(Washington Post) Eliot A. Cohen - * John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt's "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy" is indeed a wretched piece of scholarship, but is it anti-Semitic? * If by anti-Semitism one means obsessive and irrationally hostile beliefs about Jews; if one accuses them of disloyalty, subversion or treachery, of having occult powers and of participating in secret combinations that manipulate institutions and governments; if one systematically selects everything unfair, ugly or wrong about Jews as individuals or a group and equally systematically suppresses any exculpatory information - why, yes, this paper is anti-Semitic. * I am a public intellectual and a proud Jew; sympathetic to Israel and extensively engaged in our nation's military affairs. In a week my family will celebrate Passover with my oldest son, the third generation to serve as an officer in the U.S. Army. He will be home on leave from the bomb-strewn streets of Baghdad. The patch on his shoulder is the same flag that flies on my porch. * Other supposed members of "The Lobby" also have children in military service. Impugning their patriotism or mine is not scholarship or policy advocacy. It is merely, and unforgivably, bigotry. The writer is a professor at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies.
2006-04-05 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive