Today's Stories

August 7 - 9, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
It Pays to Have a Nuke

August 6, 2009

Ishmael Reed
Let's All Have a Beer

Paul Craig Roberts
The Expiring Economy

William Blum Assassinations and Coups: Keeping Track of the Empire's Crimes

Michael Donnelly
Rod Coronado: the Hardest Working Man in Animal Rights "Terrorism"

Jonathan Cook
Rabbis Ban Marriage for Israeli "Untouchables"

Dave Lindorff
The Health Care Reform Sell-Out

Ellen Brown
The Public Option in Banking

Website of the Day
Ellsberg on Hiroshima

August 5, 2009

Dedrick Muhammad /
Barbara Ehrenreich
The Destruction of the Black Middle Class

Norman Solomon
The Incredible, Shrinking Health Care Plan

William Blum
The Myths of Afghanistan: Past and Present

Gareth Porter
The ISI and the Taliban: US Officials Are Protecting Pakistani Aid to Taliban

Mary Lynn Cramer
The Myth of Medicare for All

Jim Goodman
Obama Needs to Take a Stand on Trade

Nadia Hijab
Playing From Strength in the Middle East

Gretchen Kroth
Guatemala's Garbage Dump Education System

Steve Macek /
Scott Sanders
Privatizing the Airwaves

Sarah Lazare
Inside G.I. Resistance

Website of the Day
The Locavore Myth

August 4, 2009

Mike Whitney
Bernanke's Shell Game

Dave Lindorff
The Recession Isn't Over, By a Long Shot

Patrick Cockburn
Did British Bomb Attacks in Iran Provoke Hostage Crisis?

Jonathan Cook
Israel's Campaign to Silence Human Rights Groups

Jeff Sher
Making a Mess of Health Care Reform

Dean Baker
Why Don't We Globalize Health Care?

Andy Worthington
Gitmo as Hotel California

Uri Avnery
A Jeremiad

Mark Weisbrot
U.S.-Brokered Mediation in Honduras Has Failed

Alvaro Huerta
Hold That Dustbin! So Much for the "End of Racism"

Website of the Day
Pentagon to Ban Facebook and Twitter?

August 3, 2009

Pam Martens
Millions of Americans Pushed Into No-Law System by Colluding Banks

Anthony DiMaggio
Media Backlash: Obama and the Settlements

Udi Aloni
And Who Shall I Say is Calling? A Plea to Leonard Cohen

Mike Roselle
See the Mountains of WestVirginia ... Before They're Blown Up!

Dr. Susan Block
Beat It! Sex, Death and Michael Jackson

Roy Bourgeois / Margaret Knapke
School of Coups

Joe Bageant
A Yard Sale in Chernobyl

Dina Jadallah
Hiding the State

Dave Lindorff
Of Blue Dogs and Jellyfish

Martha Rosenberg
Grand Closings in Evanston: How the Recession is Hitting Illinois

Website of the Day
Why We Can't "Afford" Health Care

July 31 - August 2, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
The Biden and Clinton Mutinies

Gabriel Kolko
Searching For Enemies

John Prados
The Intelligence Oversight Mess

Joe Bageant
The Bastards Never Die

Tim Wise
Rationalizing Racial Oppression

Carl Ginsburg
Frist First: Follow the Money (and Find the Plump Heart of "Health Care")

Michael Fox
The Honduran Coup as Overture

John Lindsay-Poland
Revamping Plan Colombia

Michael Winship
Pay-to-Play: Washington's Sport of Kings

Rev. William Alberts
White Men Can Jump ... to Conclusions

Andy Worthington
Judge Orders Release of Tortured Gitmo Prisoner

Steve Breyman
Counting the Unemployed

Cyrus Bina
Racism, Class and Profiling

Missy Beattie
Promises Ignored

Ron Jacobs
Into the Vapid: Consuming the Cultural Product

Willie L. Pelote, Sr.
Party of Concessions: Democrats Never Learn

Lucia Alvarez
Fall of the House of Kirchner? Return of the Right in Argentina

Dave Lindorff
David Brooks' White Guy Nightmare

Lawrence R. Velvel
Madoff: What Should be Done Now?

Omar Barghouti /
Sid Shniad
United for Freedom and Universal Justice

James L. Secor
The Name of the Game is Wipe-Out

Belén Fernández
Zelaya in Nicaragua: Has Another Constitution Been Violated?

