The Moose reveals the vast Zionist conspiracy.
Two academics, Walt and Mearsheimer, writing for the JFK School of Government at Harvard have created quite a stir with their recent paper that charges that there is a vast Zionist, neo-conservative, Christian cabal directing our Middle East policy. That is not a new theory and has its adherents across the political spectrum.
The Jewish conspiracy to control world events is as old as time. The Moose will not bother to refute the claims in the paper - others have. As Marty Peretz notes, there is a synergy between Israel's values and our own that needs no conspiracy to mobilize support for the Jewish state,
"Support for Israel is, deep down, an expression of America's best view of itself. Mearsheimer and Walt clearly have no clue that U.S. support for the Jewish restoration, rather than a result of Zionist machinations, dates back to the Puritans. And it carries through Woodrow Wilson and Harry Truman to, if you'll forgive me, George W. Bush. But rarely without colossal struggle."
What is interesting to the Moose is how the allegiances have switched on attitudes toward Israel between the right and the left. Since the 1967 war, the right has generally become reliable supporters of Israel while the left has been the state's most ardent critics. Much of that attitude swing is attributable to the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. Israel is no longer perceived as the "underdog" by the left while the right views her has the most ardent defender of Western values in the region.
Consequently, when the Washington Post was looking for a defender of Walt and Mearsheimer, it turned to one of the most popular lefty bloggers, Juan Cole. The Post,
"And they are not without academic support. Juan Cole, a professor of Middle Eastern studies at the University of Michigan, suggests the authors make commonplace points -- that U.S. Middle East policy is driven disproportionately by those who favor Israel, and that this lobby resorts to all manner of vile accusations to discredit opponents.
"There's nothing intellectually wrong with arguing that U.S. policy in the Middle East is dislodged from its natural moorings by the power of a domestic constituency," Cole said. "But most people are timid -- they don't want to be smeared and risk having their lives ruined."
And when the subject of Joe Lieberman is mentioned on a left wing blog, the conversation on the discussion threads quickly turns to accusations of dual loyalty. And it was only a couple of years ago that a Democratic congressman raised the venomous canard that the Jews drove us to war in Iraq.
Of course, the irony is that American Jews are the most reliable liberal group in America. And while Israel is not without its imperfections, compared to its neighbors it is a democratic paradise (including the treatment of its Arab citizens who are the most free in the Middle East).
It wasn't always so that the most reliable friends of Israel were on the right. The Moose's youthful liberal heroes - Humphrey and Scoop - were rock-solid.
In truth, the greatest animus toward Israel lies in the realist center. Indeed, the two academics who wrote the Harvard report are not crazy lefties, but rather "realists". But, what we are witnessing in the great foreign policy debate is a merging of the realist school and the left. Since the Bush Administration has rejected stability, everyone from the Saudi reactionaries to the realist center to the paleo con right to the lefty bloggers can blame a shadowy neo-con, vaguely Jewish cabal for our woes.
Eliot Cohen eloquently explains what is going on here - anti-semitism, pure and simple. Addressing the Walt and Mearsheimer study,
"Inept, even kooky academic work, then, but is it anti-Semitic? If by anti-Semitism one means obsessive and irrationally hostile beliefs about Jews; if one accuses them of disloyalty, subversion or treachery, of having occult powers and of participating in secret combinations that manipulate institutions and governments; if one systematically selects everything unfair, ugly or wrong about Jews as individuals or a group and equally systematically suppresses any exculpatory information -- why, yes, this paper is anti-Semitic."
The Zionists Occupying Government lives on! -- | 
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