Israel’s Lobby vs US Democracy | A Special Roundtable

0:09 Hi, this is John Meersheimer, and today is October 21st, 2026. And we are bringing you a special video collaboration between the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and my YouTube channel, Offensive Realism. The focus is basically on a round table discussion of the Israel lobby. And in particular, we're going to focus on two books.

0:39 The 2007 book that Steve Walt and I wrote on the Israel lobby and U.S. foreign policy, and on the important, truly important, new book written by Eli Clifton and Ian Lustig entitled Israel's Lobby, America in the Grip of a Foreign Power. Now let me say a word about each of the authors. As I'm sure most people know, I'm a professor of political science at the University of Chicago.

1:14 My co-author, Steve Walt, teaches at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. Ian Lustig is a distinguished professor emeritus of political science at the University of Pennsylvania. While Eli Clifton is one of the most distinguished investigative reporters in the United States and is also one of the co-founders of the Quincy Institute.

1:45 We're going to have Rasheed Halidi serve as the moderator today. Rashid has taught at Columbia University in the history department for many years, although he is now emeritus in that department. So what we will do now is turn to the discussion, turn to the round table, and turn this over to Rashid, who will moderate the discussion among the four authors.

2:17 Thank you.

2:18 Hi, everybody. Most recently, Eli Clifton and Ian Lustick's Israel's Lobby, America in the Grip of a Foreign Power, and the classic by now 19-year-old John Miersheimer and Steve Waltz, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy. I think that the publication of the new book of Israel's Lobby by Eli and by Ayan marks a new phase in the willingness of people to critique American foreign policy insofar as Israel and Palestine are concerned.

3:04 But the pioneers in this were John and Steve way back in 2007. I am a great fan of both of these books. For all of the horrific ad hominem, rather stupid critiques of the book, it stood the test of time. And I'm pretty sure that Eli and Ianspoke will do that. That said, uh I have enormous admiration for these four authors.

3:46 Several of them are good friends of mine. I have a couple of critiques, and I'm going to lay a couple of them out right now. And then I'm going to ask first, I guess, uh John and Steve, and then Eli and Ian to respond. My first critique, and it's not really a critique, but it's something that I don't think is sufficiently emphasized in either of these books, is the fact that the lobby for Israel is not just the folks whom both books focus on.

4:21 Yes, APAC, this, yes, this enormous range of uh of supporting actors, a chorus uh that is behind them, uh supported by the same groups within American society, and as as Eli and Ayan's book talk about, supported by some of the richest people in the United States. All of that is true. But something that I feel is to some extent missing from both books is the extent to which the Israel lobby includes the war lobby, includes the military-industrial complex, includes the defense industries, which have a very close relationship with Israel in a variety of ways, and which are involved with a sort of forever war lobby, uh, which is a close ally of Israel.

5:05 And I never felt that this was, it is actually mentioned at one point in Elion Ayn's book. Uh but I don't think enough emphasis is given to this. The people we hear and we see are people funded in Congress by APACs and other uh donors. Uh the people we we hear and read in the newspapers and on television are people affiliated exactly with the lobbies that both books talk about.

5:31 But I think that a lot of the muscle behind the support for Israel, um, outside of the voters among Christian fundamentalists and people in the American Jewish community who are very, very deeply supportive of Israel, is the people who take up 52% of the discretionary budget, which is defense. 52% of our of our budget goes to defense.

5:54 Those people are extraordinarily powerful. And the other group allied with them are the oil lobby, the energy lobbies. Um, in 2015, Irene Gensier, in a book called Dying to Forget, which has a subtitle, Oil Power, Palestine, and the Foundations of U.S. Policy, revealed that the Pentagon and the oil industry back in 1948 understood the value of Israel to them, even though they had misgivings about support for Israel at the outset.

6:21 And I don't think that that's reflected that the degree to which these enormously powerful uh uh lobbies in American life, oil defense, uh, are or energy and defense are are are fully um pictured in in these two books. I I think uh maybe Steve and John, uh one or both of you, could could speak to that.

