The weird thing is that the current issue of Foreign Policy, a widely respected magazine, has a symposium feature in which there are three articles claiming that the U.S. Israel lobby is too powerful and three articles claiming that it is not. I don't remember the three authors who say the lobby isn't too powerful, but the three who say it is are Walt, Mersheimer and Zbigniew Brzezinski. So Walt and Mersheimer have more credibility than I thought. And Brzeziski is in their camp. I haven't read the articles. I don't know if I'll have the stomach for it.

W & M are really going mainstream in the US.

I don't think that the finer debating points as to what Walt and Mersheimer exagerated or left out will be greatly heard or understood. It seems that they have succeeded, because they have greatly helped in making the power of the Israel lobby an acceptable mainstream issue.

I remember that, on a recent trip to India, I saw some material on India's efforts to improve its profile in the U.S. One of the bulleted points was that it was going to develop a lobby like AIPAC, the most powerful lobby in America (or words to that effect). So even among admirers and would-be imitators, it seems to be an accepted fact that AIPAC is a Goliath in American politics. I'm sure AIPAC is a highly influential lobby, but I suspect that it is not the all-embracing all-controling affair it's made out to be.

I wouldn't have the stomach to read it, either.

People have been talking about emulating the "Jewish lobby" in the US for many years. Good luck to them. Their main problem is that all the money in the world buy the fact that the Israel lobby simply has a good case to make and that Americans identify with Israel over her enemies.

I get all kinds of emails. One list I subscribe to is a Palestinian Christians list that's "anto-Zionist" and consistently forwards insane anti-Semitic stuff, far-Leftist stuff from CounterPunch and elsewhere...they live in the self-reinforcing world where they can't understand why everyone doesn't see things just as they do. I'm sure they figure if they could just afford lobbyists on Capitol Hill, they'd be able to turn America against Israel and the Jews. It just isn't going to happen.

Speaking of Counterpunch, get this: A writer on that site also doesn't think that the Israel lobby is all powerful. This is his take on the issue:

"Zionist organizations do not hold sway over anyone … Instead, the answer can be found in the history of white supremacy and imperialism within the United States and Europe themselves. In other words, Zionist Apartheid is seen as an old fashioned war on people of color and, as such is perfectly attune to the historical psyche of white America."

And the idiot adds:
"Zionism developed in a time of reinvigorated white supremacy in the latter part of the nineteenth century when European states were busily dividing up the land of Africa and Asia. In the confrontation with the indigenous people of Palestine, its ideology belongs within the history of European racial theories and, like the Afrikaner ideology of Jan Smuts, has little problem with seeing itself in the forefront of democracy and civilization."

I guess he never heard of Herzl and of the Frenchmen who were shouting "death to the Jews" when Dreyfus was being courtmartialed. I guess he never heard of pogroms. To think that the Zionists in Central and Eastern Europe were emulating racial theorists---who despised Jews and proffered the inferiority of Jews as the main point of their philosophy---is just plain crazy.

The current feature on the Counterpunch Web site: "The Collapse of America."

These people really do live in a parallel universe.