Your including the copy-editing of Ambassador Peck's letter to you must be unprecedented in the history of journalism. Congratulations! The point?

It would be common courtesy and ethical practice to print Ambassador Peck's letter without the copy editor's marks, and most editors would have honorably checked with the author first since only the final version was approved for publication by him.

The atrocities by Arab states and suicide bombers are indeed an outrage and should be condemned, and those individuals responsible held fully accountable. However, this has nothing to do with the policy issues at hand here.

And, why do you resort to name-calling when you disagree with someone? Since Mearsheimer/Walt/Peck strongly believe that U.S. policies in the Mideast are seriously endangering Israelis and Jewish (and all) people worldwide, and the recent Israeli elections show that the majority of Israeli citizens also oppose invasive policies as foolish and wrong, Mearsheimer/Walt/Peck could similarly accuse you of anti-semitism [sic] for supporting such measures. And yet although the attacks on Mearsheimer/Walt/Peck continue in flawed, disingenuous and disgraceful manners, Mearsheimer/Walt/Peck have remained properly respectful and civil throughout.

The end never justifies the means regarding the issues of government policy nor the simple decency of the Golden Rule.

Well, to quote Al Gore, "I also believe in the Golden Rule." We reproduced the Peck missive exactly as we received it; and we thought one of the Theroux edits relevant: He inserted the words "with ad hominem attacks" into Peck's complaints about "vilification." In fact, our original item included no ad hominem attacks against Peck, though we did make some gibes at the expense of the Independent Institute.

On to the substance. Theroux writes that "the atrocities by Arab states and suicide bombers" have "nothing to do with the policy issues at hand here." This is the only honest thing we have heard anyone say in defense of Mearsheimer and Walt. It is a pithy recapitulation of their argument, which is a moral condemnation of Israel on the basis of its sins (real and imagined), without regard to context. That is, in judging the Arab-Israeli conflict, Mearsheimer and Walt admit only those facts that establish the guilt of the Jewish side. This is an anti-Semitic argument.

To say so is not "name-calling," as Theroux implies it is. We have not impugned the motives or personal character of Walt and Mearsheimer, only taken issue with their work. As we noted yesterday, Peck evaded the substance of the criticism and instead recast the Mearsheimer-Walt argument as a trivial truth. Now Theroux, incredibly, tries to recast it as a pro-Israel argument, a vindication of, in his words, "Israelis and Jewish (and all) people worldwide" and of the Israeli political center as a better guardian of Jerusalem's interests than the right.

In fact, the Mearsheimer-Walt paper is a broadside against Israel and against American support for the Jewish state. Theroux has put the prestige (such as it is) of the Independent Institute behind a paper whose central claim is: "Neither strategic nor moral arguments can account for America's support for Israel." Yet Theroux, like Walt and Mearsheimer's other backers, is unable or unwilling to defend that claim. Instead, he pretends it is something else entirely.