Eliot Cohen, professor of international studies at Johns Hopkins University, used the pages of the Washington Post as a bully pulpit for his diatribe against Mearsheimer and Walt. Cohen called the article "inept" and "kooky," and claimed that it recycled standard anti-Semitic themes--"obsessive and irrationally hostile beliefs about Jews"; accusations of "disloyalty, subversion or treachery"; and charges of "participating in secret combinations that manipulate institutions and governments."

The campaign of criticism led Harvard University's Kennedy School to remove its logo from the article and strengthen its disclaimer that the paper only reflected the views of the authors. In the midst of the furor over the article, Walt announced that he would end his tenure as dean in June, but Harvard officials denied the move was related to the backlash against the article.

Ironically, the uproar proved the existence of the Israel lobby that critics of Mearsheimer and Walt are trying to deny--and underscored the unwillingness of Israel's apologists to allow even faint criticism of this lobby.

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BUT DEFENDING Mearsheimer and Walt's description of the Israel lobby from Israel boosters is less critical than pointing out what's wrong with other points they make.

That's because their argument that Israel has become a "strategic liability" to the U.S. is a view shared by some in the pro-Palestinian movement.

Mearsheimer and Walt are on firm ground when they outline the many channels employed by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and other pro-Israel organizations to influence elected officials, government policy and public opinion.

"The lobby pursues two broad strategies," write the authors. "First, it wields its significant influence in Washington, pressuring both Congress and the executive branch. Whatever an individual lawmaker or policymaker's own views may be, the lobby tries to make supporting Israel the 'smart' choice. Second, it strives to ensure that public discourse portrays Israel in a positive light, by repeating myths about its founding and by promoting its point of view in policy debates. The goal is to prevent critical comments from getting a fair hearing in the political arena."

There's nothing particularly insightful in these observations, which would apply to every effective lobby in Washington--from the farm lobby to the American Association of Retired Persons.

But according to Mearsheimer and Walt, the Israel lobby is so good at what it does that its influence has swamped any rational assessment of actual U.S. interests. "Other special-interest groups have managed to skew foreign policy, but no lobby has managed to divert it as far from what the national interest would suggest, while simultaneously convincing Americans that U.S. interests and those of the other country--in this case, Israel--are essentially identical," they argue.

In their view, the U.S. receives very little in exchange for the $3 billion it annually gives to Israel in direct aid and the unswerving diplomatic support the U.S. provides to Israel. They claim that the U.S. loses out in the deal because its reputation in the Arab world is tarnished by its association with Israel's violations of Palestinian human rights.

But Mearsheimer and Walt don't stop there. They assert that the influence of the Israel lobby was a "critical" reason for the U.S. war on Iraq. "Some Americans believe that this was a war for oil, but there is hardly any direct evidence to support this claim," they write. "Instead, the war was motivated in good part by a desire to make Israel more secure."

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IN REALITY, Mearsheimer and Walt have the causal connection between U.S. support for Israel and the Israel lobby backwards. Support for Israel as a centerpiece of U.S. strategy to dominate the oil-rich Middle East largely explains the power and influence of the Israel lobby, not the other way around.

U.S. support for Israel took on central importance in 1967--at a time when there was no Israel lobby and when most American Jews in fact had little interest in Israel. That year was when Israel proved its effectiveness as an ally--by waging war on Egypt and neutralizing the growing influence of secular Arab nationalism.

In subsequent years, Israel could be relied on to strike out at Arab regimes that fell afoul of Washington (such as its 1981 destruction of Iraq's nuclear reactor) and to serve as a conduit for sending arms to forces that the U.S. was legally barred from or too embarrassed to support directly (such as apartheid South Africa, Rhodesia and the Nicaraguan contras).

Israel's Yediot Ahronot newspaper once compared the U.S. to the Godfather, and Israel to the "Godfather's messenger"--since Israel "undertakes the dirty work of the Godfather, who always tries to appear to be the owner of some large, respectable business."

The danger in Mearsheimer and Walt's reversal of cause and effect is the confusion that follows from saying, in the words of Columbia University professor Joseph Massad, that "absent the pro-Israel lobby, America would at worst no longer contribute to the oppression of Arabs and Palestinians, and at best would be the Arabs' and the Palestinians' best ally and friend.

"What makes this argument persuasive and effective to Arabs? Indeed, why are its claims constantly brandished by Washington's Arab friends to Arab and American audiences as a persuasive argument? I contend that the attraction of this argument is that it exonerates the United States' government from all the responsibility and guilt that it deserves for its policies in the Arab world and gives false hope to many Arabs and Palestinians who wish America would be on their side, instead of on the side of their enemies."

In denying the role of Middle East oil in the U.S. decision to wage war on Iraq, Mearsheimer and Walt echo both the Bush administration as well as some in the Israel lobby.

Oil "has barely been on the administration's horizon in considering Iraq policy," said Patrick Clawson, an oil and policy analyst with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, in 2003.

But in 1999, Clawson--whose think tank was founded by a former deputy director of research at AIPAC--Clawson was reading from a different script at a Capitol Hill forum on a post-Saddam Iraq. "U.S. oil companies would have an opportunity to make significant profits," he said. "We should not be embarrassed about the commercial advantages that would come from a reintegration of Iraq into the world economy."

But even if oil played a bigger part in the decision to go to war, Mearsheimer and Walt believe they have an airtight argument about why Israel serves no useful purpose for the U.S. During the 1991 and 2003 wars on Iraq, far from drawing on Israel's regional military superiority to help subdue Saddam Hussein, the U.S. had to restrain Israel from becoming involved militarily.