Jeffrey St. Clair
Frank Lloyd Wright in Hollywood: the Ennis House as Imperial Ruin

David Yearsley
Beauty in Dark Places: Berlin's Olympic Stadium

Brian J. Foley
Pre-Eating: a Threat to Restaurants Everywhere

Alan Cabal
Onward, Into the Fog: Thomas Pynchon's
"Inherent Vice"

Kim Nicolini
The Way War Feels

Lorenzo Wolff
The Way It Felt the First Time: the Jump Rope Magic of the Shangri-Las

Poets' Basement
Four Poems From the Chinese

Website of the Weekend
Obama's Ex-Doc Knocks ObamaCare

July 30, 2009

Patrick Cockburn
Victims of a Covert Tit-for-Tat War

Gareth Porter
Afghanistan's US-Backed Child-Raping Police

Saul Landau
Summer of Denial

Greg Grandin
Honduran Coup Over?

Diane Farsetta
Pentagon Pundits Get a Pass

Stephen Soldz
The King Case, the APA and the Missing Ethics Investigation

Alan Farago
Learning How to Survive in a Depression From "Weeds"

David Macaray
Cops and Labor Unions

Mike Howells /
Jay Arena
Volunteerism Will Not Rebuild the Gulf Coast

Christopher Brauchli
Oatmeal Envy

Website of the Day
Changing the SOFA

July 29, 2009

Carl Ginsburg
Our Crisis, Their Gain

Clifton Ross
From Tegucigalpa to El Paraiso: a Voyage From Curfew to State of Siege

Paul Craig Roberts
How Fake is the "Recovery"?

Franklin C. Spinney
Winning Hearts and Minds, Pentagon Style

James Bovard Lackawanna Six: Bogus Charges and Martial Law

Anthony DiMaggio
Health Care, the Media and Public Opinion

Bouthaina Shaaban
How Will Arabs Wake Up?

Greg Moses
A Catch and Trade Policy for Labor Costs

Wajahat Ali
No Racism in Obama's Post-Race America?

Gary Leupp
Beer Will Not Solve This

Ayesha Ijaz Khan
Musharraf, Imran Khan and Overseas Pakistanis

Website of the Day
Why Single-Payer Gets No Respect

July 28, 2009

Jean Bricmont
Bombing for a Juster World?

Uri Avnery
Obama, Netanyahu and the Settlements

Dean Baker
Right to Rent: a Remedy for the Foreclosure Crisis

Heather Gray
Stupid Cop Tricks: Driving Too Close to a White Female and Other Episodes in Racist Policing

Jonathan Cook
Can an "Arab Soul" Yearn for Israel's Anthem?

Winslow T. Wheeler
Beyond the F-22: the Future of Pentagon Reform

Belén Fernández
Thomas Friedman Does Afghanistan

Carl Finamore
The Hotel Workers' Kickass Local 2

Eli Jelly-Schapiro
Striking the World Cup

Harvey Wasserman
We All Stand Before Peltier's Parole Board

Website of the Day
Behind the Wheel

July 27, 2009

Ishmael Reed
Gates: Post-Race Scholar Yells Racism

Patrick Cockburn
Elections Shake Kurdistan

Roger Burbach
Hillary and Obama Nix Change in Honduras

Steve Breyman
Bomber Joe and Russia: Why is Biden Channeling Cheney?

Ramzy Kysia
Gaza: On the Right of Resistance

Stephen Soldz
Will the American Psychological Association Renounce the Nuremberg Defense?

Raymond J. Lawrence
Sexual Hocus Pocus in the Episcopal Church

Greg Moses
The Color Line is Black

Binoy Kampmark
Swine Flu Panic

Kim Ives
Lavalas and Haiti's Student Union Unite

Website of the Day
Meet the Paid Assassins of Health Care

July 24-26, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
"A Damned Murder, Inc."

