> Your examples here are perfect illustrations of my own nuanced
> difference with the Mearsheimer-Walt "lobby" hypothesis (or at least
> the vulgarization of it's that's frequently bandied about).
The book is well worth a read, and better worth discussing than vulgarizations, which are, after all... vulgarizations.
M-W are interested in institutions and the Washington inside game. They're not much interested in the larger questions of popular base.
Zionism undoubtedly has such a base. But it's numerically tiny and increasingly long-in-the-tooth -- survey after survey tells the encouraging story that younger Jews are less and less interested in Israel with every passing year.
What gives the Zionist base a leverage (expressed in practice through the institutions of the lobby) disproportionate to its numbers is that that base is generally speaking more well-off than the average fetus fancier. Again, there's no real controversy about the factology here; there's good data about incomes and assets by ethnic group and religion, and pro-Israel Jewish donors are generous in a way which belies one of the many nasty stereotypes about Jews.
And of course the average American politician, regardless of creed, would cook and eat his own grandmother for a campaign contribution; surely this too is uncontroversial.
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Michael Smith mjs at smithbowen.net http://stopmebeforeivoteagain.org http://fakesprogress.blogspot.com http://cars-suck.org