Jewish lobby

Descriptions

In his  Dictionary of Politics  (1992), Walter John Raymond describes the term “Jewish Lobby” as “A conglomeration of approximately thirty-four Jewish political organizations in the United States which make joint and separate efforts to lobby for their interests in the United States. , more for the interests of the State of Israel . ” He also notes that “[i] nly those organizations which are most actively involved in lobbying activities at the federal, state and local levels of political and governmental institutions are the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the American Jewish Committee … and the B’nai B’rith . ”  ^[1]  Dominique Vidal , writing in  The Diplomatic World  , states that in the United States the term is “self-described” and it “is only one of many influence groups that have official standing with institutions and authorities.”  ^[2]

The B’nai B’rith Anti-Defamation Commission of Australia states in its description, “It is important to recognize that lobbies are natural parts, plural societies such as Australia.” Lobbying constitutes a mainstream method of influencing government policy, as such, just as other communities and interest groups have lobbies, there is a Jewish lobby – an unwieldy group of individuals and organizations devoted to supporting the needs and interests of the Jewish community. place Jews have within Australian politics, The assumption, however, that Jews have a disproportionate power and influence over decision making. ^[3]

Noting the high voting rate of individual American Jews in elections, JJ Goldberg , editorial director of  The Forward  , stated in a 2004 speech that “The Jewish lobby … is actually more than just a dozen organizations.” The Anti-Defamation League , the American Jewish Committee , Hadassah , of course, AIPAC, but it is also the impact of the Jewish role … So, the Jewish influence is a lot of things, it is the organizations, it’s the vote, it’s fundraising. ”  ^[4]

Criticism of the term

Viewed as inaccurate

Mitchell Bard , director of the non-profit Jewish Virtual Library , writes that: “Reference is often made to the ‘Jewish lobby’ in an effort to describe Jewish influence, but this term is both vague and inadequate. Representatives of lobbyists, such as lobbying, lobbying, lobbying, lobbying, lobbying, lobbying, lobbying, lobbying. ”  ^[5]  Bard argues the term Israel lobby is more accurate, because it includes both formal and informal elements (which includes public opinion), and “… because a large proportion of the lobby is made up of non-Jews.”  ^[6]  In his 1987 work,  The Lobby: Jewish Political Power and American Foreign Policy  ,states that the term “needed some fine-tuning; what was most at issue … was the influence of the ‘pro-Israel lobby.'”  ^[7]

In a letter to the editor of the  New York Times Sunday Review of Books  , responding to a review by Leslie Gelb of their 2007 book  The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy  ,  ^[8]  University of Chicago Professor John Mearsheimerand Harvard University Professor Stephen Walt write: “Gelb refers repeatedly to a ‘Jewish lobby,’ despite the fact that we never employ the term in our book. Indeed, we definitely reject this label as inaccurate and misleading, both because the lobby includes non-Jews like the Christian Zionists and because many Jewish Americans do not support the hard-line policies favored by its most powerful elements. ”  ^[9] The previous week, in a live Q & A session at  The Washington Post  , they stated they themselves “never use the term” Jewish lobby “because the lobby is defined by its political agenda, not by religion or ethnicity.”  ^[10]

Viewed as antisemitic and / or pejorative

Robert S. Wistrich , of the International Center for the Study of Antisemitism, Hebrew University of Jerusalem , when used to describe an ” all-powerful ” Jewish Lobby that allows justice in the Middle East “, as reliance we have a classic antisemitic stereotype.  ^[11]

Bruno Bettelheim detested the term, arguing “The self-importance of Jews combined with the paranoia of the anti-Semitic had created the image of this lobby.”  ^[12]  Michael Lasky describes the term “unfortunate phrase,” and “imagines” that Alexander Walker’s use of it was about the Nazi films of Leni Riefenstahl was not intended pejoratively.  ^[13]

The B’nai B’rith Anti-Defamation Commission of Australia states that “the stereotype of the Jewish lobby is that the Jewish engagement in politics and policy is above and beyond the ordinary participation of a group in public policy-making. It paints Jewish involvement as surreptitious, and as subverting the democratic process, It alleges that a ‘Jewish lobby’, through bribery, bullying and manipulation, pressures politicians to act against their will and duties. ”  ^[14]  Michael Visontay, editor of Australia ‘s  The Sydney Morning Herald  , wrote in 2003 that “The way the phrase’ Jewish lobby ‘has been bandied about in many letters that is something inherently sinister in lobbying when Jews do it.” ^[15] According to Geoffrey Brahm Levey and Philip Mendes, the term is used in Australia as a pejorative description of the way in which the Jewish community influences the Liberal Party “by talking to its leaders and making them aware of Jewish wishes and views”.  ^[16]

Dominique Schnapper , Chantal Bordes-Benayoun and Freddy Raphael write that following the 1991 Gulf War , the term “to be heard in political life” in France .  ^[17]  Vidal writes that the term has been used by the French far right as “a phrase that combines standard anti-semitic fantasies about Jewish finance, media control and power; the term is the contemporary equivalent of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion “.  ^[2]  Loyola University ChicagoProfessor Wiley Feinstein wrote in 2003 that “there is much talk of the ‘Jewish lobby’ in the Italian Press and in Europe”, describing the term “a phrase [] of scorn for Jews and Judaism”.  ^[18]

William Safire wrote in 1993 that the United Kingdom “Jewish lobby” is used as an “even more pejorative” term for “the Israel lobby”.  ^[19]  Susan Jacobs of Manchester Metropolitan University writes that the phrase “Jewish lobby”, when used “without mentioning other” lobbies’ or differentiating Jews who have different political positions on a number of issues, including Israel and Palestine “, is a contemporary form of the fear of a Jewish conspiracy .  ^[20]

