It's not just the religious right as such that is responsible for this reflexive feeling many Americans have that it is simply appropriate for there to be an Israel. The religious right articulates a feeling that has a broader base, and organizes the support where it needs organization. Hence, though Justin is right in pointing out the following, this is a secondary problem. --
"At the same time, I can't agree with you about the power and significance of the Israel lobby. It's full-funded, well-organized, and extremely effective, and has the support of almost all of organized, and I emphasize _organized_ American Jewry--the poll data show that the majority of American Jews are several steps to the left of the institutional community they support."
I suspect that the Israel lobby's influence is concentrated in places where parts of the left also are a little more numerous, and thus tends to influence the left. I live now in New York, and think New York is a bit more under this malign influence. Hence I think the following exchange between Nathan and Justin misses the mark --
"
>
>And what "silence" of the left on Israel? Almost every major left
>organization condemns Israel's policies. The National Lawyers Guild, the
>major left legal organization of which a number of folks on this list are
>members (who disagree on a hell of a lot), has been consistently and rather
>harshly anti-Israel for many years, at some membership cost due to its
>principled position.
>
It's not like the Guild is representative of a wide spectrum of opinion. DSA is pretty wishy-washy at best on this."
Most left criticism of Israel seems to address atrocities the Israelis commit against the Palestinians. This criticism seeks to counter the media's ceaseless flogging the news about suicide bombings to the exclusion of the greater death toll among Palestinian civilians. (And that form of media bias goes back into the sixties and fifties, long before the US alliance with Israel became so tight.)
Instead, a more important criticism of Israel, which the left ought to be making, would challenge the fundamental legitimacy of a state based on a definition of "peoplehood" primarily around a criterion of descent. That is and always has been racism, going back, institutionally at least to the passage of the Law of Return. Demanding repeal of that law as a component of a peace settlement is a sound left demand. So too, abolition of the official rôle of the orthodox rabbinate.
Christopher Rhoades Dÿkema