The IDF Sweeps Embassy Row — French Surrender Without Delay

Is this a trend, or what?

First, the Polish embassy in New York cancels a scheduled talk by Tony Judt in response to pressure from Abe Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith. Judt’s sin? He defended scholars John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, whose thesis that the Israel Lobby has a virtual lock on U.S. foreign policy has the Amen Corner up in arms.

Now we learn that author Carmen Callil has suffered the same fate — this time at the hands of the French.Callil’s new book, Bad Faith, is about the career of an official of Vichy France who masterminded the deportation of Jews: the book has received rave reviews. However, the Amen Corner is peeved at the author’s postscript, which refers to the oppression of Palestinians at the hands of the Israeli state.

The French embassy in New York scheduled a reception to honor Ms. Callil’s arrival in the U.S., and celebrate her book — but an email campaign underscoring the offending passage and indulging in the usual smears put the kibosh on the party. Why am I not surprised that, according to Media Bistro, the French surrendered after only a few emails?

Israel Lobby? What “Israel Lobby“?


This one:

“The Lobby pursues two broad strategies.

First, it wields its significant influence in Washington, pressuring both Congress and the executive branch. Whatever an individual lawmaker or policymaker’s own views may be, the Lobby tries to make supporting Israel the ‘smart’ choice.

Second, it strives to ensure that public discourse portrays Israel in a positive light, by repeating myths about its founding and by promoting its point of view in policy debates. The goal is to prevent critical comments from getting a fair hearing in the political arena. Controlling the debate is essential to guaranteeing US support, because a candid discussion of US-Israeli relations might lead Americans to favour a different policy.”Having made a clean sweep of Embassy Row, the intellectual shock troops of the IDF (American branch) are now no doubt preparing an assault on Publishers’ Row: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux is reportedly bringing out a book-length work by Mearsheimer and Walt, elaborating on their thesis.

You don’t have to be Nostradamus to see, with a fair degree of certainty, an organized effort to spike their book.If FS&G, the Mercedes Benz of the publishing world — which has brought out works by T.S. Eliot, William Golding, Hermann Hesse, Czeslaw Milosz, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Aleksander Solzhenitsyn, Philip Roth, Susan Sontag, and Tom Wolfe — can be intimidated into silencing the Lobby’s critics, then what institution in American society is immune?



http://www.antiwar.com/blog/2006/10/11/the-idf-sweeps-embassy-row-french-surrender-without-delay/