However, to conclude from this, as Mearsheimer and Walt do, that Israel is therefore a "strategic liability" is absurd. The U.S. relies on its strategic relationship with Israel first and foremost, but it also has firm supporters among several other Middle Eastern countries--most notably, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and others.

The very existence of Israel--and its stability as a U.S. foothold in the region--greatly enhances the ability of the U.S. to force Arab regimes to make agreements at the negotiating table. After all, if Israel has already assured the U.S. a secure grip on the region, why shouldn't Arab leaders derive benefits from making their own deals with the U.S.?

If the U.S. can wage war on Iraq with the help of its Arab allies, then the U.S. is happy to restrain Israel. But the U.S. knows that it's dangerous to become too dependent on any given Middle Eastern country, because the populations of those countries resent their own leaders' collaboration with the U.S. Israel's population, on the other hand, overwhelmingly supports the U.S., making Israel a far more predictable and stable ally.

And in any case, even if the U.S. had to restrain Israel during its war on Iraq, Israel nevertheless can act on behalf of the U.S. when the U.S. wants it to--such as Israel's 2003 air strikes deep in Syrian territory.

Though the billions that the U.S. gives to Israel seem exorbitant, the U.S. spends far more annually to maintain its military bases throughout the Arab world, not to mention its many military installations throughout Europe and Asia. In that sense, U.S. support of Israel is a bargain--and the Israel lobby serves the useful purpose of protecting the U.S. government's investment.

But even without an Israel lobby, the U.S. would support Israel, just as it supports Colombia and Egypt--the second- and third-largest recipients of U.S. foreign aid--even though those countries don't have lobbies with anything near the clout of the Israel lobby.

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IT SHOULDN'T come as a surprise that liberal critics of U.S. foreign policy, like Mearsheimer and Walt, would conclude that lobbying has blown U.S. war planning off course.

But the truth is that the misadventures of U.S. imperialism can't be corrected by curtailing the influence of a "lobby." The U.S. has opposed national liberation movements and backed nasty dictatorships all over the world, not just in the Middle East.

And as Middle East expert Stephen Zunes points out, "There are far more powerful interests that have a stake in what happens in the Persian Gulf region than does AIPAC--such as the oil companies, the arms industry and other special interests whose lobbying influence and campaign contributions far surpass that of the much-vaunted Zionist lobby and its allied donors to congressional races."

There are no shortcuts in the fight for justice for Palestinians, for Iraqis and for all peoples oppressed by U.S. imperialism. An anti-imperialist movement--built right here in the belly of the beast--is the essential ingredient for bringing an end to U.S. crimes around the world.

Alan Finder told us that other "opinion journals" attacked the professors, "part of a group of foreign policy analysts, known as realists, who believe that international politics is fundamentally about the pursuit of power," as anti-Semitic. But he took no position on the contents of their critique.

The Times hasn't taken a stand on the merits of their arguments for two reasons: Its record on Jewish issues before the creation of Israel in 1948 was shameful and got worse afterwards. A former executive editor spoke for it in the 11/14/01 issue. It's willful blindness to the holocaust was "surely the century's bitterest journalistic failure."

Forbes Magazine laughingly calls itself a "capitalist tool," but today's Times is convinced that it is capitalism's official organ. Indeed if control still rests tightly in the hands of the Ochs and Sulzberger families, publishers since 1896, now worth well over half a billion dollars, a former Federal Communications Commission Chair is on its board of directors and Bear Stern Securities, Brown Brothers Harriman, Charles Schwalb, Citibank, Goldman, Sachs & Co., JP Morgan Chase Bank and Merill Lynch are major stockholders.

Originally from Germany, the Ochs and Sulzbergers started as members of the "Reform" Jewish sect, which preached Tory American patriotism. When the Times defended Atlanta Jew Leo Frank, lynched in 1916 after false rape and murder charges, death threats put Adolph Ochs under "neurological" treatment. He recovered, but thereafter it deliberately fled from fights against anti-Semitism and spiraled right. In 1922 it hailed Mussolini's Fascism as "the most interesting governmental experiment of the day .... We should all be glad that he is going at it vigorously."

Of course, when Hitler came to power in 1933, even it admitted to "qualms which the news from Berlin must cause to all friends of Germany." But

"It is announced that the national finances will be kept in strong and conservative hands .... There is thus no warrant for immediate alarm. It may be that we shall see the 'tamed Hitler' of whom some Germans are hopefully speaking. Always we may look for some such transformation when a radical or demagogue fights his way into responsible office."

Tame Hitler quickly vanished from editorials. But wherever possible the paper evaded dealing with Nazi anti-Semitism. By 1942 it buried Washington's 1st announcement of the Holocaust on page 10.

Of course the present publisher, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, Jr., bears no responsibility for his kin's Hitler era infamies. But he knows that if the Times prints an editorial word in favor of any Mearsheimer/Walt thesis, Zionists would fight back, exposing its morbid role in the Hitler era. That can't do it any good. But there is a more important reason why it can't accept their line.

The Ochs and Sulzbergers privately dismissed pre-state Zionism as utopian and sectarian, raising questions as to Jews' loyalty to the US. In 1946, Arthur Hays Sulzberger gave a synagogue speech denouncing Zionist attacks on calls for liberalizing America's immigration laws, passed in 1924 to keep down the number of Catholic and Jewish immigrants. These Zionists wanted Jews in Displaced Persons camps in Germany to have no choice but to go to Palestine. They retaliated by getting the city's Jewish department stores to pull ads from the paper.

