On Upper Broadway: Mearsheimer Unbound

Walt and Mearsheimer’s appearance at Columbia U. Monday night had an odd energy. I kept  wondering what the event’s true character was. Ahmadinejad had come to Columbia just ten days ago; and I expected to find the two armies massed again in the quadrangle. No. There were no crowds outside the hall. Just two girls from the Zionist Organization of America, with a Little-Match-girl-like demeanor, handing out flyers accusing the authors of shoddy scholarship. The only people in the lobby (I mean the actual Lerner Hall lobby!) were Columbia security and administration.

The hall was half full. A barricade separated the audience from the dais, and a cop stood at the barricade. But there was no tension in the room. No demonstrations of any sort. The audience was polite, respectful. Only toward the end did they begin to applaud. Later that night the School of International Relations staged a second event with Joe Stiglitz and Peter Singer. You couldn’t get in. Jammed. Walt and Mearsheimer aren’t rock stars, yet.

I think what’s happening is that Walt and Mearsheimer have successfully established a position in the American discourse–at the edge. No one can remove them. High-end branding (Harvard/FSG) and the sensation over the book has granted them standing. The other side is now hoping that Walt and M will go quietly into the night. But they’re not. So the other side is trying to ignore them. The high lobby (my coinage!) seems to have adopted the Daniel Pipes strategy. I was elevated by my raucous critics, he has written; so don’t elevate Walt and M! The crowd was almost entirely in Walt and Mearsheimer’s corner. I saw Rashid Khalidi and Saif Ammous and thought, Yes, Walt and Mearsheimer are preaching to the choir. I saw one guy with a yarmulke and one other Jewishy guy who got up and left early. Ho hum.

The most interesting thing about the night was John Mearsheimer’s performance. I said a few days ago that Mearsheimer is best when stirred. Boy was I right. A year ago at Cooper Union, Mearsheimer was nervous and on his heels. That Mearsheimer persona is in the dustbin of history. At Columbia, Mearsheimer had an air of I-don’t-give-a-sh-t-about-my-critics. He got stirred. He let it hang out. You saw the inner Mearsheimer, the passionate folksy oldfashioned intellectual, a little Frank Capra, a little Adlai Stevenson, a little Chomsky.  

I don’t have time to transcribe the tape and quote verbatim, I’ll reprise from notes:

Mearsheimer’s first riff was that Israel did "terrible" things to the Palestinians, and it was perfectly understandable in the context of nationbuilding.

 

"…. How could a large number of Jews move into an area filled with Palestinians and create a Jewish state in that land without doing terrible things to the Palestinians? How do you do it?… All of the early Zionists understood that they had to do terrible things…"

Look at the colonization of America. “White Americans came across the ocean” and wanted to create a country between the oceans. “How do you think we created that state… we did horrible things to the native Americans… 

“There is no way they could build a Jewish state without doing horrible things to the Palestinians… from the very beginning the Zionist leaders wanted all of Mandate Palestine for themselves…” Transjordan conspired. The Zionists worked with the Jordanians to “screw” the Palestinians. “Now in 1948 the [Zionists] got pretty much everything but the West Bank and Gaza. … a lot of Zionist leaders were upset about this… It’s no accident, folks, that the Israelis since 1967 have been in the process of colonizing these two pieces of real estate.”

And today the only way to create peace in that part of the world is to create a “viable Palestinian state.” Pre-67 borders.

The next thing that got Mearsheimer going was the book’s reviews. The dean of International Affairs, who was moderating, pointed out, a little piously, I thought, that most of the reviews have been negative. What does that show? 

Mearsheimer said that the reviews were utterly predictable. For the American mainstream media are inhospitable to work that is critical of Israel.

“You would have predicted that we would have done much better in Europe and Israel than in the United States. And you know what, those predictions have come true.”

 Of 7 reviews in Britain, six were favorable, one (the Economist) so-so. In Israel, Walt and Mearsheimer were reported on straightforwardly in the Jerusalem Post and have gotten remarkably positive readings in Haaretz. From Akiva Eldar, Daniel Levy, and MJ Rosenberg. Their best review so far is from Israeli Uri Avnery. Why? Because “they [Israel] don’t have the lobby over there smearing people and shutting down debate.” Biggest applause line of the night.

In fact the authors have been invited to Israel, and they expect to be treated quite well there.

“Surprise, surprise, we’ve been hammered in the mainstream American media.” Mearsheimer noted that the Washington Post hired Samuel Freedman, of Columbia Journalism School, to review the book, notwithstanding the fact that he had hammered the original article a year back. “This is just what one would expect from reading our book, and we’ve not been disappointed.”

If that sounds like self-indulgent wound-licking, it wasn’t. Mearsheimer framed all this in an important context. States, he said, have a tendency to “go off half-cocked” and “do foolish things.” The best way to restrain this behavior is to have an open debate about policy. Makes sense. But last year during the Lebanon war–in retrospect a huge mistake and a cause of enormous suffering–you simply weren’t allowed to criticize that decision in America. Congress voted to support Israel’s decision 400+ to about 8. “It’s very difficult if not impossible to criticize Israel in the mainstream media… it is very difficult if not impossible to criticize the US-Israel relationship in the mainstream media…

“When people are talking about Mideast policy, there’s no discussion of the lobby.” Two of the book’s critical reviewers have described the lobby as a, (the New York Times) the most powerful influence on US policy toward Israel and b, a “leviathan” in American politics (The New Republic). “Where is the leviathan in the stories you read in the New York Times. Don’t you find this peculiar? Isn’t this quite stunning?”

Then he said, “And you know what, we are really in serious trouble in the Middle East.” Our country has gone terribly wrong there. Our country needs an open debate!

“Was it possible for anyone in the United States, for Steven Walt or John Mearsheimer, to stand up and say, Israelis are pursuing a foolish policy? No you could not say that. It was just absolutely impossible. No critics of Israel’s policy were allowed to be heard in the pages of the New York Times or the Washington Post…. And it’s about time that the New York Times and Washington Post started talking in a more honest fashion about the making of foreign policy.” Huge applause. End of evening.

I said hello to the profs as they were finished their booksigning. I commented to Mearsheimer on his ardor and he said it was the first time he’d been this way on the tour. He shrugged and then went out on to Broadway, smiling.

 

Related posts:

1. Nakba Hits Upper Broadway (When Will It Hit Times Square?)
2. Yivo Owes Walt and Mearsheimer an Apology. Or a Stage
3. Walt and Mearsheimer Have Already Created Perestroika
4. Legendary ‘NY Review’ Hasn’t Gotten Around to Walt & Mearsheimer, Now Out for a Year
5. Do the Goyim Get to Register an Opinion Re Walt/Mearsheimer?