Author of anti-Semitic book shocks all by endorsing another author's anti-Semitic book

Eamonn alerted me to this, which has sent me next to a truly excellent Foreign Policy post by David Rothkopf. Two of the comments to the post, ones that spin the discussion into one about Jewish marriage patterns, will, believe it or not, make it into the conclusion of my dissertation. Into a draft of it, at least. So that's something. My work, as 1840-France as it might seem, has contemporary American relevance.

But that's for a reason only tangentially related to the matter at hand, which is that Rothkopf managed to point out where Mearsheimer (and Walt, let's never forget Walt!) screwed up in endorsing a book by a Jewish anti-Semite and Holocaust revisionist without in any way disagreeing with them that U.S. Israel policy is something it's acceptable and even perhaps necessary to criticize. Said Jewish Jew-hater is, from what I've read, apparently something of an outcast among anti-Zionists, who don't want to be associated with his filth.*

All of this should, I'd think, make clear that it's possible a) to criticize Israel and not hate Jews, and b) to criticize Israel as a socially-acceptable proxy for hating Jews. Such a simple point, but so difficult to make known. Not everyone who criticizes Israel hates Jews, this much not too many doubt. No reasonable people, at least, and there are those (including some in my own family, etc., etc.) who cannot be reasoned with.

But a whole lot of folks seem to find it mind-blowing/libelous/theoretically impossible that any "critics of Israel" are just anti-Semites. And, OMG of OMGs, it's obviously impossible that anyone with a prestigious academic position at a university with lots of Jewish students and faculty could be an anti-Semite. Like, physically impossible. How could it be? Why, no doubt some of the man's best friends are...

Since these discussions always descend into accusations among a bunch of blog-skimmers about how no one's really read any of the tomes being discussed, I'll say upfront that I have read only about Atzmon's book and Mearsheimer's defense of blurbing it. I have, however, read The Israel Lobby, and closely at that, both to have authoritah on the matter and, more practically, to write an article about it. It is, without a doubt, an anti-Semitic book. I say that - let me repeat - having read the book. A book scattered with valid observations, indisputable facts, and, from what I understand from experts in that discipline, shoddy political science. But if there's some anti-Semitism in a book, and we're not talking something written in 1950 that fails to live up to today's standards of political correctness but that was for its time quite progressive, then sorry but yes, it counts.

So no, my mind is not blown, every truth I hold dear not shattered, to learn that one of its authors has offered up yet more evidence of hating The Jews (and I do not care where Some of His Best Friends might rank on the Jewiness spectrum), nor that the other of its authors signs off on it. I do think we need to be careful labeling people bigots - against Jews or anyone else - whether these people are baristas at the local coffeehouse or big-deal polisci professors. I also think we can't have anything close to a real discussion about anti-Semitism if we maintain the absurd stance that it's so totally impossible that anyone living and breathing today, who isn't in fact Mel Gibson, might be oh just the teensiest bit anti-Semitic.

*Along the same lines, anyone who thinks U.S. Israel policy needs to change should be less than thrilled that the work most associated with bringing this issue to light is one that's also just plain anti-Jewish.