Pro-Israel intellectuals in the US tried to turn a blind eye to the historic study, ‘The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy’, written by John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walta. Mearsheimer is a professor of political science at the University of Chicago and the heavyweight of the realist school of international affairs, and Walter was the former dean of Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. When the pro-Israel intellectuals failed to turn a blind eye to the study, they tried to defame the two professors and belittle their opinions. However, this was difficult because the two men belong to the academia elite.
Afterwards, I expected the lobby to try to take revenge on the two professors and their supporters. Walt’s deanship was not renewed, but I do not think that this was a punishment. Perhaps he simply was not a candidate for the post. Although Harvard University was the publisher of the study, the university’s logo was later removed from the study. This came after the lobby began a campaign among the major Jewish benefactors of the University to stop donations as punishment.
The study urged the lobby to double its efforts and activities. The first victim since the essay was published was probably Professor Juan Cole of the University of Michigan. Professor Cole is a Middle East expert, a distinguished scholar, and an articulate critic of American interventionist foreign policy.
I came across Professor Cole’s name after I read the Harvard essay. The essay mentioned that the Israeli lobby was trying to “take back the campuses”. I have started a study of my own, which includes some details about ‘Campus Watch’. It should be printed in a couple of days. ‘Campus Watch’ is another activity of the extremist Israeli supporter, Daniel Pipes, which aims to terrorize professors who work in Middle East programs, who do not support Israel, or who try to speak the truth about Israeli crimes against Palestinians.
Cole is not as famous as Mearsheimer and Walt; punishing him will not cause an uproar. That is why the lobby chose him as a scapegoat. He was to be appointed tenure position at Yale University. However, the university denied his appointment, according to Justin Raimondo on the ‘Anti War’ internet site.
Campus Watch (represented by Daniel Pipes along with Martin Kramer) began a campaign against Cole. It suggested that if Yale executives read Cole’s blog (informed comment) with the least bit of criticism “they would most likely reconsider their likely offer”. They accused him of making mistakes, and of making claims without substantial evidence. Campus Watch unpleasantly asked: “What will Mr. Cole do when he is inevitably caught making a mistake in the classroom? Belittle the student as a stooge of the neocons? Accuse a teenager of being a Mossad agent? Prattle on about the Zionist campaign against him?”
The reader may notice that accusations could be charged against those who are pro-Israel in dealing with Cole. They repeat these accusations to prevent accusations from being directed at them, and thereby lessen their credibility.
When Cole became President of the Middle East Studies Association (MESA), there was an article: “Juan Cole and the Decline of Middle Eastern Studies” in the winter 2006 issue of the Middle East Forum’s Middle East Quarterly. The author, Alexander H Joffe, who is the director of Campus Watch, accused Cole of portraying Israel as a fascist society, saying that American Jewish officials had dual loyalty, making allegations of manipulation by Likud, saying that Israel is the cause of terrorism, and of “taking liberty with the facts”.
What was wrong with that? It is completely true and evident from one day to the next. However, I personally disagree with Professor Cole about the dual loyalty. I think that the Likudniks’ loyalty is to Israel alone, and at the expense of the US.
While the campaign against Juan Cole is not recent, it escalated with the news about Yale’s offer to him, and again later with the publishing of the Mearsheimer and Walt essay. The result was that a university professor became the target of outraged opinion articles in the ‘Wall Street Journal’ and the ‘New York Sun’. The former is one of the most important and credible economic newspapers. However, the opinion section is incredibly pro-Israeli. The latter is an extremist trivial newspaper, for which Pipes writes every now and then.
Neo-conservative records and internet sites began an extremely organized campaign against Professor Cole, with others playing behind the scene. In what was quite clearly an organized effort, Joel Mowbray, a smalltime neoconservative columnist, smeared the Professor with the ‘tar brush’ of ‘anti-Semitism’ the same way he did with General Anthony Zinni for opposing the war in Iraq and the US Justice Department, which had the temerity to prosecute the confessed Israeli spy, Larry Franklin. Mowbray sent a letter to a good number of Yale benefactors, alerting them to Cole’s pending appointment and urging them to take action. ‘Jewish Week’ reports that “several faculty members said they had heard that at least four major Jewish donors…have contacted officials at the university urging that Cole’s appointment be denied”. And it was.
It is a new form of McCarthyism. For years, the cabal of evil has targeted many professors. I know two of these professors, whose work and courage are really admirable.
Campus Watch has been attacking Dr. Rashid Khalidi since 2003, after he was recruited by Colombia University as a successor to Edward Said. Professor Edward Said was previously a target. The accusations wavered between being anti-American and pro-terrorism. These two accusations apply to nobody on earth more than they apply to pro-Israel intellectuals in the US. They serve Israeli interests at the expense of the interests of their alleged country. They spread hatred of the US all around the world. They facilitate the mission of terrorists, especially when it has to do with recruitment. They support Israeli terrorism against Palestinians; they even participate. We have seen examples in the last two weeks that put them in the same category with those who co-operated with Nazis and were silent about their crimes.
I always believed that the war with Israel was being fought on American soil, in the government, the universities, the media and others. It is not just fought on the occupied territories. In a few days, I will have more to say about this matter.