Reddit reviews The Deadliest Lies: The Israel Lobby and the Myth of Jewish Control
We found 3 Reddit comments about The Deadliest Lies: The Israel Lobby and the Myth of Jewish Control. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
I have no clue how this happened, I just found it profoundly shocking that this book is now classified right beside David Icke's theories of lizard people. The authors of this book go out of their way to say that there is not a conspiracy.
If you look here:
http://www.amazon.com/Deadliest-Lies-Israel-Jewish-Control/dp/1403984921/
You'll see that Abraham Foxman of the ADL does believe that discussion of the "Israel lobby" is akin to a conspiracy theory. Some of the selected professional reviews specifically mention the term "conspiracy theory." Thus this reclassification of the book is in line with what the ADL has been very vocally pushing for. I'll quote the specific review on Foxman's book here:
> "Conspiracy theories are a measure of a society's mental health; when on the rise, trouble lies ahead. In The Deadliest Lies, Abraham Foxman diagnoses the 'Israel Lobby' conspiracy theory and reveals how sick it is. In doing so, he does a service to all Americans." --Charles Hill, Distinguished Fellow in International Security Studies, Yale University
>China and Russia are not natural allies, and Central Asia is a region where there is potential for conflict between Beijing and Moscow
They are natural allies as balancers against US interests, actually. Russia could've bandwagoned, but that goes against Russian interests and historical understanding. They're pretty natural allies with China for the time being.
>There is little doubt that China and India are likely to be adversaries in the future,
This is more minor, but in the future? They've fought border wars, buddy. They're adversaries now.
>Not tried to make Ukraine a Western bulwark on Russia's border. Specifically, the West should have refrained from trying to integrate Ukraine into the EU, and especially into NATO
I'm sorry, what? Ukraine itself wanted to join the EU, though NATO was not on the table until Russia invaded.
The idea that the West shouldn't have tried to engage Ukraine because Russia didn't want it to is tantamount to basic appeasement, particularly since he just assumes that Russia thought Ukraine would join NATO.
That's not why Russia acted. Russia acted because it saw opportunity, not because of fear. It saw a chance to seize some territory it desperately wanted, of strategic value, and to destabilize a country that was going to drift away from them regardless. They knew it, so they acted to take what they could, not out of reaction to some kind of Western initiative but because everyone knew precisely what Ukraine wanted.
>I think that the influence of the lobby has hardly changed since Obama first took office. It remains a remarkably powerful interest group. What has changed is that now lots of people understand that there is an Israel lobby and that it wields great influence on US foreign policy.
First of all, I just want to point out that his claims of the "Israel Lobby" were ridiculously underresearched. He cited, for example, historian Benny Morris, who summarily took apart their claims on history, saying:
>Like many pro-Arab propagandists at work today, Mearsheimer and Walt often cite my own books, sometimes quoting directly from them, in apparent corroboration of their arguments. Yet their work is a travesty of the history that I have studied and written for the past two decades. Their work is riddled with shoddiness and defiled by mendacity.
And not only that, but they literally wrote hundreds of words, if not thousands, about groups they never interviewed a single current or former member of, including the US government. They just said they had "enough information" and spoke to no one about whom they wrote.
There was a literal book length response by the ADL's Director to their book, debunking its claims, which former US SecState George Shultz wrote the foreword to, saying their book was entirely wrong.
Ignoring that they were literally rebuked by the people they did cite, and failed to even do proper research, let's just assume for a moment that they're correct. Mearsheimer actually makes the claim that the "Israel Lobby" is hardly changed. But wait...what happened to the prominence of left-wing groups like J Street and Jewish Voice for Peace, one of which even advocates the destruction of Israel? What happened to the loss on the Iran deal? What happened to the loss on the aid package MOU the US signed, which the "Lobby" supposedly wanted to be much more generous? What happened when the ACLU came out against the Anti-Israel Boycott Law?
This idea that there is such a powerful lobby is belied by the fact that even if there was such a "lobby" acting in some kind of concerted way he claims (this is separate from there being pro-Israel groups, as there are anti-Israel ones, not some kind of "lobby" coordinating) and with the power he claims, then it wouldn't be losing so often.
>Regarding the Israel-Palestine conflict, it seems clear to me that the two-state solution is dead and that there is going to be a Greater Israel for the foreseeable future. I agree with former Israeli prime ministers Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert, who have said that in the absence of a two-state solution, Greater Israel would be an apartheid state.
This is a weird comment. For one thing, he claims the two state solution is dead. But it clearly is not, when you bother to look at the numbers. It is still eminently possible, including with the deal that Prime Minister Olmert proposed. And Israelis are for such a deal, in polls. But the question isn't whether or not it is possible or dead, it's whether it is likely to happen. In the foreseeable future? Probably not. But does that make it dead? No.
