John Mearsheimer

It's an American interest group.

I mean, you hit the nail right on the head.

That's exactly right.

And...

And there was nothing that we said that was anti-Semitic by any reasonable definition of that term.

And huge numbers of Jews have known me and Steve over the years, and nobody ever, ever said that we were anti-Semitic before March 2006 when the article appeared, because we're not anti-Semitic.

But look, you've got this interest group.

right, that has a significant influence on American policy and on Israeli policy.

And you want to talk about it.

It's just important to talk about it.

It's important for Jews, right, in the United States, for Jews in Israel to talk about this.

The idea that you want to silence critics is not a smart way to go about doing business, in my opinion.

If we were wrong, if Steve and I were so wrong and our arguments were so foul, they could have easily exposed those arguments.

They could have gone...

into combat with us in terms of the marketplace of ideas and easily knocked us down.

The problem was that our arguments were quite powerful.

And instead of engaging us and defeating our arguments, they wanted to silence us.

And this is not good, right?

It's not good for Israel.

It's not good for the United States.