It's Not Anti-Semitic
Richard Cohen of the Washington Post gives one of the best write-ups yet on the Walt-Mearsheimer paper. It exposes critics like Alan Dershowitz for the smear artist they are.
Mr. Cohen opens by responding to the hysterical and politically motivated attacks on the papers:
Better yet, he rebukes Eliot Cohen for his article on the W-M paper, also published in the Washington Post.
Finally, Cohen exposes some of the real over the top rhetoric put forth with regard to the paper.
Thank you Mr. Cohen.
Washington Post
Mr. Cohen opens by responding to the hysterical and politically motivated attacks on the papers:
During the Jim Crow era, many American communists fiercely fought racism. This is a fact. It is also a fact that segregationists and others often smeared civil rights activists by calling them communists. This technique is sometimes called guilt by association and sometimes "McCarthyism." If you think it's dead, you have not been following the controversy over a long essay about the so-called "Israel Lobby." [Yup.]
Better yet, he rebukes Eliot Cohen for his article on the W-M paper, also published in the Washington Post.
But I did find Cohen's piece to be offensive. It starts by noting that the paper, titled "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy," had been endorsed by David Duke, the former head of the Ku Klux Klan. It goes on to quote Duke, who, I am sure, has nodded his head in agreement over the years with an occasional piece of mine, as saying the paper is a "modern Declaration of American Independence." If you follow Cohen's reasoning, then you would have to conclude that David Duke and the Founding Fathers have something in common. I am not, as they say, willing to go there.
Finally, Cohen exposes some of the real over the top rhetoric put forth with regard to the paper.
There is hardly a stronger, more odious, accusation than anti-Semitism. It comes freighted with more than a thousand years of tragic history, culminating in the Holocaust. The mere suggestion of it is enough for any sane person to hold his tongue. Yet this did not stop the respected German newspaper editor Josef Joffe from stating in the New Republic that the lobby paper "puts 'The Protocols of the Elders of Zion' to shame.", He is referring to the most notorious anti-Semitic text of all time. My friend Joffe is in dire need of a cold compress.
Thank you Mr. Cohen.
Washington Post
posted by Brian at 11:31 AM
2 Comments:
Joffe would be a Jewish name. Cohen himself is a limited hang-out type of guy.
I emailed him extensively BEFORE the invasion of Iraq with detailed information on the neo-cons and their ties to Israel's Likud -- this was when Cohen was a gung-ho supporter of the invasion.
All I got back were accusations by Cohen that I was a tin-foiler/anti-Semite. Tragically to the close to 3000 Americans and close to 300,000 (!!!!) Iraqis now dead, I was right.
I would never trust another word that came out of Cohen's word processor and again, I would have to suggest that this Cohen essay is a limited hang-out attempt to control the damage done by the Walt/Mearsheimer study "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy" which is a MUST READ for every American.
That is if most Americans could read a word with more than one syllable...
I agree that Cohen still kicks the paper in the course of this article, but you have to give him credit for taking on the smear artists head on.
He does not mince words when it comes to calling the smears exactly what they are, and that should be commended.
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