Note, however, that the wrong and disgusting influence of powerful lobbies on policy — and lawmaking — in this country, and the suppression of any discussion thereof by politicians the MSM, extends to many, many other areas besides this one.

The role of lobbyists and of Israel merits a balanced discussion, and for too long we have not seen nor heard the arguments in opposition. I have paid attention to the attacks on President Carter in the media for his recent book and am convinced by them that opposition to the simple of discussion of Israeli influence on American foreign policy is being suppressed –and with the help of politicians and the media.
It is a wrong and disgusting state of affairs.

Oh, okay. THAT’s what I’ve been doing wrong for the last six years….not taking what I’m told at face value. Yes, this war was all about protecting our country from terrorists….why should I consider any other possibility?

How will you discern that? Or will you just assume it? Or, do want people to always suspect it when the hear bad things said about Israel?

No, I do not want to assume or suspect, and I certainly don’t think lurking ugliness can be discerned without close scrutiny.

Beginning with a hint for the subtlety-challenged: in 2007 America, most people don’t drive cars with “I hate Jews” bumper stickers.

Well, it’s quite simple, you should take arguments for what they are and not for what they could be.

And again with:
because…MAYBE….SOMETIMES….something ugly might be lurking there

How will you discern that? Or will you just assume it? Or, do want people to always suspect it when the hear bad things said about Israel?

Did you even READ the article? The whole point is that we need to look more closely behind the kind of knee jerk sound bite you just recited — because…MAYBE….SOMETIMES….something ugly might be lurking there.

Really? So some guy (Klug) finds it convient to label opposition to Israel antisemitism? That certianly explains this:

Part of the answer lies in the fact that I spend much of my time in colleges and universities, where anti-Israel sentiment flourishes and is regarded more or less as a default position. And I have seen (with apologies to Shelley) that when hostility to Israel comes, anti-Semitism is not far behind.

Once you’ve labeled hostility to Israel as antisemitism…I suppose you’ll find antisemitism behind every anti-Israel position.

Why, they ask, should our foreign policy be held hostage to the interests of a small country that is perfectly capable of defending itself and is guilty of treating the Palestinians, whose land it appropriated, in ways that are undemocratic and even, in the opinion of many, criminal?

A now famous answer to this question was given a year ago in the title of an article in the London Review of Books written by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt: “The Israel Lobby.” Mearsheimer and Walt contend that American Middle East policy “derives almost entirely from domestic politics, and especially the activities of the ‘Israel Lobby,’” which they describe as an incredibly powerful “coalition of individuals and organisations who actively work to steer U.S. foreign policy in a pro-Israel direction.” The goal of the coalition, they assert, is to get “America to help Israel remain the dominant regional power,” and so successful has it been that “the United States has become the de facto enabler of Israeli expansion in the Occupied Territories, making it complicit in the crimes perpetrated against the Palestinians.”

So there you have it. The war was a huge mistake and is causing us no end of trouble at home and in the world at large. The lobby that led us into it is “a de facto agent for a foreign government” – Israel. Members of that lobby are largely, though not exclusively, Jewish. And that’s where the anti-Semitism comes in. Or does it? One reason the lobby is “immune from criticism,” Mearsheimer and Walt explain, is that criticism, when it appears, is always re-described as anti-Semitism, and “anti-Semitism is something no one wants to be accused of.” Their point, and it has been made by many, is that there is no reason to assume that those who criticize Israel and argue that America’s uncritical support for a flawed state is strategically unwise and morally wrong are anti-Semitic.

