Foreign Policy CEO David Rothkopf doesn’t believe there’s an Israel lobby but he says that this year’s presidential election will damage it, and he’s right. His logic: There is no Israel lobby, it’s just a bogey man invented by prejudiced people (read, anti-Semites); but for some darn reason Romney believes that the Israel lobby has influence, and by playing to it so crudely, he’s about to demolish the perceptions of the Israel lobby’s power, because Obama’s going to win bigtime, and Obama defied the so-called lobby.
Rothkopf’s best points involve Obama’s defying the lobby on Iran:
the Obama administration bravely kicked off last week with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s outright rejection of the idea of red lines, a strong message that they would not be bullied, even in an election year, regardless of the political consequences. This was further underscored later in the week when the Obama administration allegedly rejected a meeting with Netanyahu. The rejection was leaked by the Israelis hoping the lobby would be outraged. The administration held its ground, in part because they knew something that Netanyahu did not: American Jews do not vote as a monolith, they don’t vote Israel’s interests first, they don’t like foreign leaders trying to meddle in U.S. elections, and the polling results show it. Since Romney and Netanyahu first started making their play to harness the power of “the lobby,” their standing in the polls has slipped. In Florida, Obama has gained ground since this effort started
But Rothkopf denies that there is a lobby:
And here we see the perils of believing your own hype — apparently Bibi and friends actually believed the idea of the all-powerful Israel Lobby. Whether through Romney’s bald-faced pandering to that perceived lobby with his ugly comments about the cultural inferiority of Palestinians or, more shockingly, through Netanyahu’s decision to take sides in the 2012 presidential campaign, they seem to think that if they can portray Obama as “weak on Israel” they will materially advance their own causes…
In short, this year is getting off to a good start for those of us who have always found the notion of some dark Jewish conspiracy of super-K Streeters to be laughable. Jews are just as divided, just as sometimes impotent and sometimes successful as anyone else…
…when it is none other than the prime minister of Israel who proves once and for all the limitations of the lobby and, by November, will have proved that estimations of Jewish political influence of all types are overstated, well, then that’s something worth celebrating….
And if the myth [all you bigots who believe the lobby exists] survives the drubbing the facts are giving it this fall, well, then it will at least prove once and for all that it is what many of us, like Jeff Goldberg and I, have been arguing for a long, long time: The Israel Lobby is just another boogie monster cooked up to serve the nasty agenda of people all too eager to sacrifice the truth on the altar of their prejudices.
This is horse manure. Yes, this will be a great defeat for the lobby. The extraordinary demonstration against the Jerusalem plank at this year’s Democratic Convention is also evidence that informed Americans don’t want what the lobby is selling. But Romney believed the lobby was important. He went to Jerusalem, he pandered. Why did he believe this? The man is a professional politician. George W. Bush believed the lobby was important; and he did the opposite of his father, who complained about the lobby and lost his job the next year– and the son appointed the lobby to countless positions. Elliott Abrams, Douglas Feith, Richard Perle. There is plenty of evidence that Netanyahu deployed the lobby to great effect. Obama once called for an end to settlements. Now he has backed away completely. Why? Because he believes the lobby must be placated. When the Jewish Week speaks openly of the battle between Romney and Obama for Jewish donors and “Israel-focused campaign cash”, it is describing a traditional source of political power that Rothkopf won’t mention.
