It's been a while since a book about American Jews has elicited as much controversy as "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy," in which professors John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Stephen Walt of Harvard University argue that America's Israel lobby exercises "undue" influence and blocks other views on the Middle East.
In the noisy debate that has sprung up among its many critics and few advocates, the issue has been unfortunately narrowed to the obvious: how powerful the lobby is or isn't, and whether it is appropriate to discuss it in such terms. All but lost has been an opportunity to examine it in a broader context.
That there is a Jewish lobby in America concerned with the well-being of Israel is a silly question. It is insane to ask whether the 6 million American Jews should be concerned about the 6 million Israeli Jews, particularly in view of the massacre of another 6 million Jews in the Holocaust. It's elementary, my dear Watson: Any people who do not care for their own are not worthy of concern.
And what the Israel lobby does is what all ethnic lobbies — Greek, Armenian, Latvian, Irish, Cuban, and others — do in this democracy.
