The kosherest nosh ever

America’s mighty pro-Israel lobby may be less durable than it looks

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It is obscene how a few individuals with deep pockets can determine the policy of "the leader of the free world", and push it into unconditionally supporting such a rogue state. The show at the Congress was beyond shameful. American Jews have good reasons to be turned off by Israel, but it is not votes what Congressmen chase after with their fawning applause, but hard cash.

Such an "honest broker".


The author should have mentioned that President Obama was given frequent applause during his speech to AIPAC.

I concluded years ago that the struggle involving Israelis and Palestinians is not between Jews and Arabs, but rather between Jews and Arabs who really want a just peace, on the one side, and Jews and Arabs who do not really want a just peace, on the other side. Netanyahu belongs to the latter group.


There is a genuine support amongst the American people for Israel and against Arab nations. Israel is associated with liberal democracy and guilt about the Holocaust (why didn't we do more, etc.). Arabs are associated with terrorism, high oil prices, despotic leaders, Islamic extremism, and hating America.

Most Americans don't know about how Israelis treat the people of the West Bank, slowly colonizing through settlements while carrying on a policy similar to Apartheid in the land they control. Most Americans have never met an Arab, and only recently became aware of the desire of Arabs to live in modern democracies, too. It will be a long, slow, change, but a successful democracy in Egypt could help Americans gain a little more perspective.

AIPAC is less important than people give it credit for. When Americans change their mind about Israel, their representatives will too, and all the lobbying in the world won't change that.

Enders Shadow

Why on earth did the article focus on Jewish voters, when these are concentrated in a relatively small part of the US and are small in number? The real foot soldiers for the support of Israel by the US are the Evangelicals, a far larger voting block, spread across all the country. Whilst their support remains, the attitude of Jewish-Americans is almost irrelevant.

Moran ya Simba

@Froy'' Please don't refer to the President of the United States as the "leader of the free world." Europe, Canada and Australia are quite free and, I am sure, happy to be allies and friends of the United States. But we don't vote for their president and he is our ally, but not our "leader."
Thanks, mate;-)


In order for peace to be achieved, both sides need to be willing to compromise. As things stand, Israel doesn't have much to lose from keeping the conflict going. In fact, the right wing and religious Israelis have more to gain as it will allow them to continue building settlements and annexing land that they believe is suppose to be theirs anyways. Therefore, a necessary but obviously not sufficient action to lead to successful peace agreement is for Israel to be pushed to compromise. The U.S.A is the only country capable of doing that pushing, by threatening to halt billions in military aid and stop providing cover at the U.N. But the U.S. will not be able to do so if the right wing pro Israel lobbies in Washington keep on exerting so much power.
The power of those lobbies will only diminish when the American Jewish community starts changing its views regarding Israel. As this article points out, there is evidence of that already happening. Hopefully it won't take long for those democrats who oppose Obama's 1967 statement to notice that there are logical contradictions in their views if they consider themselves to be American liberals but also support the far right in Israel.

Note: I am NOT claiming that if Israel is forced to compromise, there will be peace. But there certainly won't be any agreement if the American congress keep on kissing Netanyahu's bottom.

Fifth Horseman

It's ironic and sad that the nation which pioneered the concept of separation of church and state would end its days supine before a sacred cow.


"The power of those lobbies will only diminish when the American Jewish community starts changing its views regarding Israel."

Mark07, thousands of American Jews don't support Israel's and AIPAC's hardline for already quite some time. Even if 90% of them stopped caring about Israel, Congress would keep pandering to it. It is the few dozen fat cats in that community with their HUGE contributions who make the difference. As long as they keep considering themselves honorary members of the Likud Party and defenders of the Jewish people's birthright to Palestine, I see it difficult that this situation will change.

The US, simply, can't be an honest broker in this conflict. Period. Either a new one is found (the Europeans, I'd say), or either Palestinians ditch the whole "peace process" charade and take matters into their own hands like their Egyptian neighbors did (salmiyeh, let's hope).

People power seems to be the answer.