Zionism was an offstage noise in 1933-39 Jewish New York. The important political players were the reformist socialists who led the International Ladies Garment Workers Union. They quit the Socialist Party to support Roosevelt. Their major rival were the Communist Party's Jews. Both despised Zionism for seeking charity donations from Jewish capitalists who should have given the money to their Jewish and other workers. They condemned the World Zionist Organization for its "Transfer" Agreement with Hitler. To get Jewish money out of Germany, the WZO sold Nazi goods in the Middle East and shipped it oranges to Europe via Nazi boats. But the holocaust stunned them. Both left elements regressed into nationalism.

Most capitalists mobilized by the Zionists had shared the broad community indifference to Zionism. Most knew little to nothing about Zionism's Hitler era record. But the slaughter had the same effect on them as on 90% of the Jews, who suddenly supported the creation of a Jewish state as a refuge for survivors.

Then Joseph Stalin decided to back Israel's creation. The cold war on, he wanted the British out of the Middle East. He reasoned that if the Zionists ran them out of Palestine, London's Arab puppets would finally start kicking them out of the region. Stalin's line allowed the CPUSA's ranks to do what they wanted to do, and the emotional wave generated by this singular cross-class unity inundated the Times. Thousands of Jews joined hundreds of young Communists, Jew and gentile, black and white, in dancing the hora, the Israeli folk dance, around the Times Tower as its electric sign announced the creation of Israel and its recognition by Stalin and the US.

Sulzberger surrendered. The 5/16/48 editorial after Israel's independence declaration even insisted that "The decision by the Government of the United States to recognize Israel calls logically for a corollary decision by the same Government to lift its present arms embargo."

Support for US taxpayers arming Israel to the teeth remains unquestioned dogma, even though Sulzberger is aware of Zionist bigotry. His assimilationist father married a Christian and she raised him. In 1969 he visited Israel. "The Family," a 4/19/99 New Yorker article, told of his

"challenging a senior official of the Israeli government who suggested that, no matter what happened in the world, everyone around the table would always have a homeland in Israel. 'Excuse me, but I'm an Episcopalian! Is this still my country?' Arthur, Jr. said loudly. Thirty years later, he continues to regard the Israeli's comment as racist."

Can we reasonably hypothesize that Sulzberger sees much of what we see, whatever Times editorials say and don't say? Lefts and Zionists argue with Mearsheimer and Walt re the degree of pro-Zionist neo-con responsibility for the Iraq invasion, but no one doubts that the lobby played a major role in building public support for what the paper now knows is a disastrous war, won or lost. However Sulzberger's national Democratic electoral commitment makes it very difficult for his paper to editorially denounce the lobby.

The Democrats are more crucially dependent on Zionist campaign contributions than the Republicans. If the paper put the lobby under a critical editorial microscope, they would still hustle rich Zionists for bucks. And it knows it can't go over to McCain or any 'moderate' national Republican candidate and hold the allegiance of its educated readers, who cynically see the Democrats as lesser evils, domestically, or share its support for them as rational imperialists.

Unfortunately for the Times, sooner or later it will have to take an editorial position on the lobby. It can't evade what is being discussed in its pages. As soon as Finder's reportage appeared, the Council for the National Interest put an ad in its 4/16 issue:

"What happens in Palestine deeply influences what will happen in Iraq and in the war on terror. As a recent study by professors at Harvard and the University of Chicago concludes, 'Saying that Israel and the United States are united by a shared terrorist threat has the causal relationship backwards: rather the United States has a terrorism problem in good part because it is so closely allied with Israel, not the other way around.'"

Paul Findley of CNI was driven out of Congress by the lobby when he questioned US ties to Israel. We have met. His anti-Zionism started from conservative premises similar to Mearsheimer/Walt but he is now genuinely devoted to justice for the Palestinians.

The issue got hotter with a 4/19 op-ed by Tony Judt, an ex-editor of the New Republic who broke with Zionism in 2003:

"Is Israel, in Mearsheimer/Walt's words, 'a liability in the war on terror and the broader effort to deal with rogue states?' I think it is, but that too is an issue for legitimate debate."

Judt gave us the classic right-wing argument against concern that anti-Semites cheer on Mearsheimer/Walt.

"The damage that is done by America's fear of anti-Semitism when discussing Israel is .... bad for Israel: by guaranteeing it unconditional support, Americans encourage Israel to act heedless of consequences."

Dialectically, the Times' dilemma also exposes Mearsheimer/Walt's and Judt's contradictions. In the tale, the mice decided that if the cat had a bell around its neck, they would hear it and hide. Unfortunately, they had no answer to an old mouse's "But how do you bell the cat?" Mearsheimer and Walt were cofounders of the Coalition for a Realistic Foreign Policy. Its prime organizers were Cato Institute conservatives with 1980s Democratic presidential wannabe Gary Hart providing 'center' cover. To all observers' amazement, they proclaimed to be "united by our opposition to an American empire."

They claim a 'libertarian' vision of what American capitalism should be like. The US is on top of the world economically. It should relax. Constantly expanding militarily imperialism is too statist for them. They want someone in capitalist Washington to make Israel 'make nice' to the Palestinians so that rich Muslims can make nice to America. But who do they think is going to do this? Bush? Rebellious Republicans? The Democrats?

The Democrats and Republicans have been imperialists since before the Spanish-American war. Opposing Bush and neo-con imperialism but not opposing both parties isn't anti-imperialism. De facto it's a call for a new emperor with smarter advisers, i.e., themselves. Sociologist C. Wright Mills encountered their type in academia during the Vietnam war. 'We have to be realistic' was the pro-war professors' national anthem as they and Washington marched to defeat. His "crackpot realist" description of them perfectly fits Mearsheimer and Walt.

