Why can’t the U.S. stand up to Israel? Who is the bigger benefactor of this partnership? And is the Israel lobby’s influence in the U.S. waning? With AIPAC-backed candidates in this year’s midterm elections struggling to win despite their massive war chests, Mehdi talks to the authors of the new book, ‘Israel’s Lobby: America in the Grip of a Foreign Power,’ who explain the shift in the notorious lobby’s influence.
“There’s one issue they [AIPAC] won’t talk about,” says Eli Clifton, co-author and cofounder of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, “they don’t talk about Israel, and I think that that’s the admission from AIPAC…that their actual issue is toxic.” Clifton notes that pro-Israel super PACs could end up raising and spending a quarter of a billion dollars this election cycle alone.
But it’s not all about money, as Ian Lustick, co-author and former State Department expert on Israel-Palestine affairs, tells Mehdi. “I spoke with Blinken and Sullivan and Biden, trying to tell them what the actual situation in Israel was like. But they’re socialized psychologically not to even be able to include in their agenda of possibilities what the realities are there.”
Watch this important conversation to understand how the U.S. paved the way for Israel to become the “extreme right-wing rogue state” it is today, as Lustick puts it, how people can push back against the lobby’s influence in the U.S., and a lot more.
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Click here to buy a copy of Clifton and Lustick’s book, ‘Israel’s Lobby: America in the Grip of a Foreign Power.’ And if you’ve already read it, feel free to share your review of the book in the comments below!
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