Senator Charles H. Percy, 1919-2011

Senator Charles H. "Chuck" Percy, onetime Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a major figure in Washington in the 1970s, died Saturday at the age of 91.

His New York Times obituary does not even mention the Middle East. Wikipedia does note that John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt in The Israel Lobby claim that his 1984 defeat by Paul Simon was a result of AIPAC's lobbying, as if this was their discovery. Let me assure you that it was widely recognized at the time, not least by Senator Percy, and some in AIPAC actually claimed they were responsible for the victory of Simon, bringing down the powerful Foreign Relations Committee chair. (The Senate was then in Republican hands.)

Percy was no rabid Arabist; he sought a balanced approach to Arab-Israeli issues, at a time when that was rare. He was a liberal Republican, a species extinct today outside of New England, where even there the faintest whiff of national Republican ambitions turns them conservative. (See Romney, Mitt.) He was also a Republican willing, on occasion and by no means as some kind of crusade, to criticize Israel. He became more outspoken out of office, as others have as well.

The Walt-Satloff Feud: All I Plan to Say

The Middle East Journal and its mother ship, The Middle East Institute, have always sought to offer a forum for multiple opinions on the region. We don't tend to give folks like Bin Ladin a pulpit, but we do try to promote civilized discourse.

The Arab-Israeli cockpit being what it is, fierce debate does occur. As anyone following the Middle East blogosphere in Washington already knows (though some of my overseas readers may not), there's been a lot of sniping between Steven M. Walt (of Harvard and Foreign Policy) and Robert Satloff of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) over WINEP's relationship to AIPAC, in the wake of Laura Rozen's post at Politico on opposition to Dennis Ross within the Obama Administration. Walt and Satloff are both intelligent and articulate spokesmen for their points of view, which rarely overlap. M.J. Rosenberg of Talking Points Memo, who says he was present at the creation of WINEP within AIPAC, has chimed in as well. This is a very, very inside-the-Beltway sort of fight, even if Walt is in Cambridge. I have my own personal opinions, but officially I don't have a dog in this fight. For the record, though, I thought I should note it for anyone who's missed it so far.

I do suspect many of my readers will lean more towards Walt and Rosenberg than toward Satloff, so to balance the account let me note that, though I missed the premiere, PBS has done a television version of Rob Satloff's book Among the Righteous, a groundbreaking book about Arabs in Vichy North Africa protecting Jews from the holocaust. Rob Satloff can be a polemicist but he can also do solid original scholarship. That said, here's the main course of the food fight so far:

Laura Rozen's original Politico post on Dennis Ross that started it all.

Walt's original post on Ross.

Satloff's response to Walt defending Ross and WINEP.

Walt's response to Satloff on WINEP.

M. J. Rosenberg chimes in on having been present at the creation of WINEP.

And Rosenberg chimes in again on WINEP as an "AIPAC cutout."

I doubt if we've seen the last of this. But at least unless I have to, that's all I have to say. Make your own judgments.

Clinton's AIPAC Speech

The State Department has posted Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's speech to AIPAC: text here and video here.

Website for J Street Conference

The much-publicized first Conference of the dovish Jewish lobby J Street (which drew even more attenion when Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren declined to attend) is receiving live multimedia coverage at this website. It continues through tomorrow.

Rosen on the Obama Administration

Steve Rosen, the former AIPAC Policy Director who resigned due to espionage charges, has an op-ed in The Jerusalem Post on the Obama Administration's Middle East appointments. It strikes me as fairly balanced: Rosen is a controversial figure these days, but he does know Washington well. It's worth a read even if one disagrees with some of the conclusions.