Clifton Ross
Surreal Honduras

Patrick Cockburn
Party of "Change" Challenges Old Guard in Kurdistan

William Polk
Report Card on Obama From a New Frontiersman

David Sterritt
Screening the Politics Out of the Iraq War

Ray McGovern
Hooded in Bush's Hood

David Lindorff
Cops Gone Wild

Hannah Mermelstein
"The War is With the Arabs"

Carl Ginsburg
The Actually Existing Health Care System

Helen Redmond
The Selling of Single-Payer Features

John Ross
The Song of the Guerrilla

Bill Simpich
Fair Play for Cuba and the Cuban Revolution

Mark Weisbrot
Learning From China on How to Beat the Recession

Lee Sustar
U.S. Labor in Crisis

David Macaray
Union Workers Forced to Accept Massive Cuts

Felipe Matsunaga
Obama's Slow (and Familiar) Dance With Cuba

Sara Mann
Why Health Care Will Kill My TV

Martha Rosenberg
Which is Worse? Germs in Our Food or the Antibiotics That Kill Them?

Missy Beattie
Cha-ching Culture

David Ker Thomson
Empty Nest: a Natural History of Now

Ron Jacobs
United4Iran, a Footnote

Stephen Martin
The Crying of Lots 1 Thru 50

David Yearsley
Psst, I Show You a Feelthy Gluck

Gilad Atzmon
Bruno: a Glimpse Into Zionism?

Kim Nicolini
Guilty Laughter in the Dark: Seeing Brüno Twice

Poets' Basement
Kakak and McLellan

Website of the Weekend
Dead Prez: Summertime

July 23, 2009

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Masters of Perfidy: AIG and the System

Saul Landau /
Nelson Valdés
Hypocrisy and the Honduran Coup: Term Limits Only Apply When Governments Help People

Jonathan Cook
The Reality of Israel's "Open" Jerusalem

Nadia Hijab
Israeli Warships in the Red Sea

Dave Lindorff
Living in a Police State: the Gates Incident

Laura Carlsen
21st Century Coups d'Etat

Steve Breyman
Bankers Beware?

Ellen Brown
How California Could Turn Its IOUs Into Dollars

Norman Solomon
Spinning Health Care

Jorge Mariscal
Youth Activists Demand Military-Free Schools

Website of the Day
Copy-Editing Sarah Palin

July 22, 2009

Bernard Chazelle
How to Argue Against Torture

Nikolas Kozloff
The Coup and the U.S. Airbase in Honduras

Carl Ginsburg
The Recovery, Phase Two

Clifton Ross
Back to the Future? Return to El Salvador

Anthony DiMaggio
Health Care, Media and the Case for Socialized Medicine

Michael Donnelly
The Whoppers Behind WOPR

Nadia Hijab
Memoirs of a Lost Arab World

Dedrick Muhammad
Structural Inequality: News Not Fit to Print?

Charles Thomson
Cronyism at the Tate

Alan Farago
Ted Williams and the Florida Keys

Website of the Day
Himmelstein: Howard Dean is a Liar

July 21, 2009

Sasan Fayazmanesh
The Iranian Election and Its Aftermath

Uri Avnery
Breaking the Silence on Israeli War Crimes

Dean Baker
Séance on Wall Street

Jonathan Cook
Team Twitter: Israel's Internet War

Dave Lindorff
Saving Private Bergdahl

Andy Worthington
Interrogating the Uighurs

David Macaray
Heat, Dust and OSHA

Carl Finamore
The Deferential Party

Harvey Wasserman
Cronkite and Three Mile Island

Walter Brasch
The Marie Antoinettes of Health Care

Website of the Day
Linebaugh: Magna Carta and the Commons

July 20, 2009

Pam Martens
Judicial Apartheid

Nikolas Kozloff
Honduras and the Big Stick: Obama's Bullish Behavoir in Latin America

Paul Craig Roberts
Threatening Iran

Deepak Tripathi
Obama's Policy on China and Iran

Ira Glunts
Netanyahu's Time Bomb: Building in the Vineyard of the Mufti

P. Sainath
Put Your Money Down, Boys

Binoy Kampmark
The Moon Landing and the Cold War

Stephen Fleischman
The First Anchorman

Norman Solomon
Cronkite and Vietnam: Beyond the Hype

Andy Worthington
Predictable Chaos as Gitmo Trials Resume

Ron Jacobs
Out of the Haze, Into the Darkness: Recalling 1979

Website of the Day
Why Publishing Can't be Saved (as it is)

July 17-19, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
"Watch What We Do, Not What We Say"

Nikolas Kozloff
Chiquita in Latin America: From Arbenz to Zelaya

Joanne Mariner
CIA Apples: Bad at the Top of the Tree

Joe Bageant
America's White Underclass

Jonathan Cook
Israeli Road Signs: Wiping Arabic Names Off the Map

Saul Landau
Why So Much Sympathy for Madoff's Dupes and So Little for the Poor?