Rothkopf is simply too empowered to be lecturing anyone else about how “impotent” Jews are. Yesterday he was on the front page of the New York Times, quoted in a puff piece about his friend and former roommate, Michael Oren, the Israeli ambassador to the U.S., in which we learned lots of fun positive human facts about Oren. Jeffrey Goldberg, another Oren “friend” who like Oren moved to Israel from the States (he’s since come back), was also quoted. Rothkopf surely thinks this was good, straight journalism, because it serves his vanity to believe as much. No: it’s the Times bending over backwards to please a Zionist establishment constituency, as Antony Loewenstein said last night at the Brecht Forum, in smashing that piece to bits. If as Rothkopf claims in his piece, Jews are a neutral force in US politics– “Jews are just as divided, just as sometimes impotent and sometimes successful as anyone else” — then why is it that the most leftwing person the Times quoted was Jeremy Ben-Ami, the ardent Zionist and son of a former Irgun member who leads J Street? Does Rothkopf publish any anti-Zionist Jews at the site of which he is CEO, Foreign Policy? No; the only diversity on this question in the establishment is shades of vehement support for Israel, which is why the choice is between Romney’s kick-the-peace-process-can down the road versus Obama’s pretend not to do the same, but also kick the can down the road policy.
Hilarious.
The lobby doesn’t exist!
(Yet it’s going to be defeated; *cough*, I meant the illusion of it!!!1one).
Rothkopf is yet another establishment Zionist trying to ‘disprove’ the lobby.
The more they deny, the more suspicion they raise.
But even beyond that, there’s a core logical fault in his argument.
The lobby doesn’t take sides. Bibi does. The lobby doesn’t. That’s why AIPAC praised Obama in their recent communiqué. They need bipartisan
controlsupport.That Romney loses changes nothing. That’s the whole point of the Israel lobby.
“No matter who wins or loses, we always win”. That’s why it constantly harps on the need for the so-called ‘bipartisan support’. It never has to tie it’s fortune to either party. Both parties serves it’s interests.
Romney exposed it more than ever, since he is a panderer by nature. He panders to his base and he panders to his donors more than most politicians do.
Of course, the MSM could write about him pandering to the base. Writing about the lobby is a no-go zone(which Rothkopf tries to enforce here) but it was at one point impossible even for the MSM to ignore the elephant in the room, so they targeted on individuals like Adelson.
Yet even then it was in a tortured way, like when the NYT did their front page report on Adelson and the word ‘Israel’ didn’t even come up once.
Yet no matter who wins, I don’t think that the talk of the lobby will die down. Romney did a lot to illuminate it already, but even if he loses, the Bibi+AIPAC attack on Obama isn’t going away and now Obama doesn’t have to face re-election, he will get a hostile Congress(Dems won’t take back the house and the Senate is a toss-up) from Republicans, so he won’t need the lobby’s muscle on domestic issues anyway.
He will be facing down the lobby and Bibi from a position of far greater strength in a second term.
And Bibi, who once declared that “America is a thing that can be easily moved”, isn’t likely to silently accept his fate. And trust him to continue to employ the lobby on his behalf to shoot the president for more wars on behalf of Israel in the Middle East.
Rothkopf won’t have many reasons to smile going forward. Poor guy.
He doesn’t do a great job for the lobby.
Very well said krauss!
No matter who wins the election the Lobby will maintain its obvious and overwhelming influence over our govt and foreign policy. The democrats are just as loyal to the lobby as republicans but the latter makes no illusions of it. The lobby has unequivocally given their support to Romney and if defeated that would be a strong indication that the dynamics of this all is changing for the better.
In addition, an Obama victory will send sweat down the face of entire pro Israel establishment. The Lobby knows a second term Obama will be empowered to (hopefully) stand his ground and push back at bibi having nothing to lose this time around
Don’t be an idiot Krauss.
The Lobby relies on the balance of power being narrow. It doesn’t rely on support, it relies on blackmail and intimidation.
If Obama looks like a shoe in, the lobby is powerless – at least until the mid terms. But that puts them in a bind because it’s Obama’s second term and that further diffuses their threats. In the mean time, he has 2 years to prepare for whatever they have to throw at the Drmocrats.
He could severely damage them by then. But most importantly, their vulnerability will have been exposed.
Already pundits are expressing disgust at Bibbi and the lobby. It’s only going to get worse.