Judt broke with Zionism but he also has realpolitik concerns for "the imperial might and international reputation of the United States." Alas, Washington has "chosen to lose touch with the rest of the international community on this issue."

Bush and the neo-cons are so close-linked that its hard to envision a scenario where he breaks with them and retains credibility with anyone. Some Republicans are beginning to wonder where he is leading them. However its his ties to Islamic fanatics, not his hyper-Zionism or Christian zealotry, that upset most of them. Rank and file Republicans were scandalized by pictures of two happy guys, Bush and Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah, holding hands at the ranch. Then Bush's Iraqi Shia clients responded to Sunni terror with their own. Then came the Afghan Abdur Rahman infamy.

Bush was ahead there. Al-Qaada and the Taliban were on the run. Suddenly his native satraps' prosecution of a Christian convert outraged them. They can't justify Christian military dying to establish 'friendly' Islamic states with laws calling for executing converts to their religion. Their critique of Bush has little in common with the profs' or Judt's.

That leaves conservative anti-Zionists with the Democrats, exactly as with the Times. Except that Hillary Clinton still stands by her vote for funding the invasion. And now she constantly makes the rounds of New York's sex-segregated Orthodox synagogues, seeking support from rabbis and male congregants who begin every day with a prayer to God: "Thank you for making me a man, not a woman."

The 1/11/06 Village Voice described her ties to Brooklyn State Assemblyman Dov Hikind, Zionism's David Duke. The Klansman mainstreamed into the Republicans. Hikind went from Meir Kahane's Jewish Defense League, listed by the US and Israel as terrorists, to the Democrats. He is against giving even an inch of the West Bank back to the Palestinians. He opposed her 2000 campaign until she went to him. Now he's in and out of her office. "'Are you going to endorse Hillary Clinton?'.... Hikind said yes, stressing how great a friend she is."

THE GREAT PROTESTANT CRUSADER

The Zionist response to the profs started with 'Duke praises Mearsheimer and Walt.' That didn't work. So Martin Peretz pointed out, in the 4/10 New Republic, that their working paper is nearly 35,000 words, with 210 footnotes, yet

"The word 'oil,' however, appears in the document exactly seven times -- all of them generic or trivial. None of the references relate to the systematic U.S. dependence on foreign crude or ... to the truly powerful lobby that has worked for many decades to satisfy it through arranging that the producer governments get what they want: mainly protection against radical Muslims."

That a denunciation of the Zionists around Bush has gotten so much media attention is certain evidence that Bush has lost his home-front. But Zionists insisting that the US truthfully is the Marxists' oil-greedy imperialist ogre, is just as sure a sign that Israel is likewise losing the propaganda war here. Un fortunately neither realists nor Zionists completely describe the Bush/neo-con relationship that produced the Iraq debacle.

Modern history is full of governments rushing into disastrous wars. However we have to go back to Portugal's 1578 invasion of Morocco for the closest analog to Bush invading Iraq. King Sebastian was three when he came to the throne. Educated by fanatic Jesuits, he grew up with a passion for a crusade against Morocco. Advisors inherited from his father opposed him. Portugal had a lot on its hands in Brazil and the East Indies. But the more they argued against it, the more he surrounded himself with mad monks who thought a crusade was a terrific idea.

Sebastian and 40,000 troops sailed away. Six, not 6,000, came back, none named Sebastian. The kingdom collapsed. In 1580 Spain marched in. Portugal literally disappeared from the map until 1640 when a nobles' revolt regained independence. The Jesuits and monks were Sebastian's neo-cons. Without them, no crusade. But he was king. He went to war, not them. If he wasn't crazy, he would have listened to dad's staff.

"Over-determined" is the historians' term for such phenomena. The neo-cons are Bush's monks. But he was President. If he wasn't as demented as Sebastian he wouldn't have listen to them.

It is also possible to blame oil imperialism for Iraq and apparently explain it. And Bush does have God's unlisted phone number and chats with him at least once a day. Each theory seems to cover the facts. But neither oil, the lobby nor born-again fanaticism, alone, explain our Sebastian. He is simultaneously ex-governor of the epicenter of America's oil industry and a Jesus freak who surrounds himself with Jewish nationalists. Yet, when he got up after 9/11 to announce a "crusade" against Al-Qaada, Jesus, the oil industry and the Zionists were equally stunned when he used the worst possible word under those circumstances.

'MONEY DOESN'T JUST TALK. IT SHOUTS!

Naturally the lobby had to respond to the Times' discussion of itself with 4/22 letters. Seymour Reich of the Israel Policy Forum insisted that Washington is only pro-Zionist because, "beginning with President Harry S. Truman's, every American administration has viewed Israel as an important strategic ally."

Except that we know, from his daughter, Margaret, exactly why he backed creation of a Zionist state. In her book, Harry S. Truman, she describes how

"More than once, the Palestine question was put to Dad in terms of American politics. At a cabinet luncheon on October 6, 1947, Bob Hannegan almost made a speech, pointing out how many Jews were major contributors to the Democratic Party's campaign fund and were expecting the United States to support the Zionists' position on Palestine."

Reich invented Truman viewing Israel as an important Middle Eastern ally. His State Department had pointed out that, strategically, it was the Arabs who had the oil. But Hannegan was Truman's Postmaster General. In those good ol' days, that meant Graftmaster General. He convinced Truman that unless these newly agitated Jewish rich funded him, he would lose the 1948 election. Like Richard Wagner presenting lead-motives in overtures to his operas and then dramatically repeating them throughout the shows, from that day to this, pandering to rich Zionists for campaign money is the 1st consideration in the Democratic Party's "strategic" thinking concerning the Middle East.