John Ross
Jurassic Fallout in Mexico

Sue Sturgis
Senator Sessions, Race and Impartiality

Anita Sinha /
Daniel Farbman
The Ricci Case and the Myth of Special Treatment

Peter Morici
Obama's Donut Economics

Pervez Hoodbhoy
Whither Pakistan? A Five-Year Forecast

Ramzy Baroud
Gaza and the Language of Power

Greg Moses
The Real Demand Crisis

Kia Mistilis
The Niger Delta Crisis

Missy Beattie
The Placebo President

David Ker Thomson
How Not to See: Things to Tell Your Eyeballs

James G. Abourezk
Evil Spirits: the Booze Strip in Indian Country

Paul Richards
Why Does Jon Tester Want to Log Wild Montana?

Dave Lindorff
Dark Days for Working People (With Three Small Rays of Light)

Marc Levy
Just Like Hanoi Jane

Matt Siegfried
The Good War Goes Hot

Stephen Martin
Panopticon Blues

Ben Sonnenberg
Sembène's Faat Kiné

David Macaray
Casablanca: When Melodrama Trumped History

Charles R. Larson
A Pakistani, Victorian Novel Celebrating Women

David Yearsley
That's Women for You: Abbas Kiarostami's Così

Lorenzo Wolff
Death Rattle and Roll: the Sound From England's Gutters

Poets' Basement
Payne, Anderson and Williams

Website of the Weekend
Hitler Learns of Sarah Palin's Resignation

July 16, 2009

Paul Craig Roberts
What Economy?

Afshin Rattansi Iranian Planes and the Hidden Toll of Economic Sanctions

Gregory V. Button
The Search for Environmental Justice in Perry County, Alabama

Evan Knappenberger
Profile of a Deserter

Michelle Bollinger
Why is Leonard Peltier Still in Prison?

Russell Mokhiber
White House to ABC News: No Obama Single-Payer Doc

Belén Fernández
Iranian Penetration, Oh My!

Alice Walker
What is Torture Like? A Letter to Obama

Nicholas Dearden
Paying the Climate Debt: the G-8's Troubling Model

Albert Osueke
Sotomayor and the Identity Mountain

Website of the Day
Sotomayor for the Prosecution

July 15, 2009

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
The Assassination Bureau

Vijay Prashad
A Political Recession

Dean Baker
Stimulus Arithmetic

Ray McGovern
Cheney Sweating Bullets

Jonathan Cook
Jenin's Model of "Economic Peace"

David Rosen
Shouts From the Gallery: the Sotomayor Hearings and the Culture Wars

Eric Walberg
Uighurs vs. Afghans: a Study in Contrast

Greg Moses
Three Dimensions of a Complete Stimulus Plan

Sousan Hammad
Decolonizing Israel

Binoy Kampmark
The Trial of Charles Taylor

Tracy McLellan
The Story of My Arrest

Website of the Day
11 Days in Saudi Gitmo

July 14, 2009

Eamonn McCann
The Emperors of Bombast: Bono, U2 and the Crisis of World Capitalism

Joanne Mariner
Obama's New Euphemism

Franklin Spinney
The Taliban Rope-a-Dope

Steve Heilig
Walking Mount Tam: an Interview with Gary Snyder

Ali Abunimah
Hamas' Choice

Dave Lindorff
The End of "Nice" Health Care Reform

Nikolas Kozloff
The Politics of Destabilization: McCain and Honduras

Ellen Brown
From Golden State to Subprime State

Alice Slater
How US Missile Defense Plans Sabotaged Nuclear Disarmament Talks With Russia