Defense of the term

In a 2004 speech, Goldberg said, “There was a lot of talk in the last few years about the rise of the Jewish lobby and the influence of the Jewish lobby. When I wrote [the book]  Jewish Power  in 1996 … I was accused by various Jewish lobbyists of inflating and buying into the old myths of international Jewish conspiracies simply by the use of the title. ”  ^[4] Goldberg disagrees with the sensitivity of the term, arguing that: “There is such a thing as a Jewish lobby, that the network of organizations that works together can be insignificant, it is not an invention, but it is not the case of all-powerful octopus that it is sometimes portrayed as these days. ”  ^[4]  Mearsheimer and Walt wrote in 2006 that “even the Israeli media refer to America’s ‘Jewish Lobby'”,  ^[21]  and stated the following year that “AIPAC and the Conference of Presidents and the Israeli media” refer to America’s “Jewish Lobby’.”  ^[22]

Reaction to the term’s use

After South African Activist, Christian Cleric, and Nobel Peace Prize winner Desmond Tutu used it in a 1985 speech at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America , wrote about him privately urging him to avoid the sentence, stating it was “language … normally with the philo-Semitic elements of our acquaintance “.  ^[23]  Tutu used the phrase again in a 2002 editorial in  The Guardian  , stating “People are scared in this country [the US], to say is wrong because the Jewish lobby is powerful – very powerful. goodness sake, this is God’s world! ”  ^[24]  This is a criticism by Melanie Phillips of the Daily Mail  .  ^[25]  When he edited and reprinted parts of his speech in 2005, Tutu replaced the words “Jewish lobby” with “pro-Israeli lobby”.  ^[26]  In 2007, an invitation to speak at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota was rescinded because of the speech; writing in  Mother Jones  , Justin Elliot Stated “Tutu’s use of the phrase ‘Jewish lobby’ is unfortunate, Mainly Because The pro-Israel lobby he is referring to is not made up Exclusively of Jews, example Texas preacher John Hagee’s Christians United for Israel. But one minor slip five years ago is hardly grounds for blacklisting him. ”  ^[27]

Chris Davies , MEP for the northwest of England has been forced to resign in 2006 as leader of the Liberal Democrats group in the European Parliament after writing a “I shall denounce the influence of the Jewish lobby”. over the political decision-making process in Many countries. ”  ^[28]  in comments to TotallyJewish.Com he” confessed he Did not Know The difference entre referring to the pro Israel lobby ‘and the’ Jewish lobby ‘, “and added ”  ^[29] Commenting on Davies’ use of the term, David Hirsh of  The Guardian wrote that Davies “had to resign because his laudable instinct to the side was not underwritten by care, thought or self-education.” He compared Davies’ rhetoric with the “care to avoid openly antisemitic rhetoric taken by sophisticates like Mearsheimer Walt and Robert Fisk .”  ^[28]

A 2007 editorial in  The New York Sun  accused Richard Dawkins , a British evolutionary biologist and writer , of repeating antisemitic conspiracy theories after he used the term in an interview published in  The Guardian  .  ^[30]  In the interview Dawkins said: “When you think about how fantastically successful the Jewish lobby has been, though, in fact, they are less numerous. Monopolize American foreign policy as far as the world can be had. “So if atheists could achieve a small fraction of that influence, the world would be better off.”  ^[31]  In a  National Review column discussing the influence of “high-profile atheists” on the American left, Arthur C. Brooks wrote that Dawkins’ claim was “anti-Semitic, religion slanders, and asserts victimhood.”  ^[32]  David Cesarani , commenting in  The Guardian  , stated that “Mearsheimer and Walt would doubtlessly cheat Dawkins for using the term ‘Jewish lobby’, which they studiously avoid in order to give an anti-Jewish innuendo.”  ^[33]

Activities

In his book  Jewish Power  , Goldberg writes that in the United States the “Jewish lobby” for a role played by leadership role in formulating American policy on issues such as civil rights, separation of church and state, and immigration, guided by a liberalism that was A complex mixture of Jewish tradition, the experience of persecution, and self-interest. It was thrust into prominence following the Nixon Administration’s sharp shift of American policy towards significant military and foreign aid for Israel following the 1973 Yom Kippur War .  ^[34]

Tivnan writes that a “full-fledged” Jewish lobby “” was developed in 1943, in which the moderates represented by Stephen Samuel Wise and the American Jewish Committee were defeated by Abba Hillel Silver’s supporters and “the maximalist goal of a Jewish Commonwealth” ‘”at the American Jewish and Biltmore Conferences . Silver became the new leader of American Zionism, with his call for “loud diplomacy,” and he then “cranked up the Zionist Organization of America’s one-man lobbying operation in Washington-renaming it to the American Zionist Emergency Council (AZEC) – and began to mobilize American Jewry into a mass movement. ”  ^[35]

Former  New York Times  reporter Youssef Ibrahim writes: “It’s a Jewish Lobby in America Concerned With the Well-being of Israel Is a Silly Question. Jews, particularly in view of the massacre of another 6 million Jews in the Holocaust.It’s elementary, my dear Watson: Any people who do not care for their own are not worthy of concern. – Greek, Armenian, Latvian, Irish, Cuban , and others – do in this democracy. ”  ^[36]

See also

• JCall
• Diaspora politics in the United States
• Ethnic interest groups in the United States
• Israel lobby in the United States
• Israel lobby in the United Kingdom

Further reading

• Rafael Medoff ,  Jewish Americans and political participation: a reference handbook  Chapter 4, The Jewish Lobby
• Alan J. Ward,  Immigrant Minority “Diplomacy”: American Jews and Russia, 1901-1912  , 1964, British Association for American Studies
• Hasia R. Diner ,  The Jews of the United States, 1654 to 2000  , (2004), University of California Press

References