Episode 7: A Must Read Book on the Israel Lobby

Eli Clifton and Ian Lustick have just published a terrific new book called Israel’s Lobby: America in the Grip of a Foreign Power. It appears twenty years after Steve Walt and I published “The Israel Lobby” in The London Review of Books (March 2006), which we turned into a book a year later. Much has happened regarding Israel, the Israel lobby, and the US-Israeli relationship in the two decades since Steve and I first addressed those subjects. Clifton and Lustick do a great job explaining those fundamental changes. In this episode, I will discuss their new book and explain how it differs from what Steve and I wrote in our article and book on the lobby. ———————————————————— BUY THE BOOKS 1\. Israel's Lobby: America in the Grip of a Foreign Power  by Eli Clifton and Ian Lustick Purchase Here: https://amzn.to/4gMNJey 2\. The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy by John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt Purchase Here: https://amzn.to/3SL2M0o (As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.) ———————————————————— CHAPTERS 0:00 Intro 0:28 The book: Israel's Lobby by Eli Clifton and Ian Lustick 2:38 The core arguments 5:15 The conceptual framework: discourse vs. policy 7:29 Where the new book breaks from Mearsheimer & Walt 8:01 How the discourse changed: dual loyalty and "Israel Firsters" 12:42 The internet and the collapse of media gatekeeping 15:08 Israeli behavior after October 7th 17:45 Israel as a "crazy state" 22:11 Israeli identity: "a nation that dwells alone" 27:51 Why Americans turned on Israel 29:29 The lobby fights back: redefining antisemitism 32:54 Government crackdowns on campus protests 35:40 Plutocrats, Citizens United, and policy capture 39:11 The bottom line and the big question ahead 41:14 Closing thoughts ———————————————————— MUSIC "The Ice Giants" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Music modified (edited/remixed) from the original.