Ron Jacobs
Protest U.S. Aggression

Joe Allen
The Fight to Save James Hickman in Jim Crow-Style Chicago

Website of the Day
Mel Brooks Does the French Revolution

July 13, 2009

Uri Avnery
The Essence of the Regime

Mike Whitney
The Deflating Economy

P. Sainath
How the World Depression Hits Orissa

Gareth Porter
A US / Iraq Conflict on Iran

Paul Moore
Rap in the Streets, Rap in the Suites

Tim Wise
Off the Deep End: Private Clubs, Public Prejudice

Andy Worthington Former Insider Shatters Credibility of Military Commissions

David Macaray
Cartoon Voices: Serf's Up in Hollywood

Cal Winslow
The Healthcare Worker War

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Spring in the Time of Obama

Website of the Day
Washington's Deep Game with China

July 10-12, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Obama's Biden Problem

José Pertierra
The Cuban Five: a Cold War Case in a Post-Cold War World

John Ross
After the Honduran Coup

Conn Hallinan
The Settlements and the Quartet

Nikolas Kozloff
C Street Band: Sex Scandals, Moral Hypocrisy and the Far Right Agenda in Latin America

Clifton Ross /
Marcy Rein
U.S. and Honduras: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Good Neighbor

Carl Ginsburg
Summers' Clouded Crystal Ball

Michael Neumann
Say It Loud, Say It Proud: There is No God!

Gilad Atzmon
The Left and Islam: Thinking Outside of the Secular Box

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Parable of the Golden Parachute

Ellen Hodgson Brown
California Dreamin': How the State Can Beat Its Budget Woes

Jim Goodman
Rural America Needs More Than Listening Sessions

Christopher Bickerton
Europe's New Politics of Hard Times

Wendell Potter
Health Care Industry Adopts Tobacco Lobby's Tactics

Dave Lindorff
CIA Lies: Why Isn't Congress in Open Revolt?

David Ker Thomson
Switchbacking Toward Bastille Day

Anthony DiMaggio
The Michael Jackson Feeding Frenzy

Raymond Lawrence
Michael Jackson as Sexual Pervert: the Calumnies of Peter King

Walid El Houri
Neda and Marwa: a Tale of Two Murdered Women

Stephanie Westbrook
Yes, We Camp

Roger Gaess
The Shades of Highgate Cemetery

David Yearsley
Tara, America's Dream House

Kim Nicolini
Caution: Men at Work, Robbing Banks

Poets' Basement
Five Poems From the Japanese

Website of the Weekend
Free Tiga and Hugh!

Weekend Edition
August 7 - 9, 2009

Obama and the Israel Lobby, Part One

Origins of Power

By ANTHONY DiMAGGIO

The power of the Israel lobby is the subject of intense dispute in the U.S.  Seldom is an issue so passionately fought over, as critics of the lobby incite the furor of activists committed to protecting the U.S. and Israel’s “special relationship.”  The Israel lobby includes groups such as the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA), and the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, among many others.

Mainstream media commentary has seized on the dispute between President Barack Obama and Israeli settlers as evidence of the continued power of the Israel lobby in dominating U.S. foreign policy.  In an August 2nd New York Times op-ed titled “Free Marriage Counseling,” Thomas Friedman claims that the current “marital spat” between the U.S. and Israel is not only based on the demand for a settlement freeze in the West Bank, although such support has “been building in America for a long time.”  The inability to resolve this conflict, Friedman argues, relates to the larger issue of the Israel lobby’s power, which has “used [its] influence to mindlessly protect Israel from U.S. pressure and to dissuade American officials and diplomats from speaking out against settlements.  Everyone in Washington knows this, and a lot of people - people who care about Israel - are sick of it.”  Friedman’s comments are significant because they allow U.S. leaders to wash their hands of any responsibility for supporting Israel’s occupation.  Friedman implies that support for Israel is the result of simple coercion exercised by the Israel lobby.

The Israel lobby has received sustained attention in other matters related to Obama.  Earlier this year, a controversy erupted over Obama’s choice of Charles Freeman - a former US ambassador and critic of Israel - to chair the National Intelligence Council.  Freeman eventually withdrew his nomination following what he called “a barrage of libelous distortions, undertaken by the Israel lobby” against his service record.  Freeman had raised serious questions about Israel’s conduct in the West Bank, describing the occupation as a “brutal oppression of the Palestinians,” and framing Israel as working against American interests in the Middle East.  In 2007 he argued that “Israel is even more despised and isolated than we are, and together with the Israelis, we are rapidly multiplying the ranks of terrorists with regional and global reach.”