6:43 And then and then uh Eli and Ian.

6:46 Yeah, I'll take I'll take a swing at that. I mean, obviously the military-industrial complex and oil companies have uh a lot of political clout, uh, but I think that there is really still a sharp distinction between the interests that they pursue and those that the quote Israel lobby uh pursues. Interest groups will ally with each other when their uh objectives are compatible, but they will also depart.

7:09 Uh so say in the case of the military-industrial complex, you know, Boeing really wanted to sell AWACS aircraft to Saudi Arabia back in the Reagan administration, and they the Reagan administration had a terrible fight on its hands because, of course, Israel didn't want the planes sold and the lobby went all out.

7:26 Uh Reagan won that, but he barely uh won the vote uh approving it in Congress, and the Reagan administration learned a lesson from that, that they didn't want to go toe-to-toe uh with the lobby. So there was a case where the military-industrial complex, as you would define it, departed from the lobby.

7:45 Remember that defense companies just want to sell weapons, they just want to get rich, make money, and therefore they'll work with anybody uh to do that. And I'd say much the same thing with uh respect to oil companies. You know, for a long time, oil companies were skittish about the American relationship with Israel because it complicated their dealings with oil producers.

8:07 Um, and I'm always reminded of what Dick Cheney said back in the 1990s when he was running Halliburton, an oil services company, and kept complaining about what he called America's sanctions-happy foreign policy, especially directed at Iran. Right now, the sanctions on Iran were heavily uh shaped by the lobby, by uh trying to keep the pressure on Iran.

8:32 And of course, running an oil services company, Cheney just wanted to make money by doing business uh with Iran. Uh similarly, Kaneko signed an oil deal with Iran to develop some oil fields there in the 90s, and Clinton, under pressure from AIPAC and others, vetoed uh the arrangement. So their interests are sometimes aligned, but not uh all the time.

8:57 And when they depart, of course, it's the Israel lobby that tends to win out on most of those battles.

9:04 I think if you look at the cases that Steve and I dealt with in our book, and you look at the cases that Ian and Eli deal with in their book, where the lobby weighs in in a big way to influence policy, you rarely see the military-industrial complex operating side by side with the lobby in a one-to-punch kind of way.

9:28 It's pretty much the lobby by itself. It is doing the heavy lifting. So, though I wouldn't say for one second that the lobby and the mix don't have similar interests uh at a macro level. I think when you get down and you look at particular cases, you see the awesome power of the lobby pretty much by itself at work.

9:54 Before uh Ayan and Eli respond, I would just throw in cases like the Iraq War, where you did have a confluence. Uh, and other, I think a lot of what we've seen with Iran most recently, again, it's not just selling weapons. To sell weapons, you have to have conflict. And this is one of the major arenas of conflict in the world for the last several decades.

10:16 So I think that the the the shared interests there don't necessarily, I agree with John, and I agree actually with what Steve said. Um there are many instances where they have clashed. I I would raise a larger point, which is that where it can be argued, and I think both of you have said this in your, all four of you have said this in your books, where it can be shown by an American president that there's an absolute overriding American strategic interest, even down to the level of AWACS, but uh the JCPOA that uh that uh President Obama forced through, Eisenhower forcing uh Israel out of uh the Gaza Strip.

10:51 Uh the United States forces Israel to do what it wants, irrespective of the lobby. But where other less significant issues like Palestine are concerned, where there's no major strategic American interest, there's no American strategic interest whatsoever, in fact, because the Arab regimes are completely complacent about whatever happens to the Palestinians.

11:07 So the United States gets what it wants there. Uh you you see you see uh the United States can force Israel, in spite of the lobby, to do what it wants. You you you both illustrate the Kissinger example with the disengagement agreements. Those were forced down the throat of Israel because of Cold War considerations.