Later, after Israel pulverized the Arab armies in 1967, Washington realized that those armies would fold if the Soviets invaded the Middle East. From then until the collapse of the Soviet Union, Israel was a standby military ally. But this didn't negate the party's central concern re campaign funding.

Naturally Mearsheimer and Walt point to this. Jews "make large campaign donations to candidates from both parties. The Washington Post once estimated that Democratic presidential candidates 'depend on Jewish supporters to supply as much as 60 percent of the money.'" But they present no notion of how to stop this. As old-cons, they don't call for abolition of private election funding.

This is a basic difference between "realism" and leftism. But this is also the core distinction between the Times and radicalism. In 1999, New York's other Senator, Charles Schumer, made a Senate speech:

"We have a tremendously serious problem. We have a poison that is in the roots of this great tree of democracy.... That poison is cynicism. That poison is a view of the average citizen, rightly or wrongly -- and in many cases, it is right -- that the average person doesn't have the influence of a person or a company or a group of great wealth.... [I]f we can no longer have the citizens believe, when this body debates an issue, that the debates are being divided by firmly held beliefs rather than by who is manipulating, controlling, or contributing to whom, then we can't survive as a democracy. That fatal distance between people and their government will get larger and larger and larger."

With readers sharply aware of local and national corruption, Times chief editorialist Gail Collins constantly takes up reform. On 5/6, she warned us yet again re congress: "There's also no reason to believe that the average lawmaker has any real intention of following even the extremely modest ethics improvements that do make it into law."

But she never mentions Zionist contributions. These aren't a state secret. Major pro-Zionist 'Jewish community' journals, Forward and Jewish Week, run detailed accounts of them. Jews are only two percent of Americans. Zionists admit that they are an ever shrinking minority of that two percent, and the rich who put money into the hacks' pockets are a minority among Zionists. How serious can the Times be about campaign reform if it never editorially confronts this egregious example of a moneyed minority of a minority of a minority corrupting both parties?

Indeed, this is in keeping with Times general hypocrisy about money in politics. For all of Collins' wearisome sarcasm re politicians, at election time the Times lists the local Democrats and occasional Republicans it wants readers to vote for. The winners among them are a huge percentage of those crooked average lawmakers Collins whines about.

The wide discussion of Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt's policy paper, including the gingerly Times take, tells us that most pro-capitalist intellectuals see Bush in deepening trouble throughout the Middle East. So they debate who to blame for getting us into these wars, without making the slightest effort to build a movement to get the US out of them.

Still, we thank the profs, Zionists and the Times. The academics succeeded in mainstreaming critical discussion of the lobby. But their approach is so narrow that it almost forced Zionists to respond by shouting about how, well and truly, the US is imperialist. And the Times' failure to editorially draw even one conclusion from a discussion in its own pages, much less call for a new policy towards Zionism, focuses us on cleaning up the antiwar movement's own act.

We have yet to set up an educational program, giving a rounded explanation of Washington's wars, clearly identifying the sins, crimes and follies of all the players on the stage, foreign and domestic. With that in place, we can organize Americans to defeat the bipartisan demagogues and imperialists in the streets and electorally, once and for all and forever.

Asked why government lawyers were invoking the Aipac case in security clearance disputes with no known connection to the pro-Israel group, Mr. Cohen said, "The only reason to possibly use it is to implicate anybody with a connection to Israel, to imply they cannot be trusted. There is no other conceivable reason to bring it up."

The two former Aipac staffers, Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman, and the Pentagon analyst, Lawrence Franklin, were indicted in August 2005 on charges they conspired to pass classified information to persons not entitled to receive it, including Israeli officials and members of the press.

Franklin pleaded guilty in October. Messrs. Rosen and Weissman, who were fired by Aipac last year, have pleaded not guilty and are scheduled to go on trial in federal court in Alexandria, Va. in August. However, a judge is considering their motion to throw out the case on the grounds that they were not government employees and had no legal obligation to protect any secrets Franklin may have provided.

Lawyers familiar with the security clearance review process said it is impossible to determine the full impact of the Aipac case on clearances because large swaths of the clearance process take place out of public view, including nearly all cases involving government employees. Only a few hundred cases involving government contractor employees are made public each year by the Defense Office of Hearings and Appeals, a quasi-judicial body which is overseen by the defense department's general counsel. The most recent cases on the Pentagon's Web site are from 2005.

Mr. Cohen, who recently completed a study of the Israel-related security clearance cases, found that "an unusually large number" of the public cases involving concerns about foreign influence appear to relate to Israel. The names are deleted from cases made public by the Pentagon and most of those involved in clearance disputes do not wish to be identified, Mr. Cohen said.

One of the pending clearance cases where government lawyers have sought to rely on the Aipac prosecution involves an Israeli-born mechanical engineer who has worked at a major defense contractor, Lockheed Martin, for more than two decades, the employee's attorney, David Schoen, told the Sun.

"There was some basis for McCarthyism. Here there's nothing, just this dual loyalty business," Mr. Schoen said. "It really strikes me as un-American."

The Lockheed employee, whom Mr. Schoen declined to name, was born in Israel but emigrated to America 25 years ago. "His wife is American. His kids are American," the lawyer said. "He has never had a problem at Lockheed."

More than 7 years ago, the engineer was assigned to the F-22 fighter jet project and granted a "secret" clearance, Mr. Schoen said. A few months ago, defense department officials moved to revoke the employee's clearance, citing his dual Israeli citizenship, his possession of an Israeli passport, and the fact that his mother and siblings live in Israel.

Mr. Schoen said his client fully disclosed the citizenship, the passport, and the family ties when he was first granted the clearance and was puzzled by the sudden claim that he was a security risk.