Freeman’s claim that the Israel lobby hinders “serious public discussion” of U.S. policy in the Middle East is shared by many on the left.  Much is made, for example, of former Republican Congressman Paul Findley’s book, They Dare to Speak Out, which chronicles the efforts of pro-Israel lobbyists to defeat those in Congress who are seen as critical of Israel.  Findley chronicles his defeat in the 1982 Illinois House of Representatives race against Democratic challenger Dick Durbin.  He attributes the loss in great part to his choice to “speak out in Congress” condemning U.S. “unwillingness to talk directly to the political leadership of the Palestinians.”  His belief that U.S. unwillingness “handicapped our search for peace” was of little interest to the lobby, which personally claimed credit for his defeat after filtering money to Durbin.

Leftist critiques at times frame the Israel lobby as all powerful.  James Petras argues in his book The Power of Israel in the United States that the Israel lobby retains a supreme position in American politics.  He denigrates the U.S. media for failing to explore “the notion that the U.S. went to war against Iraq for the greater good of Israel.”  Petras attacks those on the left such as Noam Chomsky for his “dubious propositions” that the “lobby’s agenda succeeds because it coincides with the interests of the dominant powers and interests of the U.S. state,” and that the lobby is “merely a tool of U.S. empire building.”  In his book The Zionist Connection, Alfred Lilienthal claims the lobby is “making it virtually impossible to formulate foreign policy in the American national interest.”  He sees none of the “many powerful political lobbies in Washington” as “better entrenched” or more “meticulously organized” than the Israel lobby.

Perhaps most controversial is the attack by famed Ivy Leaguers John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt.  Their book, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy concludes that “America’s uncritical and uncompromising relationship with Israel” is “undermin[ing] America’s standing with important allies around the world…U.S. support for Israel has fueled anti-American terrorism” and is “casting doubt on America’s wisdom and moral vision, helping inspire a generation of anti-American extremists, and complicating U.S. efforts to deal with a volatile but vital region.”

It seems undeniable that the Israel lobby exercises great power in the American political system, with its ability to utilize the American press to attack critics of Israel’s occupation and its conflicts with Arab neighbors.  The lobby is able to discredit critics of Israel due to its widespread support from U.S. officials.  However, there is a more interesting question than whether the lobby is powerful or not: what are the origins of the lobby’s power?  Was the lobby instrumental in creating the special U.S.-Israeli relationship, or is its power reliant upon the strategic value of Israel to the U.S.?  In addressing this question, I reject assumptions that the campaign contributions, coercion, and PR tactics used by a single lobby are able to bring U.S. leaders to their knees, forcing them to vote, often against their wishes, in favor of Israeli interests.  U.S. leaders and the American public, in other words, are not pawns of the lobby.

It is difficult to argue that the Israel lobby is successful in using PR to co-opt the American public.  I have documented in great detail the failure of the lobby to convince Americans of the need to uncritically support Israel’s military actions (see my 2007 CounterPunch article: “American Public Opinion and Israel” for more on this).

Much is made of the lobby’s power to mobilize voters to protect U.S.-Israeli relations, with great attention paid to the campaign contributions it gives to Congress.  Evidence of the lobby’s power to coerce Congress is not very convincing.  The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs estimates that pro-Israel political action committees (PACs) contributed just over $2 million to Congressional candidates in the 2000 election.  Their data indicates that nearly 46 percent of the incumbents running for re-election accepted money from these groups.  At first glance this may seem like a tremendous amount of money.  Upon closer inspection, however, the group’s reach is relatively small when compared to that of other interest groups.  The $2 million the lobby allocates is just .1 percent of all the money spent by those who ran for Congress in 2000 (which totaled $1.4 billion according to the Center for Responsive Politics).  Pro-Israel groups contributed on average just $8,000 to each incumbent that accepted pro-Israel PAC money.  This total is miniscule when considering the cost of the 2000 election for those who won races in the House and Senate: $840,000 and $7.2 million respectively for the average House and Senate winners.  In other words, contributions from pro-Israel PACs covered on average one percent and .1 percent of the costs to win a seat in the House and Senate.

