Latest scapegoating of Jews

is national director

of the Anti-Defamation League

The issues surrounding the Middle East - what to do about Iraq, a nuclear Iran, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the continuing threat of Islamic extremism and terrorism - are too serious to be subject to scapegoating and simplistic attacks.

Unfortunately, we have seen in recent years the emergence of a number of such assaults, indeed, conspiracy theories, targeting the Israel lobby and the American Jewish community. It began with comments by Rep. Jim Moran (D., Va.) in 2003, in which he blamed the war in Iraq on neoconservative Jews. This was followed by an article by two professors from distinguished academic institutions, John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Stephen Walt of Harvard, in which they claimed that the overwhelming power of the Israel lobby steered American policy in directions against U.S. interests. And then, former President Jimmy Carter in his book Palestine: Peace or Apartheid and Mearsheimer and Walt again in The Israel Policy and U.S. Foreign Policy, the book version of their original article, reinforced the scapegoating of Israel, the Israel Lobby, and American Jews.

All of these expressions are troubling - first, because they simply distort the truth. In the words of individuals like Edward S. Walker Jr., former ambassador to Egypt and Israel, and Dennis Ross, former special envoy for the Middle East Peace Process - people long-involved in the nitty-gritty of policymaking on Middle East issues - these charges of Jewish or pro-Israel control of policy bear no resemblance to reality. Any serious discussion of policymaking will speak to a diversity of factors, internal and external, that come into the mix.

No matter how one tries to pretty up these charges, the focus on American Jews smacks of classic conspiracy-mongering about excessive Jewish power, disloyalty, and acting in cabal. To blame the war in Iraq on the Jews - a community, by the way, that has had a high level of outspoken critics of the war - is to play into the notion that somehow neoconservative Jews have more power than the real deciders: George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice - none of whom is Jewish. This is a classic anti-Semitic canard.

It is claimed that the Israel lobby stifles debate in this country on the Middle East, that the Palestinian narrative gets no hearing. In fact, all one has to do is turn on the TV any day, read a daily newspaper, log on to Web sites and blogs, or visit college campuses to see all views expressed, and many critical of Israel.

Such scapegoating of Jews has a long and nasty history. It surfaces most when anxiety is in the air, as has existed since Sept. 11, 2001. It seems like an effort to intimidate supporters of Israel from continuing their efforts. It also carries with it the danger of diverting attention from the truly difficult policy choices that face this country.

That is why I wrote my book The Deadliest Lies: The Israel Lobby and the Myth of Jewish Control. I hope readers will see not only that such conspiracy theories are bad for American Jews, but also that they could set America off in irrational directions about its future.

My book is based on the notion that Americans ultimately support Israel not because of any lobby, but because they identify with the Jewish state and its values, because they see Israel as wanting peace, and because they see Israel as a valuable U.S. ally in an unstable region. Most Americans are not interested in scapegoating a community that shares with them so many goals and values.

The Mearsheimer-Walt-Carter phenomenon comes at a time when conspiracy theories about Jews are resurging around the world. According to Gallup, millions believe that Jews or Israel, not Osama bin Laden, were responsible for the 9/11 attacks. Holocaust denial in many parts of the Arab and Muslim world is finding its way with increasing frequency into articles and political statements. Most notable are statements by Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who not only questioned the reality of the Holocaust, but then followed up by organizing a conference of Holocaust deniers who came to Tehran to give further legitimacy to this insidious lie.

Images right out of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the infamous anti-Semitic forgery, appear on television and in newspaper cartoons in a number of Arab states. And even in Western Europe, high percentages of the population believe that Jews are more loyal to Israel than to the country in which they live and are citizens. They also believe that Jews have too much influence in politics and business.

That is why it was important for me to dissect the inaccuracies, distortions and inadequate analyses being presented on the subject of how Middle East policy is made.

The views that Jews control the Congress and the president, that Jews care only about their own self-interest - read Israel - rather than what is in the best interests of America, are views that have been destructive to the Jewish people for generations.

It is bad enough when such views surface in other countries. When they appear at the heart of the American establishment, they must be taken particularly seriously.