Israel is pushing the U.S. to attack Iran
Israel lobby authors in Israel
06/13/2008
The authors of a controversial book about the pro-Israel lobby said Israel is pushing the U.S. to attack Iran.
Profs. John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt spoke Thursday at a forum in Tel Aviv and at Hebrew University in Jerusalem in their first visit to Israel since the publication of "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy."
Echoing their claim that pro-Israel forces in Washington had pressured the United States into attacking Iraq, the pair argued that the same forces are now pushing the country into attacking Iran.
"There is only one country in the world that is putting any pressure on the U.S. to attack Iran, and that is Israel," Mearsheimer told a packed lecture hall at Hebrew University, according to the Jerusalem Post. "And it is putting enormous pressure on the US."
Mearsheimer added, "Inside the United States, it is pro-Israel individuals and groups who are almost wholly responsible for pressure being brought to bear on Bush and Cheney to use military force on Iran. The idea that the lobby and Israel don't put huge amounts of pressure on the U.S. is contradictory to the evidence."
US POLICY AND THE PRO-ISRAEL LOBBY: A UNIVERSITY IN JERUSALEM TAKES ON THE DEBATE
The authors of 'The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy' said Thursday that the special-interest group is leading the charge for attacking Iran and damaging US interests.
By Ilene R. Prusher | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
"Giving Israel unconditional support is not making America more popular around the world, and it is not making Americans more secure at home," said Walt. Israel's role as a democracy is also not a strong enough reason for such strong political and financial backing, he said. "There are a lot of other democracies around the world and none of them get this level of support, with no strings attached."
He said that anyone who questions that relationship is "playing with fire" and risks "being smeared" as anti-Semitic.....
In the talk, Mearsheimer charged that Israel and the Israel lobby – which he said also included many Christian Zionists and Evangelicals, and therefore was not synonymous with being a "Jewish lobby" – was trying to push America into military action against Iran.
"There is only one country that is putting pressure on the US to attack Iran, and that is Israel," Mearsheimer said. "AIPAC is pushing hard for an attack on Iran, and no other lobby in America is," he said, referring to the pro-Israeli lobby group the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.
The above stories clearly stated that Professor Mearsheimer said Israel is putting pressure on the U.S. to attack Iran. Yet, do a search on this subject and one will mostly find articles like the one below, from the AP, that made NO mention of the LOBBY pushing the U.S. into a war with Iran.
But the AP does smear Mearsheimer and Walt by associating them with the KKK--Klu Klux Klan.
Surely the fact that ultra-Zionist Rupert Murdoch is on the AP Board of Directors had nothing to do with this slanted coverage of the professors visit to Israel. After all, that would imply that lobbies like AIPAC wield an unhealthy amount of sway over the USA and we all know that kind of thinking is VERBOTEN, since it is "Anti-Semitic."
'Israel Lobby' authors in Jerusalem: Ahmadinejad not inciting to genocide
By The Associated Press
JERUSALEM - Two prominent American professors who sparked an uproar with their best-selling book critical of the powerful pro-Israel lobby in Washington, remarked Thursday that they felt that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's call for Israel to be wiped off the map was not in fact incitement to genocide.
About 200 students and faculty members crammed into a stuffy lecture hall at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and grilled John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt for more than two hours about their harsh findings in The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, published last year.
In the book, the pair argue that pro-Israel special interest groups have manipulated the U.S. political system to promote policies that favor Israel, while running counter to American interests. They argue that Israel is often a strategic burden, not an asset, pointing to the 1991 Gulf War as an example, when the Israel-U.S. alliance hindered the U.S. in building a coalition of forces.
Since Mearsheimer, a University of Chicago professor, and Walt, of Harvard University, published their working paper of the same title in 2006, they have drawn the wrath of Jewish American groups and U.S. administration officials.
Walt shot back. "With all due respect, I don't think it is my words that harm Israel, but rather Israel's actions."
A professor criticized the authors for failing to condemn Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has called for Israel to be wiped off the map. "I don't think he is inciting to genocide," Walt responded.
Mearsheimer said Israel's brutal treatment of Palestinians helped fuel terrorism against the United States and that, unlike in Israel, there was no healthy debate on the matter in America.
Critics have charged them with shoddy scholarship, faulty logic and even anti-Semitism. The attacks have been compounded because Islamic militants, Holocaust deniers and even former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke are among those who have praised the book, though some mainstream analysts have said their work raised legitimate points.
"The U.S. media coverage is heavily slanted in Israel's direction," he said.
