[Commentary Magazine] Gabriel Schoenfeld - In August, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) hosted an event in Washington, D.C. entitled "The Israel Lobby and the U.S. Response to the War in Lebanon," featuring John J. Mearsheimer, a professor at the University of Chicago, and Stephen M. Walt, a professor at Harvard and former academic dean of the university's Kennedy School of Government. In March, the two men charged in the London Review of Books that "the Israel Lobby" was seeking "to bend U.S. foreign policy so that it advances Israel's interests." At the CAIR event the two charged that Hizballah's July 12 attack was merely a "pretext" for Israel to strike at Hizballah and that the "Israel Lobby" had "worked overtime" to ensure that U.S. and Israeli policies were perfectly aligned. Their view of the Lebanon war as the product of extensive collusion between Jerusalem and Washington was a historical fabrication and a slander. Israel was made to appear an aggressor when it acted in self-defense.
2006-11-03 01:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive