“Yes, It’s Anti-Semitic”

By Published On: April 5, 2006

An Op-Ed in today’s Washington Post, entitled “Yes, It’s Anti-Semitic,” weighs in on the widely criticized Walt and Mearsheimer working paper on the “Israel Lobby.” After explaining why he calls the piece a “wretched piece of scholarship,” Eliot A. Cohen, the Op-Ed writer and a professor at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies, reaches a couple of conclusions.

On whether the paper is anti-Semitic, he writes:

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.

Hinting at the paper’s underlying attempt to repress pro-Israel voices, Cohen writes that

To dispute [Walt and Mearsheimer’s] view of Israel is not to differ about policy but to act as a foreign agent.

Might Cohen, then, be acting as a “foreign agent”? He notes:

I am a public intellectual and a proud Jew; sympathetic to Israel and extensively engaged in our nation’s military affairs; vaguely conservative and occasionally hawkish. In a week my family will celebrate Passover with my oldest son — the third generation to serve as an officer in the United States Army. He will be home on leave from the bomb-strewn streets of Baghdad. The patch on his shoulder is the same flag that flies on my porch.

Other supposed members of “The Lobby” also have children in military service. Impugning their patriotism or mine is not scholarship or policy advocacy. It is merely, and unforgivably, bigotry.

Read the whole piece here.

radioislam cartoon.gif
Cartoon found on the virulently anti-Semitic Radio Islam Web site.
We expose the anti-Israel lies so you don't have to. But we can't do it without your help. Join the fight -- Donate now
CAMERA logo
Tell the World – Share Now!

More from SNAPSHOTS

  • Double Standards: Boycotts and Discrimination in MassLive

    May 16, 2025

    Anti-Israel activists, including Harvard University’s Lara Jirmanus, a clinical instructor, seem to struggle with the concept of “discrimination.” Quoted in a May 14 MassLive article, “Harvard ‘failed to respond’ to 450 discrimination complaints. Staff hand-delivered [...]

  • Swarthmore Students Are Learning: It Was Never About Palestinian Rights

    May 14, 2025

    Students at Swarthmore College are so close to understanding the conflict. An article in the Swarthmore Phoenix details the frustrations of student activists with the college’s Students for Justice in Palestine. The gist of their criticism is [...]

  • AFP Arabic Stops Mislabeling Northern Israeli Communities ‘Settlements”

    August 10, 2021

    A view of Metulla, northern Israel (Photo by Hadar Sela)After failing to set the record straight last May when Agence France Presse's Arabic service repeatedly referred to Jewish communities in northern Israel as "settlements," the [...]

  • NY Times Defends Holocaust-Inversion

    March 22, 2021

    The historian Deborah Lipstadt described Holocaust inversion — the act of described Jews in Israel as the new Nazis — as a form of "soft-core denial." This style of Holocaust denial is part of an [...]

  • NY Times Praises Ilhan Omar’s Book While Glossing Over Her Antisemitism

    August 19, 2020

    A recent New York Times book review boosts Rep. Ilhan Omar’s (D-MN) autobiography while glossing over her antisemitism. In the paper’s Aug. 16, 2020 edition, NYT reporter Christina Cauterucci writes: The memoir offers breathing room [...]

  • When TV Interviews of Ilhan Omar Constitute Journalistic Malpractice

    August 11, 2020

    Rep. Ilhan Omar’s (D-MN) documented animosity toward Jews and Israel was ignored in recent interviews by MSNBC and C-SPAN.   MSNBC’s The Beat for July 23, 2020 included host Ari Melber’s 10-minute conversation at 6:16 [...]

  • Boston TV Station WCVB Teamed Up With Terrorist Supporter CAIR

    July 7, 2020

    WCVB-TV (channel 5) (Boston’s ABC network affiliate) recently misled area viewers about a matter involving antisemitic propaganda. This occurred on its local Sunday show Cityline hosted by Karen Holmes Ward who is described by the [...]

  • CNN’s Fareed Zakaria Declares That Israel Does Not Want Peace

    June 25, 2020

    Fareed Zakaria and Ehud Olmert, a former prime minister of Israel (June 21 broadcast) In the teaser at the beginning of his June 21 show “Global Public Square” (GPS), Zakaria drew this unwarranted, likely agenda-driven [...]

  • Haaretz Applies Inconsistent Standards to NGOs

    June 17, 2020

    A news story in Haaretz's English edition yesterday applied a double standard in its treatment of NGOs ("Fearing structural collapse, Israel halts dig in East Jerusalem," page 3, and online here.) Nir Hasson's online article [...]

  • Harper’s Magazine Echoed Palestinian Propaganda Condemning Israel And America

    June 2, 2020

    Writing in Harper's, Kevin Baker condemns the U.S. Middle East peace plan [“The Striking Gesture,” Easy Chair, May 2020], mischaracterizing it as, “Give up all your [Palestinian] hopes and your holiest places, embark on a [...]