States into the Iraq war-are openly connected with the right-wing Likud, and especially with Binyamin Netanyahu. The billionaires who finance the lobby are the same people who finance the extreme Israeli right, and most of all the settlers.
The small, determined Jewish groups in the United States who support the Israeli peace movements are remorselessly persecuted. Some of them fold after a few years. Members of Israeli peace groups who are sent to America are boycotted and slandered as "self-hatingJews."
The political views of the two professors, which are briefly stated at the end of the book, are identical with the stand of the Israeli peace forces: the two-state solution, ending the occupation, borders based on the Green Line, and international support for the peace settlement.
If this is anti-Semitism, then we here are all anti-Semites. And only the Christian Zionists-those who openly demand the return of the Jews to this country but secretly prophesy the annihilation of the unconverted Jews at the Second Coming of Jesus Christ-are the true Lovers of Zion.
Even if not a single bad word about the pro-Israel lobby can be uttered in the United States, it is far from being a secret society hatching conspiracies like the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. On the contrary, AIPAC, the Anti-Defamation League, the Zionist Federation, and the other organizations vociferously boast about their actions and publicly proclaim their incredible successes.
Quite naturally, the diverse components of the lobby compete with each other. Who has the biggest influence on the White House? Who scares the most senators? Who controls more journalists and commentators? This competition causes a permanent escalation-because every success by one group spurs the others to redouble their efforts.
This could be very dangerous. A balloon that is inflated to monstrous dimensions may one day burst in the face of American Jews (who, by the way, according to the polls, object to many positions adopted by the lobby that claims to speak in their name).
Most of the American public now opposes the Iraq war and considers it a disaster. This majority still does not connect the war with the actions of the pro-Israel lobby. No newspaper and no politician dares to hint at such a connection-yet.78 But if this taboo is broken, the result may be very dangerous for the Jews and for Israel.
Beneath the surface, a lot of anger directed against the lobby is accumulating. The presidential candidates who are compelled to grovel at the feet of AIPAC, the senators and congressmen who have become slaves of the lobby, the media people who are forbidden to write what