Comparing contributions from pro-Israel PACs to those of other industries demonstrates that the lobby is a minnow in a sea of more privileged actors.  While total Congressional contributions from pro-Israel PACs totaled just over $2 million in 2000, health care industry PACs gave out $55.8 million to Congress; agribusiness PACs gave $31.3 million; communications and electronics PACs gave $43.9 million, transportation PACs gave $29.6 million; military contractors PACs gave $8.9 million; and energy industry PACs gave $29.7 million.  After reviewing these numbers, it is clear that the Israel lobby is in no privileged position in the contributions arena.

The failure of pro-Israel PACs to provide money to a majority of Congressional representatives raises questions about its “dominance” of Congress.  Although 46 percent of Congressional incumbents accepted contributions from the lobby in 2000, 54 percent accepted no money at all.  If providing money to campaigns help to ensure that interest groups influence or dominate officials, than the Israel lobby does a poor job of ensuring its dominance.

Pro-Israel groups do effectively target members of Congress that are in a strong position to influence legislation.  84 percent of the money given in 2000 was allocated to incumbents, since incumbents tend to win U.S. Congressional re-election by an overwhelming rate of 90 percent.  In the 2000 election, 70 percent of the top recipients of contributions from Pro-Israel PACs (those who received over $20,000 each) served on foreign affairs committees and subcommittees that write laws covering U.S. policy toward Israel.  A number of points here should be clarified, however.  For one, such contributions still represent a tiny amount of the total raised by these Congressmen and women, at .3 percent of the money raised by the average Senate winner and 2.3 percent of the money raised by the average House winner.  Even for those committee members who accepted the most money from pro-Israel PACs, the total contributions to their campaigns were still meager.  Joseph Lieberman for example, is one of the strongest allies of Israel, and he received by far the most from of any committee member in 2000: $86,000.  This amount, however, constituted just 2 percent of all the money he raised for the election.

A second point of clarification is articulated in the following question: even if foreign policy committee members accept the largest amounts from pro-Israel PACs, does this mean that these contributions “buy” committee members, or that pro-Israel groups are merely rewarding those who are already sympathetic to their interests?  Those who believe in the all-encompassing power of the lobby will assume the former, but there is little evidence to suggest this is the case.  Recent evidence suggests that the two major determinants of organizations’ choice of which legislators to lobby include “the extent of support interest groups perceive themselves to have in a [Congress] member’s district, and their perception of a legislator’s issue position” (Hojnacki and Kimball, “Organized Interests and the Decision of Whom to Lobby in Congress,” American Political Science Review).   Interest group scholars generally conclude that the most common “electoral strategy” for organized interests is to provide contributions based on a candidate’s “ideological or policy compatibility with the interest organization” in question (see Lowery and Brasher’s book Organized Interests and American Government).  Jeff Berry concludes in his book The Interest Group Society that PACs “commonly donate to incumbents to enhance their relationship with them,” rather than to create a new relationship based on the “buying” of votes.  In the case of the Israel lobby, anecdotal evidence verifies this view.  For example, Dante Fascell, a former Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee in Congress, explains the Israel lobby’s power to “buy” Congress in this way: “the whole trouble with campaign finance is the hue and cry that you’ve been bought.  If you need the money, are you going to get it from your enemy?  No, you’re going to get it from your friend…nobody has to give me money to make me vote for aid to Israel. I’ve been doing that for 20 years, most of the time without contributions.”

A large literature has developed examining the power of organized interests to secure “distributive” benefits from Congress.  Congressional leaders “bring home the bacon” in the form of “pork barrel” projects and other monetary benefits directed to their constituents.  This pattern of representative-constituent service is empirically demonstrated in many studies.  For example, my research shows that campaign contributions from labor and business PACs are statistically related to votes in favor of and against the minimum wage in all bills examined during the late 1990s and post-2000 period.  Studies demonstrate that business and labor PAC contributions are statistically correlated with increased Congressional support and opposition to voting on NAFTA, and that contributions from business interests are positively correlated with favorable voting on establishing industry price controls, trucking deregulation, corporate tax reductions, military contracts, and favorable tobacco legislation.  In other words, constituencies matter [especially privileged ones] when it comes to pressuring officials to vote on legislation.