“In short, this year is getting off to a good start for those of us who have always found the notion of some dark Jewish conspiracy of super-K Streeters to be laughable. Jews are just as divided, just as sometimes impotent and sometimes successful as anyone else…”"……Rothkopf
LOL….what we find laughable is this pitiful attempt to deny the Lobby and it’s power by trying to say….. If The Lobby doesn’t influence the public or Jewish opinion ……Then it doesn’t influence the US congress and politicians either and therefore doesn’t exist.
Plezzzzze…..you’re stupid Rothkopf .
The assumption that we are the stupid ones who can’t add 2 and 2 and get 4 or tell an apple from an orange is what impresses me time after time about the Lobby apologist.
Rothkopf doesn’t seem to publish very many non-MOT’s period. He has Walt on there to placate the realist academics who read that rag, I guess, and then he proceeds to attack him periodically in his own blog. Incidentally, I know an academic who used to report for their mideast channel, who says he will not write for it anymore, given how neo-conesque the editorial line has become during the past year.
Of course.
Pay lip service to different constituencies, but when the chips are down, draw closer to your neocon roots and hold the line in absolute terms. Smear anyone who disagrees.
Notice again that the primary way that the neocons fight their battles is always via the same mechanism: smear campaigns of anti-Semitism. It’s the same story every time.
These people don’t believe in rational debate. And that in of itself is actually rational; for they understand they would lose it in an instant.
The drubbing of the IL is overstated. The lobby has gotten whatever it wanted out of Obama for the past 4 years. They weren’t able to bait the US into launching a new war against Iran before this election but that was an impossible dream. Falling short of that they have made sure the US and Iran will be enemies for a long time to come. This is 180 degree change from how the US was beginning to see Iran pre 9/11. Unless the IL is dealt with…it will still be Sanctions and demonizing Iran now, war whenever possible down the road. And of course thanks to the power of the IL, its still fck all to the Palestinians, full steam ahead on settlements, whilst the billions in US aid keep flowing in.
You are slightly contradicting yourself. The lobby clearly wanted a war with Iran and it did not get it. So the lobby did not get whatever they wanted, and merely everything that they wanted that Obama could give them.
So the lobby is not “all powerful”. My private theory is that USA simply cannot attack Iran, or even allow Israel to do so because of red lines discretely drawn by Russia and China. Charm offensive in the form of Avigdor Lieberman personally visiting Moscow and Beijing failed to impress inscrutable leaders of those countries.
Actually, this is not the first time GoI is thwarted. They had this nice project of putting domestic opposition “on diet” by controlling who is allowed to accept foreign donations. Then it turned out that the treasonous NGOs that accept foreign money are often beneficiaries of “charities” run by key Western political parties. Suddenly the category of “dangerous leftists and Islamists” included Hamas, British Tories, German CDU/CSU and even US State Department. Some invisible red lines materialized and the project was shelved and it was not discussed ever since. Such was the power of the Umma that even IL gave this issue a pass. Keeping powder dry.
But now IL lobby is thwarted quite spectacularly. They demanded the impossible, they said it loudly, they repeated it, the case was nicely explained to American public on prime time TV and what? The impossible remains undone. And even worse, the impossible remains unpopular. And how it can be explained to our children?
Explanation that Netanyahu with support of Romney demanded the impossible would imply that these gentlemen are either delusional or liars, and so is Sheldon Adelson, a loose cannon who by dint of wasting tens of millions of dollars became the apotheosis of the Israeli Lobby.
helpful analysis, thank you piotr
“The lobby clearly wanted a war with Iran and it did not get it.”
All true, but look at this way. By the swinging for the fences the lobby changed the script Obama had intended for Israel, it put him on the defensive. They got more aid, silence on the settlements, total disregard of Palestinians…they got a solid double out of it.
It didn’t get the war with Iran…now, but the game is still in play and look how far they came. When Obama came into office he intended to talk with our enemies, to talk with Iran. Go back just after 9/11 Iran was cooperating with the West on terrorism…during the late 90s Iran was being described as a moderate country on the cusp of having relations with the US again.
