The Israel Lobby
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Within days of the publication of The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, a study alleging that American foreign policy is heavily directed—and undermined—by the “Israel lobby,” a number of critiques have exposed serious flaws in the study’s scholarship.
Here are some of the noteworthy analyses and other commentary:
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CAMERA’s Alex Safian details the study’s factual errors, leaps of logic, inaccurate citations, and shoddy sources, as well as the authors’ complete disregard of previous work written on the subject. Safian concludes that “a student who submitted such a paper would flunk.”
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Richard Baehr and Ed Lasky of the American Thinker agree that the paper “fails the test of academic integrity and honest research.”
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Alan Dershowitz has called the authors “liars” and “bigots” and challenged them to a debate, according to the Harvard Crimson.
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James Taranto discusses shortcomings in the paper’s argument that moral reasons don’t justify American support for Israel.
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Shmuel Rosner of Ha’aretz suggests the study “is biased, one-sided, foolish, repetitive, and most of all, has nothing new to offer.”
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Martin Kramer writes that the piece “cobbles together a lot of half-truths and untruths that have been out there on the far fringe, and gives them ‘academic respectability.'”
The study does have its supporters. David Duke proudly states that “I and a few other American commentators have for years been making the same assertions as this new paper.”
More is written by Elder of Ziyon, the New York Sun, and others.
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