Muhammad Idrees Ahmad

Earlier this year Council on American-Islamic Relations held a news conference on the clout of the Israel Lobby in Washington. Keynote speakers were John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M.Walt, authors of the report Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy. The talk was immediately subjected to one of the ugliest hit pieces by Dana Milbank in the Washington Post. In response, the Palestinian-American scholar Mazin Qumsiyeh wrote:

It was rather amazing to see the article from Dana Milbank (August 29) trashing professors Walt and Mearsheimer for simply speaking about the power of the Israel lobby in our government’s disastrous foreign policy. The distortions in Milbank’s article are obvious to anyone who attended or watched the event at the National Press Club on Monday… There is indeed a significant body of evidence in support of the power of the lobby even quotes from the lobby itself…The viscious attack by Milbank on the two scholars merely proves the thesis that there are people in this country who are so fixated on supporting Zionism, right or wrong, even against Israeli and American public interests, that they are willing to do anything including trying to “shoot the messenger”.

Part 1

Part 2

Alison Weir (from If American’s Knew) and Al-Jazeera interview Walt & Mearsheimer