"With their exaggerations and distortions, [Walt and Mearsheimer] do more than simply get it wrong. They have actually reversed the clock of American social and religious history.  [....]  Mearsheimer and Walt bring us back to the Middle Ages without even getting into costume.  [....] Luckily, most Americans are smarter than Mearsheimer and Walt. They see Israel as America's best and most dependable ally. They will not willingly retreat into anti-semitic images and mythologies that are more appropriate to 1407 than 2007. 

"The authors are mostly wrong, as well as dangerously misleading. [....]  Why have two such serious students of United States foreign policy written so weak a book and added fuel, inadvertently, to the fires of anti-Semitism?"

"The works of Walt and Mearsheimer have about as much in common with the actual making of U.S. foreign policy as the idea that the American government carried out the September 11 attacks on itself, the sun goes around the earth, or the world is flat." 

"Anyone familiar with the tortured history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will have a hard time recognizing the history Mearsheimer and Walt rehearse. Every hoary old Israeli atrocity tale is trotted out, and the long story of Palestinian terrorism is rendered entirely as a reaction to Israeli oppression." 

"Mearsheimer and Walt disappoint. They had an observation worth making and a position worth debating. But their argument is so dry, so one-sided -- an Israel lobby that leads America around by the nose -- they suggest that not only do they not know Israel, they don't know America, either."

"Walt and Mearsheimer offer dashes of truth and big dollops of outright falsehood, all wrapped in a thin academic veneer devoid of genuine scholarship. In renewing their attack on the pro-Israel community, they only complicate the search for a fair, secure peace for the Middle East."

"The trick follows a typical pattern. Step one: Publish your views in as provocative a manner as possible. Use words like “apartheid,” as Jimmy Carter did in his book, or paint Jewish lobbying efforts in darkly conspiratorial terms, as Walt and Mearsheimer did in a paper published last year. Step two: Dare the Jewish community to lash out at you, then whine about being victimized by bullies. Step three: Implore fair-minded liberals to line up behind you, forcing them to choose between endorsing your vision — however skewed — or becoming part of the censorship juggernaut."

“Not only are these charges wildly at variance with what I have personally witnessed in the Oval Office over the years, but they also impugn the loyalty and the unstinting service to America’s national security by public figures… . As a Christian, let me add that it is also wrong and unfair to call into question the loyalty of millions of American Jews who have faithfully supported Israel while also working tirelessly and generously to advance America’s cause, both at home and abroad. They are among our finest citizens and should be praised, not pilloried.”

"They quote only those people who basically have this point of view and don't take a serious look at anything in a more profound way. It is masquerading as scholarship." --Dennis Ross (President Clinton's special Middle East envoy)

When Should We Stop Supporting Israel? by Victor Davis Hanson

Private Papers, March 28, 2004