J Street and Stephen Walt

A Goldblog reader asks:

Why is it so important to you that J Street denounce Stephen Walt for his endorsement of their group? You can't always pick who likes you.

It's important because J Street needs to send a clear signal that it disapproves of the work of one of America's leading Jew-baiters. J Street hopes to gain mainstream support for its mission. If it won't tell Stephen Walt to shove off, then who will it tell? Stephen Walt demonizes Jews by blaming them for the Iraq War and for creating conditions that led to the attacks of 9/11. I don't think this should be a hard call for the group.

This is what the eminently reasonable David Rothkopf said about Walt and his cynical co-author, John Mearsheimer:

They may not be anti-Semites themselves but they made a cynical decision to cash in on anti-Semitism by offering to dress up old hatreds in the dowdy Brooks Brothers suits of the Kennedy School and the University of Chicago. They did what the most desperate members of academia do, they signed up to be rent-a-validators, akin to expert witnesses who support the defense of felons with specious theories served up on fancy diplomas. They would argue that they were daring to speak truth to power.  In reality they were giving one crowd in particular precisely what it wanted to hear.