The Deadliest Lies: The Israel Lobby and the Myth of Jewish Control [Hardcover]

Foxman has the opportunity here to defend the Israeli lobby in a rational way. There are sound objective reasons why America should wish to support Israel, to a degree. There are also solid reasons why anti-semitism should be combatted. Unfortunately, these are lost in the morass of rhetoric into which his writing sinks.

The bricks and mortar of good writing are three simple principles: Statement, explanation, example, which Foxman rarely, if ever employs. He seldom addresses the genuine concerns of adversaries, dismissing these in rhetorical asides. His writing is often tangential and fails to focus on issues in a logical way, wandering off into anti-Jewish propaganda prevalent in the Arab world, instead of exploring the questions and possible motives of those opposed to current US policy in the Middle East. He also uses and abuses ad hominem arguments, appearing blissfully unaware of their incoherence.

The work does contain the seed of an answer but shows a remarkable lack of understanding of opposing views. Overall, a rambling response and surprisingly unintelligent. The subject deserves better treatment from a more sophisticated hand, perhaps an Israeli professor who knows the subject at first-hand and can respond in a calm, objective way.

Antisemitism has constantly shifted shape down the centuries. The church accused the Jewish people of deicide and later invented the creed of Replacement Theology, an attempt to usurp the Jewish heritage. A further mutation of theological Antisemitism was the racial version which culminated in the Holocaust. Now it has mutated again, appearing as Anti-Zionism which is the desire to annihilate the Jewish State.

Two excellent studies on the new Antisemitism are available in The Resurgence of Anti-semitism by Bernard Harrison and The New Anti-Semitism by Phyllis Chesler. In this work, Foxman sets out to refute Jimmy Carter's slanderous accusations against Israel and the distortions of Walt and Mearsheimer who aim to portray the Israel lobby as a powerful sinister force manipulating US foreign policy against America's interests.

Not only does Foxman effectively point out the flaws in the arguments of Walt & Mearsheimer, he also demonstrates the sinister sub-text in their book. He reveals how their work makes use of the same outright falsehoods, half-truths and distortions that have been characteristic of Antisemitic libels for many centuries. Bernard Harrison in his aforementioned book also observes how the "new" Antisemitism resembles the old; how the same assumptions, imagery and concepts are employed.

Being tactful, Foxman does not call Walt, Mearsheimer or Jimmy Carter Antisemites. In this he is very kind, as both books under discussion contain some really glaring innuendo. He does explore the anti-Israel propaganda in the Arab world, of which further evidence is available in the book Peace: The Arabian Caricature of Anti-Semitic Imagery by Arieh Stav. This kind of thing is of course completely ignored by Carter, Mearsheimer and Walt. The latter two even try to euphemize the threat of the Iranian president to "wipe Israel off the map."

The author devotes some pages to making a distinction between legitimate criticism of Israeli actions and demonization of Israel - when Anti-Zionism becomes Antisemitism. A chapter is devoted to Fox's dispute with the critic of Israel Tony Judt. He observes that there is a link between the books under discussion and the Judt episode. The books complain that the Israel lobby stifles debate while Judt employed that accusation in the dispute.

The foreword by former secretary of state George Schultz is a concise and illuminating argument in its own right. He argues that US support for Israel is in America's own best interest. The lobby system is part of how government functions and the Israel lobby has as much right as the petrodollar lobby to exert its influence. Finally, the US government alone is responsible for the policies it adopts and the actions it takes.

America has been a good friend to Israel but has sometimes acted against Israel's interests. In both the 1967 and 1973 wars it was because of American pressure that Israel's victorious advances were halted. Fair enough, there was the threat of nuclear war from the Soviet Union which saw its allies defeated and humiliated, but in both cases a few more days would have provided Israel with total victory.

In addition, the USA and the world as a whole gain much from Israel as a technological powerhouse, especially in the fields of electronics and medical advances. In this regard, see Israel in The World: Changing Lives Through Innovation by Helen Davis. So it is not just a one-sided affair. Furthermore, the USA supports Egypt with billions of dollars annually, it sells arms to Saudi Arabia, it freed Kuwait from Saddam and helped rebuild that country after the war. Is there any chance that Jimmy Carter would write a book about social conditions in Saudi Arabia or that Walt and Mearsheimer would write about the Arab lobby? I think not.

I think these people are being used by forces that they are unaware of, just like the mass media are being used as proven by the Ad-Dura hoax of France TV 2 and the Reuters and Associated Press Fauxtography scandals during the 2006 Hezbollah war. This media bias is discussed in Stephanie Gutmann's book The Other War: Israelis, Palestinians and the Struggle for Media Supremacy, whilst BBC anti-Israel bias is covered in Robin Aitken's book Can We Trust The BBC?

In my opinion, the most informative work on Antisemitism, exploring all its shape-shifting manifestations down the ages and across the cultural-political-religious spectrum, is Why the Jews?: The Reason for Anti-Semitism by Dennis Prager and Joseph Telushkin, as it engages with the neglected spiritual dimension of this mental disease. I recommend The Dawn: Political Teachings of the Book of Esther by Yoram Hazony, to gain insight in how to counteract it. The Good Book is full of good advice for these times.