Video Debate: Does the Israel Lobby Run America?

Thanks to Pete Cervieri of Scribe Media for letting us know about their publication of the video last year of the (10/11/2006) debate at Cooper Union in New York City. Unfortunately the matter has not died down. The M-W axis of evil has published the nefarious thesis as a book now.

Last March, John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt published an article in the London Review of Books. Entitled “The Israel Lobby: Does it Have too Much Influence on US Foreign Policy,” it drew swift charges of anti-Semitism in the editorial pages of American newspapers.

I have always sided with those who judged this article anti-Semitic back then, saying, "The charge of a malevolent organized Jewish conspiracy is the most blatant form of anti-Semitism."

One of the nefarious authors and these five others debated the "Lobby":

John Mearsheimer is the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science and the co-director of the Program on International Security Policy at the University of Chicago.

Shlomo Ben-Ami is a former Israeli foreign and security minister and the author of Scars of War, Wounds of Peace: The Israeli-Arab Tragedy.

Martin Indyk is Director of the Saban Center for Middle East Policy and Senior Fellow in Foreign Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution.

Tony Judt is Erich Maria Remarque Professor in European Studies and Director of the Remarque Institute at New York University.

Rashid Khalidi is Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies and Director of the Middle East Institute at Columbia University.

Dennis Ross is Counsellor and Ziegler Distinguished Fellow of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and the author of The Missing Peace: The Inside Story of the Fight for Middle East Peace.

This is a state-of-the-art video. Nice job Pete. And the debate was excellent. It seemed to me that Judt and Mearsheimer were clobbered by the others even though the crowd cheered for them.

Here's the link and here is the first segment is embedded below.