The generation of American Jews who felt guilty because they stayed safely in the US when Israel was genuinely at risk is dying out. They felt the need to be "More Catholic than the Pope", and adopted the very un-Jewish behavior of suppressing all debate regarding Israel. Of course, Jews in Israel debate everything with enthusiasm, so this anomaly could hardly continue unchallenged once Israel was no longer under threat of destruction, and started behaving like the neighborhood bully. AIPAC and their supporters are certainly losing their grip on American Jews, and we can expect to hear ever more hysterical claims and charges about anti-semites and self-hating Jews. But the Israeli Right is not coextensive with Zionism, nor is Zionism coextensive with Judaism. It is not the least unreasonable to be philo-Judaic, uneasy with some of the implications and results of Zionism, and hostile to Likud and its coalition.


Nobody talked about "full-blown conflict", KillerGroove. Haven't you been watching the news lately. People Power is the latest fashion. One million Palestinians marching to their stolen lands. Would Israel go Gaddafi?

About the mediator, honestly, I don't think that anyone could make Israel budge, as long as life is beautiful in Tel Aviv, and Palestinians are kept quiet in their ghettoes. It will take pressure, internal or external, to disturb that "pleasantness" for Israelis to demand an end to occupation, just like it had to be in South Africa for Afrikaaners to demand the dismantling of apartheid. You know, protest, boycott, sanctions...


I agree wholeheartedly with Enders Shadow on this. The article makes makes a huge mistake of oversight in omitting the christian zionist movement in the US. Theyre the real roadblock to the US taking up a balanced view of the problem, far more so than American jews. After all, its the Christian zionists who need to Israel made whole again for the rapture to commence, and in their religious zeal they will stop at nothing to ensure that is the case, right up to ethnic cleansing of 'Judea and Samaria' and for that matter i guess every other land from the red sea to the euphrates. The evangelical right go so far as to denigrate jews for being too 'liberal' on Israel. Just go and read the comments section on sites such as americanthinker.com if you dont believe me. Scary stuff.


The Jewish voters might not care about AIPAC anymore, but that's not the main power of the AIPAC. Their ability to influence elections and campaigns using contribution money is much more powerful(and the article discusses nothing about it). It's quite funny, because some of Israel money come from US budget anyways.


And even if he could somehow be portrayed as wildly hostile to Israel, the Democrats on the Hill cannot be. Smelling danger, many joined the Republican scolding of the president. Harry Reid, the Democrats’ leader in the Senate, did not explicitly repudiate Mr Obama’s reference to the 1967 borders, but made his displeasure plain. “A fair beginning to good-faith talks means that Israel cannot be asked to agree to confines that would compromise its own security,” he said.

So this men are more loyal to Israel then to their elected President of our great country The United States of America

Audi Man

Young Jews tend to come from the upper middle class in America; they have studied abroad, they have been educated in a worldly matter, and they are more concerned with principles like self determination and individualism than dogmatic support for (an evermore) foreign country. Intermarriage is just another effect of wanting to determine one's own fate, rather than being confined to the (tiny) boundaries, both social and philosophical, of one's ancestors. Same thing with the views of Israel.


Good article, the Jews are way to educated to ever back anything the Tea Party is involved with. The Tea Party is down right scary. And scary too are the Evangelicals waiting for rapture. I believe 20% of the US population are evangelical.

The Israelis must shake their heads as they know that the Evangelicals are crazy, but they get their support. Well the right wing settlers in the West Bank are just as crazy too. Poor Israel, what it once stood for has been high jacked but the far right and religious loonies. That is why younger American Jews are distancing themselves. Israel is not the same as liberal and tolerant New York, LA or San Francisco.

Canadian Thunder

It is the Duty of America's Jews led by the pro-Israel lobbyists to assume the high moral gorund and force through the Peace that can be had onto the Israelis and Palestinians and end this conflict that distorts the perception of the West by the Islamic world and thereby jeopardises its strategic aims.


Morani: that's why I wrote it between quotation marks. That's how they like to call themselves. Such a great leader, being led by the nose by a tiny colonial regime.




Can you name who these deep pocket individuals are? Granted, AIPAC is influential, it surely does not shape US policy. Your pushing the edge bad taste and it smells bad.



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