Now the US is so far down the road towards conflict with Iran it is hard to see them turning around. The public has been so saturated with Iran/Hitler comparisons what no US politician can even suggest otherwise.
Getting the US into a war with Iran was an impossible dream because the public is totally disillusioned by Iraq/Afghanistan and the economic collapse. They waited too long and now the public wants nothing to do with the ME. They may have been ‘thwarted quite spectacularly’ but is that how the children see it? I don’t think IL is in their vernacular. I think the children see Iran as an enemy who we are one day going to have a war with. Its not war, now, but we’re on the path and that’s quite an accomplished for the IL.
All too true.
Obama’s going to win bigtime, and Obama defied the so-called lobby.
Oh please, both candidates and the leadership of both parties took turns pandering to The Israel Lobby. The spectacle of Obama putting recognition of Jerusalem back in the party platform was an act over defiance alright, but he was standing up against the party delegates, not AIPAC.
@ Hostage
And, D W-S quickly pointed out, when Obama got the word, he quickly amended the day prior DNC change to show his stance, hence that’s why they have to drop the rules & do a 2/3rd voice vote (in the morning, with half the delegates missing). LOL
Not so fast, Phil. Are you accounting for the 150,000 to 300,000 dual US/Israeli
citizens as well as their progeny ( who may never have lived in the US)
who are eligible to vote and who are being actively recruited by IVoteIsrael? The Uniformed Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act authorizes such participation in
US elections. This project, spearheaded by Ari Fleisher and Americans for Jerusalem
(a US 501 (c)(4) nonprofit has regional directors throughout Isreal and, of course, the West Bank. The primary goal of this project is to make voting easily and accessible with ballot boxes throughout Israel. The stated intent of IVoteIsrael is
“to mobilize (sic) a small yet homogeneous and passionate microgroup to affect narrow margins in swing states.” On a political cartoon being shown throughout Israel (but obviously not in the US), the narrator opines, “Its not Uncle Sam who needs Americans to vote, Isreal needs you to vote,” obviously to further the election of politicians who can be guaranteed to support and amplify current Israeli policies,
such as Iran, settlement expansion, unlimited financial support.
The most ugly part of this is the current situation wherein the Republicans have passed numerous vote caging laws in this country (asserting non existent voter fraud) which restrict the “47%” citizens from excercising their legally mandated democratic rights, while enabling significant numbers of Israeli voters to have an ease and access to the vote – to influence a country in which they do not live and wherein they are not – really – expatriates, since their first loyalty is to their own country, Israel.
@ Abierno
And now factor in that, while not too long ago there were usually 30 swing states, now there is only 7. There are focused advantages to being the only state in the world that is the state of official allegiance for its constituency, no matter where they were born, grew up, or live, or have lived.
There is no lobby. AIPAC is just a Jewish version of the Knights of Columbanus.
Except the KoC don’t run an annual conference that features session on geopolitics and war . But I guess that is because Irish American catholics aren’t as smart as Jews.
Bibi has put all his chips on Romney. Israel is now reliant on the Empire.
And it’s only a matter of time before the liberal Jews start leaving Israel en masse.
So much for Herzl’s vision.
@ seafoid, unless I don’t remember so good anymore, the KOC was never for Orange Irish. No Protestant Irish allowed. And you can’t be any kind of Christian and be an atheist or agnostic.
The KoC was like Pepsi versus the Orange Order’s Coke
Lobby: ‘Jewish presence in Congress to Shrink’
Excerpt: There are 27 Jews serving in the current Congress (18%) and 12 in the Senate (11%). According to Forward’s prediction; 20 Jews will be elected to Congress and 10 to the Senate in the November 2012 elections. Which means the percentage of Jewish members in Congress and Senate will be lower than it had been in decades.
More: link to rehmat1.com
A similar story in the Forward:
link to forward.com
A much more accurate measure of influence would be among political donors/bundlers.