11:25 And I think both of all all four of you have correctly identified uh those those kinds of cases where an uh overriding American strategic interest caused the lobby to be ignored, or at least reduced its influence. Uh Ayan and and and Eli, if you'd like to answer.

11:43 I mean, I I actually uh agree with Steve and John, but I would emphasize it this way. There's uh you can say there's an objective alliance by uh by identifying common interests, but number one, if the United States switched its special relationship so that it was with Turkey uh and not Israel, the lobby uh the military industrial commerce would be just as happy.

12:09 In fact, right now they probably are not very happy about Israel's attempt to gin up Turkey as the next uh uh enemy because it's such a good customer. Uh uh but I'd also say this is this your question is related to a larger point that comes up quite often. What about Noam Chomsky's argument? What about the argument that American imperialism uh uses Israel as a tool, that it that's what Israel really is?

12:34 My uh response to that whole position is process tracing questions. When you look at what is actually on the minds of uh State Department officials, presidents, uh Congress people, when they make decisions about Israel, it is not pressures from Lockheed, it is pressures from the uh from APAC and from the panopolitical organizations that are associated with the lobby.

12:57 So I I that's what I say. Yes, Your Rashid, it makes sense, but show me show me the process tracing. And that's what I don't see. But when you look into it the uh as we do in the book, try to, you really see what the actual causal impacts are.

13:15 I think talking about process tracing, if you if you look at Irene Genzier's book and how she shows shifts in American policy from what both of you talk about, Marshall opposing the recognition of Israel and and uh uh Clark Clifford and and Truman's other advisors basically prevailing, uh, the shift over time is the oil companies and the defense and the defense department suddenly realize Israel is a potential asset and Israel won't harm us.

13:43 So if you if you look at that over at the period of time that she does, which is several years, uh I think you'll see cases like that uh where in fact these are, I don't disagree with what all of you are saying. The lobby is out front. The lobby has the ability to pressure the president in a way that I agree.

14:02 I don't think the oil companies have that same interest, or they do it in the same way, nor the defense industries. But I think I think there's a a substratum there of uh uh desire to sell arms and desire to have this relationship with the oil-producing countries of the Middle East, which is which is completely uh convergent with Israeli interests.

14:24 I agree with you. The the lobby is always out front and and can and usually wins uh when it comes up again. I think the issue of Turkey is gonna be fascinating. I think Israel is a better customer, and Israel is involved in more conflict, which means selling more weapons ultimately. Eli, did you want to say something?

14:40 I'm sorry.

14:41 I'd love to answer your question, just I think a little bit differently, and jumping off of Ayan's point about sort of the Noam Chomsky argument, uh a key rebuttal to that is obviously that an enormous amount of money is being spent to try to maintain these pro-Israel policies from the US government.

14:57 Uh, and if this was simply in the nature of the United States or something that uh Americans could agree about, or something that uh all uh even elected leaders agreed about, you wouldn't need all of this uh pressure campaigns and the hundreds of millions of dollars that are being spent in this midterm election alone.

15:13 But let's apply that same uh framework, I think, to the question about the military-industrial complex and uh the Israel lobby. And what you see, particularly over, and I would say the last 13 years, and and you'll find out why I say that 13 years, I think is very significant, um, is that they are putting a lot of money into trying to create uh more connective tissue between the military-industrial complex and Israel than has been there in the past.

15:43 And you know, we can interpret that how we might. I would interpret it to mean that Israel's lobby does not feel like there has been sufficient uh uh uh uh connection, sufficient uh uh coordination between uh venture capital, particularly in the United States, that wants to invest in defense technologies, and uh the uh Israeli and American weapons companies that uh indeed, as you've tried to, as you've pointed out, profit from these sorts of conflicts and wars.

