BUY THIS BOOK RIGHT NOW.
The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policyby John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt
The Israelis and the pro-Israeli lobby in the US would prefer to simply ignore this book and pretend it doesn't exist so as to minimize publicity for the book.
Don't let them get away with it.
Its a great book btw. Very detailed. I knew most of the incidents mentioned here but its good to have them all in one place, with footnotes and reference. My only complaint is that they didn't really go into the nuclear facts about Iran in sufficient technical detail - simply saying that Iran "could" build a bomb "if it so chooses" and while they do mention the Iran has made several compromise offers to the US over the nuclear issue, they don't provide the details - for example, that Iran has offered to renounce plutonium processing and to place strict, verifiable limits on its uranium enrichment and open Iran's program up to foreign participation (so in fact, Iran would not even theoretically be capable of building nukes.) But I guess what they wrote is good enough.
Incidentally, it also appears that the warmongering pro-Israelis in the US are trying to push for war on Iran on one hand, and avoid the public appearance of pushing for war on the other hand.
The funny thing is, a few years ago when anyone even spoke of AIPAC's influence and role in shaping US foreign policy, they were looked upon as kooks and conspiracy theorists. Talking about the pro-Israeli lobby was a big taboo, and you risked being labelled as an "anti-Semite" for doing so. Now, there are books being published with these sorts of titles, by authors who are the cream of academia in the US. A couple of years ago even, a major US mainstream foreign policy journal had a cover which said "Does the Israeli lobby have too much power" - amazing when you consider that US Congressman Paul Findley's book They Dare Speak Out on the power of the Israeli lobby was treated so poorly when it was published many years before. Criticism and analysis of the Pro-Israeli lobby is no longer a taboo!
For the longest time, the pro-Israeli lobby liked to pretend that it didn't exist and complained that people who spoke of the influence of a pro-Israeli lobby were repeating anti-Semitic claims about exaggerated "Jewish influence" - and yet on the other hand, the same pro-Israeli lobbyists couldn't help but show off how influential they were, by boasting that they could get 50 US senators to sign a dinner napkin. Well, that's all over.
And the biggest irony is that AIPAC and Bush's own miserable failures in causing the mess in Iraq have caused this taboo on the discussion of the pro-Israeli lobby to be removed. Even other American Jews are speaking up against The Lobby's influence now (and yes, Jews like non-Jews have a variety of views on a variety of issues and not all of them agree with the Israeli agenda.) Now, all the pro-Israeli lobby can do is engage in damage control and try to prevent academics like Norman Finkelstein from getting tenure, thus further proving their illiberal proto-fascist tendencies.
When I checked a couple of years ago, I was only able to find one PhD thesis done in the US on the topic of the pro-Israeli lobby specifically. Hopefully, there will be more coming out now.
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