David Seaton's News LinksI apologize right off for the horrible pun on Mearsheimer and "Lady Chatterley", but as I read all the commentary about Mearsheimer and Walt's book, "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy" I suddenly had a flashback to when D. H. Lawrence's book came out in the states.
I was a high school freshman when the book was finally allowed to be published and I still remember the scandal around the book and reading a hidden copy of it one summer and how arousing it was then to read in cold print, forbidden language that today is normal currency among eight year old girls.
The same gasping prurience and pussy footing is now hanging around M&W's book as the authors use the "forbidden words" describing what most of world sees as perfectly obvious.
I imagine that before too long, after the taboo is broken, its thesis will be common currency at every level in America and it will be fun to see how the politicians, who are desperate for campaign contributions, will try to avoid mentioning something that everyone else, everywhere, is talking about.
Read the NYT review of M&W:
The reviewer, William Grimes, would obviously like to rip their hearts out, but he cannot dismiss them in Dershowitz fashion. Finally his arguments are reduced to whimpering and whining, here is a sample:
Trying to compare Israel to Britain is really a pitiful ploy... Do you know how many times the USA nearly went to war with the UK? We actually went to war twice. Do you know how much we charged them for the "lend-lease destroyers" when they had their backs to the wall in WWII? Do you know how "special" England is for Irish Americans? What a load of rubbish!
I would say then that it's "official", the book cannot be "ignored". The NYT is America's newspaper of reference and they have not been able to ignore it and Grimes has gingerly waltzed around the charge of antisemitism... hinting around it by calling the analysis, "cold".
Not only is the book not to be ignored, its hot, hot, hot. The Israelis better start their war soon, by next week it might be too late. DS
I was a high school freshman when the book was finally allowed to be published and I still remember the scandal around the book and reading a hidden copy of it one summer and how arousing it was then to read in cold print, forbidden language that today is normal currency among eight year old girls.
The same gasping prurience and pussy footing is now hanging around M&W's book as the authors use the "forbidden words" describing what most of world sees as perfectly obvious.
I imagine that before too long, after the taboo is broken, its thesis will be common currency at every level in America and it will be fun to see how the politicians, who are desperate for campaign contributions, will try to avoid mentioning something that everyone else, everywhere, is talking about.
Read the NYT review of M&W:
The reviewer, William Grimes, would obviously like to rip their hearts out, but he cannot dismiss them in Dershowitz fashion. Finally his arguments are reduced to whimpering and whining, here is a sample:
(...)"The general tone of hostility to Israel grates on the nerves, however, along with an unignorable impression that hardheaded political realism can be subject to its own peculiar fantasies. Israel is not simply one country among many, for example, just as Britain is not. Americans feel strong ties of history, religion, culture and, yes, sentiment, that the authors recognize, but only in an airy, abstract way.That for the "gray lady" is the equivalent of throwing in the towel: they cannot ignore or really trash the book, they would like to, but they can't...
They also seem to feel that, with Israel and its lobby pushed to the side, the desert will bloom with flowers. A peace deal with Syria would surely follow, with a resultant end to hostile activity by Hezbollah and Hamas. Next would come a Palestinian state, depriving Al Qaeda of its principal recruiting tool. (The authors wave away the idea that Islamic terrorism thrives for other reasons.) Well, yes, Iran does seem to be a problem, but the authors argue that no one should be particularly bothered by an Iran with nuclear weapons. And on and on.
“It is time,” Mr. Mearsheimer and Mr. Walt write, “for the United States to treat Israel not as a special case but as a normal state, and to deal with it much as it deals with any other country.” But it’s not. And America won’t. That’s realism."(END QUOTE)
Trying to compare Israel to Britain is really a pitiful ploy... Do you know how many times the USA nearly went to war with the UK? We actually went to war twice. Do you know how much we charged them for the "lend-lease destroyers" when they had their backs to the wall in WWII? Do you know how "special" England is for Irish Americans? What a load of rubbish!
I would say then that it's "official", the book cannot be "ignored". The NYT is America's newspaper of reference and they have not been able to ignore it and Grimes has gingerly waltzed around the charge of antisemitism... hinting around it by calling the analysis, "cold".
Not only is the book not to be ignored, its hot, hot, hot. The Israelis better start their war soon, by next week it might be too late. DS
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