16:13 But the fact of the matter is that you look for since there's been the startup of this thing called Startup Nation Central, funded by Paul Singer, hedge fund billionaire who's one of the largest donors in Israel's lobby and one of the largest donors in the Republican Party. And this Startup Nation Central is designed to be this hub connecting, again, venture capitalists, generally speaking, in the United States with uh emerging companies, startup tech companies in Israel.

16:35 But when you really look at what a significant number of those companies are, they are in the defense tech, drone space, AI, uh various either multi-use or uh explicitly uh weapons-related technologies. And this is a lot of money going into trying to create that. And now we can flash forward to practically the present day with Section 224 of the NDAA, which is being promoted again by Israel's lobby, is deeply.

17:03 It's a piece of legislation that just cleared the House, that's now with the Senate, uh unclear where it's gonna go. It's a piece of the defense budget, more broadly, the In National Defense Authorization Act. And what this legislation would do is deeply tie together the uh the defense and weapons research and development in the United States and Israel, actually mandating that the Department of Defense needs to uh work with Israeli defense tech companies and coordinate the development of technologies, effectively making it harder to unravel the US-Israel relationship in a much more deep weapon systems level uh that could survive.

17:40 And to be clear, advocates of it say the reason for this is to make it harder to unwind this relationship as it becomes less and less popular. So all of these efforts are being are being pushed by Israel's lobby, and they are doing so, uh, I believe, because whether we can find identify instances in which the military-industrial complex was in alliance with the lobby or not, uh, and we can certainly find evidence to promote either theory uh uh since 1948.

18:06 Uh, the fact of the matter is that the lobby feels there needs to be greater integration, and what has been there has been insufficient, in their view.

18:13 No, I you're I think you're absolutely right. The the other reason for pushing this is, of course, the fact that opposition to overt aid to Israel, the $3.8 billion that the President Obama approved nine years ago, um is forcing them to find a subterfuge whereby the Israeli defense uh establishment and its defense industries can be subsidized by American tax dollars uh in a way that's not as visible as 3.8 billion every year.

18:42 Um I'm gonna I'm gonna drop this. Um and I want to go back to something that I mentioned, which I think both books, to be fair, uh stress, but I just wanna I wanna poke all four of you for a little more on this. I I see uh the United States in its foreign policy in the Middle East, where, as both of you correctly, or both authors, both sets of authors correctly state, um prioritizing, for example, Cold War uh uh issues and the possibility of war with the Soviet Union during the Cold War as far, far more important than the relationship with Israel.

19:25 Um I and you you both, I think, stressed that and stressed correctly the degree to which Israel was sort of joined to the hip with the United States from the 60s right through the end of the Cold War for Cold War reasons. Um I don't think maybe enough emphasis is put on the fact that the the the issue that gets left by the wayside in this is again and again the Palestinians.

19:49 I I I was just going to John and and and Steve's book, and you do mention it, as as do Ian and and and Eli. But I it seems to me that it's very clear this is not something of very high priority for the United States. It's not as important as oil or selling weapons or certainly avoiding a nuclear confrontation with the Soviet Union.

20:10 Um, the kinds of issues that drove American presidents to push Israel aside and do what they pleased. Uh and this to me seems like a consistent issue right up until the present, where maybe it might be the case that this is changing. And that will lead me to another question, um, which I'll ask after you guys, all four of you respond to it.

20:30 I think that uh there's no question that from the Israeli point of view, the most important issue is the Palestinian issue. It trumps all the other issues, which is not to say they don't care about Iraq or Iran, but they care the most about Palestinians because they're interested in creating a greater Israel that has hardly any Palestinians in it.

20:53 Second, it's very important to emphasize, of course, we all know this, that uh there's no real strategic considerations at play when it comes to the United States dealing with the Palestinians. When it's the United States dealing with Iran or Iraq or dealing with Egypt and Syria during the Cold War, it's a completely different matter.

21:14 It has all sorts of strategic implications. And those are the places where you can make the argument. I don't believe it for one second, that Israel is our attack dog. But when it comes to the Palestinians, you can't make that argument at all. It's quite clear that Israel and the lobby are driving the train when it comes to our dealing with the Palestinians.

