Mr. Forman:

I do hope you read this comment. Your post is a welcome breath of fresh air. There are perhaps a half dozen or so regular Middle East-focused posters here, refugees of a sort, who subscribe neither to the Stephen Walt or Adam Hasner view of the world. We are generally referred to, implicitly and often otherwise, as neocons, or likudniks, or Israel Firsters. Heck, around these parts, Stephen Walt is some brave dragon slayer, as opposed to the formerly boring professer who has now marketed himself into fame and a little fortune with an ingenious marketing strategy that would make Madison Avenue and Hudson Street advertising and public relations gurus proud. It is nice to see a visit from someone from the real world, as it does get awfully lonely sometimes at the Cafe, this little bubble that for some reason I continue to call my internet home.

Bruce S. Levine
New York, New York

Stephen Walt is on the "left"? That's news to me.

Walt wrote of an Israel lobby that was both a monolith and relentless in its obsession to quiet even the most mild criticism of Israel. To construct this cartoonish view of how the pro-Israel community operates Walt had to ignore facts.

It's hard to see how one could extract this view of the Israel lobby and pro-Israel community as a "monolith" from Walt's piece, since the concluding paragraph of that piece states:

It's also encouraging that some key members of the pro-Israel community, like M.J. Rosenberg of the Israel Policy Forum, have come to Freeman’s defense.

So it doesn't sound to me like Walt views the pro-Israel community as monolithic. Perhaps it is Forman's view of Walt that are cartoonish.

There are a couple of points where I agree with you Mr. Forman--

1. I don't like the dual loyalty argument. That can be used against anyone who tries to bend US foreign policy in a particular direction, left or right. If someone actually spies for a foreign country, then the accusation is valid, but it shouldn't be used except in extreme cases like that, IMO.

2. There were legitimate reasons to oppose Charles Freeman on human rights grounds, though using that reasoning (which I often do), there aren't many people in D.C. that would pass an Amnesty International or HRW test for consistency on human rights issues.
I doubt Chuck Schumer or Nancy Pelosi could.

The rest of your post sounds like an attempt at telling us what sort of criticism of Israel is acceptable and what isn't. So you defend Obama against Hasner by telling us that it's a slander that Obama wants to talk to Hamas before Hamas renounces terrorism and accepts Israel's right to exist--presumably, then, you agree with Hasner's views on the correct policy and would agree with his attacks on Obama if Obama were willing to talk to Hamas without agreeing to those conditions. And then you seem to accept Hasner's view that Walt and Mearsheimer are "anti-Israel". But they want the two-state solution, so being "anti-Israel" apparently just means that they are very critical of Israel's policies. You also tell us that some of Freeman's critics are also critics of the West Bank settlements. That's nice, but in recent years we've found that there are many people who oppose the settlements, but didn't have any criticism of Israel's blockade of the Gaza Strip or Israel's war on Gaza or Israel's bombing of Lebanese civilians in 2006. So being critical of the settlements is actually a pretty low bar. Were any of these Freeman critics who oppose settlements and favor an active US role in the peace process critical of the Gaza War? Personally, I don't consider someone seriously pro-peace unless they condemn the violent actions of both sides, but I don't have much influence over people like Senator Schumer or Nancy Pelosi.

Walt is not an "extreme leftist" nor even a leftist. This is such an absurd charge that it left me wondering: who is Ira Jordan? So I googled the name and learned, big surprise, he is firmly part of the lobby. One who is stationed inside the Democratic Party, but faithful to the party line, to be sure. He was part of the group that discplined Rep Moran for criticizing Aipac.

Well, at least, he did not call W&M antisemites.

Syvanen:

At least you could give Mr. Forman the courtesy of citing to your allegation that "he is firmly a part of the lobby". What do you mean that he was "part of the group that disciplined Rep Moran for criticizing Aipac?" What passes for "discipline" in your small but vocal circle jerked world?

Here's a guy that is encouraging Jewish Americans to send letters of support to President Obama in connection with the president's promise of a new approach to matters concerning Israel and Palestine. I cite to his post.

I submit that is you who are part of a lobby syvanen, only yours is an incredibly "dumbed down"--with slick-sounding one-liners--one without any impact whatsoever outside of a very tiny circle jerk that is, at most, an embarassment to the Obama Administration.

Bruce S. Levine

Well, unfortunately, an example of this type of dumbing down of discourse can be found right here at the Cafe in the blogs of MJ Rosenberg. Just yesterday, MJ cautioned the "neocons" not to get too worked up over their "victory" in the Freeman matter. When I pointed out that Jonathan Chait, Jeffrey Goldberg, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer and others who spoke against Freeman are hardly neocons, MJ's response was "Schumer has no particular views, one way or another. It's just politics. But the others all take the neocon view on the Mideast so they are neocons." MJ openly stated that his support for Freeman was solely based on the opposition of the Israel Lobby - on the theory that breaking the momentum of the Lobby was the central issue. Freeman's views were deemed irrelevant. Those with opposing viewpoints are regularly demeaned as unpatriotic.

One might ask why I stick around? To his credit, MJ does raise important issues and, funny thing actually, I probably agree with him more often than not. Certainly some of the posturing and bravado is intended to provoke, and based upon his position as Director of Policy for IPF, an organization I support, I assume a level of thought beyond that which some of his blog posts would indicate.

Still, it is disheartening when progressives ape the same tactics they deplored when employed by the right. As I noted yesterday, this type of name-calling is no more accurate than dismissing any and all criticisim of Israel as an expression of the author's anti-semitism, and equally stifling of reasoned debate.

As to the idea that we would not have gone to war in Iraq but for the wishes of Israel, there is a way to look at it that makes that true, or at least likely.
If a decision is a close call then any single influence among many might be the straw that blah blah blah. Consider the Two thousand election. Nadar's votes were enough to change the outcome. So were Buchanan's. So were those of several other otherwise insignificant [vote-wise] groups. So were some worn out machines in a few counties.
I would find it hard to argue with someone who maintained that had Israel strongly opposed our going to war in Iraq, and so did AIPAC, and so did the neocons, we would have done so anyway. Maybe, but I doubt it.