Featured this weekArizona Ben-Gurion Berkeley Colorado Harvard Hebrew Indiana Kean Lehigh Marquette Miami of Ohio Pennsylvania College of Optometry Santa Clara Washington U., St. Louis Wayne State Weizmann Institute of Science Yale York | Israeli Election Briefing: Political Parties
by Sharmila Devi  Israelis head to the polls on Tuesday, March 28 to elect members to the 120-seat Knesset or parliament. The last elections in January 2003 were won by Ariel Sharon, who is in a coma after suffering a massive stroke almost three months ago. Polls give the lead to the party he founded, Kadima, now led by Ehud Olmert, acting prime minister. Mr. Olmert says he will accept in coalition only those parties that approve his 'convergence plan' for a unilateral withdrawal from some isolated Jewish settlements in the West Bank in order to keep the large settlement blocs. (Financial Times)
Additional Headlines Abbas Will Disband Palestinian Cabinet If Needed Iran's Nuclear Steps Quicken, Diplomats Say Al-Qaida Eyes Israeli Battleground | | 40,000 North American Students 'Vote' Online in Israeli Elections
by Daphna Berman  Some 40,000 students on more than 75 North America college campuses participated in a mock Israeli election this week. The online voting kicked off last week and results will be announced on Sunday. As part of this year's project, students logged on to www.Israelvotes.com and received background information on various parties, candidates and their platforms. (Ha'aretz)
An Israel Transformed
by Gerald M. Steinberg  Israelis are about to go the polls for the 6th time in less than 14 years - an unenviable record among the world's democracies. The high frequency of national elections is surely one of the main reasons for apathy and the number of undecided voters in the pre-election surveys. In the previous elections, the main issues were based on ideology - Left vs. Right; Orthodox vs. secular, and so on. But in these elections pragmatic realism is the main theme, not only in Kadima, but spilling over into Labor and Likud. (Jerusalem Post)
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Arizona: Israel Comes to Tucson in Hillel Event
by Laura Ory  A camel named Chewy drew attention from students at yesterday's Israelpalooza, an event on the UA Mall organized to educate students about Israel. Israelpalooza was sponsored by the Hillel Foundation and was organized to educate students about Israel and erase the misconceptions students may have about the country and its people, said Erin Searle, a Judaic studies senior. (Wildcat)
Harvard: KSG Seeks Distance from Paper
by Paras D. Bhayani  The Kennedy School of Government (KSG) removed its logo from a controversial paper published last week by Academic Dean Stephen M. Walt and the University of Chicago's John J. Mearsheimer. A disclaimer stating that the views expressed belong only to the authors was also made more prominent on the working paper's cover. (Crimson)
| | Colorado: Building Bridges for Peace
by Erica Seldin  In an intimate lecture last week, Melodye Feldman, founder of Seeking Common Ground, led a powerful discussion of her mission to ease the conflict in the Middle East through honest listening and communication between Israeli and Palestinian children. She started a camp that hosts 45 middle school girls from Israel, Palestine and America of varying religions, cultures and beliefs in the Colorado Mountains. (Campus Press)
Indiana: Speaker: Nuclear Weapons in Iran Could Lead to Arms Race
by Chris Freiberg  If Iran attains nuclear weapons, it could lead to a new arms race in the Mideast and the end of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, said Bradley Gordon, an expert on the region, who previously worked for the CIA and is currently director of policy and government relations for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. In the second half of the presentation, Gordon discussed the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. (Indiana Digital Student)
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Point-Counterpoint - Perspectives on the Mearsheimer/Walt Paper Attacking the "Israel Lobby"
The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy
by John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt Apart from its alleged strategic value, Israel's backers also argue that it deserves unqualified U.S. support because 1) it is weak and surrounded by enemies, 2) it is a democracy, which is a morally preferable form of government; 3) the Jewish people have suffered from past crimes and therefore deserve special treatment, and 4) Israel's conduct has been morally superior to its adversaries' behavior. On close inspection, however, each of these arguments is unpersuasive. (Kennedy School of Government Notes)
The Basis of the U.S.-Israel Alliance: An Israeli Response to the Mearsheimer-Walt Assault
by Dore Gold - On December 27, 1962, President John F. Kennedy told Israeli Foreign Minister Golda Meir: "The United States has a special relationship with Israel in the Middle East really comparable only to what it has with Britain over a wide range of world affairs."
- In the 1980s, several memoranda of understanding between the U.S. and Israel on strategic cooperation were followed by regular joint military exercises, where U.S. forces were given access to Israel's combat techniques.
