Given that the Middle East is currently the central challenge facing America, Professors John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt have rendered a public service by initiating a much-needed public debate on the role of the “Israel lobby” in the shaping of U.S. foreign policy.

The participation of ethnic or foreign-supported lobbies in the American policy process is nothing new. In my public life, I have dealt with a number of them. I would rank the Israeli-American, Cuban-American, and Armenian-American lobbies as the most effective in their assertiveness. The Greek- and Taiwanese-American lobbies also rank highly in my book. The Polish-American lobby was at one time influential (Franklin Roosevelt complained about it to Joseph Stalin), and I daresay that before long we will be hearing a lot from the Mexican-, Hindu-, and Chinese-American lobbies as well.

Mearsheimer and Walt are critical of the pro-Israel lobby and of Israel’s conduct in a number of historical instances. They are outspoken regarding Israel’s prolonged mistreatment of the Palestinians. They are, in brief, generally critical of Israel’s policy and, thus, could be labeled as being in some respects anti-Israel. But an anti-Israel bias is not the same as anti-Semitism. To argue as much is to claim an altogether unique immunity for Israel, untouchable by the kind of criticism that is normally directed at the conduct of states.

Anyone who recalls World War II knows that anti-Semitism is the unbridled and irrational hatred of Jews. The case made by Mearsheimer and Walt did not warrant the hysterical charges of anti-Semitism leveled at them by several academics in self-demeaning attacks published in leading U.S. newspapers. Sadly, some even stooped to McCarthyite accusations of guilt by association, triumphantly citing the endorsement of ...