Scholars' Attack on Pro-Israel Lobby Met With Silence

Scholars' Attack on Pro-Israel Lobby Met With Silence: "News
Scholars' Attack on Pro-Israel Lobby Met With Silence
By Ori Nir
March 24, 2006

WASHINGTON � In the face of one of the harshest reports on the pro-Israel lobby to emerge from academia, Jewish organizations are holding fire in order to avoid generating publicity for their critics.
Officials at Jewish organizations are furious over 'The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy,' a new paper by John Mearsheimer, a top international relations theorists based at the University of Chicago, and Stephen Walt, the academic dean of Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government. In their report � versions of which appear on the Kennedy School Web site and in the March 26 issue of the London Review of Books � the scholars depict 'the Israel lobby' as a 'loose coalition' of politicians, media outlets, research institutions, Jewish groups and Evangelical Christians that steers America's Middle East policy in directions beneficial to Israel, even if it requires harming American interests.
Despite their anger, Jewish organizations are avoiding a frontal debate with the two scholars, while at the same time seeking indirect ways to rebut and discredit the scholars' arguments. Officials with pro-Israel organizations say that given the limited public attention generated by the new study � as of Tuesday most major print outlets had ignored it � they prefer not to draw attention to the paper by taking issue with it head on. As of Wednesday morning, none of the largest Jewish organizations had issued a press release on the report.
'The key here is to not do what they probably want, which is to have this become a battle between us and them, or for them to say that they are being silenced,' said Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of "