Chas Freeman and the ‘Israel Lobby’

last updated 8 January 2015

A “ferocious” debate over the alleged power of “the Israel Lobby” raged in 2006, after two professors wrote a book of the same name, said the Los Angeles Times in an editorial. The furor re-erupted when President Obama picked former Ambassador Charles (Chas) Freeman to head the National Intelligence Council. He withdrew Tuesday, blaming what he called the dishonorable and dishonest “tactics of the Israel Lobby.”

Not the Israel Lobby “conspiracy theory” again, said The Washington Post in an editorial. Freeman—who said the Chinese should have crushed the Tiananmen Square protesters sooner and offered “sycophantic paeans” to Saudi King Abdullah—was always a bad choice. But his “crackpot” departing “screed” against the mythical “shadowy and sinister ‘Lobby’” made it clear how bad.