Despite their polite academic tone, and frequent denials that they are attacking all Jews, Jews as such, or even Israel, or that they support anti-Jewish "conspiracy theories," in essence their claims are just a rehash of traditional anti-Israel and indeed anti-Jewish mythology and rhetoric. There is nothing either new or true about them. In fact, nearly all of Walt and Mearsheimer's arguments, much of their "research," many of their "facts," and even the expression "The Lobby," derive from a bestselling book first published [1] twenty years ago, "The Lobby: Jewish Political Power and American Foreign Policy," by Edward Tivnan . Our scholars have only updated this earlier book a little. They retell [2] some of its anecdotes without changing their substance.

Let us take a moment to examine each count in Walt and Mearsheimer's indictment of Israel and the so-called "Lobby," and compare each with the actual state of affairs.

AS A RESULT OF THE POWER OF THE "THE LOBBY." AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY GIVES UNQUALIFIED, UNLIMITED SUPPORT TO ISRAEL. THIS HAS BEEN ESPECIALLY TRUE DURING THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION.

As Canada's late Prime Minister, Pierre Trudeau, once memorably remarked, "Oh, Fuddle-duddle!" During the recent Al-Aksa Intifada" Palestinian Arab terrorist campaign (2000-2004), the United States repeatedly restrained Israel from taking military action against the terrorists, even though Israeli casualties from the terror attacks steadily mounted. Even when it finally "permitted" Israel to attack the primary terrorist base in Jenin, it compelled the Israelis to withdraw quickly. The U.S. administration has repeatedly demanded and received from Israel "confidence-building" and "goodwill" unilateral acts, such as the closure of security checkpoints in the disputed ("occupied") territories, and the release of convicted terrorists from prison. All of these unilateral gestures have been followed by increased Arab terrorist attacks, not peace. The U.S. administration also forced Israel to accept the so-called "road map" peace plan that would compel her to withdraw to its pre-1967 frontiers (more or less) and place the homes and futures of 400-500,000 Israelis living outside these frontiers in jeopardy. The Bush administration has strongly and consistently campaigned for the creation of a Palestinian state, which would leave Israel exposed to continuous terrorist attacks, rockets and mortar fire from at most a few miles, and in some cases a few yards, from its principal population centers. It has sold vast amounts of state-of-the-art, high tech weapons to countries unfriendly to Israel, most notably Saudi Arabia and Egypt. It has even given weapons and provided military training to the Fatah terrorist organization-assistance that the Fatah "Al-Aksa Martyr's Brigades" made very effective use of during their "Intifada" to kill Israelis. If all this is unqualified support of Israel, one wonders what opposition would look like.

CONGRESSMAEN AND SENATORS ARE AFRAID TO DO ANYTHING THAT IS OPPOSED BY "THE LOBBY", SINCE "THE LOBBY" TARGETS AND BRINGS ABOUT THE ELECTORAL DEFEAT OF ANY LEGISLATOR WHO OPPOSES A PERCEIVED INTEREST OF ISRAEL.

Once again,"fuddle-duddle." For decades, Congress has been approving the sale of tens of billions of dollars worth of advanced weapons systems to Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries, including some advanced technology that the U.S. refuses to sell to Israel. And it has approved the executive branch's requests to fund the Palestinian National Authority, which is controlled by Fatah. Even though Israel has made it plain that it doesn't like these sales and/or aid to its enemies, and even though pro-Israeli activists in the U.S. have also opposed them, Congressmen have continued to vote for them just the same. Moreover, most of these Congressmen have been reelected without difficulty. Few have been "targeted" by pro-Israel groups.

W & M's claim that "The Lobby" in effect controls the American electoral process, and can insure the defeat of anyone who opposes or criticizes Israel, also ignores the fact that the voters have some say about who gets elected to Congress. There exists no 'lobby" in this country that has the power to prevent American voters from voting for someone that they believe has supported their interests. By claiming that the pro-Israel "Lobby" controls American elections, W & M are claiming that American democratic elections are frauds rigged by behind-the-scenes "interest groups." This view in turn implies contempt for American democracy itself.

THE "LOBBY" PREVENTS A FREE, RATIONAL DISCUSSION ABOUT ISRAEL AND AMERICAN AID TO ISRAEL BY "SMEARING" ANYONE WHO OPPOSES THEM AS "ANTI-SEMITES"

In reality, very few pro-Israel activists have ever suggested that most or all of those who disagree with them are anti-Semites. Indeed, most pro-Israel advocates are extremely careful to avoid any such aspersion against Israel's critics. Even more to the point, it is very dubious whether anyone in the United States has ever been dissuaded from criticizing Israel by fear that someone might call him an anti-Semite. It is very questionable whether anyone in the U.S. has ever lost a job, gone out of business, lost his friends or suffered social disgrace simply because someone has called him or her an anti-Semite. This accusation is very rarely damaging to anyone-not even when there is overwhelming and obvious evidence that it is true. The billion-plus dollars made by Mel Gibson from a film that was widely criticized as anti-Semitic by members of the American Jewish community, and the fact that he suffered no damage to his career even when he made crudely anti-Semitic remarks to an officer who arrested him for drunken driving, is a case in point.

As for our American debate about the Middle East and Israel, it is lively, free, and open to all shades of opinion. The great deference with which W & M have been treated throughout the country, the vast amount of press attention they have received, and the numerous speaking invitations to them, even from Jewish groups, is proof that there is no suppression of criticism of Israel in the United States, and no penalty to be paid by those who criticize her. Equal proof of this is provided by the best-seller status achieved by Jimmy Carter's recent book denouncing Israel.

