So I just heard an interesting interview on NPR (fresh air) with Walt (of Mearsheimer and Walt) about their new book, “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy”. This interview was followed by one with Abraham Foxman, the national director of the Anti-Defamation League and author of “The Deadliest Lies: The Israel Lobby and the Myth of Jewish Control.” Now Walt’s arguments seemed silly, factually dubious and subtly fallacious, in other words exactly what I expect for any public policy discussion, particularly those involving Israel, but he certainly didn’t appear even slightly antisemitic. Now to be fair Foxman didn’t technically call either Mearsheimer or Walt an antisemite in the interview I heard¹ but he did call Walt and Mearsheimer’s argument a, “sinister antisemitic canard,” accuse them of “defamation of the Jewish community” and do his best to imply they were no different than Pat Buchanan or David Duke not to mention running afoul of Godwin’s Law. Ironically while Foxman blasts M&W for aiding and abetting antisemitism his outraged denunciations do an order of magnitude more harm than Mearsheimer and Walt would have done on their own.

In short I think that Mearsheimer and Walt certainly ought to be blamed for foolishly adopting some silly beliefs and presenting them poorly I think just as much blame lies with their opponents for encouraging people to take this crap seriously. The fact that we tend to blame only one side not the other regardless of the causal impact of their choices is yet another deep seated human irrationality that always seems to bite us in the ass. I argue for this views at far too much length below.

Mearsheimer and Walt’s book builds on their controversial 2006 article in the London Review of Books where they criticize the influence of the “Israel Lobby” on US politics and accuse it of distorting our foreign policy to the detriment of both the US and Israel. Just as in the interview the article made a point of saying that the “Israel Lobby” included a great many non-Jews while many Jews weren’t part of it and disapproved of it’s tactics. Still, I think the article could have been worded more carefully since on a subject like this the following sentence just invites confusion.

And because Jewish voters have high turn-out rates and are concentrated in key states like California, Florida, Illinois, New York and Pennsylvania, presidential candidates go to great lengths not to antagonise them.

And this one is just as problematic.

The Lobby doesn’t want an open debate, of course, because that might lead Americans to question the level of support they provide. Accordingly, pro-Israel organisations work hard to influence the institutions that do most to shape popular opinion.

Now my overall perception from the article is that M&W are merely making (potentially false) claims about political influence. Claims that would be unremarkable if he had explained say the tendency of government aid to flow to the middle class rather than the most needy by a reference to the disproportionate political power of white suburbanites and suggesting that your opponents don’t want an open debate appears to be de rigueur in American political discourse. However, when discussing a subject like this with obvious potential for misinterpretation it is negligent not to word this more carefully. Still, poor wording is hardly a capital offense and in the interview Walt went out of his way to clarify these sorts of misconceptions, e.g., emphasizing that he didn’t view it as disloyal or even wrong to support Israel only that the policies the “Israel Lobby” supported were horribly misguided.

Now merely from a rhetorical point of view it would be bad tactics to respond to the calm reasonable sounding academic with an outraged lecture about the role of disloyalty accusations in the Soviet and Nazi genocides but when the individual your criticizing credibly denies making any such allegation at all it just plays to the (mostly false²) idea that accusations of antisemitism are being used to stop any discussion. As if this tactic wasn’t foolish enough Foxman responds to the idea of a hard right “Israel Lobby” by snapping, “Why is it their business how the American Jewish community works?” Not only is this a terrible argument (voting patterns are everyone’s business) but there is no more surefire way to convince people your covering up a dark secret than to tell them something is none of their business. Why do you think the UFO buffs simply won’t accept the fact that Area 51 is just a boring aircraft research facility?

I understand why Foxman has the reaction to M&W that he does. Obviously talking about the “Israel Lobby” and their ‘sinister’ goals is a way to disparage the people who disagree with you. If you are primed to respond to the standard antisemitic slurs about Jewish disloyalty or conspiratorial power when you hear someone blaming the “Israel Lobby” using dubious evidence you are going to hear exactly what you expected to hear. Human psychology just works like that, especially about particularly emotional issues.