21:38 I'd like I'd like to make a comment about that that's a little different. You know, I completely agree, of course, on what was just said, the Palestinian issue is not of great strategic importance. And as John said, it is the key issue in Israel. It's not so much that Israelis cares that much about Iran.

21:54 The reason Netanyahu expresses an obsession about Iran has to do with the fact that the don't want to have to produce a solution to the Palestinian problem. They need some other conflict constantly. They need to dominate the region. So once so if that is the most salient issue for Israel and is not particularly salient for the United States, what's really puzzling is why so many presidents, whether it's Ford or it's Carter or it's uh Obama, even uh the Baker-Bush team, even Eisenhower in his way, all tried to advance some kind of solution, some kind of response to the Palestinian problem, and they were checked.

22:33 They were defeated by these what I call oh shit moments when they realize that the lobby's going to go down their throat and ruin something that they care about in domestic politics. So to me, I mean I think your analysis is correct, but the reason for the absence of American action is clearly the lobby.

22:52 Oh and what it also shows us is there is a deep state in which there are constantly people who are whose teeth are grinding about American policy toward the Middle East. They remember the liberty they they they can't they they have to keep their mouth shuts on all the on all these things that they know about.

23:11 And so when a new president comes in they're looking for an opportunity to kind of support an initiative and they usually fail because of the lobby.

23:20 Speaking of the deep state I would bet that all four of us who have been teaching for a very long time have taught many dozens of people who are in that deep state and who tell us about these things in a private moment when they they know that they're not being listened to. Anybody else want to say something about this?

23:38 Yeah I I wanted to sort of highlight a common theme in both books and it it builds on something you said Rashid uh in your earlier comment about you know that when American presidents see a strategic interest, they're willing to you know play some hardball. I think one of the themes in our book uh you could argue almost argue it's the overarching uh sort of historical argument is that whatever you thought the strategic case for supporting Israel during the Cold War was that case diminished dramatically when the Cold War came to an end.

24:10 And whatever you thought about the moral case for supporting Israel as a democracy, et cetera, in the Middle East, that case was declining over time given the treatment of the Palestinians, the occupation, et cetera, the campaign for a greater Israel. So the case for a close special relationship was declining over time.

24:31 And yet the special relationship was getting deeper and deeper and deeper over time. And you could argue our book was an attempt to explain that puzzle. If the case for doing it is weakening what's explaining the direction and of course what Ian and Eli have done is they've taken that case forward and shown that first of all that trend has continued.

24:54 It's if anything increased.

24:56 Trevor Burrus Well and what's and what's so fascinating is that you have successive U.S. presidents Obama, Trump, Biden, all talking about wanting to pivot from the Middle East to focus on managing a rising China in whatever ways they thought was necessary. And they have not been able to do so. And sorry I'll throw it back to you Steve.

25:11 No well and I was going to have just one final point that's consistent with that is that the other thing that had started to change didn't hadn't changed when we wrote our book but it changed by the time this book came out was that the American public was finally moving on this issue. Right. Right?

25:27 And you still that was not apparent when you guys published your book that's correct.

25:30 Exactly the American public was strongly pro-Israel more than uh you know more far more than say pro-Palestinian that's completely that's completely shifted now and yet American policy to a first approximation hasn't changed at all maybe even has continued to march in the same direction. But that's a puzzle that needs to be accounted for and this uh their book does a terrific job of doing that.

25:55 American policy is like a huge aircraft covering or ocean liner. It takes a very long time to change course. The shift in public sympathy for Palestinians and and and increasing criticism of Israel is relatively recent. We're talking five, 10 years ago. I mean you you had students coming out on campuses as as as I think Eli and I and show eight, ten years ago talking about divestment from Israel.