THE AMERICAN PRESS IS EXTERMELY BIASED IN FAVOR OF ISRAEL, AND REAELY OR NEVER PUBLISHES COLUMNS OR OP-EDPIECES THAT CRITICIZE HER.

Oh, wow! Apparently W & M have never read the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, or the Chicago Tribune. No honest and fair-minded individual could possibly read any of these major American newspapers on a regular basis without becoming aware of their fierce anti-Israel bias.

ISAREL AND ITS LOBBY DRAGGED THE UNITED STATES INTO THE IRAQ WAR, FOR ISRAEL''S BENEFIT RATHER THAN THAT OF THE UNITED STATES.

W & M now reluctantly acknowledge that there are some facts that appear to contradict this claim, even while they continue to repeat it. In order to reconcile this accusation with a fact that other scholars have called attention to, namely that Israel's leaders actually wanted America to attack Iran rather than Iraq, because they considered Iran the greater threat to Israel (see for example , Martin Kramer's documented analysis at http://www.matinkramer.org/sandstorm.html), W & M turn intellectual summersaults. Israel at first favored an American attack on Iran rather Iraq, they concede. But upon discovering that the "war party" in Washington was determined to attack Iraq, Israeli leaders obtained a promise from the "war party" (an expression that our authors use interchangeably with "the neoconservatives") that America would attack Iran sometime later. The Israelis then joined forces with the "war Party"/"neoconservatives" to persuade the U.S. government to attack Iraq.

But this claim is full of logical inconsistencies. According to W & M, the "war party/ neoconservatives" were "part of the Lobby." But if the "neocons" were really Israeli agents, as W & M insinuate, why did they need to persuade initially dubious Israeli leaders to fall in with their (the "neoconservatives") plans? Apparently the "neoconservative" tail wagged the Israeli dog. And if the Israelis did not even have enough clout with their own supposed "lobbyists" in Washington to obtain their support for a strike at Iran, at least in the immediate future (no such attack has yet happened, five years after Ariel Sharon proposed it to George Bush), how likely is it that it was the Israelis who persuaded a supposedly divided and hesitant U.S. government to invade Iraq instead? In any case, what evidence is there that President Bush and Vice President Cheney needed to be persuaded by "The Lobby," "the neoconservatives," Israel or anyone else to order an invasion of Iraq? They were both convinced from very early on in their administration that Iraq was a threat to the United States.

Walt and Mearsheimer assert that the Bush administration showed little interest in an invasion of Iraq until 9/11 "changed everything." This much may be true, although the President had expressed an interest in "regime change" in Iraq to his advisors even before 9/11. But if it was Osama bin Ladin who convinced Bush that an invasion of Iraq was necessary, why attribute the president's decision to Israel and "The Lobby?" Our ingenious pair of scholars never weave their way out of this tangle of inconsistencies.

ISRAEL CAUSED THE PALESTINE CONFLICT BY EXPELLING THE PALESTINIANS AND STEALING THEIR LAND

To support this accusation, which is the stock and trade of all Israeli propaganda, our scholars admit that they "rely heavily" on the Israeli "New Historians," such as Benny Morris , Avi Schlaim, Illan Pappe , and Shlomo Ben Ami. They do not refer to the work of Efraim Karsh, a professor of Mediterranean Studies at the University of London, whose penetrating study of the New Historians has exposed their anti-Israel bias and gross distortions of the historical record (Fabricating Israeli History: The New Historians; available at http://www.amazon.com/Fabricating-Israeli-History-Historians-Israeli/dp/0714650110) . About another of Walt and Mearsheimer's sources, the late Jewish leader Nahum Goldmann, we will have more to say in a future column.

It cannot be denied that masochistic, self-hating Israeli and other Jewish "historians" provide plenty of ammunition to the likes of Walt and Mearsheimer. The hatred of so many Jewish "intellectuals" for Israel, the Jews as a people, and Judaism as a faith is an open wound on all Jews that has severely damaged our reputation among the nations. We cannot blame W & M for this wound.

ISRAEL IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE HATRED OF THE UNITED STATES IN THE ISLAMIC WORLD.

Islam's jihad against Christendom goes back at least to the conquest of previously Christian Palestine, Syria, Egypt, North Africa and Spain in the 7th century C.E. It continued through the conquest of Constantinople (now Istanbul) in 1453, the conquest of the Balkan Peninsula and even Hungary in the 15th century, and the sieges of Vienna in 1529 and 1683. Did Israel cause any of this? Once the Islamic world began to regain some of its lost wealth and power in the late 20th century, after three hundred years of decline ,a renewal of the old conflict was inevitable. And the United States, whether it likes it or not, finds itself the leader of the Western world, and therefore the primary obstacle that the jihadists see to their dream of a world ruled by the Muslim Shar'ia (law) and Ummah (people). Because contempt for the Jews is one element in Islamic traditional tradition, which describes Jews as a weak and paltry enemy, easily reduced to subservience by the Ummah in the seventh century C.E/ 1st Islamic century, hatred for Israel makes a convenient rallying cry for the jihadists. But the jihad against the United States and Europe would certainly have been revived even if there had never been an Israel, and it will certainly continue and intensify if Israel falls to the jihadists' siege and their appeasement by the W & M crowd in the West.

But if Walt and Mearsheimer's claims are neither new nor true, and if they are little more than a restatement of traditional anti-Jewish conspiracy theories (however vehemently they deny this), why have they received so much attention and been treated with so much respect by educated and influential people? We cannot answer that one question. Perhaps it is what Germans call the zeitgeist, the "spirit of the age."

* John Landau contributed to this article

1. The Lobby: Jewish Political Power and American Foreign Policy (Paperback) by Edward Tivnan (Author) Publisher: Touchstone Books (October 1988)

click here