ISRAEL'S LOBBY

Politically charged history of a “special relationship.”

The U.S. has been lavish in its financial support of Israel for more than half a century, a time in which “Israel has been the largest recipient of American aid and regularly receives one-quarter of all US military aid delivered worldwide,” by journalist Clifton and political scientist Lustick’s account. This largess has been engineered, the authors assert, by a powerful lobby consisting of Israeli operatives and American supporters such as the billionaires Sheldon and Miriam Adelson. The Adelsons have contributed scores of millions to President Trump and downticket Republicans—and managed to secure the release of the convicted spy Jonathan Pollard, flown to a new life in Israel on the Adelsons’ private jet and greeted personally by Benjamin Netanyahu. One recent task of the lobby has been “restricting the size of the Overton Window [of acceptable ideas] on public discussion of Israel.” They write, “We are now subjected to criminalization of criticism of Israel’s policies, restrictions on speech on university campuses, and a dangerous defense of Israel that equates criticism of it with an attack on all Jews.” The irony, the authors argue, is that “the most explicit and sustained attacks on Jews come from far right, Christian, and white nationalist groups, who are not the main target of the accusations of antisemitism based on opposition to Israel’s policies.” Faced with the reality of Israel’s war on Gaza—and now with the U.S.-Israel war in Iran—a plurality of Americans, Clifton and Lustick hold, favor reducing military aid to Israel—to which the lobby is responding in part by shifting rhetorical strategies to insist that any criticisms are “attacks on civilization itself.”

A closely reasoned argument in favor of a more balanced U.S. approach to Middle East affairs.