But the Forward ain’t going to go there; for understandable reasons.
It raises all sorts of uncomfortable questions and reinforces stereotypes.
It also, incidentially, blows Rothkopf’s hilarious antics apart completely.
“Impotent”.
How long are we going to pretend that those darned Christian gentiles run the show on everything and everyone else is a poor, oppressed minority?
Those days are since long gone, but it’s a comfortable narrative to keep telling yourself when you don’t want to be held accountable to anyone or anything and always find someone else to blame for all your failures.
I get the attraction of it.
But that doesn’t mean it’s accurate, or even close to it.
A bogey man initially empowered when President Johnson, not once but twice, ordered the return of Navy aircraft sent to investigate what had happened to the USS Liberty.
@ Les
And all because Johnson wanted Jews to support him as he was losing power fast due to the Vietnam War, which he chose to escalate. Has there been anyone in US politics at such a high level who has been more selfishly opportunistic and vulgar than that ugly hick? He cared about nobody but himself, and history shows it. Don’t bother to tell me he’s responsible for civil rights legislation.
“…If as Rothkopf claims in his piece, Jews are a neutral force in US politics– “Jews are just as divided, just as sometimes impotent and sometimes successful as anyone else” — then why is it that the most leftwing person the Times quoted was Jeremy Ben-Ami, the ardent Zionist and son of a former Irgun member who leads J Street?…”
Why is it? Maybe it’s because most of those Jews who have reservations about Israel just keep quiet.
While the Jews I have known presumably have been disproportionately progressive Jews, only one Jew I have ever known was a strident Israel supporter. Most seem to react to the subject of Israel about the way you would to the subject of your criminal younger brother coming up — yeah, you know he’s perfectly awful, but he is family, and you’re not about to publicly agree the state should lock him up and throw away the key.
The Jewish attitude towards Israel I have generally encountered is indeed about that you would have towards your criminal younger brother: above all, you just dearly wish he’d shape up — and indeed, most Jews seem to be for a ‘nice’ Israel, one who somehow starts conforming to civilized norms.
So Jews may or may not be politically powerful — everybody assures me that they are, and everyone keeps acting as if they are, so I suppose that’s so. They are, however, indeed divided. It’s just that the worst of them are also the noisiest.
ColinWright
Sometimes, silence is complicity. They hung that on the average German, so why not the average Jew?
What do you need, somebody scribbling on a napkin how many congress critters the Zionists can get in five minutes to push their agenda? Another dose of US congress clapping for Bibi? More info on how, no matter what is cut from the US budget, nobody important is saying they will cut aid to Israel, the biggest chunk of foreign aid, and instead, more is being given to Israel while the US is failing fast economically?
Citizen says: “…Sometimes, silence is complicity. They hung that on the average German, so why not the average Jew? “
Except that American Jews, at least, are not even in Israel, and moreover, as I have checked, the truly robotic Israel supporters in Congress, come not from districts with large Jewish votes, but from those with large evangelical votes. Go ahead and check where the 26 don’t come from the next time there’s one of those 411-26 ‘we love Israel’ resolutions. It’s the Congressmen with Evangelicals in their districts who have to toe the line, not those with Jews in their districts.
Furthermore, to demand that Jews not merely refrain from vociferously supporting Israel, but come out in vehement opposition is to some extent to fall for the Zionist paradigm. Aren’t you demanding that Jews indeed be a people, that they take responsibility for the acts of others in their community?
Ultimately, I think the same logic that says Israel is nonsense to begin with, also says that Jews have no more obligation than anyone else does to oppose Israel. If they haven’t voted with their feet and gone there, they are exactly as responsible as gentile Americans are for Israel’s crimes. No more, and no less.
You would also have to look at the money flows. Who sponsors all of that swanky settlement infrastructure?
link to yeshabulletin.com
link to israelnationalnews.com
link to binamica.com
“Isn’t it about time you took your children to visit your great-grandparents in Hebron? New armored buses (WTF) , inspiring guides like Rabbi Simcha Hochbaum…”
Who pays money as a replacement for making aliyah to a second rate country that is much more attractive from a distance ?