While the distributive/pork barrel paradigm benefits from significant empirical support, there is little evidence of its relevance in the case of Israel’s lobbying of Congress.  I found no statistically significant relationship between campaign contributions from Pro-Israel PACs and favorable voting on legislation supporting Israel.  I examined voting on five bills in recent years in the House of Representatives, including bills that support 1. Israeli military action against Hezbollah in Lebanon in 2006, 2. a cut off of aid to Palestinians after the Hamas electoral victory in 2005, 3. the placing of pressure on Europe to declare Hezbollah a terrorist organization, 4. a demand that the U.N. “stop supporting resolutions that unfairly castigate Israel,” and 5. a declaration that Hamas is a terrorist organization and should not participate in Palestinian elections.  In none of these bills is there a significant relationship between increased campaign contributions from pro-Israel PACs and favorable voting on these bills.  The answer to why there’s no connection is clear.  Although the overwhelming majority of the members of Congress voted in favor of the bills, campaign contributions from pro-Israel PACs were not even allocated to many of those who voted in the first place (keep in mind, again, the 54 percent of Congress that do not receive contributions).  Members of Congress vote in favor of Israeli interests, not because they are “bought” by imaginary pro-Israel dollars but because they ideologically agree with the views expressed in legislation favoring Israel. Even though the Israel lobby is effective in targeting Congressional foreign relations committee members, this alone does not ensure passage of a bill.  Widespread support from a majority of members of Congress is needed too.  The Israel lobby is clearly effective in influencing how bills are written in committee, but there is no guarantee that bills voted upon will become law (only 6 percent of bills introduced, and 49 percent of bills voted on in the 110th Congress became law).  For pro-Israel bills to succeed, the Israel lobby needs more than sympathetic committee members.  It also needs the support of Congressional majorities that are monetarily independent of Israeli PACs, but ideologically supportive nonetheless.

Some scholars point to the fact that American Jews vote in large numbers as evidence of their power in influencing legislation.  Janice Terry argues in U.S. Foreign Policy in the Middle East that although Jews account for just over 2 percent of the population, they “comprise between 4 and 5 percent of the total vote.”  This is true, but it is worth remembering just how small the Jewish population is throughout much of the U.S.  At 2.2 percent of the American public, the Jewish voting bloc is hardly a mass constituency that legislators can take advantage of.  Furthermore, most of the Jewish population is concentrated in a small number of states.  Jews constitute less than one percent of the population in 32 of the 50 U.S. states.  Only 10 states have a Jewish population at or above the national average of 2.2 percent and even in highly populated states and districts, their numbers are still a very small minority.  The largest Jewish concentrations are in the District of Columbia (at 5.1 percent of the population), New Jersey (5.5 percent), and New York (8.4 percent). 

One could dismiss the small size of Jewish population concentrations if their votes carried disproportionate power.  This, however, is not the case.  In analyzing pro-Israel legislation, areas with larger Jewish populations are not more influential in increasing the probability of a bill’s success.  For example, my analysis of the 2006 Congressional bill supporting Israel’s war in Lebanon finds widespread support for the initiative; 95 percent of the members of the House of Representatives voted in favor of the bill, and just 2 percent voted against.  Furthermore there is little difference between states with larger and smaller Jewish concentrations in regards to voting.  97 percent of Representatives from states with a Jewish population above the national average voted yes on the bill, compared to 97 percent of Representatives from states with a Jewish population below the national average who voted for the bill.  In other words, the existence of stronger and weaker Jewish voting blocs has no effect on pro-Israel voting.

The argument that the Israel lobby is the main factor driving U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East is largely exaggerated.  There is little evidence that support for Israel can be reduced to a simple monetary exchange whereby legislators vote for Israel due to campaign contributions, or because they are disproportionately pressured by Jewish voters across the board.  The question still remains, however: what is it that drives the special relationship between the U.S. and Israel?  My answer to this question will be provided in another essay, but it is worth briefly noting here that the relationship originated largely in response to perceptions among U.S. elites that Israel serves a vital strategic interest in the Middle East.  It is within this strategic realm that the Israel lobby’s power to coerce and intimidate critics, and its success in passing pro-Israeli legislation must be understood.  Israel’s favored position in U.S. politics arose not out of the infinite power of a small lobby, but from the support afforded to Israel by sympathetic political officials who utilize Israel’s power to further U.S. geopolitical interests.

Anthony DiMaggio teaches American and Global Politics at Illinois State University.  He is the author of Mass Media, Mass Propaganda (2008) and the forthcoming When Media Goes to War (2010).  He can be reached at adimagg@ilstu.edu

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