[3] Mearsheimer and Walt decry what they call misuse of "the charge of anti-Semitism", and argue that pro-Israel groups place great importance on "controlling debate" in American academia.

They claim that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) in particular has a "stranglehold on the U.S. Congress", due to its "ability to reward legislators and congressional candidates who support its agenda, and to punish those who challenge it."

The essay's central controversial claim was that the Israel lobby's influence has distorted U.S. Middle East foreign policy away from what the authors referred to as "American national interest."

[28] As a result of the controversy created by Mearsheimer and Walt's article, the Dutch Backlight (Tegenlicht) program produced a documentary entitled The Israel Lobby.

Peck is generally in agreement with the paper's core thesis: "Opinions differ on the long-term costs and benefits for both nations, but the lobby's views of Israel's interests have become the basis of U.S. Middle East policies.

Michael Scheuer, a former senior official at the Central Intelligence Agency and in 2006 a terrorism analyst for CBS News, said to NPR that Mearsheimer and Walt are "basically right.

"[12] Zbigniew Brzezinski, former national security advisor to U.S. President Jimmy Carter, wrote: "Mearsheimer and Walt adduce a great deal of factual evidence that over the years Israel has been the beneficiary of privileged — indeed, highly preferential — financial assistance, out of all proportion to what the United States extends to any other country.

[34] Glenn Greenwald has endorsed the book's central thesis, arguing "Walt and Mearsheimer merely voiced a truth which has long been known and obvious but was not allowed to be spoken.

[39] Columnist Christopher Hitchens agreed that "AIPAC and other Jewish organizations exert a vast influence over Middle East policy", and stated that the paper "contains much that is true and a little that is original" and that he "would have gone further than Mearsheimer and Walt".

"[41] Joseph Massad, professor of modern Arab politics and intellectual history at Columbia University, writes, "Is the pro-Israel lobby extremely powerful in the United States?

[42] In describing the last of three "surprising weaknesses" of the paper, Eric Alterman writes in The Nation, "Third, while it's fair to call AIPAC obnoxious and even anti-democratic, the same can often be said about, say, the NRA, Big Pharma and other powerful lobbies.

She also finds valuable points: "Walt and Mearsheimer are correct, after all, in arguing that discussion about Israel is hugely circumscribed in mainstream American media and politics....

Michael Massing, contributing editor of the Columbia Journalism Review, writes: "The lack of a clearer and fuller account of Palestinian violence is a serious failing of the essay.

On the other hand, he writes: "The nasty campaign waged against John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt has itself provided an excellent example of the bullying tactics used by the lobby and its supporters.

[45] Zunes also writes that "The authors have also been unfairly criticized for supposedly distorting the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, though their overview is generally quite accurate," and agreed with Joseph Massad's interpretation of Mearsheimer's and Walt's argument: "[T]here is something quite convenient and discomfortingly familiar about the tendency to blame an allegedly powerful and wealthy group of Jews for the overall direction of an increasingly controversial U.S.

[46] In a review in the New Yorker, David Remnick writes, "Mearsheimer and Walt give you the sense that, if the Israelis and the Palestinians come to terms, bin Laden will return to the family construction business.

It's a narrative that recounts every lurid report of Israeli cruelty as indisputable fact but leaves out the rise of Fatah and Palestinian terrorism before 1967; the Munich Olympics; Black September; myriad cases of suicide bombings; and other spectaculars.

The duplicitous and manipulative arguments for invading Iraq put forward by the Bush Administration, the general inability of the press to upend those duplicities, the triumphalist illusions, the miserable performance of the military strategists, the arrogance of the Pentagon, the stifling of dissent within the military and the government, the moral disaster of Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo, the rise of an intractable civil war, and now an incapacity to deal with the singular winner of the war, Iran—all of this has left Americans furious and demanding explanations.

"[47] Writing in Foreign Affairs, Walter Russell Mead applauds the authors for "admirably and courageously" initiating a conversation on a difficult subject, but criticizes many of their findings.

He is especially critical of their analysis of domestic politics in the United States, suggesting that the authors overstate the magnitude of lobbying in favor Israel when considered relative to overall sums spent on lobbying—only 1% in a typical election cycle.

Robert Pfaltzgraff of the Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis questioned why Mearsheimer and Walt had suddenly arrived at completely different assumptions related to the Israel Lobby than that they had utilized for the rest of their career.

They fault Szanto for not recognizing that America's security ties with Western Europe, Japan and South Korea did not according to them depend on "strong domestic lobbies.

"[11] Benny Morris, a professor of Middle East history at Ben-Gurion University, prefaced a very detailed analysis with the remark: "Like many pro-Arab propagandists at work today, Mearsheimer and Walt often cite my own books, sometimes quoting directly from them, in apparent corroboration of their arguments.

"[51] Alan Dershowitz, at the time a professor at Harvard University, published an extended criticism of Mearsheimer's and Walt's position in his 2008 book, The Case Against Israel's Enemies: Exposing Jimmy Carter and Others Who Stand in the Way of Peace.

The claim is supported neither by logic nor evidence nor even a rudimentary understanding of how the American policymaking system works" [52] Former Director of the CIA James Woolsey also wrote a strongly negative review, remarking that "... Reading [Walt and Mearsheimer's] version of events is like entering a completely different world."

"[56] The Anti-Defamation League (ADL): National Director Abraham H. Foxman wrote a book in response to Mearsheimer and Walt's paper, entitled The Deadliest Lies: The Israel Lobby and the Myth of Jewish Control[57][58] where he allegedly "demolishes a number of shibboleths .

[64] Those critical of the paper include Leslie H. Gelb of the New York Times;[65] Caroline Glick of The Jerusalem Post;[66] columnist Bret Stephens;[67][68] and editor of Jewish Current Issues Rick Richman.

"[79] Mark Mazower, a professor of history at Columbia University, wrote that it is not possible to openly debate the topic of the article: "What is striking is less the substance of their argument than the outraged reaction: to all intents and purposes, discussing the US-Israel special relationship still remains taboo in the U.S. media mainstream.

The editorial praised the paper, remarking that "They argue powerfully that extraordinarily effective lobbying in Washington has led to a political consensus that American and Israeli interests are inseparable and identical.

[86] The work generated fascination and interest in the question of Israel-US relations and other scholars were motivated to address the issue from different perspectives, including those who asserted that the relationship is much too complex to be discussed solely through the prism of the Israeli lobby.