DOV TALES
by Dov Burt Levy

What a storm of passionate emails I got following my recent column about Professors John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt's book, "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy."

The M-W book, I wrote, was a pernicious account of the Jewish community's alleged sway over America's Middle East policies.

For openers, let's talk about so-called dual loyalty, the book's most hateful charge. One reader helped a lot by writing that "American Jews DO have dual loyalty. The problem is the M-W suggestion that this is somehow a problem. Irish-Americans, Franco-Americans, and on down the list — all these have dual loyalty too. It's as American as apple pie."

He is right. But M-W go even further by in-effect charging American Jews with "primary loyalty" to Israel. My guesstimate is that well over half of Americans have a special relationship with their families' countries of origin. At its most intense levels, this leads them to visit often, urge their children to learn the language and make family and institutional contributions. On a lesser level, they cheer the national soccer team and occasionally visit the country.

To the reader's citation of the French and Irish, add Greeks, Armenians, Portuguese, Dominicans, Brazilians, Lebanese, Nigerians and almost everybody else.

By portraying American Jews as holding primary loyalty to Israel, M-W create the specter of American Jews pushing policies that favor Israel's interests over America's. That, in my opinion, is a gun aimed at the American-Jewish heart.

Jews know from sad experience that once an ethnic or religious group is separated from the body of the nation by charges of disloyalty, anything is possible: pogroms (Russia), expulsion (Spain and Portugal), extermination (Germany).

Another response to my column said: "Instead of presenting the arguments and thesis of the M-W book and then refuting them, you just rely on sheer emotion… All this will make a hit with your Revere readers, but does not serve the cause of responsible journalism and commentary."

Here's the deal. I am prepared to discuss virtually every social and political issue, where I have knowledge and opinions, with all of the academic niceties. But I exclude three subjects I consider beyond debate, where debate would give even a hint of credibility to the other side: whether the Holocaust happened, Israel's right to exist and American Jews' loyalty to America. On these, I am combatively Jewish.

Finally, M-W know at least two things that should have made their book much different than it is. First, they speak of how Jewish neo-cons (Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, among others), brainwashed the ruling trio of Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld into the Iraq fiasco.

Utter nonsense to think that these three long-time political animals could be easily swayed by those outside their inner circle, especially about something as significant as starting a war in Iraq. Here's an example of how tough Bush is to persuade once he's made up his mind. He, as Texas governor, never, though implored by many, commuted even one death sentence to life imprisonment.

Cheney and Rumsfeld can be criticized for many things, but not as patsies for anybody's foisted ideas. They formulated their world vision over years of working together. To say that the Jewish underlings brought those three into their orbit, rather than the opposite, is complete nonsense.

Second, M-W know that a lobby's primary goals are to keep the organization rich, high salaries flowing and their supporters believing in their power.

Really successful lobbies don't do, as AIPAC has done over the years, things like televising annual meetings featuring Hollywood-like settings and pandering politicians.

The real lobby powers in Washington, the defense contractors and the drug companies, accomplish their goals quietly and keep their profile low. They don't need to brag publicly nor prompt politicians to sing their virtues. That's real lobbying strength.

There's no denying that AIPAC has lobbying clout getting 90 signatures on a Senate resolution; but, for example, what are the real results of all those resolutions to bring the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem or not to sell weapons to Saudi Arabia? Nada, klum, nothing.

Somebody might think the motivation for the Mearsheimer-Walt book was the $700,000 book advance and their new celebrity. I don't know. For me, it is their attempt to put their heel on my neck. So, why should I be polite?