Author of "Israel Lobby" agrees with Jeffrey Goldberg

In one of my recent postings titled "Final Solution" for Palestinians I analyzed the article by Jeffrey Goldberg titled "Israel's America Problem". I noted that Goldberg criticized the book "The Israel Lobby" and made this comment.

Of course Goldberg feels the need to take a swipe at the book "The Israel Lobby" just to maintain his creds in the pro-Israel Lobby, but he is absolutely wrong on this point. John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt do not argue against "support of Israel", they argue against "unconditional support for Israel". In fact I am sure they would agree with most of what Goldberg states in this article.

I just read the reply by Stephen M. Walt in a NY Times letter to the editor.

Israel’s Friends and the Path to Peace
Re “Israel’s ‘American Problem’ ” (Op-Ed, May 18):

Jeffrey Goldberg attacks our book, “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy,” while openly embracing one of our main arguments.

He writes that we “argue, unpersuasively, that American support for Israel hurts America. It doesn’t. But unthinking American support does hurt Israel.”

Our book contains detailed case studies showing that unconditional support for Israel is not in America’s national interest. Readers can judge for themselves whether we are “persuasive.”

But we also emphasized that “the lobby’s impact has been unintentionally harmful to Israel,” that its actions “may even be jeopardizing the long-term prospects of the Jewish state” and that its “influence has been bad for both countries.”

The lobby’s harmful impact on Israel was also a central theme of an op-ed article, “Israel’s False Friends,” we wrote in The Los Angeles Times on Jan. 6. Mr. Goldberg clearly agrees with this part of our argument. John J. Mearsheimer

Stephen M. Walt
Chicago, May 18, 2008

This is good stuff. You couldn't make this stuff up if you tried. The Israel Lobby is uncharacteristically tripping all over itself lately.