{"id":47,"date":"2007-08-15T22:15:02","date_gmt":"2007-08-15T22:15:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/feilerfaster\/2007\/08\/the-israel-lobby.html"},"modified":"2007-08-15T22:15:02","modified_gmt":"2007-08-15T22:15:02","slug":"the-israel-lobby","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster\/2007\/08\/the-israel-lobby.html","title":{"rendered":"The Israel Lobby"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.brucefeiler.com\/blog\/2006\/12\/carter-anti-christian.html\">debate <\/a>over Jimmy Carter&#8217;s book may have been only the beginning.  The war over the Israel Lobby is already underway in advance of a new book, and counter book, being published this September.  I haven&#8217;t read the books, so it&#8217;s hard for me to comment at this moment, but the debate triggers a number of soap boxes for me:  Namely 1) the conflation of criticial talk about Israel with anti-Semitism is dangerous and wrong, 2) the idea that supporting Israel, or everything Israel does, is somehow a standard of how Jewish one is is dangerous and wrong, and 3) the idea that the Israel lobby is just about Jews is dangerous and wrong, especially considering the complicated relationship between evangelical Christians and the Holy Land.<br \/>\nPatty Cohen, who is simply hitting story after story <a href=\"http:\/\/www.brucefeiler.com\/blog\/2007\/05\/new-new-south.html\">out of the park <\/a>in the ideas arena in the NYT, writes up the <a href=\"John J. Mearsheimer, a political scientist at the University of Chicago, and Stephen M. Walt, a professor at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, were not totally surprised by the reaction to their work. An article last spring in the London Review of Books outlining their argument \u2014 that a powerful pro-Israel lobby has a pernicious influence on American policy \u2014 set off a firestorm as charges of anti-Semitism, shoddy scholarship and censorship ricocheted among prominent academics, writers, policymakers and advocates. In the book, published by Farrar, Straus &amp; Giroux and embargoed until Sept. 4, they elaborate on and update their case.\">conflict<\/a>.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>John J. Mearsheimer, a political scientist at the University of Chicago, and Stephen M. Walt, a professor at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, were not totally surprised by the reaction to their work. An article last spring in the London Review of Books outlining their argument \u2014 that a powerful pro-Israel lobby has a pernicious influence on American policy \u2014 set off a firestorm as charges of anti-Semitism, shoddy scholarship and censorship ricocheted among prominent academics, writers, policymakers and advocates. In the book, published by Farrar, Straus &amp; Giroux and embargoed until Sept. 4, they elaborate on and update their case.<br \/>\n\u201cNow that the cold war is over, Israel has become a strategic liability for the United States,\u201d they write. \u201cYet no aspiring politician is going to say so in public or even raise the possibility\u201d because the pro-Israel lobby is so powerful. They credit the lobby with shutting down talks with Syria and with moderates in Iran, preventing the United States from condemning Israel\u2019s 2006 war in Lebanon and with not pushing the Israelis hard enough to come to an agreement with the Palestinians. They also discuss Christian Zionists and the issue of dual loyalty.<br \/>\nOpponents are prepared. Also being released on Sept. 4 is \u201cThe Deadliest Lies: The Israel Lobby and the Myth of Jewish Control\u201d (Palgrave Macmillan) by Abraham H. Foxman, the national director of the Anti-Defamation League. The notion that pro-Israel groups \u201chave anything like a uniform agenda, and that U.S. policy on Israel and the Middle East is the result of their influence, is simply wrong,\u201d George P. Shultz, a former secretary of state, says in the foreword. \u201cThis is a conspiracy theory pure and simple, and scholars at great universities should be ashamed to promulgate it.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The debate over Jimmy Carter&#8217;s book may have been only the beginning. The war over the Israel Lobby is already underway in advance of a new book, and counter book, being published this September. I haven&#8217;t read the books, so it&#8217;s hard for me to comment at this moment, but the debate triggers a number&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":352,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-47","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-middle-east"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The Israel Lobby - Feiler Faster<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster\/2007\/08\/the-israel-lobby.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Israel Lobby - Feiler Faster\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The debate over Jimmy Carter&#8217;s book may have been only the beginning. The war over the Israel Lobby is already underway in advance of a new book, and counter book, being published this September. I haven&#8217;t read the books, so it&#8217;s hard for me to comment at this moment, but the debate triggers a number&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster\/2007\/08\/the-israel-lobby.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Feiler Faster\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2007-08-15T22:15:02+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"bfeiler\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"The Israel Lobby - Feiler Faster","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster\/2007\/08\/the-israel-lobby.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"The Israel Lobby - Feiler Faster","og_description":"The debate over Jimmy Carter&#8217;s book may have been only the beginning. The war over the Israel Lobby is already underway in advance of a new book, and counter book, being published this September. I haven&#8217;t read the books, so it&#8217;s hard for me to comment at this moment, but the debate triggers a number&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster\/2007\/08\/the-israel-lobby.html","og_site_name":"Feiler Faster","article_published_time":"2007-08-15T22:15:02+00:00","author":"bfeiler","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster\/2007\/08\/the-israel-lobby.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster\/2007\/08\/the-israel-lobby.html","name":"The Israel Lobby - Feiler Faster","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster\/#website"},"datePublished":"2007-08-15T22:15:02+00:00","dateModified":"2007-08-15T22:15:02+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster\/#\/schema\/person\/cd560df5c2f027ddc9a594e3313de1d8"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster\/2007\/08\/the-israel-lobby.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster\/2007\/08\/the-israel-lobby.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster\/2007\/08\/the-israel-lobby.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"The Israel Lobby"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster\/","name":"Feiler Faster","description":"The Blog of Bestselling Author and Commentator Bruce Feiler","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster\/#\/schema\/person\/cd560df5c2f027ddc9a594e3313de1d8","name":"bfeiler","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/ce3\/ce3529dc7e8bc71c31414750eb2dfd45x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/ce3\/ce3529dc7e8bc71c31414750eb2dfd45x96.jpg","caption":"bfeiler"},"description":"Bruce Feiler is one of America\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s most popular voices on faith, family, and finding meaning in everyday life. He is the best-selling author of nine books, including Walking the Bible, Abraham, and America's Prophet, and one of only a handful of writers to have four consecutive New York Times nonfiction bestsellers in the last decade. He is also the writer\/presenter of the PBS miniseries WALKING THE BIBLE. His latest book, The Council of Dads, tells the uplifting story of how friendship and community can help one survive life\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s greatest challenge. For more information, please visit brucefeiler.com or councilofdads.com.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster\/author\/bfeiler"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/352"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}