You never were able to respond to the various criticisms of the W/M thesis posted in your comments, were you? Beyond nutpicking and playing the "anti-Semitism" card, that is? My guess from your dishonest spin on the controversy in the linked earlier post is no.

The above is of course the "McCarthyite" POV.

Thanks for the clarification; I've updated my post to acknowlege it.

Have you actually checked the claim from the Times of London with the Obama operation? If you had, you would get a very different version of events. Either way, there is no evidence that Obama declined to give Malley a job because of Aipac. There is no evidence that Malley was ever a serious adviser to the campaign in the first place. And as for Brzezinski, it's possible that he doesn't have a job because he is very old, or because of his sordid legacy in the Carter administration, or because he says nonsensical things in joint appearances with Brent Scowcroft. But as someone who actually reports on these things, I would be interested if you could provide some evidence to support your claim.

Linguistically I think the use of the phrase "Israel Lobby" here, capitalized as a name, is rather dubious. It implies a corporate agency or entity to which this name refers, as opposed to a bunch of people doing whatever it was they did.

Aipac is of course such an entity but if you think Aipac was involved here then you should say Aipac.

Perhaps the phrase is meant semi-ironically. But then you have to ask yourself, what is the point of the irony here?

The larger point being, the content of language is not just what it denotes; the way in which it says what it says carries all sorts of connotations. It might make sense to avoid echoing some unfortunate historical tropes in this context. What the Mearsheimer Walt book did that was upsetting wasn't its explicit factual claims -- it was its deliberate use of this kind of inflammatory language.

The phrase should indeed have been "Likudnik Lobby". I think Walt and Mearsheimer were just ham-handed in failing to realize how much of a difference that would have made.

Anon, I appreciate your point but I'm not sure how much of a difference it would have made. It's the capitalized "L" in lobby that carries the additional connotation here.

In any case while it would be nicer to think that Mearsheimer and Walt were merely "ham-handed" in their use of language, and it could be true, I just don't think so.

Linguistically I think the use of the phrase "Israel Lobby" here, capitalized as a name, is rather dubious. It implies a corporate agency or entity to which this name refers, as opposed to a bunch of people doing whatever it was they did.

Aipac is of course such an entity but if you think Aipac was involved here then you should say Aipac.

Can we just knock this shit off? Really, Israel has supporters in Washington beyond AIPAC. There's nothing "dubious" about the view that, like any other special interest group, that the various actors and organizations are aware of each other and take account of one anothers' actions. That is, that Israel's active supporters in Washington are a community of sorts, with some amount of self-conscious organization.

Is the argument really that there's just AIPAC, but beyond that, there's just isolated, atomized free agents just doing their own thing?

So what the fuck? How does characterizing that community as a lobby (or even, God forbid, a Lobby) become dubious?

(As a courtesy, I'll let you know I am not Jewish. So you can set your phasers on "anti-Semite" rather than "self-hating Jew.")

Oh,

Invective aside, yes, there is a difference between "Israel lobby" and "Israel Lobby." That's my point. There is, as you say, nothing dubious about either the activity or about calling it a "lobby."

To put this in a completely different context, think about the difference between "big oil" and "Big Oil." One of these is a bunch of companies with a shared interest who might cooperate in their dealings with the government. The other is something much more conspiratorial.

Although things have changed considerably, Walt is a bad example because he is a rather hard figure to dislodge. You cannot get rid of a tenured professor and academic dean of the most storied college in the U.S. - dare I say the world.

But many casualties lay at the hand of the lobby, some more directly then others. A sample:

Academic:

Norman Finkelstein
Maureen Larudee
Juan Cole
Margo Ramlal-Nankoe

Political:

Sen. Charles Percy
Sen. James Abourezk
Sen. Lincoln Chafee
Rep. Paul Findley
Rep. Pete McCloskey
Sen. William Fullbright
Sen. Roger Jepson
Sen. Adlai Stevenson

What is the distinguished Eli Lake doing in a dive like this??

Lord, lest I forget the most obvious cases -

Cynthia McKinney and Earl Hilliard.

This blog is the internet equivalent of those 1930's Munich beerhalls. Here you can meet believers in the world Jewish conspiracy (now known as the Israel Lobby), holocaust deniers ,(back then you could meet the planners) and just ordinary working Jew haters.

Jeff, you should read everything you read in the papers. Ramlal-Nankoe asserts that she didn't get tenure because of her views on Israel-Palestine. Do we know if this is true? No, because the other side (the college administration) cannot say anything about the subject due to the lawsuit she has threatened to file and because personnel matters are confidential. Mere assertion is not a convincing argument.

oops, that should have been "believe everything."