Love of the Land: The chronologically-challenged Stephen Walt

The chronologically-challenged Stephen Walt

Martin Kramer
Inside the Middle East/JPost
11 February '10

In the past, I've demolished Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer's claim that Israel and its friends drove the United States to war with Iraq. I did it when they published their article, and did it again when they published their book, The Israel Lobby. It's a conspiracy theory, pure and simple. And because Walt is a conspiracy theorist, he does what they all do: he rips evidence out of context.

Here's his latest grasp at a straw: his claim that Tony Blair has "revealed" that "Israel officials were involved in those discussions" on Iraq held between Blair and George Bush in Crawford, Texas in April 2002. Walt brings as evidence this quote from Blair's testimony to the UK commission investigating the Iraq war:

As I recall that discussion, it was less to do with specifics about what we were going to do on Iraq or, indeed, the Middle East, because the Israel issue was a big, big issue at the time. I think, in fact, I remember, actually, there may have been conversations that we had even with Israelis, the two of us, whilst we were there. So that was a major part of all this."

Walt's conclusion: "Blair is acknowledging that concerns about Israel were part of the equation, and that the Israeli government was being actively consulted in the planning for the war." Walt goes on to declare that "more evidence of their influence [of Israel and the Israel lobby] on the decision for war will leak out," and that "Blair's testimony is evidence of that process at work."

When people who don't know much about the Middle East, like Stephen Walt, pose as experts, they make basic mistakes of chronology. So let me remind him of exactly what coincided with the Crawford meeting of April 6-7, 2002.

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Love of the Land: The chronologically-challenged Stephen Walt

Love of the Land: Blumenthal Lets It Slip

Blumenthal Lets It Slip

Jennifer Rubin
Contentions/Commentary
27 October 09

Jeffrey Goldberg catches Max Blumenthal telling a nugget of truth at J Street about the authors of the Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy. Blumenthal at the J Street fest declared:

I personally think they provided cover for J Street to be able to exist to fill this void but Jeremy capitulated, he sort of prostrated himself before the serious man, Jeffrey Goldberg, and he said yes, it’s true they wrote the modern version of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, they’re anti-Semites. And to me, when you call Stephen Walt and John Meirsheimer anti-Semites — first of all it raises the question: if you’re going to capitulate before Jeffrey Goldberg, if you can’t stand up to Jeffrey Goldberg, how can we trust you to stand up against the settlers, how can we trust you to stand up against the government of Netanyahu and Lieberman?

Just think, the book that made it onto Osama bin Laden’s list also provided “cover” for J Street.

As an aside, it is remarkable that the villains in the J Street drama are Goldberg, Netanyahu, and Lieberman. Hmm. You’d think a pro-Israel group would think of the “enemies” as being those who hide behind women’s skirts and use baby carriages as barricades. But no, the focus of J Street’s ire is the Jews who disagree with J Street and criticize its grab bag of Israel-hating friends and allies. They are not, it seems, “pro-Israel” but “anti-pro-Israel.” Or maybe they should be renamed in honor of their intellectual godfathers: W and M Street.

Love of the Land: Blumenthal Lets It Slip

Love of the Land: The Places Stephen Walt Goes

The Places Stephen Walt Goes

Noah Pollak
Contentions/Commentary
04 October 09

A Norwegian university has decided to assemble a cast of Israel haters to teach a seminar on Israel. Ilan Pappe, of Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine notoriety, is involved. Pappe, a Marxist Israeli who left his native land for the UK—which is far more welcoming of people like him who support economic and academic boycotts and the destruction of Israel—will be joined by a group of similarly obscure quasi-academics whose major qualification is their hatred of Israel. As Haaretz reports,

Other speakers invited by NTNU Dean Torbjorn Digernes include Moshe Zuckermann, who in a January interview for Deutschlandradio—a widely-heard German program—said that operation Cast Lead cost hundreds of thousands of Gazan lives.

The members of the seminar’s organizing committee—Morten Levin, Ann Rudinow Saetnan and Rune Skarstein—have all signed a call for an academic boycott of Israel.

Who would feel comfortable sharing the stage with such people? Well, Stephen Walt, of course, who has joined the seminar as a lecturer. For someone who was once lauded as one of America’s greatest foreign-policy thinkers, it must be a little embarrassing to be forced to take your act to an obscure university set in a small city of a country whose major export is pacifistic moralizing. Or maybe Walt’s desire to participate in some high-octane Israel-bashing is so intense that he can only get his fix abroad, what with all the intimidation from the Israel lobby in the U.S. Who knows.

During the Chas Freeman controversy, one of Walt’s ways of defending Freeman was to compile lists of American Jews who opposed his nomination and accuse them of dual loyalties and then express puzzlement at how anyone could suspect him of animosity to Israel. After all, as he insisted, he and his co-author, John Mearsheimer,

have consistently declared our support for a Jewish state, said we “admired its many achievements,” and wrote that the United States “should come to Israel’s aid if its survival is ever in jeopardy.”

Stephen Walt is just a concerned friend, you see. Is it really possible that he is traveling all the way to Norway to appear next to Ilan Pappe so he can declare to the assembled his admiration for Israel’s many achievements and his support for the Jewish state?

Love of the Land: The Places Stephen Walt Goes