In 2006 Dershowitz accused Walt and Mearsheimer of being antisemites. He wrote that their landmark paper on the Israel lobby, which could only be printed in England, recycled the "blood libel" and other canards and was giving an imprimatur to "bigotry." He said that their arguments came from "hate sites" and they aimed to limit the hiring of Jews as Congressional staffers. Meantime, in the Washington Post Dana Milbank said that Walt and Mearsheimer were blue-eyed men with white knuckles and Germanic names–all but accusing them of being Nazis. And Jeffrey Goldberg in the New Republic and on the stage at Yivo said that they were antisemitic.
Now when Chas Freeman, whose criticisms of Israel and the lobby are generally more blunt than Walt and Mearsheimer's, first obtains a presidential appointment, and then loses it, Dershowitz doesn't use the words bigotry or antisemitism at all in his attack on Freeman. He calls Freeman a "zealot" and an ideologue, etc., but he doesn't accuse him of antisemitism. That same piece mentions Stephen Walt, but Walt is no longer denounced as a bigot. Now Walt is merely "discredited," Dershowitz says. In Jeffrey Goldberg's attacks on Chas Freeman at his blog, the ones I read anyway, he did not accuse him of hating Jews, but of bias against Israel.
Here's my point. The Israel lobby and its exponents used to say that sharp criticism of Israel equals anti-semitism. The American Jewish Committee said so, and maybe they actually believed that. (Now the AJC merely says that Freeman is "nefarious"). But the exponents smeared Israel's critics in this manner because they were engaged in a power struggle and the charge of antisemitism carries real obloquy, and they did not want Walt and Mearsheimer and others of their ilk to gain any traction.
That line of defense has plainly failed. Freeman was chosen by the Obama administration; and the lobby respects power. The theory of the Israel lobby is being debated, somewhat, on the front pages of the Washington Post and the New York Times. Forced to publish in England three years ago, Steve Walt now has a blog at Foreign Policy. And even in going down, Chas Freeman was cheered on by many people. He touched a nerve that he first described in an interview in 1995, a fact that many supporters of Israel are aware of:
Washington, because it tends to get what it wants by the exercise of
raw political power and threats.
The purpose of the Israel lobby is to keep those enemies in the closet, often by threat. Now that the enemies are starting to defy the threats and come out of the closet (come out, more of you, please!) and on to the front pages, with more and more people paying attention, the lobby understands that the anti-semite smear doesn't work and is actually engaging more in civilized argument. Progress.
