Many (or perhaps most) of the media that supposedly serve primarily Jewish constituencies, as well as a number of the most powerful organizations that claim to serve Jewish constituencies, make exactly the same effectively anti-Semitic suggestion.
In the context of discussing how well Obama's various positions on the Middle East will play among Jewish voters, The Jewish Week notes: "Obama supported Israel's military actions against Hezbollah and Hamas last summer, saying, 'I don't think there is any nation that would not have reacted the way Israel did after two soldiers had been snatched. I support Israel's response to take some action in protecting themselves'" (James D. Besser, "Obama Set For Big Jewish Push," 16 February 2006, <http://www.thejewishweek.com/news/newscontent.php3?artid=13676>).
Now, in this particular case, I do not have a poll at hand, and it is not impossible for a majority of Jewish Americans to have sided with Israel in its war against Lebanon and attacks on the Gaza strip last year, though I doubt that's the case. But either way, whatever American Jewish opinions, Obama would have supported Tel Aviv in both instances anyhow.
There are prominent Jewish leaders and organizations that advocate for bellicose policy on just about anything in the Middle East, like ADL and AIPAC, and those need to be forthrightly criticized, but in most cases mentions of "Jewish voters," who polls after polls show are just about as left-wing as overlapping categories of Black and Muslim voters, are basically covers for politicians for taking the positions they take no matter what.
The rhetoric of "doing it for Jewish voters" is especially an effective cover for Democrats, for everyone knows that only a minority of Jewish voters vote for Republicans.
A while ago, without citing any evidence, The Jewish Forward claimed: "They say that money from Jewish donors constitutes about half the donations given to national Democratic candidates (an extremely large pot of gelt long coveted by the GOP)" (E.J. Kessler, "Hillary the Favorite in Race for Jewish Donations: Biden, Obama Expected to Make Some Inroads," 26 January 2007, <http://www.forward.com/articles/hillary-the-favorite-in-race-for-jewish-donations/>).
It seems to me that the claim is probably exaggerated, but if it's anything close to the truth, those Jewish donors, unlike most Jewish voters, certainly have a chance to shape the Democrats' foreign as well as domestic policy, or so the reader would be led to think.
The waning of (liberal and Marxist) theories of imperialism more or less leaves the liberal theory of interest groups as default explanation of politics. Combined with the media's insistence on claiming that politicians do this or that "for the sake of Jewish voters," the absence of a compelling theory of imperialism is likely to have a deleterious impact on how people think of causes and consequences of Washington's wars in the Middle East. -- Yoshie <http://montages.blogspot.com/> <http://mrzine.org> <http://monthlyreview.org/>