BUY THE BOOKS:
Israel's Lobby: America in the Grip of a Foreign Power by Eli Clifton and Ian Lustick: https://amzn.to/4gMNJey
The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy by John Mearsheimer & Steve Walt: https://amzn.to/3SL2M0o
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DESCRIPTION
Why has American opinion on Israel shifted so sharply while U.S. policy has barely moved? The authors of the two major books on the Israel lobby take it on.
In this special collaboration between the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and my YouTube channel, I join Stephen Walt (Harvard Kennedy School), Eli Clifton (Quincy Institute co-founder), and Ian Lustick (University of Pennsylvania) for a roundtable discussion on our book The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy (2007) and their new book Israel's Lobby: America in the Grip of a Foreign Power. Rashid Khalidi, professor emeritus of history at Columbia University, moderates.
We cover the military-industrial complex and oil lobbies, why the Palestinian issue is where the lobby dominates, the gap between public opinion and policy, campaign money after Citizens United, the antisemitism charge and the use of state power against campuses, why Israel's defenders struggle to argue the facts, and when policy might change.
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CHAPTERS
00:00 Introduction:
00:09 Offensive Realism & the Quincy Institute
02:20 Rashid Khalidi opens the roundtable
04:03 Is the military-industrial complex part of the lobby?
06:46 When defense & oil interests clash with the lobby
09:53 Strategic interests vs. the lobby: Kissinger, Eisenhower, the JCPOA
11:43 Ian Lustick: process tracing & the Chomsky argument
14:41 Startup Nation Central & the NDAA push to fuse U.S.–Israeli defense
18:43 The Palestinians: always left by the wayside
21:38 Why presidents' Palestine initiatives keep failing
23:38 The post-Cold War puzzle: weaker case, deeper relationship
25:14 Public opinion has shifted, but policy hasn't
26:39 The lobby lost the discourse, not the policy
29:20 Citizens United & $200M in pro-Israel super PAC money32:39 "Smash-mouth politics"33:06 The domestic fallout: universities, speech & state power36:01 Rising antisemitism & the "collective Jew" argument38:00 American Jews are not a monolith41:12 Why the lobby can no longer defend Israel's policies44:42 Israel as a "crazy state" & the civilizational-war narrative48:06 New historians, scholars & the internet49:48 Smears losing force & the alliance with culture warriors53:13 The facts on the ground: Gaza & social media55:42 The NRA parallel: why policy lags opinion58:09 Washington's Farewell Address & the danger of faction1:00:35 The bandwidth cost of the special relationship1:03:18 Israel's new military doctrine & "Sparta among nations"1:09:04 When will public opinion finally change policy?1:12:09 Predictions: the Democrats, 2028 & the Iran war1:18:50 Generational change1:22:03 A grim note: "cooked" antisemitism statistics1:26:14 The danger of a backlash & the dual-loyalty trope1:28:51 Mearsheimer: antisemitism on campus before 20241:30:46 Closing remarks————————————————————MUSIC"The Ice Giants" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 Licensehttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Music modified (edited/remixed) from the original.
