The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy

Abstract

At the suggestion of several wellrespected scholars who had read earlier drafts, we also posted a slightly longer and documented version of the article on the Working Paper website of Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government. We did this so that interested parties could see the sources and evidence on which our conclusions were based.The response to the two versions of the paper was dramatic. As of mid-July 2006, there had been over 275,000 downloads of the KSG Working Paper version, and a lively (albeit not always civilized) debate was underway. During this period, we were contacted by the editor of Middle East Policy, who sought to publish the documented version. We agreed but asked that we be allowed to revise the Working Paper in response to the comments and criticisms it had provoked.After considering the responses to our article, we stand by our original arguments. We knew that it would attract criticism, but we have been struck by how weak and illfounded many of the criticisms have been. We have made minor adjustments in some of the language we employed and corrected a few typographical errors. We have supplemented our arguments in several places to clarify issues that some of our critics either misunderstood or misconstrued, and we have updated a few points in light of subsequent events. In terms of its core claims, however, this revised version does not depart from the original Working Paper.We are now preparing a detailed "Response to Our Critics" that will formally address and refute the various charges that were leveled at our original article. And we remain convinced that the United States will not be able to deal with the vexing problems in the Middle East if it cannot have a serious and candid discussion of the role of the Israel lobby.

Critical discourse analysis of war reporting in the international press: the case of the Gaza war of 2008–2009

“…This subsection focuses on the similarity in the newspapers' representation of social actors in relation to the foreign policy 10 of the USA and UK on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. For this similarity, there are different reasons such as the role of media, US public opinion supporting Israel, the location of Israel in the Middle East, and the Israeli lobby in the USA (see also Hansen, 2008;Mearsheimer and Walt, 2006;Slater, 2007). The exploration of all these reasons in detail is behind the scope of this study.…”

Volume 9 (2013) | Issue 1

“…Whether this support is due to the Second World War's great narrative, which partly legitimizes US leadership in the world, or to the extensive domestic power of the American Jewish community [35], or to something else cannot be concluded on the basis of this study. However, what can be said on the basis of the analysis above is that the US has had to help autocrats stay in power to support the strategic goal of helping Israel.…”

“…which can make the prisoner more impressionable and vulnerable. At this moment recruiters can enter into contact with the new prisoner and evaluate their vulnerability and likeliness to conform to their extremist group [35]. It is also common for incarcerated individuals to undergo unbalanced emotional states, such as states of discontentment-excitement (hate, anger, doubt) and states of discontent-relation (humiliation, fear, sadness) [35].…”

“…This is most prominent in foreigners who are incarcerated in another country and do not speak the language [35]. For instance, in the UK, the proportion of foreign national prisoners has increased steadily over the past decade.…”

“…Overall, this transformation allows individuals to manage their new environment, adapt to a new daily routine and ultimately help an individual learn how to get past a crisis [36]. However, going through a crisis can make the individual easier to persuade and even more open to manipulation and brainwashing [35], thus making them very susceptible to extremist recruitment.…”