Editor hits back over Israel row (observer.guardian.co.uk)

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Editor hits back over Israel row

London Review of Books stands its ground after being accused of anti-Semitism in an article attacking pro-Israeli influence on US policy

Peter Beaumont, foreign affairs editor
Sunday April 2, 2006
The Observer


She is, in the words of her many admirers, the 'mater familias of London's liberal intelligentsia'. This weekend, however, Mary-Kay Wilmers, editor of the London Review of Books, is on the defensive - speaking out for the first time in an escalating transatlantic row that has seen her respected journal accused of promoting anti-Semitism.

The argument has erupted over a cover article in the latest issue of the LRB by two prominent American academics on the influence of the pro-Israel lobby in the US. The article, which argues that the lobby holds a disproportionate and damaging sway over American foreign policy, prompted a bitter and growing controversy, particularly in the US, where rival camps have exchanged claims of anti-Semitism and intellectual intimidation by those accused of being members of 'the Lobby'.

The article, by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, was originally written for, but rejected by, the Atlantic Monthly and picked up by the LRB, when Wilmers 'became aware of its existence'.

The article set out at exhaustive length to list every way in which it claimed US foreign policy had been captured on behalf of Israel by an all-encompassing lobby of academics, campaign groups, journalists and pro-Israeli activists in government. Among the fiercest critics have been Eliot Engel, a Democratic congressman from New York, who branded the authors 'anti-Semites', and the right-wing New York Sun, which likened the piece to the 'rantings' of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.


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http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,1744960,00.html