Maybe so, but there is some empirical evidence to the contrary. Charles Small and his Yale colleague Edward Kaplan have recently published an article in the Journal of Conflict Resolution, the title of which also tells its own story: “Anti-Israel Sentiment Predicts Anti-Semitism in Europe.” What Small and Kaplan find is that “Those with extreme anti-Israel sentiment are roughly six times more likely to harbor anti-Semitic views than those who do not fault Israel on the measures studied, and among those respondents deeply critical of Israel, the fraction that harbors anti-Semitic views exceeds 50 percent.” The authors conclude that, “even after controlling for numerous potentially confounding factors,” “anti-Israel sentiment consistently predicts the probability that an individual is anti-Semitic” and will say things like “Jews don’t care what happens to anyone but their own kind” or “Jews are more loyal to Israel than to this country” or “Jews have too much power in international financial markets.”

Small and Kaplan are careful to disclaim any causal implications that might be drawn from their analysis: they are not saying that anti-Semitism produces opposition to Israel or that opposition to Israel produces anti-Semitism, only that the two attitudes will more often than not be found in the same individual: scratch an opponent of Israel and you are likely – 56 percent of the time – to find an anti-Semite. This does suggest that if opposition to Israel increases, there will be an increase in anti-Semitism because the population of the 56 percenters will be larger. Is this something Jews, even Jews living in the United States, should be apprehensive about?

The answer to that question will depend on whether you think that there is a meaningful distinction to be made between the “old” and the “new” anti-Semitism. Old anti-Semitism, according to Brian Klug of Oxford University, is based on a hostility to and fear of “the Jew” as an alien and demonic figure. In this ancient and much retailed story, Klug tells us, in an article in Catalyst magazine last year, subhuman Jews wander from country to country and “form a state within a state, preying on the societies in whose midst they dwell.” This is the anti-Semitism that came to full and disastrous flower in Nazi Germany.

The new anti-Semitism, in contrast, Klug continues, is rooted not in a hostility to “the Jew” as a vampire-like destroyer of cultures, but “in the controversial nature of the State of Israel and its policies.” As such, “it is not a mutation of an existing ‘virus,’ but a brand new ‘bug.’” That is to say, its origin is political rather than racial, and there is at least a chance that if its political source were removed – if Israel’s policies were to change – its force would abate.

So there you have two stories: anti-Semitism is on the rise and it’s time to get out those “Never Again” signs. Or, it’s not anti-Semitism in the old virulent sense, but a rational, if problematic, response by Middle East actors and their supporters in the West to what they see as “an oppressive occupying force”; don’t take it personally. I understand this second story, and appreciate its nuance, but I can’t bring myself to accept it, if only because I believe that the viral version of anti-Semitism is always capable of regaining its full and deadly form even when it is apparently dormant or weakened. All it needs is a pretext, and any pretext will do. If the Israeli-Palestinian conflict didn’t exist, it would attach itself to something else; but it does exist, and anti-Semitism couldn’t be happier.

Because I think this way, I can imagine a time in the not-so-distant future when American Jews might feel precarious once again. There is a certain irrationality to this imagining, given that at this moment, I am sitting in a very nice house in Delray Beach, Fla., and taking advantage of the opportunity afforded me by The New York Times to have my say on anything I like every Monday. And in a few months I will repair to an equally nice house in the upstate New York town of Andes, where I will be engaging in the same pleasurable activity. Sounds like a good life, and it is. So why am I entertaining fantasies of being dispossessed or discriminated against or even threatened?

Part of the answer lies in the fact that I spend much of my time in colleges and universities, where anti-Israel sentiment flourishes and is regarded more or less as a default position. And I have seen (with apologies to Shelley) that when hostility to Israel comes, anti-Semitism is not far behind. But the deeper explanation of my apprehension is generational. One of my closest friends and I agree on almost everything, but we part company on this question. He tells, and believes, the “criticism of Israel is one thing, anti-Semitism another” story. I hear it, but I can’t buy it. He is 10 years my junior. I remember World War II. By the time he was born it was history. Maybe it’s that simple.

That could have been avoided by just admitting that this is not a blog to discuss foreign policy. It does what it does extrememly well but that does not include foreign policy.

Mark, I don’t know what you’re talking about, but may I suggest you don’t, either?

I’m off to bed so I’ll look forward to more of this tomorrow. Cheers!