"The Israel Lobby" by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt

excessively long article and old news at this point, but i *finally* sat down to read it and watch the debate. my interest in the piece isn't necessarily with its final claim (that the Israel Lobby had a strong influence on the government to go to war in Iraq), but moreso with the beginning where the authors explain, piece by piece, why a US alliance with israel is against America's interests. the highlights below don't really reflect said interest, mainly because it's a step-wise argumentation which is difficult highlight without losing strength. the highlights, therefore, are just quotes that make me go "blah."

the claim of the Israel Lobby's enormous impact on US politics has been the source of controversy for the article and the London Review of Book recently held a debate in which opponents and proponents of the idea could voice their opinions.

The original piece can be found HERE
The video (and transcript) of the debate is HERE.

Blahighlights:

This was well understood by Israel’s early leaders. David Ben-Gurion told Nahum Goldmann, the president of the World Jewish Congress:

"If I were an Arab leader I would never make terms with Israel. That is natural: we have taken their country . . . We come from Israel, but two thousand years ago, and what is that to them? There has been anti-semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They only see one thing: we have come here and stolen their country. Why should they accept that?"

During the first intifada, the IDF distributed truncheons to its troops and encouraged them to break the bones of Palestinian protesters. The Swedish branch of Save the Children estimated that ‘23,600 to 29,900 children required medical treatment for their beating injuries in the first two years of the intifada.’ Nearly a third of them were aged ten or under. The response to the second intifada has been even more violent, leading Ha’aretz to declare that ‘the IDF . . . is turning into a killing machine whose efficiency is awe-inspiring, yet shocking.’ The IDF fired one million bullets in the first days of the uprising. Since then, for every Israeli lost, Israel has killed 3.4 Palestinians, the majority of whom have been innocent bystanders; the ratio of Palestinian to Israeli children killed is even higher (5.7:1). It is also worth bearing in mind that the Zionists relied on terrorist bombs to drive the British from Palestine, and that Yitzhak Shamir, once a terrorist and later prime minister, declared that ‘neither Jewish ethics nor Jewish tradition can disqualify terrorism as a means of combat.’