July 3, 2007 journal, a book entitled the Power of Israel in the United States by James Petras. Page 54 "Israel and the Right of Free Speech-There is presently an inability in America even to formulate or sustain a discourse related to the study of Israeli influence on the United States. Such an opportunity seemed to open with the courageous publicat-ion of a well documented essay written by Professor Walt of Harvard University and Professor Mearsheimer of University of Chicago critical to the Lobby's influence on U.S. Middle East policy. However a virulent campaign enhanced Mearsheimer and Walt was then waged by all the major Jewish publications and pro-Israel organizations. From the ultra "right wing" Orthodox Jewish Press (which claims to be the largest "independent" Jewish newsletter in the US), to the formally social democratic 'Forward', to the Jewish Weekly, all have launched, together with all the major Jewish organizations, propaganda campaign of defamation the new ("Protocols of Zion,", anti-Semitic, "Sources from Neo Nazi websites...)" and pressure for their purge from academia". Page 55 "The Jewish authoritarians have already partially succeeded. Their press releases have been published by the mass media without allowing for rebuttal by the academics under attack. Harvard University has demanded that the identification of the Harvard Kennedy School be re-moved from the paper. The financier of the professorial chair (in his name) which Pro-fessor Walt, as academic dean, occupies at the Harvard Kennedy School, is no longer mentioned in his publication. Ultra-Zionists and torture advocate Professor Dershowitz and his fellow Harvard zealots called into question their moral and academic qualificat-ion to teach-this concerning Professors of the highest standing, with an established record at America's top universities. In both the United States and France, legislation is being prepared to equate anti Zionism with anti-Semitism and to criminalize as a hate crime the free expression of outrage over Israeli atrocities and any criticism of the lobbyist control of U.S. Middle East policy. In the U.S., the proposed legislation would take the form of withdrawing federal funding from any academic institution where the policies of Israel are criticized. Other attacks on American academics include the effort of Daniel Pipes, director of Middle East Forum, to establish a campus blacklist through his neo McCarthy-ite Campus-Watch website. Pipes is a part of a "band of neo conservative pundits" with strong allegiances to Israel who took on the task of launching a more focused assault on Middle East Scholars. This effort was but the latest in a long history of attempts to curtail academic discussion of issues that might relate to Israel. In New York City, a major thea-tor production of the life of Rachael Corrie, an American humanitarian volunteer murder-ed in the occupied territories by an Israeli Defense Force soldier driving a bulldozer, was canceled because of Jewish pressure and financial threats. The theater admitted that the cancellation had to do with the "sensitivities" (and pocket book) of the Israel-Firsters. Even the progressive magazine, Mother Jones, went to the trouble of running an article critical of Corrie, heading it; NEWS; Martyr, idiot, dedicated and diluted. Why did this American college student crushed by an Israeli bulldozer put her life on the line? And did it matter? The pro-Israel lobby defense and support of a minority opinion in favor of the Middle East aggression is now extended to the authoritarian reach into undermining the basic right of Americans to free and open expression. There is no group of investors or financiers willing to fund a civil rights campaign defense of free speech, academic and artistic freedom, to counter the minority Zionist financial and professional elite. Leaders of the peace movement, reject efforts to include Israel's genocide war against Palestine.