George R. Packard
President, International University of Japan;
Director of the Reischauer Center for East Asian Studies at the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), Johns Hopkins University, President, U.S.-Japan Foundation
George R. Packard was dean of SAIS from 1979 to 1993 and is now director of the Edwin O. Reischauer Center for East Asian Studies as well as professor of East Asian studies at the school. He is also president of the International University of Japan. From 1965 to 1967, he was chief diplomatic correspondent for Newsweek. Prior to that, he served as special assistant to U.S. Ambassador to Japan Edwin O. Reischauer. In March of 1998, he was appointed president of the U.S.-Japan Foundation.
Packard Report - Sep. 2007
Finally it has happened. For more than four decades, neither politicians nor diplomats nor mainstream journalists have dared to raise the subject of the undue and unhealthy influence of the Israel lobby over the making of American foreign policy. To raise the topic was to invite severe, even career-ending criticism from Jewish organizations, which would brand the critic "anti-Semitic" and punish him in various ways.
Everyone who follows American foreign policy knows that Israel is treated with special respect by Congress, the State Department, Pentagon, the media, and a succession of U.S. presidents. The few legislators who have dared to speak out against the influence of Israel, such as Congressman Paul Findley of Illinois, have found themselves running in the next election against a well-funded opponent who is backed by Jewish individuals and organizations, They usually lose.
John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt are the authors of a new book, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy that will be officially published on September 4 (but thousands of copies are already circulating and I have one in front of me). Both are respected scholars with impeccable credentials. Mearsheimer is a well-published scholar of international relations at the University of Chicago. Walt teaches at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, and was academic dean there until last year.
The two authors wrote a paper in March 2006 on this topic, but found that no journal would dare to publish it in America. It was "too hot to handle," Even the liberal Atlantic that originally commissioned the article turned it down. So they turned to the London Review of Books, which dared to publish the article. It also appeared on the Internet as a Kennedy School publication, but Harvard quickly withdrew its name from the piece because of howls of rage from Jewish critics.
Even though the piece was never published in hard copy in America, it caused uproar. Jewish critics such as Professor Eliot Cohen of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies denounced it as -you guessed it-"anti-Semitic." Others question its facts and sources. The two authors stuck by their guns, and the degree of controversy strengthened their view that this topic needed to be aired and publicly debated in America. So they expanded the original article and found a New York publisher -Farrar, Straus and Giroux -who would accept it as a book.
Even before its official publication date, the book has set off a storm of controversy. In August, the prestigious Chicago Council on World Affairs had invited John Mearsheimer to one of its meetings in the fall to discuss the book. But Jewish critics raised objections and the invitation to Mearsheimer (a prestigious intellectual at Chicago's most distinguished university) was told that he was no longer welcome -without explanation.
At various other universities and councils, Jewish critics are attempting to silence the authors, or when that is not possible, to arrange for critics to appear along with them to discredit their work. It will be fascinating to see how the distinguished Council on Foreign Relations in New York handles the issue (its president is Jewish).
The arguments advanced by the authors are quite simple and straightforward, and they are meticulously footnoted. They describe the huge amount of economic and military and diplomatic support given to Israel by the U.S. since its founding in 1948, and conclude that, while it may have been justified during the Cold War, it is now harming U.S. interests in the Middle East and it is also dangerous for Israel. They explain that there can be neither strategic nor moral justification for this aid. They describe in detail how the Israel Lobby works, and how it pushed the U.S. into waging war against Iraq (Paul Wolfowltz is mentioned 13 times!). They also go out of their way to deny that they are anti-Semitic (though they know that this charge will be made against them).
They write: "Today, America's intimate embrace of Israel -and especially its willingness to subsidize it no matter what its policies are -is not making American safer or more prosperous. To the contrary: unconditional support for Israel is undermining relations with other U.S. allies, casting doubt on America's wisdom and moral vision, helping inspire a generation of anti-American extremists, and complicating U.S. efforts to deal with a volatile but vital region."
No respectable scholar has dared, until now, to make these charges. Fasten your seatbelts.
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