The authors of The Israel Lobby went on Chicago radio station WBEZ last week to reflect on their achievement after ten years. No, not 60 Minutes. Not The New York Times. Not MSNBC. But WBEZ radio. It is a great interview by Jerome McDonnell about a stupendous achievement. As I wrote ten years ago, this... Read More

The livre de scandale of John J Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt, The Israeli Lobby and US Foreign Policy, was for me a mostly disappointing read. Having seen the earlier article by these two illustrious academics, one at Chicago and the other at Harvard, “The Israel Lobby,” in the London Review of Books (May 2006),... Read More

The antiwar Left would prefer that old-style American imperialism and the quest for oil had caused the Iraq War. They are the preferred enemies of the Left. They are the traditional villains. And they are safe villains. Mentioning Israel as a culprit would cause problems: it would lose support for the Left among activist Jews,... Read More

For the past few weeks a sometimes comic debate has simmering in the American press, focused on the question of whether there is an Israeli lobby, and if so, just how powerful is it? I would have thought that to ask whether there's an Israeli lobby here is a bit like asking whether there's a... Read More

The elephant in the room that no one is supposed to mention is the role of the supporters of Israel in shaping American foreign policy in the Middle East. Their role has become especially apparent with the American attack on Iraq and the subsequent American policy toward Iran and Syria, in all of which the... Read More