At a hearing a few weeks ago on the Lockheed engineer's case, Mr. Schoen said, a government attorney sought to file the indictment of Messrs. Franklin, Rosen, and Weissman as an exhibit. The government argued that the indictment showed Israel was actively spying on America, Mr. Schoen said.

Mr. Schoen said he strenuously objected that the indictment was irrelevant to his client's case and, as a charging document, no proof of anything. "The only relevance can be is here are two Jews in Washington who are accused of spying for Israel so now any Jew is suspect for that," he said.

Mr. Schoen said the government argued that Franklin's guilty plea confirmed the validity of the charges, but the administrative judge conducting the clearance review hearing declined to admit the exhibit.

Mr. Schoen said his client, whose hearing was continued to June, was recently laid off by Lockheed.

The Defense Department public affairs office initially referred the Sun's questions about these issues to the Defense Security Service, which said it could not respond. A Pentagon spokesman later referred the questions to the Defense Office of Hearings and Appeals. An official there, Peregrine Russell-Hunter, said no one in the office was authorized to speak with the press. "We haven't had a press inquiry here in a very long time," he said.

After courts ruled that dual citizenship alone was insufficient to deny a clearance, in 2002, the defense department adopted a policy that denied clearances to most people who hold foreign passports. Mr. Schoen said his client offered to give up his Israeli passport if the government would agree to grant him a clearance, but the government declined.

A law professor who studies issues of dual nationality, Peter Spiro, said he saw no legitimate connection between the Aipac prosecution and the security clearance cases involving dual citizens. The professor, who teaches at the University of Georgia, noted that Messrs. Franklin and Weissman are not Israeli citizens. "All it says then is that somebody of a certain ethnicity may be more amenable to do the bidding of a foreign government," Mr. Spiro said. "These folks are being picked out for their national association which in this case is a proxy for their ethnic identity.... It's sort of like corruption of the extended blood."

The professor said there have been no major espionage cases involving dual nationals and intelligence agencies would be foolish to enlist people with such obvious ties.

A Jewish leader in Washington, Rabbi Shmuel Herzfeld, said he was disturbed by the challenges to security clearances. "This is terrible," he said. "People around the country are turning to use and telling us of ongoing cases where people are stripped of their livelihoods just because they're Jewish."

Mr. Cohen said he has not seen evidence the Pentagon is hostile to Jews. Rather, he said, people with ties to Israel have been casualties of a general tightening of the clearance process since the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. "There is an intensification of government interest in people who have ties to any country in the Middle East," he said. "Aipac may just have added fuel to the fire."

In 2000, an attorney for the CIA, Adam Ciralsky, made headlines when he charged that the agency fired him because he is Jewish, studied Hebrew, and traveled to Israel. The agency denied that anti-Semitism played any role in his firing, but acknowledged that some memos written by investigators were offensive and inappropriate.

Nearly six years after Mr. Ciralsky filed suit over his firing, his case against the CIA is still pending before a federal court in Washington.

The Kadima party's victory in Israel's elections last month reveals the deep shift that has taken place in Israeli politics. By bringing Ehud Olmert into power with a solid leftwing majority in the Knesset, the Israeli public has made it clear to its politicians that it is ready to give up the dream of a Greater Israel. A leading hawk and life-long revisionist until only recently, Olmert based his electoral campaign on a promise to carry out his "convergence plan" (which in Hebrew rhymes with and evokes Ariel Sharon's "disengagement plan") to evacuate settlers from the West Bank.

However, Olmert's actions since being elected suggest that he does not intend to act in accordance with the mandate given to him by the public. Olmert rejected talks with the Israeli Arab parties and has shown little enthusiasm for Meretz, despite the fact that these parties have been calling for the evacuation of settlements for years, making them the most natural partners for a government sincere about ending the settlement enterprise.

Instead Olmert began by courting the hardline nationalist Yisrael Beiteinu party, whose leader recently said that certain Israeli Arab members of the Knesset should be executed. He eventually brought the rightwing Shas party into his government, and may yet recruit another anti-pullout party for his coalition, in addition to the Labour Party and the Pensioners, to the left of Kadima. In light of this unexpected coalition, a closer look at the details of the convergence plan is in order.

Between the lines

The stated aim of the convergence plan is to evacuate approximately seventy thousand Jewish settlers from their homes on the other side of the fence separating Israel from the Palestinians. (Lately, Kadima members have been saying that the number of evacuated settlers will actually be lower). Even if Olmert keeps his promise, this figure represents less than a third of the Jewish settlers on the West Bank of the Jordan, not counting another 184,000 Jewish residents of East Jerusalem who also live over the Green Line, and are considered settlers by the Palestinians and much of the international community. Thus the convergence plan will not spell the end of the Jewish settlement enterprise in the West Bank.

Nor will the convergence plan end Israel's military occupation of the West Bank. Olmert has assured the public on several occasions that unlike in Gaza, where the army was pulled back to the Green Line, in the West Bank the army will remain even in those areas where settlements are to be evacuated. Thus Palestinian life will continue to be disrupted by military checkpoints; Israeli soldiers serving in the West Bank will continue to be exposed to attacks by Palestinian militants; and Israel's military front lines will not be shortened (a step widely seen as a means to free up funds for education, health and other social spending).

Olmert's promise finally to determine permanent and recognised borders for Israel also appears doubtful. Recognised borders by definition must be agreed in negotiations with the Palestinians. Olmert has promised to hold an internal dialogue with the settler movement, and to coordinate his positions with the Bush Administration in Washington later this month, but he seems to have no intention of negotiating in good faith with the Palestinians.

