It starts to stink from the opening paragraph (and it doesn't get any better).
For the past several decades, and especially since the Six-Day War in 1967, the centrepiece of US Middle Eastern policy has been its relationship with Israel. The combination of unwavering support for Israel and the related effort to spread ‘democracy’ throughout the region has inflamed Arab and Islamic opinion and jeopardised not only US security but that of much of the rest of the world. This situation has no equal in American political history. Why has the US been willing to set aside its own security and that of many of its allies in order to advance the interests of another state?Gee, I don't know, why is that?
The explanation is the unmatched power of the Israel Lobby.You mean the Jews, right?
We use ‘the Lobby’ as shorthand for the loose coalition of individuals and organisations who actively work to steer US foreign policy in a pro-Israel direction. This is not meant to suggest that ‘the Lobby’ is a unified movement with a central leadership, or that individuals within it do not disagree on certain issues.Yeah, I get all that, but you're talking about the Jews, right?
Not all Jewish Americans are part of the Lobby, because Israel is not a salient issue for many of them.See, I told you it was the Jews! "Not all" of them but most of them.
In a 2004 survey, for example, roughly 36 per cent of American Jews said they were either ‘not very’ or ‘not at all’ emotionally attached to Israel.But the rest of them, according to Walt and Mearsheimer, are all part of "the Lobby". Get it? Traitors the lot of them, conspiring together to compromise US security in the service of Israeli interests. Well, who'd have thunk it!?
Come to think of it - isn't this just a cheap rip-off of "The Protocols"?
Lee Smith (guest posting at Michael Totten's blog) finds it hard to believe that Walt and Mearsheimer were sober when they wrote this nonsense - I think he's being far too charitable.
More informed comment here and here.
