The Plot Against America... by Ivy League and Israeli Academians

Today's NY Sun reports:

A paper recently co-authored by the academic dean of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government about the allegedly far-reaching influence of an "Israel lobby" is winning praise from white supremacist David Duke.

The Palestine Liberation Organization mission to Washington is distributing the paper, which also is being hailed by a senior member of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist organization.

But the paper, "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy," by the Kennedy School's Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago, is meeting with a more critical reception from many of those it names as part of the lobby. The 83-page "working paper" claims a network of journalists, think tanks, lobbyists, and largely Jewish officials have seized the foreign policy debate and manipulated America to invade Iraq. Included in this network, the authors say, are the editors of the New York Times, the scholars at the Brookings Institution, students at Columbia, "pro-Israel" senior officials in the executive branch, and "neoconservative gentiles" including columnist George Will.

Duke, a former Louisiana state legislator and one-time Ku Klux Klan leader, called the paper "a great step forward," but he said he was "surprised" that the Kennedy School would publish the report.

"I have read about the report and read one summary already, and I am surprised how excellent it is," he said in an e-mail. "It is quite satisfying to see a body in the premier American University essentially come out and validate every major point I have been making since even before the war even started."

Alan Dershowitz likens the paper to The Protocols of the Elders of Zion:

"Sorry, but it sounds very similar to me. The only difference is the Protocols are a forgery, but this is actually written by two bigots."

In response to the public praise and support of a former head of the Klu Klux Klan, Dean Walt said,

"I have always found Mr. Duke's views reprehensible, and I am sorry he sees this article as consistent with his view of the world."

Mr. Walt must be even sorrier that someone exposed his academically sanctioned anti-Semitism for what it is. It's about time that we call a spade a spade. If the Jews need David Duke--a white supremacist and unapologetic anti-Semite--to point out bigotry, then so be it; but at least the farce that is academic freedom of speech is being stripped away.

The most interesting aspect of this paper, without which it be a typical product of liberal academia, is that it relies heavily on Israeli sources, specifically the work of revisionist historians who have in one fell swoop redefined Zionism as racism, misappropriated the legacy of the Holocaust to Palestinian plight, and given scholarly credence to anti-Semitism. Their work is being eagerly accepted by the likes of the authors above (note Norman Finkelstein's liberal quotation of Benny Morris at his recent Columbia lecture). How wonderful for Israel's haters to have a kosher brand of anti-Semitism available.

Update:
Required reading on this topic-

• Daled Amos: The Israel Lobby: An Antechamber To Debate