In fact, the prime minister has stated on many occasions that he sees no partner for negotiations on the Palestinian side unless several preconditions are fulfilled, including a change in the democratically elected Hamas government. He has made it clear that he will implement his plan unilaterally if negotiations fail, despite the fact that its outlines have already been rejected by the Palestinians in past negotiations. They are roughly the same lines that Ehud Barak brought to Camp David in 2000, which the Palestinian leadership rejected out of hand. Barak's map was later reincarnated as the approximate route of Sharon's separation wall, and is now to form the basis of Olmert's proposed permanent eastern border.

For their part, the Palestinians have called on the new Israeli government to sit down for talks with Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas. Neighbouring Arab countries have also called for negotiations rather than unilateral actions. The Hamas government has made it clear that it views Olmert's unilateralism as "a declaration of war", and experienced Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat has stated that "peace and settlements cannot go together".

Maps produced in recent unofficial negotiations between Israeli and Palestinian leaders provide a better picture of what a final negotiated settlement might look like. In these maps, certain settlement blocks disappear, while others are preserved in a scaled-down form.

Facts on the ground

Like Ariel Sharon before him, Olmert has pledged that the settlement blocks will be a part of Israel forever. The basis of this promise is a letter from George W Bush to Sharon last April recognizing the settlement blocks as "new realities on the ground". The Israeli government sees this as proof of the Bush Administration's acquiescence to Israel's territorial ambitions regarding these areas - hence the urgency to accomplish the convergence by the end of Bush's term.

Labour chairman Amir Peretz has called on the new government to set up a legal and budgetary framework for the immediate evacuation of those settlers who are willing to move back over the Green Line. There are many of these, and early coordinated relocation is certainly preferable to coerced evacuation. There are also enough existing empty homes in communities and urban neighbourhoods within the Green Line to provide at least a partial solution for their absorption. But Olmert instead plans to build thousands of new housing units in the West Bank settlement blocks for the future evacuees. This will likely translate into reactivating controversial shelved building plans. One plan that has the potential to absorb at least half of the evacuees is the E1 plan, east of Jerusalem. Previously rejected by the US, and bitterly opposed by the Palestinians, the E1 plan now looks set to make a comeback. If built, E1 would sandwich Palestinian East Jerusalem between Jewish West Jerusalem and a massive block of Jewish settlements to the east.

Just as a former advisor to Sharon, Dov Weisglass, once revealed that the Gaza evacuation was meant to spoil any chance for peace negotiations with the Palestinians, it appears that relocating settlers en masse to Jewish settlement blocks would make future negotiations that much more difficult, if not impossible.

And just as Gaza evacuees were relocated to the Halutza area, previously seen as an area to be potentially handed over to the Palestinians in a land swap, settlers evacuated from isolated West Bank settlements will be shifted to consolidated settlement blocks to solidify Israel's hold on these territories. These blocks are unacceptable to the Palestinians, and the chances of evacuating settlers for a second time in the future are slim. It appears that Olmert is following Sharon's strategy of using ostensible peace moves to predetermine the results of any future agreement.

Thus the actual objectives of the convergence plan appear to be the following:

* to continue the military occupation of the West Bank;
* to expand settlement construction by winning US approval for building projects that until now have met with opposition in the Bush Administration;
* to continue the transfer of state resources to the settlers, against the wishes of the voting public, by providing them with massive compensation packages and new homes outside the Green Line;
* to use public funds to create profitable business opportunities for influential building contractors - who, with the completion of the separation wall over the next couple of years, will soon be keen for more massive government-funded projects - by fast-track approval of the construction of thousands of new apartments;
* to predetermine the results of any future negotiations with the Palestinians by cementing the status of the settlement blocks as irreversible "facts on the ground".

In any case, it is clear that the convergence plan will not end the conflict and bring peace in the middle east. The Gaza disengagement showed that unilateral actions strengthen radical elements on the Palestinian side, thus potentially raising the intensity of the conflict.

Olmert's convergence is scheduled to be completed by 2010, the same year his term in office ends. It appears that the Israelis and the Palestinians will have to wait until at least the next decade for a serious chance for peace in the region.

Hamas partly fought the January election on a law and order ticket amid hopes that it would put an end to tribal and factional shootings, kidnappings and other violence.

But witnesses told Associated Press that members of the Hamas-supporting force ­ many with the beards favoured by Gaza's devout Muslims ­ had also beaten demonstrators at the education ministry offices in the southern Gaza town of Khan Yunis. Ministry officials and protesters said around 40 militiamen had jumped from jeeps and fired in the air before entering the building and attacking protesters with clubs and rifles.

Jamal Abu Samadhana is a prominent member of the Popular Resistance Committee, which is believed to be responsible for many of the rocket attacks on Israel and has been suspected of involvement in the bombing which killed three Americans travelling through Gaza in October 2003.

Units of the force ­ said to number 3,000 in all ­ were ordered on to the streets by the Hamas Interior Minister Said Syam after the shootings " to protect the security of the citizens and their property".

This was despite explicit rejection of the new force by Mr Abbas, who insisted he was in overall charge of security and has been building up his own personal security force with US help. Maher Mekdad, a Fatah spokesman in Gaza, declared: "The formation of this unit is illegal. It violates the presidential decree, and it's a unit outside the law."

There were no claims of responsibility for the drive-by shootings but Mushir al-Masri, a prominent Hamas parliamentarian in Gaza, said: "This is a plan of the Preventative Security to draw Hamas into a civil war and to make the government appear ineffective." Meanwhile in Strasbourg, Mr Abbas said in an interview with AP that Hamas "can't survive" if it continues to ignore international demands that it refrain from violence and recognise Israel. "They should adapt to international standards, they should be part of the international community. Without that I don't think they can survive, I don't think they can deliver," he said. Mr Abbas added: "Whether it is reasonable to expect a change or not we have to give them a chance. They've been in office less than a month and a half. They should take their chance."

