We hear more voices these days expressing an age-old form of bigotry that always arises during times of conflict. Certain unhinged elements of society believe with a certain ferocity that secret Jewish cabals run the US government and create conflict around the world. When the proponents of such theories sport few teeth and carry the unmistakable aroma of high-tension liquor, they're easy to ignore. However, when they come from academia and have a few chunks of the alphabet after their name, people tend to take them more seriously than they deserve.

Today's case in point comes from Dana Milbank at the Washington Post, who amused himself by attending a lecture from University of Chicago political scientist John Mearsheimer and Harvard's Steven Walt. Mearsheimer co-authored a "study" with Walt that claimed to have laid out the machinations of the Jewish lobby. CAIR invited Mearsheimer and Walt to speak at the National Press Club to expand on their views:

University of Chicago political scientist John Mearsheimer was in town yesterday to elaborate on his view that American Jewish groups are responsible for the war in Iraq, the destruction of Lebanon's infrastructure and many other bad things. As evidence, he cited the influence pro-Israel groups have on "John Boner, the House majority leader."

Actually, Professor, it's "BAY-ner." But Mearsheimer quickly dispensed with Boehner (R-Ohio) and moved on to Jewish groups' nefarious sway over Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), who Mearsheimer called "Von Hollen."

Such gaffes would be trivial -- if Mearsheimer weren't claiming to be an authority on Washington and how power is wielded here. But Mearsheimer, with co-author Stephen Walt of Harvard's Kennedy School, set off a furious debate this spring when they argued that "the Israel lobby" is exerting undue influence in Washington; opponents called them anti-Semitic.

This shows the preparation and scholarship that comes into play when one writes anti-Semitic diatribes. Not that CAIR had any problem with the presentation, of course; they wasted no time giving the pair "Fight The Israel Lobby" buttons and cheered their denunciations of Israel and the Jews -- which was the entire point of the event.

The circumlocutions of their logic reminds me of the lame Family Circus cartoons with Billy's neighborhood meanderings in dotted lines. The two imply that American foreign policy has been hijacked by men with "attachments" to Israel -- with the "attachment" being their Jewishness. The conspiracy has to be subtle indeed; after all, how can John Boehner and Chris Van Hollen overcome the goyim who actually run Congress -- Denny Hastert and Nancy Pelosi? Likewise, the academics spend a lot of effort blaming Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith for insidiously leading the United States into war with Iraq for the supposed benefit of Israel, but never mention why this "attachment" affects gentiles like Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, and George Bush -- the people who actually made those decisions.

Walt at least attempted to maintain some semblance of rationality, although it turned his arguments incoherent. He said that the Israel lobby was "not a cabal" and that merely being Jewish didn't make one part of the conspiracy. That fails to explain why he keeps drawing that exact inference from the religious background of people like Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith, neither of whom have been in the government for at least the past year. Mearsheimer just went with the full yahoud. He denounced Jewish activists, Jewish organizations, and the Israeli lobby, apparently stopping only at Jewish delis. He even told the group of Jew-haters that Israel exploited the kidnapping of its soldiers to attack Hezbollah -- somehow forgetting that the kidnapping came from a Hezbollah attack that left several IDF soldiers dead and covered by a number of rockets from Lebanon into Israel.

Milbank clearly has fun dissecting the two anti-Semitic paranoid conspiracy theorists, but Chicago and Harvard should be embarrassed by this display of hatred and defective thinking.

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