Ira Glunts

A Truly Inconvenient Truth

Ira Glunts — 2007-09-29T10:30:00Z

When the article entitled “The Israel Lobby” by Professors John J. Mearsheimer (University of Chicago) and Stephen M. Walt (Harvard) appeared in the London Review of Books and in expanded form as a working paper on the web site of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government in March 2006, the authors were immediately battered by a tsunami of unjust criticism. It included vilification, insults and demonization of a kind that even the telling of a very inconvenient truth rarely elicits. The two scholars were called “anti-Semitic,” “unpatriotic,” “ignorant,” and “dangerous.” Their work was labeled “poor scholarship” and it was claimed that their article used racist web sites such as that of white supremacist David Duke as a source of information and inspiration. These scurrilous and ludicrous charges, all of which were made by a number of their colleagues at Harvard as well as prominent politicians, political analysts and other shapers of public opinion, were trumpeted in The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and The Boston Globe, as both opinion and “straight” news coverage. This is an unusual reaction to an academic article written by two distinguished political scientists from first rate universities. Ironically, it served to demonstrate one of the authors' main contentions: the media has convinced the American public that US and Israeli interests are identical and any opinion to the contrary is unacceptable, outrageous and intolerable. (...)

Maxwell's Silver Hammer

Ira Glunts, Linda Ford — 2007-08-02T10:13:00Z

Imagine my surprise as I leafed through what is usually a fairly bland magazine that, as an alumna (PhD. History '84), I periodically receive from the Syracuse University Maxwell School of Citizenship, to find that therein is a new ideal of citizenship. My alma mater now informs me that to be a citizen of the Maxwell School is to support continual and all-out war against a vaguely defined “terrorist” enemy, to condone lethal collateral damage to civilians, and to team up with Israeli military institutions in order to learn the methods that they have found “successful” against the Palestinians, a people they have occupied and suppressed for over 40 years. (...)

A Song Only Obama Hears, A Vision Only Obama Sees

Ira Glunts — 2007-03-22T00:13:00Z

In an otherwise unremarkable speech delivered March 2 (for full text) to members of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), Senator and Presidential candidate Barack Obama concluded his talk by making a startling reference to his brief January 2006 visit to the village of Fassuta [1] in northern Israel. The Senator spoke of “the signs of life and hope and promise” he witnessed there. Toward the end of his speech Mr. Obama stated,

Peace with security. That is the Israeli people's overriding wish. It [emphases mine] is what I saw in the town of Fassouta on the border with Lebanon. There are 3,000 residents of different faiths and histories. There is a community center supported by Chicago's own Roman Catholic Archdiocese and the Jewish Federation of Metro Chicago. It is where the education of the next generation has begun: in a small village, all faiths and nationalities living together with mutual respect. [2]

The reality is that the village of Fassuta [3] is not an integrated community as Senator Obama claims, but one that is comprised almost solely of Melkite Christian, Palestinian Arabs. The Melkites, who are Roman Catholics, are part of a greater Christian Arab community, who are themselves a minority among Palestinians living within the pre-1967 Israeli borders. Of course the vast majority of Arabs in both the Israel delineated by the pre-1967 borders and the Israel delineated by the post-1967 borders, are Muslims. (...)

Rice Jerusalem Summit about Regime Change

Ira Glunts — 2007-02-23T17:41:15Z

Secretary Rice wants not only consent on all the above conditions, but additionally, Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah Party's return to power. She had hoped to offer tangible incentives to Abbas to continue the armed civil insurrection against the ruling Hamas government at their Monday meeting.

- / PalestineChronicle.com

The Israel Lobby Redux

Ira Glunts — 2006-04-08T18:46:11Z

Two Israeli prominent journalists wrote that Colin Powell understood and feared the power of the lobby.

In an op-ed column critical of his Harvard colleagues, ludicrously titled “There Is No Israel ‘Lobby'” the well-known political consultant David Gergen proclaimed, “Over the course of four tours in the White House, I never once saw a decision in the Oval Office to tilt U.S. foreign policy in favor of Israel at the expense of America's interest.” America's massive financial support of Israel's territorial expansion in the West Bank is very much contrary to its own interests, his two colleagues would respond. Gergen's blanket denial is one of the most preposterous statements in the ongoing media reporting that impugn the motivations of Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer, two political scientists who recently published the “Israel Lobby.” Their essay described what the writers understand to be the many deleterious effects of pro-Israel activists upon the formulation of American foreign policy. In his critique of the essay, Gergen displays a level of chutzpah which would astound even the most blindly loyal devotee of the Israeli cause, when he excoriates Walt and Mearsheimer for “impugn[ing] the unstinting service to America's national security by public figures like Dennis Ross, Martin Indyk...” (...)