DISSENTERS SHOOT THEMSELVES IN THE FOOT

The Independent Australian Jewish Voices is in tatters but what remains of the rump of this bitterly anti Zionist lobby continues to trot out that highly overused line about dissenters in the Jewish community not being heard. So for the 100th time, Messrs. Peter Slezak and Antony Loewenstein have today lodged their complaint in the Melbourne Age in the form of an Op Ed article about that hoary old chestnut - the fact that, as dissenters fighting against the so-called "Israel lobby", their voices are being silenced.

The truth of the matter is that a little over a week ago, the pair were given the opportunity in the Australian Jewish News of all places to voice their opinions on their scandalous attempt to align the rank and file of IAJV signatories with the notorious Nakba Advertisement that co-incided with the bipartisan resolution in Federal Parliament congratulating Israel on its 60th Anniversary.

So much for being silenced!

As if that's not enough, Slezak and Loewenstein go on to again demonstrate how little they understand about the conflict between Israel and its Arab neighbours. It's one thing to be critical of individual actions of Israelis in the past but they really shoot themselves in the foot by citing a largely discredited book on the "lobby". This is what they have to say:

"In their controversial book The Israel Lobby, John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt point out that the popular image of David confronted by Goliath, cultivated to maintain Jewish support, is the reverse of the truth."

Mearsheimer and Walt's thesis on this aspect of the Israel/Arab narrative was demolished soon after their views were first published by no less eminent an historian than Benny Morris. Slezak and Loewenstein cannot dispute Morris' credentials because they quote him later in their own Op Ed article and they call him a "leading Israeli historian".

In order to appreciate the enormity of the howler Slezak and Lowenstein have committed by slavishly following the Mearsheimer/Walt fantasy line, I commend you to an article by that leading Israeli historian Benny Morris in which he completely shatters the very foundations of their argument - THE IGNORANCE AT THE HEART OF AN INNUENDO. And Now For Some Facts. His opening paragraph gives an insight of what follows:

"John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt's "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy" is a nasty piece of work. Some of what they assert regarding the terrorist tactics of certain Zionist groups during the 1930s, and the atrocities committed by Israeli troops in the War of 1948, and the harsh Israeli measures against the Palestinians during the second intifada, and certain activities of the pro-Israel lobby in the United States over the past decades--some of this is correct, and I realize as I write this sentence that it will henceforth be trotted out by the Mearsheimers and Walts of the world, as by their Arab admirers, while they omit the previous sentence and all that now follows. But what these distinguished professors have produced is otherwise depressing to anyone who values intellectual integrity."

Exactly the same thing can be said about Slezak and Loewenstein's sloppy efforts although one should add that while they once might have been able to claim that their views had the support of 0.05% of Australia's Jews, the number has fallen to 0.005% and still heading south.