Prof. McGonagall

Obviously it's in their interest to paint as black picture of Israel is possible, it is very difficult for the Israelis to paint a more rosy picture.

Obviously the life of our person living in Tibet or Darfur is not as important as the life of the Palestinian living in Palestine. I very much doubt that the situation in Syria, the people are being murdered, raped and terrorised, is of little importance in your council chambers.

I wish you well in your endeavours.
PS. I hope that you don't have bombs, mortars and bullets being indiscriminately fired at a West Dunbarton

Keep up the good work.

I have emailed the good Councillor and suggest everyone do the same.

As for the "genie [being] out of the bottle", for decades those opposed to Israel have loudly complained that a Jewish conspiracy is subverting US foreign policy and attempting to silence them. This is nothing new, and they remain blissfully unaware of the irony. Typically, they refer to any criticism as "censorship" or "oppression" or "moral blackmail", when trying to shut down their opponents' free speech or at least evade their opponents' argument. It's troubling that so many prominent British publications have taken to actively seeking out conspiricist anti-Israel material for publication, even from members of the Arab lobby like Stephen Walt.

This has led to the number of antisemitic attacks in Britain reaching an all-time high (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/7156244/Record-number-of-anti-Semitic-attacks-in-Britain.html) . At British universities, pro-Israel speakers are banned out of "security concerns", while virulently anti-Israel speakers are permitted.

Mearsheimer doesn't exhibit an interest in preserving free speech when he accuses Jews who disagree with him of "blind loyalty to the Jewish state" and being the "new Afrikaners" (http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2010/04/30/mearsheimer-makes-a-list/). He's engaging in classic antisemitic conspiracy theories, where he accuses Jews of disloyalty to their country and engaging in conspiratorial subversion of their country on behalf of their own interests.

“Mearsheimer and Walt's The Israel Lobby was published in the United States by the firm of Farrar, Straus and Giroux in 2007. Evidently, your argument against the "Israel Lobby" is so strong that you're reduced to inventing censorship and then attributing the non-existent censorship to Israel's supporters!”

No. See the FT link below. The core thesis of the book had been widely disseminated before the book was published in 2007. The genie was out of the bottle by the time Farrer Straus published it in 2007.

The book was originally a paper commissioned in 2002 by The Atlantic Monthly, and was then rejected for “unknown reasons”.

In 2006 it was available as a Working Paper at the Kennedy School. In the same year, an edited version appeared in London Review of Books under the title “The Israel Lobby”. Later in 2006 a revised edition was published in “Middle East Policy”.

“Kindly post a reply as to why you are repeating this assertion that a sinister Israel Lobby suppressed the free speech of Mearsheimer and Walt.”

The British Financial Times, perhaps articulated it better than Ambassador Peck even,

America and Israel http://news.ft.com/cms/s/8ed824fc-c11b-11da-9419-…
Author: Financial Times Editorial Board
Published: Apr 1, 2006

Only a UK publication, the London Review of Books, was prepared to carry their critique, in the same way that it was Prospect, a British monthly journal, that four years ago published a path-breaking study of the Israel lobby by the American analyst, Michael Lind.

Moral blackmail – the fear that any criticism of Israeli policy and US support for it will lead to charges of anti-Semitism – is a powerful disincentive to publish dissenting views. It is also leading to the silencing of policy debate on American university campuses, partly as the result of targeted campaigns against the dissenters.

Ambassador Edward L. Peck
Of Course There Is an Israel Lobby http://independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=17…
The expected tsunami of rabid responses condemned the report, vilified its authors, and denied there is such a lobby—validating both the lobby’s existence and aggressive, pervasive presence and obliging Harvard to remove its name.