"The Myth of the Israel Lobby" ( http://www.aei.org/ra/rafrum021021.htm) by David Frum, is typical of those who wish to defray attention from the power of the pro-Israel lobby of which my article, "Breaking the Silence on the Israel Lobby" ( http://sf.indymedia.org/news/2003/01/1560029.php), was only the briefest sketch. Frum, a conservative columnist, former Bush, Jr., speech writer and American Enterprise Institute fellow--his wife claimed that he was the inventor of the “axis of evil” phrase--who is often expediently and partially posted under other names in various online discussion comment posts (like different indymedias), trots out all the standard fallacies in support of his position. A few major corrections to Frum's commentary will be supplied here.

First, by several estimates, including the Jewish press, Jewish contributions to the Clinton campaign were 60%, not one-third as Frum claims. This is in keeping with a Congressional Research Service report from the early 1980’s that reported that more than 60% of the contributions to the Democratic Party over $10,000 came from Jews.

Clinton's plan, if agreed to by the Palestinians would have left the major Jewish settlements in place, would have left the Palestinians with 22% of what had been Palestine, and would have cantonized the resulting Palestinian bantustans with its divisions being separated by "for Jews only roads" enforced by the IDF, as would the air space over the bantustans controlled by Israel, as well as the water beneath the ground.

As Uri Avnery has pointed out, every president from Nixon on, made an effort to get the Israelis out of the West Bank and Gaza and each effort was foiled by the mobilized lobby whose generous contributions, combined with blackmail and intimidation--and no visible opposition thanks to the mindset of Carter, as codified as "conventional wisdom" by Chomsky and Bennis--guarantee Congress's compliance.

Those presidents who challenged the lobby in the post-Nixon years were one-termers:

Ford, with Kissinger's agreement, halted aid to Israel for six months in 1975 when Israel refused to disengage from the Sinai and was about to make a major speech, reassessing the U.S.-Israel relationship, but was stopped from doing that when AIPAC heard about it and drafted a warning letter to Ford signed by 75 senators.

Carter became unpopular with the lobby when he pushed through Camp David, which required Israel to give up the Sinai. In order either to break the agreement or to test Egypt's willingness to be pacified, Begin invaded Lebanon in 1978 but was forced to withdraw when Carter told him to three months later. Begin responded by rapidly colonizing the West Bank. Then Carter committed another heinous sin in the eyes of Israel and the lobby by calling for a Geneva conference, which would include the USSR, to bring about a just settlement of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Carter ended up in 1980 with the lowest Jewish vote of any Democratic candidate in modern times.

Bush, Sr., came into office with a record of past antagonism to Israel. As Reagan's veep, he had wanted to sanction Israel, first for bombing the Iraq reactor and second, for invading Lebanon in 1982, but he was outvoted within the administration. His defeat in 1992 was largely caused by his demand that Shamir halt Jewish settlement building in order to get $10-billion in loan guarantees that the Israeli PM turned down and instead went to Congress for help. When Bush called a press conference denouncing 1000 Jewish lobbyists who had come to Washington to lobby for the loans, his goose was cooked. Old friends in the media, like Safire and Will, went on the attack, finding everything possible wrong with the Bush administration, and his Jewish vote went from an estimated 38% in 1988 to 6% in 1992.

Bush, Jr., learned the lesson. When he called for Sharon to pull out of Jenin, saying "Enough is enough!," and Sharon ignored him, he could do so because there was Safire and Will again on the attack, with Will writing that Dubya had "lost his moral clarity." Dubya did a quick reality check and described Sharon as "a man of peace."

But let's leave Washington and look at the role of Zionists in the left who have kept the anti-intervention [anti-war] movement from putting the Palestine issue on its agenda, and blocking any movement to end the billions of dollars that flow to Israel each year to purchase weapons and cash. The time has arrived when the issue of the lobby will be viewed as it should be, exactly like Gore Vidal described it back in 1986, a veritable fifth column which places the interests of a foreign government over that of the inhabitants of the US.


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Jeffrey Blankfort is a journalist and Jewish-American pro-Palestinian human rights activist in the San Francisco Bay Area. He won a sizeable lawsuit against the Jewish Anti-Defamation League (ADL) in February 2002 for its vast illegal spying against him, as well as other peaceful political groups and individuals (including, earlier, anti-Apartheid groups/activists).

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