Meanwhile the new Labour Defence Minister, Amir Peretz, signalled a new approach to Gaza's economic crisis by requesting the army to reopen the Karni cargo crossing into Israel for export cargo. Yesterday was the first day the crossing ­ which has been closed for much of the past six months ­ was opened for outgoing traffic since Palestinian police foiled an attack on it on 26 April.

Professor Rafi Walden and Professor Zvi Bentwich, two senior Israeli clinicians on the board of Physicians for Human Rights ­ Israel, called on the Israeli government to take immediate action to pay directly for drugs, medical salaries and hospital treatment for Palestinians to relieve what they warned was now a rapidly worsening medical emergency in Gaza. They rejected claims that the international and Israeli boycott of funding to the PA would not affect humanitarian needs. Professor Bentwich said of the government: "The reality of what they have done is clearly not fitting with what they have stated."

An Israeli official said that Israel was now discussing the creation of an independent unit at every medical centre to pay Palestinian clinicians' salaries. The official added that provisions had been made for the direct payment to Israeli hospitals for Palestinian patients out of the revenues it is withholding from the PA. But officials at Shifa hospital in Gaza City say that 270 patients are awaiting transfer to Israel partly because the PA has no funds to pay for treatment there.

The Hamas-led Palestinian Authority has deployed a new militia in Gaza under the command of a leading militant and in direct defiance of a veto by the PA President Mahmoud Abbas.

The paramilitary "implementation force", led by Jamal Abu Samadhana, prominent on Israel's wanted list, took up positions on the streets of Gaza City and elsewhere yesterday with the stated aim of restoring order in the increasingly lawless Strip. Late last night security force units loyal to Mr Abbas began patrolling Gaza as part of what a security official told Reuters would be the largest such deployment since the run-up to Israel's withdrawal from Gaza last August.

The moves risked increasing tension between Fatah and Hamas after two Hamas militants were killed in drive-by shootings which the faction blamed on the Fatah-dominated Preventative Security Force. But by 1am there had been no clashes between the rival forces.

Hamas partly fought the January election on a law and order ticket amid hopes that it would put an end to tribal and factional shootings, kidnappings and other violence.

But witnesses told Associated Press that members of the Hamas-supporting force ­ many with the beards favoured by Gaza's devout Muslims ­ had also beaten demonstrators at the education ministry offices in the southern Gaza town of Khan Yunis. Ministry officials and protesters said around 40 militiamen had jumped from jeeps and fired in the air before entering the building and attacking protesters with clubs and rifles.

Jamal Abu Samadhana is a prominent member of the Popular Resistance Committee, which is believed to be responsible for many of the rocket attacks on Israel and has been suspected of involvement in the bombing which killed three Americans travelling through Gaza in October 2003.

Units of the force ­ said to number 3,000 in all ­ were ordered on to the streets by the Hamas Interior Minister Said Syam after the shootings " to protect the security of the citizens and their property".

This was despite explicit rejection of the new force by Mr Abbas, who insisted he was in overall charge of security and has been building up his own personal security force with US help. Maher Mekdad, a Fatah spokesman in Gaza, declared: "The formation of this unit is illegal. It violates the presidential decree, and it's a unit outside the law."

There were no claims of responsibility for the drive-by shootings but Mushir al-Masri, a prominent Hamas parliamentarian in Gaza, said: "This is a plan of the Preventative Security to draw Hamas into a civil war and to make the government appear ineffective." Meanwhile in Strasbourg, Mr Abbas said in an interview with AP that Hamas "can't survive" if it continues to ignore international demands that it refrain from violence and recognise Israel. "They should adapt to international standards, they should be part of the international community. Without that I don't think they can survive, I don't think they can deliver," he said. Mr Abbas added: "Whether it is reasonable to expect a change or not we have to give them a chance. They've been in office less than a month and a half. They should take their chance."

Meanwhile the new Labour Defence Minister, Amir Peretz, signalled a new approach to Gaza's economic crisis by requesting the army to reopen the Karni cargo crossing into Israel for export cargo. Yesterday was the first day the crossing ­ which has been closed for much of the past six months ­ was opened for outgoing traffic since Palestinian police foiled an attack on it on 26 April.

Professor Rafi Walden and Professor Zvi Bentwich, two senior Israeli clinicians on the board of Physicians for Human Rights ­ Israel, called on the Israeli government to take immediate action to pay directly for drugs, medical salaries and hospital treatment for Palestinians to relieve what they warned was now a rapidly worsening medical emergency in Gaza. They rejected claims that the international and Israeli boycott of funding to the PA would not affect humanitarian needs. Professor Bentwich said of the government: "The reality of what they have done is clearly not fitting with what they have stated."

An Israeli official said that Israel was now discussing the creation of an independent unit at every medical centre to pay Palestinian clinicians' salaries. The official added that provisions had been made for the direct payment to Israeli hospitals for Palestinian patients out of the revenues it is withholding from the PA. But officials at Shifa hospital in Gaza City say that 270 patients are awaiting transfer to Israel partly because the PA has no funds to pay for treatment there.

It would also coincide with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's first visit to Washington.

Abbas will meet Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni on Sunday at the Egyptian resort of Sharm-el-Sheik. Both men will attend the World Economic Forum.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry wouldn't immediately confirm the meeting, but indicated that Livni's schedule for the weekend had not been finalized.