Israel receives about $3B in direct assistance each year, roughly one-fifth of the foreign aid budget, and worth about $500 a year for every Israeli. This largesse is especially striking since Israel is now a wealthy industrial state with a capita income roughly equal to that of South Korea or Spain.
It is the only recipient that does not have to account for how the aid is spent.
The US has overthrown democratic government in the past and supported dictators when this was thought to advance its interests — it has good relations with a number of dictatorships today.
The US form of government offers activists many ways of influencing the policy process. Interest groups can lobby elected representatives and members of the executive branch, make campaign contributions, vote in elections, try to mould public opinion etc. They enjoy a disproportionate amount of influence when they are committed to an issue to which the bulk of the population is indifferent. Policymakers will tend to accommodate those who care about the issue, even if their numbers are small, confident that the rest of the population will not penalize them for doing so.
Its success is due to its ability to reward legislators and congressional candidates who support its agenda, and to punish those who challenge it. Money is critical to US elections, and AIPAC makes sure that its friends get strong financial support from the many pro-Israel political action committees. Anyone who is seen as hostile to Israel can be sure that AIPAC will direct campaign contributions to his or her political opponents. AIPAC also organizes letter-writing campaigns and encourages newspaper editors to endorse pro-Israel candidates.
It’s common for members of Congress and their staffs to turn to AIPAC first when they need information, before calling the Library of Congress, the Congressional Research Service, committee staff or administration experts. More important, AIPAC is often called on to draft speeches, work on legislation, advise on tactics, perform research, collect co-sponsors and marshal votes.
Although the make up fewer than 3% of the population, the make large campaign donations to candidates from both parties. Democratic presidential candidates depend on Jewish supporters to supply as much as 60% of the money. And because Jewish voters have high turn-out rates and are concentrated in key states, presidential candidates go to great lengths not to antagonize them.
Key organizations in the Lobby make it their business to ensure that critics of Israel do not get important foreign policy jobs. Jimmy Carter wanted to make George Ball his first secretary of state, but knew that Ball was seen as critical of Israel and that the Lobby would oppose the appointment.
To discourage unfavorable reporting, the Lobby organizes letter-writing campaigns, demonstrations and boycotts of news outlets whose content it considers anti-Israel. One CNN executive has said that he sometimes gets 6K email messages in a single day complaining about a story.
AIPAC more than tripled its spending on programs to monitor university activities and to train young advocates, in order to “vastly expand the number of students involved on campus in the national pro-Israel effort.”
The Lobby also monitors what professors write and teach.
No discussion of the Lobby would be complete without an examination of one of its most powerful weapons: the charge of anti-semitism.
Wolfowitz declared that “there has got to be regime change in Syria,” and Richard Perle told a journalist that “a short message, a 2-worded message” could be delivered to other hostile regimes in the Middle East: “You’re next.” Syria “should not miss the message that countries that pursue Saddam’s reckless, irresponsible and defiant behavior could end up sharing his fate.”
Israelis tend to describe every threat in the starkest terms, but Iran is widely seen as their most dangerous enemy because it is the most likely to acquire nuclear weapons. Virtually all Israelis regard an Islamic country in the Middle East with nuclear weapons as a threat to their existence.
There is some truth in this, but Iran’s nuclear ambitions do not pose a direct threat to the US. If Washington could live with a nuclear Soviet Union, a nuclear China or even a nuclear North Korea, it can live with a nuclear Iran. And that is why the Lobby must keep up constant pressure on politicians to confront Tehran.
It is not surprising that Israel and its American supporters want the US to deal with any and all threats to Israel’s security. If their efforts to shape US policy succeed, Israel’s enemies will be weakened or overthrown, Israel will get a free hand with the Palestinians, and the US will do most of the fighting, dying, rebuilding and pay. But even if the US fails to transform the Middle East and finds itself in conflict with an increasingly radicalized Arab and Islamic world, Israel will end up protected by the world’s only superpower. This is not a perfect outcome from the Lobby’s point of view, but it is obviously preferable to Washington’s distancing itself, or using its leverage to force Israel to make peace with the Palestinians.
There is a moral dimension here as well. Thanks to the Lobby, the US has become the de facto enabler of Israeli expansion in the Occupied Territories, making it complicit in the crimes perpetrated against the Palestinians. This situation undercuts Washington’s efforts to promote democracy abroad and makes it look hypocritical when it presses other states to respect human rights. US efforts to limit nuclear proliferation appear equally hypocritical given its willingness to accept Israel’s nuclear arsenal, which only encourages Iran and others to seek a similar capability.