Free Republic

Ukraine’s American-backed fight against Russia is being waged not only in the blood-soaked trenches of the Donbas region but also on what military planners call the cognitive battlefield – to win hearts and minds. A sprawling constellation of media outlets organized with substantial funding and direction from the U.S. government has not just worked to counter Russian propaganda but has supported strong censorship laws and shutdowns of dissident outlets, disseminated disinformation of its own, and sought to silence critics of the war, including many American citizens. Economist Jeffrey Sachs, commentator Tucker Carlson, journalist Glenn Greenwald, and University of Chicago Professor...

US political scientist John Mearsheimer on Israel’s ‘punishment campaign’ against the civilian population in Palestine. Israel has gone far beyond “going after Hamas” in the first 10 weeks of its war on Gaza, according to one of the United States’ leading political scientists, John Mearsheimer. He tells host Steve Clemons that murdering hundreds of civilians daily and starving the rest is a “punishment campaign” and “should be unacceptable to decent people all over the world”. In this episode, Mearsheimer, who teaches international relations at the University of Chicago, looks into Israel’s long-term strategies and explains why the elites in the...

A controversial research report, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, by Harvard professor Stephen Walt and University of Chicago professor John Mearsheimer, that faults the “Israel lobby” for allegedly distorting the foreign policy of the United States to the detriment of U.S. interests, and which has been severely criticized as inaccurate and wrongheaded, no longer sports the Harvard or Kennedy School of Government logos that previously appeared on its front page. The original first page, with the Harvard and KSG logos, and the usual small disclaimer. The revised first page – no Harvard logos and a much stronger and...

Gilad Atzmon is a jazz saxophonist who lives in London and who has a side gig disseminating the wildest sort of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. He is an ex-Israeli and a self-proclaimed "self-hater" who traffics in Holocaust denial and all sorts of grotesque, medieval anti-Jewish calumnies. Here is a small sample of his lunatic thoughts (bold text is mine):

Students at the University of Chicago are not happy with Professor John Mearsheimer – and they want the school to “remedy” the “problem” of his comments. Professor Mearsheimer, known for his work on the realist approach to national security issues, has argued that problems in Ukraine are the fault of the West. He gave a speech in 2015 that called the violent 2014 removal of President Viktor Yanukovych a “coup.” He also referred to fighting between two groups of Ukranians in the Donbas region a “civil war.”

Hal Freeman is an American who relocated to Russia with his Russian-born wife, and their children — this, in part to take a Benedict Option of their own. He writes a blog about his experiences there. Recently, he wrote about a post I’d made here, about people who have decided to leave America to live abroad. In his response, Freeman talked about his experience, and about a new book by University of Chicago political theorist John Mearsheimer. Excerpts: Others, not writing from a Christian perspective, have also noted major changes in American culture and the inability of much of “the...

A pair of activists in the state of Washington are promoting an anti-Israel curriculum that high school social studies teachers are considering adopting. Ed Mast and Linda Bevis, of the Palestine Solidarity Committee, have developed “The Palestine Teaching Trunk.” Bevis gave a presentation on it in October at the Washington State Council for the Social Studies annual meeting, Edward Alexander reported in The Weekly Standard on November 10, 2014. “In 1967, Israel seized control of the West Bank and Gaza from Egypt and Jordan,” the “Teaching Trunk curriculum reads. “Israel instituted a military occupation in Gaza and the West Bank—which...

Armaros wrote, "This is it. As the evidence grew about Iran building bombs and warheads, Obama's team must have shown divisions. Thus he removes the eyes who saw, Ross, (who is a Clintonian) and replaces him with an Iran regime lobbyist. The Iran lobby, the NIAC, is a regime presence within the USA. Led by a famous Brzezinski-endorsed Iranian antisemite who blames Israel for Iran-US tensions and denies Ahmadinejad said "wipe off the map". Basically Obama has handed over the Iran negotiations to an Iranian regime agency. This is grotesque and shows Obama's determination to avoid confronting Iran at all...

Professor John J. Mearsheimer states… Fortunately, there is a strategy that has proved effective in the past and could serve again today: “offshore balancing.” It’s less ambitious than President Bush’s grand plan to spread democracy throughout the Middle East, but it would be much better at protecting actual U.S. interests. The United States would station its military forces outside the region. And “balancing” would mean we’d rely on regional powers like Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia to check each other. Washington would remain diplomatically engaged, and when necessary would assist the weaker side in a conflict. It would also use...

A tenured professor at the University of Chicago recently claimed Israel was to blame for the Sept. 11 attacks and for the U.S. war in Iraq. The assertions by John Mearsheimer were met with an amen chorus from colleagues at New York University and Columbia. "The Israel lobby was one of the principal driving forces behind the Iraq war, and in its absence we probably would not have had a war," he explained. Later, he said al-Qaida's "animus to the United States … stemmed from U.S. foreign policy toward Israel." Imagine what a peaceful world in which we would live...

US scholars: Israel planned Lebanon war in advance Nathan Guttman, THE JERUSALEM POST Aug. 29, 2006 The two US scholars, who stirred controversy several months ago after claiming that US foreign policy is skewed in favor of Israel due to the work of the pro-Israeli lobby, are now accusing the lobby of leading the administration, Congress and public opinion to support Israel's actions in Lebanon against America's best interests. Profs. Stephan Walt and John Mearsheimer also claim that Israel had planned the war in Lebanon in advanced and used the kidnapping of its soldiers as a pretext to launch the...

And so I repeat my challenges to Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer. I challenge them to tell us which arguments are new and have not previously been made on hate sites and in anti-Israel screeds. What new evidence has been gathered? Why are there so many factual errors, all cutting against Israel? Why didn’t they present important counterfacts or address any counterarguments? Walt and Mearsheimer repeatedly claim that they have written their paper, at least in part, in order to stimulate dialogue concerning the influence of the Lobby. They claim that it is the pro-Israel side that seeks to suppress...