"Very few Americans will exercise their right to free speech if criticizing Israel earns them identification as an anti-Semite."

Head Strong | 'Anti-Semitic' label curbs talk about Israel
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"Yesterday, an Israeli guide was anxious to show me the community called Gilo.

" 'Look,' he said, 'at the sandbags that these people have to place in their windows to shield them from sniper fire from a neighboring village called Beit Jala.'

"Sure enough, there were sandbags in windows and bullet holes in walls. Thinking of my kids, I said, 'That's no place to raise a family.'

"Today, I had a different guide with a different perspective. He wanted me to tour an Arab neighborhood in the West Bank.

" 'Look at where Israeli tank fire has destroyed these homes,' he said to me. I looked. The devastation was terrible. 'This is no place to live,' I said to myself.

" 'Where are we?' I asked.

" 'This is the village called Beit Jala,' he told me, 'and the tank fired from over there, in Gilo' - where I had been the day before."

I ended the commentary by saying: "And so it goes."

My intention was only to present a form of geopolitical glass half empty/half full, not to assert any moral equivalency. But that didn't spare me an onslaught of e-mail from Jewish listeners disappointed in what I had said, or what they thought I was implying. Some told me my "comparison" was anti-Semitic, which stunned me, given that my entire trip had a palpable, pro-Israeli tone.

I was reminded of that experience this week while considering the backlash against the release of The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, by John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt. Mearsheimer is a political scientist at the University of Chicago. Walt is a professor at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government.

Their book is an outgrowth of their lengthy online article on the same subject, and of a 40-page essay published last spring in the London Review of Books. Their premise is that the United States has set aside its own security to advance the interests of Israel, owing to the existence of a "lobby," which they define as a loose coalition of individuals and organizations who actively work to steer U.S. foreign policy in a pro-Israel direction.

Among their observations is that anyone who criticizes Israel's actions or argues that pro-Israel groups have a significant influence over U.S. policy stands a good chance of being labeled anti-Semitic.
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"The most dangerous aspect of the Israel lobby," Scheuer said, "is that it threatens free speech in America. Very few Americans will exercise their right to free speech if criticizing Israel earns them identification as an anti-Semite."