I don't think that it is illegitimate to investigate whether there is a Jewish lobby that is shaping US policy, but looking at the question, you would have to conclude that its not true.
It would be truer to say that the United States' changing policy towards Israel had an impact upon mainstream Jewish organisations in the sixties, and more so in the seventies. I can't quote chapter and verse, but as I remember it, it is really with Nixon and the 1973 war that there is a shift of Jewish support to the Republicans. I think I'm right in saying that Jews voted for Kennedy.
The interaction between foreign and domestic policy is not straight forward. At the same time as the US's more active support for Israel was making it possible for Jewish organisations to endorse right wing politicians, the social character of the Jewish community was also changing, as was the situation of other ethnics, like Italian or Irish Americans. Put simply, they were less the outsiders, more prosperous, and more supportive of the US. America's championing of Israel consolidated that bridge to those - the substantial majority - of the Jewish community who were also Zionists.
Insofar as one can identify a 'Jewish' - better, a Zionist lobby in US foreign policy, it is truer to say that the policy of support for Israel created the lobby than the other way around.
Of course, everybody understands that some Jewish Americans are active in promoting the alliance with Israel. But that is just the minutiae of the foreign policy process. Substantially, US support for Israel flows from the interests of American imperialism in the Middle East. More, since Israel is not self-sufficient, but an artificially sustained entity, it is US foreign policy that makes Israel a continuing possibility.
The relative independence of the ruling elite (like the spying scandal) on the one hand, and the role of the Israel lobby makes it appear that the Zionist tail is wagging the American dog - but that is just an illusion.
The belief that America's policy is bent or even dictated by a Zionist lobby is for the most part, wishful thinking on the part of the opponents of US foreign policy in the Middle East. Arab-Americans dream of driving a wedge between the Zionist lobby and the US govt., as if it was the former that was responsible for America's reactionary policies, and not the latter.
Hakki and Pradeep are right to say that for the most part accusations of anti-Semitism are a smoke-screen. Anti-Semitism is not a particularly powerful ideology in America, or Europe, nor has it been for forty or so years. (By contrast, anti-Arab sentiment is profound, and a necessary accompaniment to the sustained military actions that have been undertaken against Arabs in the post 2WW period.)
On the other hand, anti-imperialists who express their opposition to US foreign policy in the Middle East in anti-Semitic terms only succeed in making themselves repugnant to any audience amongst ordinary citizens of Western states.
Doubtless Arabs who bear no historical culpability for the holocaust find it difficult to understand the guilty sentiments of Europeans especially, but also Americans as regards the treatment of the Jews. But that's a mistake.
To express opposition to Israel in anti-Jewish language might even be an understandable reaction to the gruesome experience of Israeli occupation, but as a political position it is wholly self-defeating.
Whether anyone here really did give voice to anti-Semitism seems lost in the tit-for-tat of accusation and counteraccusation. But there is no need to rake over the coals. I don't see anybody now saying that Jews are to be denounced because they are Jews.
I don't think that you can say that just because someone argues that there is a Jewish lobby that supports Israel that makes them anti-Semitic. Far from it, you would find it difficult to show that it was any other way.
You can argue that they are wrong to see the hand of the Jews behind US decisions on the Middle East, because that would be to assume that American foreign policy was without any tendency of its own.
More than that you can indicate that the conclusion of the Jewish lobby argument correspond with the conspiracy theories of anti-Semitism. But that doesn't necessarily tell you about the person making such an argument. They might just be making it out of naivety, or desperation.
On the other hand, I think it would be wrong to assume that opposition to the state of Israel is the consensus here. On the contrary, there are some good interlocutors who defend the position that Israel is to be distinguished from its specific policies. If one wants to argue that Israel overall should be dismantled, then you have to make the argument, not assume it to be shared.. -- James Heartfield Sustaining Architecture in the Anti-Machine Age is available at GBP19.99, plus GBP5.01 p&p from Publications, audacity.org, 8 College Close, Hackney, London, E9 6ER. Make cheques payable to 'Audacity Ltd'. www.audacity.org