The Boston Globe has a little piece following up the bogus controversy started by Jonathan Chait when he wrote that Steve Walt did not hurt his career by writing, The Israel Lobby. Chait is wrong, and either foolishly misleading, or fraudulently so. A statement on this matter from the New Republic, which called Walt an antisemite, has the same authority as, say, Roy Cohn's opinion on whether there was a blacklist in Hollywood. Now Daniel Drezner has taken up the issue, in a further motion of deceiving the public about the power of the Israel lobby.
Some day maybe I'll tell these academics about New York journalism…
By the way, Larry Summers said Walt hurt himself. And so did Walt, who is as smart as they come, on the Diane Rehm show:
other point. Perhaps the most common reaction I have gotten from
friends and associates including some who don’t necessarily agree with
everything we wrote is, you know, “Well, gee, Steve, you’re never going
to work in Washington.” Now, working in Washington was not
necessarily my life’s ambition. I’m not complaining at all about
my situation in life, but I find it interesting that that’s so
frequently the reaction. I think that this has simply made us
complete pariahs. Quite remarkable.
Oh and here is Anatol Lieven telling me in a Nation piece that he became a "pariah" at Carnegie and at Aspen when he questioned the degree of American support for Israel:
horrible unpopularity…. All my personal loyalties are the other way.
I've literally dozens of Jewish friends; I have no Palestinian friends."
Lieven says he was a regular at the Aspen Institute till he brought up
the issue. "I got kicked out of Aspen…. In early 2002 they held a
conference on relations with the Muslim world. For two days nobody
mentioned Israel. Finally, I said, 'Look, this is a Soviet-style debate.
Whatever you think about this issue, the entire Muslim world is shouting
about it.' I have never been asked back." In 2004 Lieven published a
book, America Right or Wrong, in which he argued that the United States
had subordinated its interests to a tiny militarized state, Israel.
Attacked as an anti-Semite, Lieven says he became a pariah among many
colleagues at the Carnegie Endowment, which he left for the fledgling
New America Foundation.
(Phil Weiss)
