Foreign Correspondence

[Vexari]

A paper co-written by the academic dean of Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government is setting off a firestorm in academic and political circles because of its assertions that US foreign policy is dominated by an ''Israel lobby" that ignores US national interest and makes the United States a target of Muslim terrorists.

According to the paper by Kennedy School academic dean Stephen M. Walt and University of Chicago political scientist John J. Mearsheimer, American Jewish groups, leading Christian evangelicals, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, the Brookings Institution, and other think tanks have all contributed to sacrificing of US security needs to the interests of Israel.

''Saying that Israel and the United States are united by a shared terrorist threat has the causal relationship backwards," the authors of the paper write. ''The United States has a terrorism problem in good part because it is so closely allied with Israel. . . . US support for Israel is not the only source of anti-American terrorism, but it is an important one."

The authors say that Israel long ago outlived its strategic usefulness to the United States and has become a strategic burden.