“Israel Lobby” refers to a loose coalition of conservative individuals and organizations  lobbying Washington for foreign policy favorable for Israel — favorable, at least, from their points of view.  It includes Christian fundamentalist groups and such evangelists as Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, and Robert Reed, allied with AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee), Paul Wolfowitz, John Bolton, and others.

Lobby is not to be confused with American Jews, themselves, who have diverse political views.  American Jewish Committee polls show a growing opposition to American action in Iraq:  70% now disapprove the war.  

To open debate about the Lobby, political science professors John Mearsheimer (U. of Chicago) and Stephen Walt (Harvard) wrote “The Israel Lobby and U. S. Foreign Policy.” They pegged the Lobby as the prime mover in Middle East policy, including attention to Syria, Iran, and the invasion of Iraq.

There is little doubt that Israel and the Lobby were key factors in the decision to go to war. It’s a decision the US would have been far less likely to take without their efforts. And the war itself was intended to be only the first step. A front-page headline in the Wall Street Journal shortly after the war began says it all: `President’s Dream: Changing Not Just Regime but a Region: A Pro-US, Democratic Area Is a Goal that Has Israeli and Neo-Conservative Roots.’

They blamed the Lobby for the dearth of criticism about it.

Israel’s backers should be free to make their case and to challenge those who disagree with them, but efforts to stifle debate by intimidation must be roundly condemned.

In explanation they quoted Michael Kinsley, former editor of online magazine “Slate” and former L. A. Times columnist and editorial editor:

`the lack of public discussion about the role of Israel . . . is the proverbial elephant in the room.’ The reason for the reluctance to talk about it, he observed, was fear of being labelled an anti-semite.

That is exactly what happened to Mearsheimer and Walt, who were immediately attacked.  The Anti-Defamation League called the article “a classical conspiratorial anti-Semitic analysis.” Noam Chomsky, who was not convinced by the article so much as he credited the authors’ courage, described this as

the anticipated hysterical reaction from the usual supporters of state violence here, from the Wall St Journal to Alan Dershowitz, sometimes in ways that would instantly expose the authors to ridicule if they were not lining up (as usual) with power.

Chomsky and other critics pointed to the role of energy corporations in shaping Middle East policy and charged the distinguished academics with a highly selective use of evidence.

Considering the complexity of politics in the Middle East, disagreement is to be anticipated with one point or another, as in “Thanks to the Lobby, the United States has become the de facto enabler of Israeli expansion in the Occupied Territories, making it complicit in the crimes perpetrated against the Palestinians.”  Disagreement, however, should not lead to deep-sixing the issues.

Lila Rajiva examined the history and influence of Christian Zionists, Jewish Zionists, anti-Arabism, and the Bush administration in her thoughtful essay, “The Ideology of the American Empire.”

Other fundamentalists like the dominionists are more concerned with the present day than the apocalypse and seek to remake the United States as country under Biblical law, focusing on the expansion of Christianity as a power. What all these groups have in common, however, is support for the Iraq war, a belief that Islam is false, and faith in Zionism.

Under the defense of civilization, a war of religion is invoked; but the rhetoric of religion itself conceals the more familiar language of territory and resources, the struggle of political interests.

What interests and for whose benefit? The Americanist language would suggest American national interest; the pervasive influence of Zionism would suggest Israeli.

Mearsheimer and Walt made a mistake in calling it the Israel Lobby.  Criticism of Israeli politics, per se, is not frightening (there’s that old joke about putting 5 Israelis in the same room who emerge with 6 different parties).  Besides, countries are expected to lobby for what their respective  administrations see as their best interests.  However, “Israel Lobby” is too easily translated into “rich Jews ruining the country” by non-academics who will never read the article but relish the title.

Had they shifted focus slightly, so that their crosshairs were on a “fundamentalist lobby” aggressively pushing for regime change in the Middle East, they might have ignited the debate they wanted.  Raise the alarm:  see the clash of fundamentalists (pick any)in the minority imposing their worldviews on secular governments.  Sadly, they missed this chance and have been dismissed as whacko — alarming in another way — an enervating distraction.