Also, pretty weird of him to reference Barak and Olmert, but not mention their full claims. Barak was talking about what would happen if Israel just decided to never withdraw no matter what, but didn't annex the territory. But literally no one in Israel's government advocates that. Even the most radical group, which has very few seats in the government, advocates annexation without full voting rights for Palestinians, but says in the long term those rights would be granted; there would be a provisional period in between is the extent of it.
Olmert's comment is the same.
>Iran is not a threat to the Gulf monarchies, contrary to what most people in those countries think.
Uh, it absolutely is. Has he not paid an ounce of attention to Bahrain, which Iran literally still thinks belongs to it? The demarcation agreement signed with the shah really isn't something Iran's current government cares about, and Iran would love to overthrow the Bahraini monarchy and install a Shia one, or annex Bahrain, since it is majority-Shia.
>First, Iran, which has never invaded a country in its history,
No, it just sends money and weapons to proxies, who then do it. Hezbollah from 2006 and the Houthis infiltrating Saudi Arabia have called, they want their political hackery back.
> shows no inclination to want to invade Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf monarchies.
Invade directly? No. They want to topple it though, and send it into chaos. Which is a threat to the monarchy. Mearsheimer does this thing where he sets up each question as a situation of either military invasion or nothing. It doesn't work that way. Threats are not solely invasions.
>Second, and more importantly, the United States would intervene immediately if Iran invaded one of the Gulf monarchies and the Iranians know that. American leaders have made it manifestly clear that they will not tolerate Iran becoming a regional hegemony in the Persian Gulf.
See above.
>The best strategy is to leave and let those stakeholders you mention deal with Afghanistan. There is nothing the US can do to fix the problem. This is simply the least bad strategy. Obama did not pull all of the US forces out of Afghanistan by January 2009 and Trump recently decided to hang on in Afghanistan, because neither one of them wants to be accused of "losing" Afghanistan. Both surely recognize that there is no clever strategy for rescuing the situation in Afghanistan.
This sounds like a great way to allow a terrorist government to run Afghanistan. Not like we've seen that harm us before cough cough Al Qaeda planning 9/11 cough cough.
>the "facts" presented by Mearsheimer and Walt suggest a fundamental ignorance of the history with which they deal, and that the "evidence" they deploy is so tendentious as to be evidence only of an acute bias
Morris continued to say:
>Mearsheimer and Walt often cite my own books, sometimes quoting directly from them, in apparent corroboration of their arguments. Yet their work is a travesty of the history that I have studied and written for the past two decades. Their work is riddled with shoddiness and defiled by mendacity
Officials he spoke about pointed out he never once interviewed or spoke with them. His knowledge of Israeli history is virtually nonexistent, and his book is rife with errors. Entire book-length responses have debunked his work on Israel.
>that Israel with its fanatical pursuit in the attempt to destroy the 2SS predicted this potential future and thinks it might be the one to win out in the end?
This is an incredibly unusual claim. Israel's "fanatical pursuit" to destroy the 2SS that he predicted in 2007...despite Israel offering a two-state solution repeatedly in 2007 and 2008? Despite Israel's offer to endorse a framework deal enshrining a two-state solution in 2014? This is an unusual tack.
It is the Palestinians, as explained here, who benefit from waiting:
>Instead, the Palestinians have an attractive (in their view) “Plan B,” which is to get the Israeli concessions in international decisions, without having to make their own concessions—all while denouncing Israel and delegitimizing it in international forums. Since 2008, there are strong indications that the international route was actually the Palestinian “Plan A”—hence their intransigence in entering the talks and in the negotiations themselves.
...
>The continuation of the status quo—which appears so problematic to many Israelis and Americans—represents for the Palestinians a favorable strategic avenue that would lead, eventually, to an Arab-majority, one-state outcome. When Americans, Europeans, and even elements of the Israeli public repeatedly warn that Israel will be “lost” if it allows the status quo to persist, it does not encourage Palestinian moderation or willingness to compromise. Instead, it strengthens the underlying Palestinian assumption that a failure of negotiations is a reasonable option from their perspective. For the Palestinian leadership, all paths lead to the same destination: either Israel accepts their conditions (which, through flooding Israel with refugees, will lead to the demise of Israel as a Jewish state) or the status quo persists and Israel is supposedly lost.
The Palestinian decision to wait and park comfortably has been literally stated outright by Palestinian leaders. For example, Mahmoud Abbas, head of the Palestinian Authority (the recognized Palestinian government) said back in 2009:
>Abbas rejects the notion that he should make any comparable concession -- such as recognizing Israel as a Jewish state, which would imply renunciation of any large-scale resettlement of refugees.
>Instead, he says, he will remain passive. "I will wait for Hamas to accept international commitments. I will wait for Israel to freeze settlements," he said. "Until then, in the West Bank we have a good reality . . . the people are living a normal life."
The reality is not what you paint. It's quite different.