Here is an interesting ambivalent post about Walt and Mearsheimer's visit to Israel, by Gil Troy at an Israeli magazine. Troy begins by comparing the pair to a Rev. Ahlwardt, an antisemite who was granted an audience in N.Y. 100 years ago over the objections of the Jewish community. He seems to regard the men as Jew haters. Said they forced themselves on Hebrew University by inviting themselves. Then come these softer words:
“Moreover, in fairness, Professors
Mearsheimer and Walt are neither Rector Ahlwardt nor President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad, who should not have spoken at Columbia University in
September 2007 because of his regime’s criminal acts, not because of
his offensive opinions. True, Mearsheimer and Walt have made loose,
politicized claims based on sloppy, often derivative, research. And yes
their demagogic distortion of the “Israel Lobby” into the modern
bogeyman helps legitimize anti-Semitism. Still, both have avoided any
anti-Semitic expressions, and their book endorses Israel’s right to
exist.“We need a war of sources not swords, we need to fight about their
footnotes not their freedom. Their book should be subject to rigorous
academic scrutiny.”I urge American Jews to read these words. The reception Israel granted Walt and Mearsheimer was a glory to free speech. I love Israel for this. No it is South Africa in its treatment of minorities, but in the love of ideas it is Athens. The men were given a platform. Israelis would have noticed that they spoke with soft voices and were highly intelligent, would have seen Mearsheimer’s fire and toughness, but Walt’s nuance and humor. That’s what free speech is about, the medium and the message. Again I compare Israel’s openness to the closed society we live in for these issues. The Jewish mandarins who man so many turrets of our cultural establishment pulled up the portcullis (I think that metaphor’s right), excluded them. I can think of only a couple of Jews with real cultural power who behaved honorably, Nick Goldberg at the LA Times gave them a hearing. David Remnick was halfway fair in the New Yorker and honored the power of their ideas. The norm was the slagfest at Yivo, or Dana Milbank’s comparing them to Nazis in the Washington Post, or Richard Cohen going into the fetal position and humming the Hatikvah. Defensive. Oh and I should mention M.J. Rosenberg, who was warm and open to Walt and M. even as he was somewhat critical. He was unafraid.
I remind people that Walt and Mearsheimer are for a 2-state solution. If American Zionists knew what they were doing, they would grapple these guys to their side with hoops of steel. Some day they will… The alternative truly is, right now, anyway, institutionalized apartheid..
