Soccer Dad: Unpublished letter to the editor

May 15, 2006

Unpublished letter to the editor

Last week the Baltimore Sun published an article by Norman Solomon titled "Opening the Debate." (Also available here. The gist of the article is that the Walt/Mearsheimer paper on the Israel Lobby has occasioned a serious look at the outsized influence Israel has over American policy. And since such serious academics were involved the usual way of shutting debate - calling such critics antisemites - won't work. At the encouragement of others, I wrote a letter to the editor (and am working on a post). Since I haven't heard from the Sun, I can assume that they won't be using my letter, so here it is.

Norman Solomon opens "Opening the Debate on Israel" with a bit of dishonesty - he ignored the most prominent reaction to Walt/Mearsheimer paper. White supremacist David Duke very publicly endorsed the paper, "The Lobby." The New York Sun might have been the only paper to report of Duke's praise for "The Lobby" in its news pages.
And it's little wonder that "The Lobby" appealed to the likes of David Duke. The central thesis of the paper is that a small group of Jews influences American foreign policy favorably towards Israel even though support of Israel is detrimental to the interests of the United States. This thesis strongly echoes the Protocols of the Elders of Ziyon, a forgery of a century ago that pretended that a small cabal of Jews controlled the world.

And if there were any doubts about the motives of Professors Walt and Mearsheimer they were put to rest when the pair submitted to an interview with Robert Fisk of the leftist British newspaper the Independent. The graphic on the cover of the section in which the interview appeared showed an American flag with six pointed Stars of David replacing the standard five pointed stars and the title read "United States of Israel."

Neither professor disowned the interview or the offensive material related to it. One can only assume that they approve of the ugly sentiments expressed by the Independent.

(A staple of white supremacist hate groups is the terms ZOG - Zionist occupied government. United States of Israel is only a slightly more polite way of expressing the same sentiment.)

Perhaps the charge of antisemitism is not always fair when levelled at critics of Israel. But Walt and Mearsheimer have no problem associating with those whose views clearly cross the boundary of legitimate criticism. Unfortunately Norman Solomon wasn't honest enough to allow his audience to see the whole picture and judge for itself.

I'm sure it was too long for the Sun to publish.

UPDATE: I followed the advice of Israel Matzav and checked. Indeed the Sun has published a number of letters on the subject. Notice that two of the letters criticizing Solomon are organizational people. And that two of the supporters of Solomon have Jewish/Israeli sounding names.

Technorati tags: Walt and Mearsheimer, Israel.