John Mearsheimer sent me the following email lately:
There is not going to be a debate between me and David Harris [executive director of the American Jewish Committee]. As you know, he previously said that he wanted to debate me, but that I was afraid to engage him. However, it seems clear from my negotiations with one of his key deputies at the AJC that the opposite is the case: David Harris is afraid to debate me.
As you and many of your readers know, I declined to debate David Harris on the Dom Giordano radio show out of Philadelphia on March 12, 2009. What he wanted was for both of us to appear together for a few minutes on that show to debate the Chas Freeman affair. I did not want to do that, mainly because it is impossible to have a meaningful debate in such circumstances, as I told the host of the radio show. I thought that was the end of the matter, but the next day the AJC put out a press release titled: “Don’t Run Away From Debate, AJC’S Harris Tells Mearsheimer.”
You heard about this from a friend and asked me if it was true. I responded and on March 30 you posted my explanation of what had happened. In that posting I said that Steve Walt and I would love to debate David Harris and someone else from the lobby in a public forum in New York City. I was sure there would be great interest in such an event and that there would be no problem filling a large auditorium and getting C-Span to cover it.
On April 2, I received an e-mail from Ben Cohen, the Associate Director of Communications at the AJC, asking me to contact him “to explore the possibility of a public debate with David Harris and a colleague.” We talked for the first time on April 3, and we agreed that we would not reveal the details of our subsequent conversations and e-mails. For that reason, I can only tell you the broad outlines of what happened in our negotiations
We had three more telephone conversations, the last one at the end of June. My preference was to have a public debate in a large auditorium and to have Steve and me on one side and David Harris and someone else from the lobby on the other side. Those preferences, of course, were clearly stated in my March 30 posting. The AJC, however, preferred a debate between just me and David Harris and they wanted to do it on the radio, with the two of us in different locations.
After some discussion, we agreed to have a one-on-one debate involving me and David Harris and to do it on radio, but with both of us in the same studio in New York City. We had little difficulty reaching that arrangement, and were set to work out the details when Ben Cohen informed me in our last conversation that there had been a change in the situation and that David Harris would be spending most of his time out of the country during the remaining six months of this year. As a result, he would not be able to debate me after all. Ben Cohen said we might be able to revisit the issue at the start of next year, but I do not believe that this will happen. In short, there is not going to be a debate between me and David Harris.
I was not surprised by what happened, nor was Steve. Indeed, I told a number of people, you included, that I did not think there would be a debate. The reason is simple: the lobby has virtually no interest in open and free-wheeling discussions about Israeli policy, the US-Israeli relationship, or the role of the lobby in American political life. If that were to happen, it would quickly become clear to large numbers of Americans that the so-called “special relationship” makes no sense – for either the US or Israel – and that the only reason we support Israel so generously and nearly unconditionally is because of the lobby’s profound influence. Of course, we would have emphasized these points in a real debate, and David Harris would have had his hands full countering our arguments. Truth and justice are not on his side.
I am sure that if David Harris thought that he could dominate me and Steve in a real debate, we would have had one. But he knows better and thus he is running scared, as he should be.
