Freedom of expression in the United States suffered a jolt at the hands of the Zionist lobby when it virtually coerced two eminent Harvard professors to retract their studies on Israeli lobby’s influence on American foreign policies.
The act also underscores the widely known but unmentioned belief that the Zionist lobby exercises rampant influence on US media and the governing bodies.
Harvard University and its ancillary, the Kennedy School of Government withdrew their name and logo from the cover page of a study prepared by professor Stephen Walt of the Kennedy School and professor John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago on the influence of the Israeli lobby on the American foreign policy.
In the study, the researchers came to the conclusion that US foreign policy in the past decade had been formulated in such a way that it protected and promoted Israeli rather than US interests.
The professors concluded that these biased policies were the major factor that had led the Arab and Muslim world to view US foreign policy with distrust.
Once the report was released, and under unrelenting Zionist pressure, university authorities had to distance their institutions from the study by going public and stating that it was not an official document but simply a topic of debate.
Indeed it is both pathetic and comical that internationally renowned institutions of higher education are now being forced to distort facts to appease the Zionist lobby.
The US media has also unleashed a barrage of criticism on the two professors, and the universities concerned.
US-based Fox News, known as a mouthpiece of Zionist hard-liners, said the study fell pitiably short of the standards expected of the two professors who had been held in high esteem in academic circles.
According to media reports, Harvard and the Kennedy School received dozens of telephone calls from financiers of the two institutions expressing concern over the issues raised by the study.
Robert A. Belfer, former director and member of the executive committee of Enron, who had previously endowed the Kennedy School with a $7.5 million grant was furious enough to demand that professor S. Walt not mention in the study his position at the school.
The study has enraged the Zionist lobby in the US as it had accurately probed the depth and intensity of Zionist influence in America, and presented findings in the logical format of an academic document. The study is all the more significant because both professors were unbiased in their research and do not subscribe to any political or ideological groups.
They were simply bold enough to take on an issue that is rarely allowed to surface in print in the United States.
Ironically, as the Statue of Liberty overlooks the entry point to the US, freedom of expression has received one more blow by the Bush administration’s ban on Lebanon’s TV channel Al-Manar.
In justifying this act, the authorities said the channel promoted terrorism by its anti-Israeli stance.
The US is quick to label anyone who criticizes or opposes the Zionist doctrine or its interests a “terrorist”.
All this while American officials go on preaching about the inviolability of the freedom of expression.
It should also be noted that so far no unambiguous and official condemnation of the cartoons disgracing the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) has come from US authorities.
One wonders if freedom of expression is applicable only when it comes to violating sacred symbols of Muslims.
