DAVID DUKE CLAIMS TO BE VINDICATED BY A HARVARD DEAN
Paper Issued by Kennedy School Blames War on Israel
Lobby
By ELI LAKE Staff Reporter of the Sun
A paper recently co-authored by the academic dean of
Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government about the allegedly far-reaching
influence of an “Israel lobby” is winning praise from white supremacist David
Duke.
The Palestine Liberation Organization mission to Washington is distributing
the paper, which also is being hailed by a senior member of Egypt’s Muslim
Brotherhood, an Islamist organization.
But the paper,“The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy,” by the Kennedy
School’s Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago, is
meeting with a more critical reception from many of those it names as part of
the lobby.The 83-page “working paper” claims a network of journalists, think
tanks, lobbyists, and largely Jewish officials have seized the foreign policy
debate and manipulated America to invade Iraq. Included in this network, the
authors say, are the editors of the New YorkTimes, the scholars at the Brookings
Institution, students at Columbia, “pro-Israel” senior officials in the
executive branch, and “neoconservative gentiles” including columnist George
Will.
Duke, a former Louisiana state legislator and one-time Ku Klux Klan leader,
called the paper “a great step forward,” but he said he was “surprised” that the
Kennedy School would publish the report.”
“I have read about the report and read one summary already, and I am
surprised how excellent it is,”he said in an e-mail.“It is quite satisfying to
see a body in the premier American University essentially come out and validate
every major point I have been making since even before the war even started.”
Duke added that “the task before us is to wrest control of America’s foreign
policy and critical junctures of media from the Jewish extremist Neocons that
seek to lead us into what they expectantly call World War IV.”
Mr.Walt said last night,“I have always found Mr. Duke’s views reprehensible,
and I am sorry he sees this article as consistent with his view of the world.”
“I think that the people who wrote that report were working for the interest
of the American people,” a senior member of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood’s
guidance council, Abdulmo’em Abulfotah, said yesterday.“I ask a question here:
Is it in the interest of the American people to clash with 1.3 billion people in
favor of 5 million people who represent the Zionist project? Not even the Jews,
but the Zionists.”
The Kennedy School published the essay nearly a month before a trial is
scheduled to begin of two lobbyists for the American Israel Public Affairs
Committee, Keith Weissman and Steve Rosen, on charges that they conspired to
leak classified material to an American journalist and an Israeli diplomat. But
it also comes as public support for the Iraq war has ebbed to new lows. Messrs.
Mearsheimer and Walt argue
that “neoconservatives” in particular launched a “campaign to manipulate
intelligence” that led to that war.
While the arguments in Messrs. Mearsheimer and Walt’s paper are hardly new —
allegations of dual loyalty have flitted about the Internet since before the
war, and the left-wing press in particular has focused on the role of the
Pentagon in making the case for the war — the fact that these points are now
being made by such establishment thinkers has raised concern among Israel’s
friends in America and cheers from their adversaries.
“The content is not significant.Those seeking to damage the U.S.-Israel
relationship have been saying this for a while.The fact that it carries the
imprimatur of the Harvard Kennedy School is. Those that don’t know better would
assume it has validity, when it doesn’t,” the executive vice chairman of the
Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, Malcolm
Hoenlein, said.
A professor at Harvard Law School, Alan Dershowitz, whom the authors call an
“apologist” for Israel, said he found much of the paper to be “trash.” He said,
“It could have been written by Pat Buchanan, by David Duke, Noam Chomsky, and
some of the less intelligent members of Hamas.An intelligent member of Hamas
would not have made these mistakes.”
Those mistakes for Mr. Dershowitz include, for example, the assertion that
“There is no question,for example,that many Al Qaeda leaders, including bin
Laden, are motivated by Israel’s presence in Jerusalem and the plight of the
Palestinians,” which Mr. Dershowitz says “is just absurd.”
Mr. Dershowitz was particularly troubled by the claim in the paper that
Israeli “citizenship is based on the principle of blood kinship.” He pointed out
that the authors had conflated Israel’s law of return with its criteria for
citizenship.“That’s right from the neo Nazi Web sites. Anybody can be a citizen
of Israel. He confuses the law of return for the criteria for citizenship. He
never mentions that a Jew cannot be a citizen in Jordan and Saudi Arabia,” Mr.
Dershowitz said.
Mr. Walt said on this citizenship point last night that he wanted to check
into it. “We were not writing on Saudi Arabia and Jordan,” he said.
Mr. Dershowitz also objected to the paper’s claim that the 2000 Oslo offer
to Yasser Arafat would have created “Bantustans.” Mr. Dershowitz said, “They
should talk to President Clinton about that. The West Bank territory would have
been completely contiguous.”
