What if you held an anti-Israel party and nobody came?
By now it has become evident to most public observers that the recent report on the “Israel lobby” by Stephen Walt 
and John Mearsheimer has virtually no credibility. Bordering on the madness of the anti-Semitic Protocols of the Elders of Zion, this now-disclaimed paper, released under the imprimatur of Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government (where Walt serves as academic dean) has had virtually none of the response or reaction that its authors presumably had expected.
Considering Walt and Mearsheimer’s extremely high professional reputation in the academy in general and especially among those in the field of political science and international affairs, it has been extremely hard to determine why they put their reputations on the line for a study that does not begin to stand up to some of the most minimal academic standards of scholarship. It is factually inaccurate and highly selective. The study is polemical in part and ideologically so transparent that is suggests a manifesto rather than an academic paper. No matter how angry these two “political realists” are with the Bush administration’s policy in Iraq, the intellectual and especially the policy jumps that they make in their paper concerning the power of Jews and supporters of Israel to influence U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East are sloppy, transparent, and intellectually irresponsible.
In some predictable corners, Walt and Mearsheimer’s study found a favorable audience. It included members of the Arab and Muslim communities, and some marginal types like former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke. Of more serious concern is the nature of the response developing on some college and university campuses. It is there that there has been support for the study. In Middle East studies departments and among the more left-wing faculty as well as among supporters of the more radical Muslim positions, there are growing voices of support for Walt and Mearsheimer. Given the influence and sway that many professors have on their young students, as well as the implicit attack on academic freedom, this offers them ripe new source material to feed into a serious discussion of the Arab-Israeli conflict. The potential misuse and abuse of this material could have a chilling effect on pro-Israel voices on college campuses.
And yet once Jewish leaders and Israeli officials opted to virtually ignore the paper, intellectual and political leaders followed suit. That gave the study an extremely short shelf life. It was left to Harvard — the Kennedy School in particular — and the University of Chicago (where Mearsheimer is professor of political science) as well as the larger academic community to address the validity and integrity of the study itself, not the U.S.-Israel relationship.
This speaks well for the depth and security of the U.S.-Israel relationship. A biting anti-Semitic attack on Israel and especially on American Jews did not generate charges of dual loyalty from any reputable constituency, nor a demand for a cut in financial support for Israel from a serious lawmaker, nor any questioning of the value of U.S. ties to Israel from mainstream pundits.
For Israel’s supporters this is the most encouraging observation. It suggests that while most Americans have not heard about the study, among opinion-makers and the well-read public its impact was nil. It seems that with the exception of the college campuses — and they should not be ignored — American society and its public and political leadership have reached a comfortable level in their relationship with the State of Israel. It also demonstrated that the Bush administration’s clear and consistent backing of Israel has produced virtually no negative outcries — at least beyond those, like the study’s authors, already predisposed to object to those close ties.
The nonevent created by this study might also deliver an important message for those seeking office this fall or in 2008. Walt and Mearsheimer’s paper might actually produce the ironic consequence of finally putting to rest any division within the country, within parties, and among candidates concerning U.S. support for Israel. This study may end up making support for Israel an issue that is no longer worthy of debate.
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