- Saudi Arabia has tried to tilt U.S. policy using a vast array of powerful PR firms, former diplomats, and well-connected officials, with the result being that America is still overly dependent on Middle Eastern oil. Given the ultimate destination of those petrodollars in recent years (the propagation of Islamic extremism and terrorism), a serious investigation of those lobbying efforts appears to be far more appropriate than focusing on relations between the U.S. and Israel. (Institute for Contemporary Affairs/Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs)
The Graves of Academe
by Melanie Phillips - The fundamental misrepresentations and distortions in this paper are quite astonishing. Take this claim, for example, that Israeli citizenship "is based on the principle of blood kinship." This is totally untrue. [More than a million] Arabs and other non-Jews are Israeli citizens.
- This is but the latest example of a poisonous pathology which has gripped the intelligentsia of the West, centered around a visceral loathing of America, Israel, the neocons, and the Jews.
- The university world is not a disinterested bystander at the current struggle between freedom and genocidal clerical fascism. It is instead an active player - and on the wrong side. (melaniephillips.com)
An Unfair Attack
by David Gergen - [The] nerve-jangling essay entitled "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy," written by Mearsheimer and Walt...[make] charges wildly at variance with what I have personally witnessed in the Oval Office over the years....They also impugn the loyalty and the unstinting service to America's national security by public figures like Dennis Ross, Martin Indyk, and many others.
- As a Christian, let me add that it is also wrong and unfair to call into question the loyalty of millions of American Jews who have faithfully supported Israel while also working tirelessly and generously to advance America's cause, both at home and abroad. (U.S. News)
| | Response to Mearsheimer/Walt Paper
by James Taranto - Israel is weak and surrounded by enemies. To the contrary, they say, Israel is by far the strongest regional power. It is true that Israel is the regional superpower, and that Cairo and Amman have signed peace treaties with the Jewish state, but it seems undeniable - and Walt and Mearsheimer do not deny it - that none of this would be true absent U.S. support for Israel. Thus their reasoning is circular: Israel doesn't deserve U.S. support because it has received U.S. support.
- Israel is a democracy. This they concede, but they also claim that "some aspects of Israeli democracy are at odds with core American values." In particular, they claim that Arab citizens of Israel "are treated as second-class citizens." Yet even acknowledging that Israeli democracy is flawed, its political system is still vastly superior to those of its adversaries. Israeli Arabs enjoy more political and civil liberties than citizens of just about any Arab country.
- Jews deserve a homeland because of their past oppression. Walt and Mearsheimer lay the plight of the Palestinians entirely at Israel's door, failing to acknowledge the Arab states' vast culpability. The Arabs rejected the 1947 U.N. partition of Palestine, which would have created a Palestinian Arab state including territories beyond the present-day West Bank and Gaza strip. The Arabs immediately declared war on the nascent Jewish state and they waged war again in 1967 and 1973. Nor do the authors acknowledge that since the creation of Israel many Jews who settled there were fleeing persecution in Arab lands and (since 1979) Iran.
- Israel is morally superior to its adversaries. Here they cite various alleged abuses by Israel during its war of independence and claim that "Israel's subsequent conduct has often been brutal, belying any claim to moral superiority." Even if we concede all the criticisms of Israel, they do not belie "any claim to moral superiority," only to moral perfection. (Wall Street Journal)
The Israel Conspiracy
by Bret Stephens - But here's a puzzle: If Israel is so damaging to U.S. interests, why do consistent and broad majorities of Americans support it? A Gallup poll from last month shows that Americans are more sympathetic to Israelis than to Palestinians by 59% to 15%. (Wall Street Journal)
See also:
- Jeffrey Herf and Andrei S. Markovits, Letter to the Editor, London Review of Books
- Martin Kramer, "The Reality behind Charges about 'The Israel Lobby,' Sandstorm
Stephen Walt's War with Israel
by Richard Baehr and Ed Lasky - Walt and Mearsheimer's attacks on Israel fail every basic test of fairness, and lead one to believe they would prefer a world without Israel. Israel is demonized by the authors, while thuggish terror-supporting states such as Iran and Syria are presented as potential important allies of America, and are insulated from any criticism.
- The authors deliberately choose to ignore the Israeli offers of peace after the 1967 war. These offers were roundly and proudly rejected by the Arab world in the infamous "3 Nos" of the Khartoum Resolution: No peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, no negotiations with Israel. (American Thinker)
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