“What he is saying is,‘some of my best lobbyists are Jews.Don’t confuse what
we are saying with the Protocols of the Elders of Zion,’” Mr.Dershowitz
said.“Sorry,but it sounds very similar to me. The only difference is the
Protocols are a forgery, but this is actually written by two bigots.”
The authors attempt to distinguish their argument from that of classical
anti-Semites, writing at one point, “there is nothing improper about American
Jews and their Christian allies attempting to sway U.S policy towards Israel.
The Lobby’s activities are not the sort of conspiracy depicted in anti-Semitic
tracts like the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.” At another point, the authors
distance themselves from the president of Iran by writing, “Israel’s survival is
not in doubt — even if some Islamic extremists make outrageous and unrealistic
references to ‘wiping it off the map.’”
Yet the paper also refers to “the unmatched power of the Israel Lobby.” It
says, “Were it not for the Lobby’s ability to manipulate the American political
system, the relationship between Israel and the United States would be far less
intimate than it is today.”
“AIPAC, which is a de facto agent for a foreign government, has a
stranglehold on the U.S. Congress,” says the paper, which also accuses “the
Lobby” of “manipulating the media” and being “a critical element” in the
American decision to attack Iraq in March 2003.
A retired lecturer at Harvard, Martin Peretz, who is editor of The New
Republic, a magazine named in the report as one of those that “zealously defend
Israel at every turn,” said, “It is easier to attribute disloyalty to Jews than
to question the loyalty of Islamists.This is really questioning the loyalty of
Jews, that is what this is about. Everyone is looped in, even people who are a
little dicey about Israel like Aaron David Miller and Howard Dean. This goes
from the lobby in capital letters, from Jerry Falwell to every left wing Jewish
Democrat in the House. It is the imagining of a wall to wall conspiracy and
therefore it’s nutsy.”
The executive director of the Committee for Accurate Middle East Reporting
in America, Andrea Levin, said yesterday that she would be asking the Kennedy
School to withdraw the paper because it failed to meet academic standards. She
said the paper relied too much on “new historians,” a group of Israeli academics
who have been critical of the founding of Israel. She called them “a thoroughly
discredited lot.” She also said the authors wrongly say that her group organized
a rally in front of the Boston affiliate of national public radio.
One of the claims in the paper is that “The Lobby’s goals are also served
when pro Israel individuals occupy important positions in the executive branch.”
To prove this point they point to a former Aipac official, Martin Indyk’s high
positions in the Clinton administration and the fact that Dennis Ross left
government service in 2001 to join the Washington Institute for Near East
Policy. This list of these pro-Israel officials also included Mr. Ross’s former
deputy Aaron Miller, who they point out “has lived in Israel and often visits
there.”
Mr. Miller, who wrote an opinion piece for the Washington Post in 2005
complaining that during the 2000 failed peace negotiations he helped broker,
American diplomats often served as “Israel’s lawyer,” differed with Messrs. Walt
and Mearsheimer. “The lobby has an important influence but not control. On
issues related to assistance for Israel there is no question the organized
Jewish community has a profound impact,” Mr. Miller said.“The argument breaks
down when he says the Jewish lobby is somehow responsible for Iraq.” Mr. Miller
added that the pro-Israel lobby is not powerful enough to influence the
executive branch in the manner in which Messrs. Mearsheimer and Walt say.
Another way the authors say the Israel lobby exercises influence is through
think tanks. Under the subchapter heading “Think Tanks that Think One Way,” the
authors say, “Pro Israel forces have established a commanding presence at the
American Enterprise Institute, the Brookings Institution, the Center for
Security Policy, the Foreign Policy Research Institute, the Heritage Foundation,
the Hudson Institute, the Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis, and the Jewish
Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA).”
The president of the Hudson Institute, Herbert London, said the notion that
his institution had a standard line on American policy to Israel “was patently
absurd.” He pointed out that a senior fellow at his institute was the former
director of the National Security Agency, William Odom, who has not only been a
vociferous critic of Israel but also the Iraq war.
“The Saudis want to express an opinion,I don’t object.People have the right
to express their opinions,” Mr. London said. “They don’t have anything to say
about how the Saudis try to influence opinion in think tanks, universities, and
corporations.”
In December of 2005 Harvard announced it had received a $20 million gift
from a Saudi prince, Alwaleed Bin Talal Bin Abdulaziz Alsaud.
A former executive director of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee,
Morris Amitay, who is quoted in the Kennedy School paper, minimized the
document’s significance. “I would be worried if Henry Kissinger was saying this.
But who are these guys?” Mr. Amitay said. “As far as I’m concerned this is a
tribute to the Jewish community. We couldn’t do anything about Auschwitz,but
look,we now control foreign policy for a region of the world so vital to
American interests.”