“The Jewish attitude towards Israel I have generally encountered is indeed about that you would have towards your criminal younger brother…”
Only that they all carry the curse of an entire family, with over 90% criminals, not just a younger brother.
sardelapasti says: “Only that they all carry the curse of an entire family, with over 90% criminals, not just a younger brother.”
Hardly. It is striking how few Jews with any authentic choice in the matter have gone to Israel and helped to commit its crimes. Zionism is a crime that has only fully engaged a minority of Jews who had a choice about it. Check how many American, Canadian, or English Jews have ever emigrated to Israel.
Now, there are of course ‘couch warriors’ — but even those are a minority. I’ll stick with my opinion that for most Jews, Israel really is like this awkwardly criminal younger brother. He’s there. They don’t feel they should disown him, but far from supporting his behavior, they just dearly wish he’d behave.
Great job Phil, i am counting on the Republican party realists to sweep the ziocons to take a back seat after the Romney presidential run goes down in flames as it shoud.
The only chance the Repubs had to win the whitehouse was with that crazy uncle up in the attick Ron Paul, but alas the conservative party is only conservative in theory and not in practice.
@ atime forpeace
You’re right about Ron Paul. That’s why neither party elite liked him.
“Romney’s defeat expose lobby’s weakness”??
That’s an even larger chunk of the horse manure you referred to!
The Zionists (no need to call it “the Lobby”) have invested at least as much in the Repucrats as in the Demolicans. In fact, any retard can see plain as day that Romney is nothing but a clown set up by the country’s owners to scare the good people to vote Obama again.
Considering the kind of mind of the Lobby leaders, I’d propose an equally credible interpretation: The slight excess of the Netanyahu-Romney bluster over the more serviceable Zionist obedience of Obama is consciously being used by the Zionists to repel some of the voters and ensure four more years of the same Obama Zionist dictatorship.
Then the Foreign Policy CEO is an idiot.
The definition of a lobby: “A group of persons engaged in trying to influence legislators or other public officials in favor of a specific cause: the banking lobby; the labor lobby.”
Do I need to list the number of Jewish groups that lobby the US Govt on behalf of Israel?
Who does he think we are? So stupid that we don’t know whether to scratch our watches or wind our asses?
Another condescending prick pushing the “rocks are what I say they are” argument.
Romney’s defeat will reveal the fact that while public support for Israel may be wide, it’s not deep. For sure not at a time when the public is more and more aware and fearful of the consequences (an iran war) of allowing the tail to wag the dog.
….and what portion of Israel firster Rothkof’s insistance that there’s no such thing as an Israel lobby can be attributed to his seeking plausible denial, if & when the U.S. joins Israel in attacking Iran? Cause should said war take place, when the s— hits the fan and the public demands to know who got us into this latest (worst yet) bloody quagmire, Rothkof’s mistaken if he thinks the American people will buy his denial that there’s a potent Israel lobby, rather than see him for the traitor that he is. Same goes for the rest of the Israel firster cabal.
I agree that the lobby will take a hit when Romney is defeated. Politicians may reconsider the necessity to kiss the rings of the Zionist kingmakers.
Strange that Rothkopf is in denial about his own identity as a lobbyist.
Incidentally, and voluntarily or not, Israel’s still got its wagon hitched to Romney’s star.
There’s a Republican ad featuring Netanyahu’s wisdom set to come out in Florida next week — presumably, whether Netanyahu wants it to or not.
link to politico.com
Give what an arrogant and essentially clueless schmuck Adelson seems to be, I’ve got high hopes that Romney’s campaign may degenerate in the final weeks into a series of increasingly frenetic commercials identifying Romney with Israel.
‘Is Netanyahu Going Crazy?’
link to globalpost.com
Great article, Taxi.