Defenses of Hagel have included opinion pieces by writers Amy Davidson, Thomas Friedman, and Robert Wright, with Wright objecting to what he called "McCarthyite" smears against Hagel. Jeremy Ben-Ami, President of the liberal lobby group J Street, said: "The notion that Chuck Hagel is anti-Israel is ludicrous. The notion that he is anti-Semitic is slanderous." Harvard University Professor Stephen Walt, co-author of a 2007 book critical of the Israeli lobby wrote in "Foreign Policy" that "The real meaning of the Hagel affair is what it says about the climate inside Washington. Simply put, the question is whether supine and reflexive support for all things Israeli remains a prerequisite for important policy positions here in the Land of the Free."