The Israel Lobby

I used to be a big fan of Andrew Sullivan and to this day still agree with much of his politics. However over the course of the last two years I’ve stopped reading his blog. I thought for a while I could just read it and ignore what I see as fundamentally flawed ideas. But in the end I’m an economist and I get that what I read, what I “pay” for (be it in time, money, etc) is ultimately who I am. So I quit reading his stuff, his feelings about Israel and the “Israel Lobby” in America have the ability to fuel what I see as a dangerous sentiments for the Jewish communities both at home and abroad.

Jeffery Goldberg and I feel similarly. Recently he wrote a lengthy response to Mr. Sullivan about one of his comments, below is an excerpt that I plucked out that has an undeniable ring of truth.

I think that critics of the "Jewish lobby" not only demonize Jewish participation in the democratic process, they fundamentally misunderstand the way powerful lobbies succeed: Lobbies succeed when they push on open doors. The NRA (which is a more powerful lobby than AIPAC, IMHO) succeeds in large part because the majority of America believes in gun rights as the NRA frames the issue. Similarly, I believe that AIPAC is pushing on open doors in Congress because the majority of Americans, polls show, are intuitively more sympathetic to Israel than to Israel's enemies. I don't believe, as AIPAC's critics do, that AIPAC creates pro-Israel legislation; I believe that pro-Israel feeling creates pro-Israel legislation. AIPAC organizes the feeling, buttresses the feeling, rewards the feeling, but I think it is obviously true that if Israel were truly unpopular in America, it would be unpopular in Congress.