the Israel lobby.

First, renowned press observer Michael Massing ’74 wrote an extensive essay in The New York Review of Books on the subject. After thumping Walt and Mearsheimer for not examining AIPAC in detail, he launched into a 5,000-word, in-depth examination of the committee’s structure and power.

And just this past month, the Washington Post wrote a similar story, again devoting over 5,000 words to another detailed examination of AIPAC.

THE FOUR MONTH VERDICT

As the authors have amended and updated their original paper, the scholars who continue to debate them—like Ben-Ami and Ross—have devoted their energies to addressing Walt and Mearsheimer’s central claims rather than discrediting the report by attacking its footnotes and sourcing.

Like the story in the New York Review, the piece in the Post did begin and end with a discussion of Walt and Mearsheimer. But it’s hard to miss the fact that the bulk of the story was not devoted to them or to their paper, but to their subject: the lobby itself.

And given that the stated purpose of the paper was to begin a discussion of the Israel’s lobby power, Walt and Mearsheimer must almost certainly regard such press accounts as a victory to their credit.

—Staff writer Paras D. Bhayani can be reached at pbhayani@fas.harvard.edu.