That’s a headline you won’t see. But if there ever was an instance of a “lobby” effect in the manner in which Professors Mearsheimer and Walt accuse what they call the Israel Lobby - to act against the interests of the United States because of a blood tie - it displays itself in the House resolution regarding the Muslim slaughter of the Ottoman Armenians in 1915. Those who promoted this resolution are correct about the Armenian genocide, but the resolution itself is, in my view, utterly pointless. There are many reasons why the resolution has no effect. Everyone knows that genocide was committed against the Christian citizens of the Muslim Ottoman state. There are virtually no Armenians left in modern-day Turkey, and yet Christians and Jews live in and visit Turkey today in more safety and to a warmer welcome than they do in any other Muslim-majority state. The resolution has no bearing on Turkey - the murder of Armenians during 1914-1918 was conducted by an entity with which modern Turkey has no continuity, in territory or law.

Yet, the effect of this resolution will harm the strategic interests of the United States when we are at war, and at a moment when we need allies in the middle east. It ought to be a test case for Lobby-smears. But it won’t.

Here are two reasons why not. First of all, the obvious one: the objective anti-Semitism of Mearsheimer and Walt. They criticize Jews and their friends for faults they forgive or ignore in others, purely because of race. The two professorial Israel-Lobby promoters reduce any argument in favor of Israel’s existence, Israel’s virtue, or the benefits of the U.S.-Israel alliance, to an expression of the dark needs of Jewish blood (as they do in the case of poor Mrs. Howard Dean), or the Svengali-like influence of Jewish blood on non-Jews (as they do in the case of poor Dr. Howard Dean). In their eyes, no honest thinking on the subject could lead an uncircumcised-American to support the existence of the state of Israel. But then we knew that about the Jew-lobby fantasists.

There is another reason - which is that Mearsheimer and Walt wish quite consciously to prevent the United States from seeking allies for its policies in the middle east, and the world in general. They have reasons for this belief, and they will make arguments in favor of it. The success of the Armenia Lobby suits their purpose. So, though on the grounds they advance against the Jew-Lobby, the “Armenia Lobby” ought to be regarded as equally guilty of disloyalty and sinister behavior, it won’t.  Consistency is the hobgoblin of minds without tenure.

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