After the paper by Walt and Mearsheimer on Israel Lobby in the US was published, and duly attacked by the Lobby, Noam Chomsky surprisingly joined the critics of the document in a piece called The Israel Lobby?

http://www.zmag.org/content/print_article.cfm?itemID=9999&sectionID=11

This response was met with critique by Jim Petras.

Noam Chomsky and the Pro-Israel Lobby:

Fourteen Erroneous Theses

James Petras

“…Reflexes that ordinarily spring automatically to the defense of open debate and free enquiry shut down – at least among much of America’s political elite – once the subject turns to Israel, and above all the pro-Israel lobby’s role in shaping US foreign policy…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…Nothing, moreover, is more damaging to US interests than the inability to have a proper debate about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict…Bullying Americans into consensus on Israeli policy is bad for Israel and makes it impossible for America to articulate its own national interests….” Financial Times, Editorial, Saturday, April 01, 2006.

Introduction

Noam Chomsky has been called the US leading intellectual by pundits and even some sectors of the mass media. He has a large audience throughout the world especially in academic circles, in large part because of his vocal criticism of US foreign policy and many of the injustices resulting from those policies. Chomsky has nonetheless been reviled by all of the major Jewish and pro-Israel organizations and media for his criticism of Israeli policy toward the Palestinians even as he has defended the existence of the Zionist state of Israel. Despite his respected reputation for documenting, dissecting and exposing the hypocrisy of the US and European regimes and acutely analyzing the intellectual deceptions of imperial apologists, these analytical virtues are totally absent when it comes to discussing the formulation of US foreign policy in the Middle East, particularly the role of his own ethnic group, the Jewish Pro-Israel lobby and their Zionist supporters in the government. This political blindness is not unknown or uncommon. History is replete of intellectual critics of all imperialisms except their own, the abuses of power by others, but not of one’s own kin and kind. Chomsky’s long history denying the power and role of the pro-Israel lobby in decisively shaping US Middle East policy culminated in his recent conjoining with the US Zionist propaganda machine attacking a study critical of the Israeli lobby. I am referring to the essay published by the London Review of Books entitled “The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy” by Professor John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Professor Stephan Walt, the purged Academic Dean of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. (A complete version of the study was published by the Kennedy School of Government in March 2006.)

[ . . . ]

Complete text at http://www.israelshamir.net/Contributors/Contributor28.htm

Some criticisms of the article-
Despite his respected reputation for documenting, dissecting and exposing the hypocrisy of the US and European regimes and acutely analyzing the intellectual deceptions of imperial apologists, these analytical virtues are totally absent when it comes to discussing the formulation of US foreign policy in the Middle East, particularly the role of his own ethnic group, the Jewish Pro-Israel lobby and their Zionist supporters in the government.
The Jewish Pro-Israel lobby and their Zionist supporters in the government is not an ethnic group.

Chompsky says:
1) The pro-Israel Lobby is just like any other lobby; it has no special influence or place in US politics.
I would agree with that. Accusations of anti-semitism aren't like a kind of McCarthyism, where the mere threat of it will silence a politician. The public is savvy enough to know the difference between a criticism of Israel, and a slander about Jewish people.

2) The power of the groups backing the Israel lobby are no more powerful than other influential pressure groups
Yes, this must be so.

3) The Lobby’s agenda succeeds because it coincides with the interests of the dominant powers and interests of the US State.
I would agree with that. Having a secular non-arab majority democracy in the middle east is to our benefit.

5) The major forces shaping US Middle East policy are “big oil” and the “military-industrial complex”, neither of which is connected to the pro-Israel lobby.

6) The interests of the US generally coincide with the interests of Israel

7) The Iraq War, the threats to Syria and Iran are primarily a product of “oil interests” and the “military-industrial complex” and not the role of the pro-Israel lobby or its collaborators in the Pentagon and other government agencies.
Yes
Yes
Yes

Chomsky’s cliché-ridden attribution of war aims to “Big Oil” is totally unsubstantiated.
Oh give me a break. Of course it's about the oil.

