Comments on: A Dose Of Realism

By: marc200

marc200 — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 00:18:14 +0000

In reality, Hamas is genuinely a terrorist group because it uses the tactics and justifications that terrorists use: it targets civilians with violence to achieve its political goals

great powers do this during wars all the time. Of course, they regret it and so forth, sometimes they claim that they don’t “target” civilians, civilians are just unintentional collateral damage. But bombing campaigns designed to “shock and awe” the enemy into surrender are certainly targeted at civilians and civilian infrastructure.

By: Charlie

Charlie — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 04:32:54 +0000

My only point is that the state of the US debate on Israel-Palestine doesn’t offer support for the thesis that US policy/debate is dictated by an “Israel Lobby”, since even if one agrees with Walt and Mearsheimer’s description of US policy and the US debate there are alternative explanations for why the debate takes the form that it does. If their discussion of the ’06 Israel-Lebanon war simply points out that US policy and the US debate was biased in favor of Israel, and that the people/groups that always support Israel continued to do so during the war, that’s one thing. If they provide evidence that US policy and the US debate during the war was dictated primarily by “the Israel Lobby” then that’s something else. Their position can’t be vindicated by continuing US support for Israel and the continuation of a biased US debate on the subject; their thesis is supposed to be an explanation for why that’s the case, not just a statement that it is the case and will continue to be the case.

Do you know if their discussion of the ’06 war is available online anywhere?

By: Daniel Larison

Daniel Larison — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 03:56:17 +0000

Yes, and to watch how the “debate” over Lebanon unfolded confirmed a lot of their original claims, which is why they went on to include an entire chapter in the book on the role of “the lobby” in the 2006 war. Their explanation of why things are the way they are may have been unduly narrow and flawed, as I said, but they were definitely on the right track.

By: Charlie

Charlie — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 03:45:24 +0000

No one could have observed the debate, or almost complete lack thereof, during the summer of 2006 during the bombing of Lebanon and still seriously believe that their thesis did not correctly describe, however imperfectly, the state of U.S. policy debate concerning Israel and its neighbors.
But The Israel Lobby wasn’t just an attempt to “describe… the state of U.S. policy debate concerning Israel and its neighbors.” It was primarily an attempt to explain why the U.S. policy debate takes the form that it does. You can agree that the U.S. debate is circumscribed in various ways, slanted in favor of Israel, etc., without agreeing with Walt and Mearsheimer’s explanation for why that’s the case.

To take a random (maybe extreme) example, Noam Chomksy also believes that American policy towards Israel and the Palistinians is unfairly biased in favor of Israel, that the American debate on the subject is severely slanted in Israel’s favor, etc., but he disagrees with Walt and Mearsheimer’s argument that these facts are explained by the power of the Israel lobby.