THE MEARSHEIMER-WALT PAPER OR THE LEARNED "PROTOCOLS"
by George Jonas
Benador Associates
April 12, 2006

A research paper published last month under the title of "The Israel Lobby
and U.S. Foreign Policy" differs from the notorious anti-Semitic pamphlet
"Protocols of the Elders of Zion" in two respects. Instead of being a
transparent forgery written by anonymous cranks, it's a work of ostensible
scholarship by two eminent political scientists, John Mearsheimer and
Stephen Walt (associated, respectively, with the University of Chicago and
Harvard University.) "Protocols" is a malevolent tract of pure fantasy;
"The Israel Lobby" mixes fantasy with facts.

Mixing facts with fantasy doesn't, of course, make a tract less malevolent.
Neither does it help that the authors explicitly deny what they implicitly
affirm ­ namely, a Jewish conspiracy. Such disclaimers make a document more
deceptive, but not less damaging and ­ if untrue ­ deplorable.

The Mearsheimer-Walt paper is "Protocols" for people with a university
education. It postulates a Jewish conspiracy designed to make US foreign
policy serve Israeli rather than American interests. It's an anti-Semitic
tract, prepared for readers with intellectual and moral pretensions who
need to hide their scapegoat-seeking, paranoid fantasies under a veneer of
literacy and scholarship.

If "The Israel Lobby" is just a deluxe edition of "Protocols," what
impelled two learned professors to write it? What happened to Western
perceptions? Why did Israel's press go from raves to rotten eggs? Space
allows me only the briefest summary.

1.) During the early Arab-Israeli wars (Independence, 1948-49, Suez, 1956)
the world's memory was still fresh. Suez came only eleven years after
Hitler's death. Most people took the necessity for Israel's existence for
granted. But as the years passed, people with personal memories of Hitler's
times became an ever-shrinking minority. The Nazis gradually became
history. By the time the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the concept of
Israel as a lifeboat for Jews seemed outdated. Jews weren't being
persecuted anywhere; they didn't need Israel as a refuge. On the contrary.
It was the Jewish state that was turning into the most dangerous place for
Jews in the world.

2.) When the Soviet empire imploded, the losers ought to have been its
erstwhile Arab client regimes. But reality turned out to be different.
While Western public opinion did favour democratic Israel over Arab
autocracies or Muslim theocracies, few people in Europe or in the United
States would have crossed the street to give this preference any effect.
The West's support for Israel hinged mainly on Israel being a trusty ally
in the Cold War. Unfortunately for the Jewish state, it turned out to be a
trusted ally in a conflict that no longer mattered. The Soviet empire had
vanished; the Cold War was history. Israel, like Shakespeare's Moor, had
done its duty: the Moor could go.

3.) The honeymoon for Israel lasted from 1948 to 1970. Those were the years
when in the eyes of Western public opinion Israel could practically do no
wrong. During that period Israelis weren't "occupiers" or "colonists," but
people who planted orange groves and made the desert bloom. This era came
to an end on September 6, 1970, when the PFLP, the Popular Front for the
Liberation of Palestine, hijacked a Swissair DC-8 and a TWA Boeing 707,
then, six days later, a BOAC VC-10. After holding the passengers for
several weeks, the Palestinians evacuated everyone and blew up the empty
planes at Dawson Field, thirty miles from Amman, Jordan.

Terrorism opened a new chapter in Israel's history. From that day on,
supporting Israel was no longer free. It now meant putting up with the risk
and vexation of the Arab/Muslim world's collective sense of insult and
injury. This seemed too high a price to pay at a time when the Jews were in
no particular danger in the Diaspora, and Israel no longer appeared
critical or indispensable. Coupled with latent Western, especially
European, anti-Semitism, public opinion eventually concluded that the
Jewish state ­ "that shitty little country," as the late French ambassador
to Britain, Daniel Bernard, referred to Israel in 2001 ­ was simply not
worth the bother.

Such factors can erode the judgement of even eminent social scientists.
Seeing no moral or practical reason for America's support of Israel, they
may conclude, as Mearsheimer and Walt did, that it must be the result of
conspiratorial machinations by "The Israeli Lobby" ­ in other words, the
Elders of Zion. So trot out the old tract, brush her off, spray her with
deodorant, dress her in an academic gown. Here. What do you think?

Sorry. Still not a pretty sight.

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