Anti Israel-lobby authors to speak at Hebrew U.

[notfullofit]

Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer, whose book The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy has become a bible for Israel-bashers in the US, will arrive in Israel Thursday and deliver a lecture at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and to a Gush Shalom forum in Tel Aviv.

Slideshow: Pictures of the week In the book, published last September amidst a wave of controversy, Walt - a Harvard University political science professor - and Mearsheimer, from the University of Chicago, argue that AIPAC and the Israel lobby have essentially hijacked US foreign policy.

The two argue in their book that Israel and its supporters in the US "have been able to stymie any détente between Iran and the United Sates, and to keep the countries far apart."

They also argue that "many policies pursued on Israel's behalf now jeopardize US national security."

Hebrew University professors Arie Kacowicz, chairman of the international relations department, and Gabi Sheffer, of the political science department, signed off on an invitation and abstract inviting students and colleagues to a lecture by the duo entitled "Is the 'Israel lobby' good for Israel?"

Sheffer said that the university had not invited the two professors to lecture, but that Walt and Mearsheimer had turned to the political science department and asked to do so. Since the two were known by many in the department, their request was accepted, Sheffer said.

The lecture at the university has not been widely publicized.

Sheffer said he had no hesitations about having the two controversial professors speak at the Hebrew University, even though he didn't agree with their positions, because if Israel was fighting against academic boycotts abroad, it could not apply one here.

Hebrew University spokeswoman Orit Sulitzeanu said that Walt and Mearsheimer were two internationally known scholars whose book was academically controversial, and whose thesis was that the Israel lobby is unintentionally bad for Israel itself.

She said that the purpose of the lecture was to have a "dialogue" and "academic argument" with them.

The two were invited to Israel by Gush Shalom, an left-wing group headed by Uri Avnery. They are scheduled to deliver a lecture at a Gush Shalom forum on Thursday at 8 p.m. at Beit Sokolow in Tel Aviv.

Avnery, in an article on the Gush Shalom Web site following US presidential candidate Barack Obama's speech at the AIPAC policy conference last week, wrote that "The most extreme conclusions of professors John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt were confirmed in their entirety ."

Neither Foreign Ministry or AIPAC officials would comment on Walt and Mearsheimer's upcoming trip.

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[LeftishBrit]

1. Sheffer makes a very good point

'Sheffer said he had no hesitations about having the two controversial professors speak at the Hebrew University, even though he didn't agree with their positions, because if Israel was fighting against academic boycotts abroad, it could not apply one here.'

And quite right too.

Having said that, I not only disagree with these two professors, but consider their work pretty sloppy from an academic point of view. I hope they get some very tough questions!

[Shaktimaan]

2. well said. I also agree. np

[notfullofit]

3. Israel is putting pressure on U.S to attack Iran

"There is only one country in the world that is putting any pressure on the US to attack Iran, and that is Israel," Mearsheimer said to a packed lecture hall of some 200 people at Hebrew University. "And it is putting enormous pressure on the US."

"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," he went on. "The idea that the lobby and Israel don't put huge amounts of pressure on the US, is contradictory to the evidence."

Walt and Mearsheimer's lecture at Hebrew University was part of a regional lecture tour that included a speech Thursday night in Tel Aviv at a forum sponsored by the extreme left-wing group Gush Shalom, as well as lectures at universities and think tanks in east Jerusalem, Ramallah, Amman, Abu Dhabi and Qatar.

This is the first time that Walt and Mearsheimer have been to Israel since the publication of a controversial article in 2006 in the London Review of Books, that was then extended into an even more controversial book, published last year, that led some critics to brand the two as tainted by anti-Semitism.

"I would certainly prefer that people not call me an anti-Semite," Mearsheimer said in a phone interview with The Jerusalem Post as he and Walt were being driven from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv.

"But it doesn't bother me. because I know unequivocally I am not an anti-Semite, nor is Steve . In fact we are both philo-Semites and we both think it is a wonderful thing there is a State of Israel, and we are not in any way shape or form trying to delegitimize Israel."

As to whether he is concerned his book is being used as ammunition by dyed-in-the wool anti-Semites to bolster their Israel-bashing arguments, Mearsheimer said: "If there was a significant danger that anti-Semites would use our writing to raise the specter of anti-Semitism, we would not have written the article or the book. We just don't think that is a serious problem, and it was therefore appropriate to write both the article and the book."

Among those who have praised and cited the book are Holocaust deniers and former Klu Klux Klan head David Duke.

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