Israel and the Right of Free Speech

 There is presently an inability in America even to formulate or sustain a discourse related to the subject of Israeli influence on the United States. Such an opportunity seemed to open with the courageous publication of a 54 well-documented essay written by Professor Walt of Harvard University and Professor Mearsheimer of University of Chicago critical of the Lobby's influence on US Middle East policy. However, a virulent campaign against Mearsheimer and Walt was then waged by all the major Jewish publications and pro-Israel organizations. From the ultra-rightwing Orthodox Jewish Press (which claims to be the largest "independent" Jewish newspaper in the US), to the formerly social democratic Forward, to the Jewish Weekly, all have launched, together with all the major Jewish organizations, a propaganda campaign of defamation ("the new Protocols of Zion", "anti-Semitic", "sources from Neo-Nazi websites...") and pressure for their purge from academia.

The Jewish authoritarians have already partially succeeded. Their press releases have been published by the mass media without allowing for rebuttal by the academics under attack. Harvard University has demanded that the identification of the Harvard Kennedy School be removed from the paper. The financier of the professorial chair (in his name) which Professor Walt, as academic dean, occupies at the Harvard Kennedy School, is no longer mentioned in his publication. Ultra-Zionist and torture advocate Professor Dershowitz and his fellow Harvard zealots called into question their moral and academic qualification to teach—this concerning professors of the highest standing, with an established record at America's top universities.

In both the United States and France, legislation is being prepared to equate anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism and to criminalize as a 'hate crime' the free expression of outrage over Israeli atrocities and any criticism of the Lobby's control of US Middle East policy.62 In the US, the proposed legisla-tion63 would take the form of withdrawing federal funding from any academic institution where the policies of Israel are criticized.

62 Canada and some other European countries that claim to honor free speech have already passed laws making "Holocaust denial" a criminal offense. United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan (whose Jewish wife is related to the prominent Swedish Raoul Wallenburg family) stated that the world must challenge those who deny the Holocaust happened.

James Petras
The Power of Israel in United States