Jews and Israel: More Voices

Note

The following letter was written in response to Tony Judt's op-ed "A Lobby, Not a Conspiracy" which appeared in The New York Times on April 19, 2006.

To the Editor:

We strongly agree that Israel's influence upon United States policy is indeed an "issue for legitimate debate," and that irrational name-calling only obfuscates the serious matters under discussion.

As chairmen of their doctoral committees, we have known and worked with Prof. John J. Mearsheimer and Prof. Stephen Walt for many years and under many circumstances.

Though we have not always agreed with their intellectual positions and have some reservations about their essay "The Israel Lobby," we reject criticisms of their work as anti- Semitic. This charge is baseless and has no place in any serious understanding of their research.

Richard Rosecrance

Kenneth Waltz

Cambridge, Mass., April 19, 2006

The writers are, respectively, a senior fellow at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard and an adjunct professor of political science at Columbia University.