Something else I heard about Avrahum Burg and his new book on Jewish history, due out in 3 weeks, translated from the Hebrew: that it's blurbed by John Mearsheimer. This is remarkable because it is almost impossible to imagine an American Jewish writer getting a book blurbed by John Mearsheimer. He's been anathematized by Jews, including the several prominent writers who smeared him as an antisemite at Yivo last November. And as I have noted, by my friend Zack Karabell, who said Walt & Mearsheimer wrote a "terrible book" at the LA Book fair. (I'm going to keep saying this till I get an email–c'mon Zack.) I insist that Mearsheimer and Walt are scholars of Jewish history, they have chronicled so completely one of the most important institutions of diaspora life, which even the Forward has tried to convince the rest of us does not exist, but which nonetheless pops up in the writings of Saul Bellow, Philip Roth and Alan Dershowitz.
In journalism you learn the obvious truth that the further you are away from something geographically the easier it is to be detached about it. And Burg demonstrates that. The lobby is surely crucial to his understanding of the unfolding of the Holocaust in Jewish consciousness (as it is for mine and for Mike Desch's). Maybe it's not just geography. Burg served in the military (like Mearsheimer) and his father was a religious leader and he was a former speaker of the Knesset. That's something admirable about the Israelis: they're tough.
The GIANT confusion about Walt/Mearsheimer thesis is that in the same breath they describe that the Lobby (however defined) is NOT monolithic, then proceed to rely on it being monolithic to make the majority of their conclusions.
It is a bait and switch process, that you and others articulating further on, fail to recognize or acknowledge.
The comments by Walt/Mearsheimer's critics relate to that bait/switch process AND the degree of weight they and you attribute to the undefined Israel Lobby.
You may consider it an example of "thorough study" but I and most don't.
Their book was a great improvement over their article, which was largely polemic in style, incomplete in content to the point of misrepresentation, and as a result, INSULTING (rather than informing).
If it served the effort to change US policy, it did so with more friction than motive force.
Obama's process and appeal is much more compelling and therefore much more effective.
To summarize his appeal as I understand:
"The US will NEVER participate in a process that seeks or functionally harms Israel's right to self-govern, or hinders the ability of Israel's leaders to defend the safety of its civilians. From that place of confident trust, the US will do everything that it can to realize a just and confident peace between a good neighbor Palestine and a good neighbor Israel."
Any implication, by you or by Walt/Mearsheimer, that is less than that standard of confidence for Israeli's safety and the state of Israel's sovereignty, is RATIONALLY rejected.
If you want to get "there", you have to walk on bridge. Even though "there" is a hundred feet away as crows fly, it is a hundred navigable miles away by ground.
We don't fly, we walk. Its a good thing to walk. A better thing to actually walk, than whine that we can't fly.
your buddy Karabell is also a twit on the market.
Witty's GIANT lie about Walt/Mearsheimer thesis is easily seen by anyone who actually reads the book's 484 pages. The bait and switch is all cheap Witty rhetoric and and intentional confusion via misleading conflation through use of terms like "monolithic."
Any implication by Witty that he has addressed Walt/Mearsheimer's central warning that Israel and USA interests are not always identical is less than that standard of confidence for the USA's safety and the state of USA sovereignty, is RATIONALLY rejected.
And not on the grounds of Witty's cheap rhetoric or Obama's pandering campaign speeches regarding Israel (Or McCain's), but on the grounds of W/M's well-footnoted 484 pages.