Chomsky frequently derides the half-hearted criticism by liberals of US foreign policy, yet he nowhere raises a single peep about the absolute silence of Jewish progressives about the major role of the Lobby in promoting the invasion of Iraq.
Bush and Co. decided to invade Iraq way before he was even elected. It's not like Bush would have made another decision given different lobbying influence.

Very good. Now how about addressing the rebuttals by James Petras.

I find them spurious.

The fact that we approve aid to Israel does not prove that the lobby was responsible for that, rather than strategic interests and a good political relationship.

The pro-Israel lobbies are the only major lobby pressuring for the vetoes against the US’ closest allies, world public opinion and at the cost of whatever role the US could play as a ‘mediator’ between the Arabic-Islamic world and Israel
No, we can still play that role if we wish. The fact is Bush and the Neo-Cons don't wish so, for deeply rooted ideological reasons.

The result is a 90% congressional vote on high priority items pushed by the Lobby...
A causal relationship has not been proven.

The AIPAC annual meeting draws all the major leaders in Congress, key members of the Cabinet, over half of all members of Congress who pledge unconditional support for Israel and even identify Israel’s interests as US interests.
Prove that they aren't. Israel's interests are in keeping it's people secure, and negotiating a peace with a Palestinian state. These two issues are difficult to accomplish at once. It is better to be friends with them than not. Still, there is not one unified set of Israeli positions. It is a democracy, with many diverse opinions. It is perfectly legitimate for a US group to promote what it thinks is the best approach for the US to take on the issues.

You say Chompsky is biased, I think the author of this article is the biased one.

You can't buy the foriegn policy of this government for 50 million dollars.

Ever since WWII my people have been strongly supportive of Israel and the Jewish community in general. There was a national revulsion when the photos of the concentration camps were published and it grew when the tattooed survivors started settling here. (No kids, they did not by any means all go to Israel.)

The KKK and "gentleman's agreements" in snooty residential areas notwithstanding, antisemitism in America was never more than a pale shadow of the real thing, which was a defining attribute of European Christendom for more than a thousand years. Jews had always fared well in America, by world standards, and after the war it was easy and natural for us to extend our new consciousness of civil rights for black people to a pro-Zionist politics. Particularly when the Baby Boomer generation came of age in the late 1960s, it seemed to them that over the centuries Jews had suffered just as badly as black people at the hands of Christians and it was up to them to right this cosmic wrong.

(I'm a few years too old to be a Boomer, but there weren't enough of us War Babies to have a generation of our own so we had to tag along with either the Depression Babies or the Boomers. To me the choice was made absurdly easy by the sex and drugs and rock'n'roll--and the motorcycles. But anyway I was there so take the words of an eyewitness.)

Yes, certainly the oil companies, wealthy Jewish American leaders, and militarists looking for a bulwark against Soviet influence in the Middle East all conspired to nurture the pro-Israeli character of the U.S. But that does not gainsay the fact that that character arose naturally. It was not created by politicians, industrialists, or even the American Jews themselves. We truly felt that way. It may have been irrational but it was genuine.

So don't get carried away with your conspiracy theories. To this day, if you ask the average American how many Muslims he would sacrifice for the security of Israel, without a moment's hesitation he would answer, "All of them."

Ever since WWII my people have been strongly supportive of Israel and the Jewish community in general.

Incorrect: Whites generally were cynical about Jews and generally were anti-semitic during your time, and during most of the 5,000 years of recorded White/Euro history. Most whites during your time didn't even embrace Blacks and were pleased with segregation and the belief that africans were inferior. It was the 60s and 70s that brought on the counter-cultural revolution of Marxism and racial egalitarianism.

White support for Jews and Israel only increased slowly to today's levels as a result of the Lobby and the mass media which also just happened to be mostly owned by the type of people who also make up the Israeli Lobby. It's a slow process of indoctrination.

The bulk of American history was based on a friendly relation with Arabs due to the oil trade. It was the growth of the Jewish community during the 1900s that slowly changed public opinion from pro-arab to exclusively pro-Israel. It did not happen all at once, but a slow indoctrination process.

Maybe you need to start another kind of lobby.