Unfortunately, the sort of underhanded argumentative move that M&W pull of dehumanizing the people who disagree with you by giving them an intimidating name, whether it is “Israel Lobby,” “big business,” “military industrial complex,” “agribusiness,” “the religious right,” or “liberal” is all to common. People think their ideas are obviously right and need an explanation for why other people disagree with them. Lacking my arrogance most people feel a tension between how obvious the conclusion feels to them and the idea there are a bunch of other folk like them who think the exact opposite so they resolve it by dehumanizing their opponents with a big scary name which lets them conceptualize themselves as the underdog nobly fighting the good fight. I think this is a much more plausible explanation of M&W’s motivations than any sort of antisemitic agenda.

Yes, the arguments made in M&W’s paper and presumably the ones in the book as well are extremely poor. In addition to the dubious factual claims they barely touch the substantive issue: what policy should the US take towards Israel. However, while I respect them less as a result and I wish academics would do better I’m hardly surprised. This is the same kinda of emotionally loaded but irrelevant crap one always sees in political discourse, especially when it involves Israel and Palestine. Even otherwise rational people start citing dubious historical events and making totally irrelevant arguments about who is at ‘fault’ for the current situation instead of asking what would be most likely to fix the problem. It is no more antisemitic when the anti-Israel side does it than it is anti-Muslim when hard line pro-Israeli partisans do.

Is it the case that M&W’s article and book provides aid and comfort for antisemitic elements? Well I’m sure some of them will get a kick out of reading it but it isn’t neo-Nazis feeling smug that we want to avoid it’s increased membership and I’m skeptical M&W’s work is going to aid in recruitment. It people like David Irving who let the neo-Nazi types feel that the truth is on their side but it is being suppressed by conspiracy. Moreover, by Foxman’s own theory he is just as culpable as M&W. He blames M&W for mainstreaming the concern about the “Jewish Lobby” to the point where it is being discussed on NPR but that never would have happened with the accusations of antisemitism and the like from people like him. Had the ADL and other Jewish groups reacted with a shrug and merely debunked M&W’s arguments instead of becoming outraged M&W’s article would have died the obscure death it deserved.

Even if their work was likely to encourage neo-Nazis this doesn’t mean it is any more morally culpable for them to publish it. After all we don’t think that scientists are blameworthy for not suppressing experimental results suggesting that certain gender differences have biological causes even if we later find them to have made a mistake. Yes, I think one can make the case that subjects like this require greater care and thus M&W are to be blamed for not exercising greater thought and care in both forming and presenting their views. However, any theory that holds people to a higher standard about racially sensitive subjects because of the greater risk of harm cuts both ways. If M&W are to be blamed for not questioning their emotionally laden beliefs about US policy towards Israel or not taking more care to avoid encouraging antisemitism than so too should Abraham Foxman for not questioning his assumptions about the nature and motivation of M&W’s view and especially for responding in a way that, under his own theory, aids genuine antisemites.

I think we should blame both of them but they are venial sins not reasons to shun them.

Don’t get me wrong. I think M&W’s arguments are a pile of crap. I just don’t think the responses to it have been much better nor do I think that it’s much worse than what I’ve come to expect from political dialog in this country. Mostly I agree with this post about the matter except I’m far more cynical about political discourse in general. The reason I care about the issues is that I’m bothered by the hypocritical standard about when we blame people for encouraging antisemitism. If we are really interested in what matters (stamping out antisemitism) then any behavior that can reasonably be seen to encourage antisemitism should be equally blameworthy but in practice we don’t judge blame based on actual impact but by sorting them out into sides. Of course this is hardly unique to antisemitism, it is the same reason that people are more interested in what you believe about affirmative action than why, but this was what made me think about it this morning.