Editor hits back over Israel row
London Review of Books stands its ground after being accused of anti-Semitism in an article attacking pro-Israeli influence on US policy Peter Beaumont, foreign affairs editor
She is, in the words of her many admirers, the 'mater familias of London's liberal intelligentsia'. This weekend, however, Mary-Kay Wilmers, editor of the London Review of Books, is on the defensive - speaking out for the first time in an escalating transatlantic row that has seen her respected journal accused of promoting anti- Semitism.
The argument has erupted over a cover article in the latest issue of the LRB by two prominent American academics on the influence of the pro-Israel lobby in the US. The article, which argues that the lobby holds a disproportionate and damaging sway over American foreign policy, prompted a bitter and growing controversy, particularly in the US, where rival camps have exchanged claims of anti-Semitism and intellectual intimidation by those accused of being members of 'the Lobby'.
The article, by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, was originally written for, but rejected by, the Atlantic Monthly and picked up by the LRB, when Wilmers 'became aware of its existence'.
The article set out at exhaustive length to list every way in which it claimed US foreign policy had been captured on behalf of Israel by an all-encompassing lobby of academics, campaign groups, journalists and pro-Israeli activists in government. Among the fiercest critics have been Eliot Engel, a Democratic congressman from New York, who branded the authors 'anti-Semites', and the right-wing New York Sun, which likened the piece to the 'rantings' of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
The article has been praised by white supremacist and former head of the Ku Klux Klan David Duke - a move that Wilmers admits was 'unsettling'.
'I don't want David Duke to endorse the article,' she told The Observer from France on Friday. 'It makes me feel uncomfortable. But when I re-read the piece, I did not see anything that I felt should not have been said. Maybe it is because I am Jewish, but I think I am very alert to anti-Semitism. And I do not think that criticising US foreign policy, or Israel's way of going about influencing it, is anti-Semitic. I just don't see it.'
Harvard University, where Walt is a professor, has also weighed into the row, distancing itself from the report. It is not the first time in recent years that the LRB has been embroiled in controversy with the US - it was accused of anti- Americanism in a special issue following the attacks on 11 September.
President Bill Clinton's special Middle East envoy, Dennis Ross, cited by the authors as having 'close ties' to pro-Israel organisations, said the authors displayed a 'woeful lack of knowledge'.
For their part, the two authors, despite the row, describe themselves as 'philo-Semites'. Wilmers says they are members of the Realist School of US Foreign Policy which insists that America should be guided by its own interests and not by Israel's.
Wilmers defends the article: 'I know Israel thinks it is a monstrous presumption. But then I don't think that the way that Israel behaves is terribly helpful. The article doesn't talk about a "Jewish Lobby" or a "Cabal". I feel very clear about that. We were very conscious of that risk.'
But while Wilmers feels confident that the article examines legitimate concerns - in particular about the lobby group American Israel Public Affairs Committee - it is not a view shared by critics of the LRB. Among them is Professor Alan Dershowitz, a colleague of Walt at Harvard, who is criticised in the article for being an 'apologist' for Israel. Dershowitz denounced the authors last week as 'liars' and 'bigots' and compared their argument to neo-Nazi literature. It is a view shared by US academics Jeffrey Herf and Andrei Markovits, who wrote to the LRB: 'Accusations of powerful Jews behind the scenes are part of the most dangerous traditions of modern anti-Semitism.'
But while some have focused on the issue of anti-Semitism, others, following Dennis Ross's lead, have condemned the article as a shoddy piece of pseudo-academia. It is a view endorsed by journalist Christopher Hitchens, who has accused the authors of an exercise in Jewish 'name listing', and perhaps - most surprisingly - by Noam Chomsky, the Nobel-prize winning academic who has written on the pro-Israeli bias of the US media.
'Recognising that Mearsheimer-Walt took a courageous stand which merits praise,' he wrote for online magazine ZNet last week, 'we still have to ask how convincing their thesis is. Not very, in my opinion.'
Wilmers rejects the accusation by Hitchens, Ross and others that the Mearsheimer-Walt article has done little more than attempt to join up a disconnected list of people and organisations lobbying on different aspects of Israeli concern into a central 'Israel Lobby' - capitalised by the LRB. She admits now, however, that it would have been better to use a lower case 'l' for the word 'lobby' - to have avoided the risk of being misunderstood.
'It is not true that the authors simply lumped together a long list of people and organisations in the same piece to make their case for an "Israeli Lobby". To say that because someone is mentioned in context in a long piece is tainted by association with any other is wrong.'
Wilmers believes, too, that the most angry denunciations of anti- Semitism - while designed to serve the purpose of censorship by those attempting to forestall criticism of Israel - may actually encourage anti-Semitism in the long run.
'It serves a purpose. No one wants to be thought of as anti-Semitic because it is thought of as worse than anything else, although it is not worse being anti-Semitic than being anti-black or Islamophobic.
'Really, one of the most upsetting things is the way it can contribute to anti-Semitism in the long run just by making so many constant appeals and preventing useful criticism of Israel. No one can say Israel's posture does not contribute to anti-Semitism, yet charges of anti-Semitism are used to justify that policy.'