26:20 That's the first signs you even had of the beginning of if smart young students on all these campuses had realized what's wrong with American policy, then in a few years the the older generation's caught up. But uh this is relatively recent. And I'm gonna come to the that uh issue but go ahead John just a very quick point.

26:39 The fundamental difference between Ian and Eli's book and our book is that we wrote at a time when the lobby effectively controlled the discourse and controlled policy. Correct. They wrote at a time when the lobby had lost control of the discourse but not the policy. And therefore there's this real disjuncture between uh what's happening at the level of the discourse and the policy.

27:10 And the lobby is therefore having to act differently now than it acted when we wrote our book. So you see they're plugging into a very different world than the one that we plugged into. And this is why their book is not in any meaningful way a follow on to our book, you know, an updated version of our book it's a new world.

27:35 It's a new world yeah and therefore they have all sorts of things to say that we did not say not because we were laxadaisical or irresponsible but just because we were dealing with a different world.

27:49 What I'd like to point out John I in fact I did in a talk yesterday is what the difference the difference between our subtitles your your subtitle essentially is uh and uh U.S. foreign policy ours is America in the grip of a foreign power because what has happened is uh because the lobby lost control of the discourse which is partly because Israel got so crazy that they had no hope of winning arguments in public, the lobby's uh has had to put pour its effort into a witch hunt to suppress uh and punish elements of civil society that are producing these critics so that's an entirely different kind of political war than you and Steve uh were contending with.

28:36 And we uh in other words completely I think agree and take forward your analysis of the lobby's effect on compromising and damaging U.S. foreign policy interests that's we can both while agree is not an absolutely new argument. People have been making that argument for a while, including George Ball but so we just took that up uh the Iran war is a crime uh the the cherry on the on the night on on the Sunday but uh but this new kind of witch hunt this argument over and the use of anti-Semitism to go after uh people and institutions this is the sense in which America not just foreign policy is at stake in the in the lobby's uh world you know well one thing that persuaded me that that writing this

29:24 book was was necessary was uh simply you know looking at at sort of the historical record and that you know Steve and John published their book in in 2007 and you know three years later uh you have the Citizens United uh Supreme Court decision and the speech now lower court decision.

29:40 And you know that's so interesting because they wrote in their book and their list of predictions that they saw in in all fairness to them, they saw the uh the what would be the trends in public opinion. And they identified that there were other factions starting to emerge who were looking to have a more balanced relationship between the US and Israel and whether those factions were going to be within the existing Israel lobby in the context of J Street or outside of it was sort of where where where I think that they saw, I don't want to put words in their mouths, but where they saw the future of this debate playing out.

30:14 And that there could be some form of gradual change within our existing democratic processes as a result. And I think that they may have been right that that's what could have happened had it not been that we opened the floodgates to our campaign finance marketplace in 2010 in a manner that allowed people who were the extreme, extreme wealthiest people within our within our country to have an outsized say in our elections.

30:44 And then when we flash forward now and are asking this question about, well, why is it when you have 75% of Democrats and a third of Republicans saying that they oppose further aid to Israel, and why is that not being translated into meaningful policy changes, I think you have to look at the fact that again, in this midterm election alone, we have over $200 million being raised and spent by pro-Israel super PACs and that that money could not have entered into our system had those changes not been made back in 2010 and that that money is what manages to prevent that transmission from again from public opinion into policy.

31:21 Whether that's going to be able to sustain itself in the long run, I I have my doubts. I think that at the end of the day every dollar spent has a diminishing marginal return.

31:31 And I think that as I need to see whether you're right in in one week.

31:36 Well so you know I get a I get that I get that point made a lot and uh and what I always say in response is that you know I I can tell you what the answer is going to be on November 3rd if we're talking about Israel's lobby, we're gonna say, well, it was a mixed bag. You know, they won some races, they lost some races.

31:53 And I think that's sort of missing the point. The point is is the price of competitiveness has gone up exponentially for them. The fact that they need to spend over $200 million, over $30 million, probably closer to $50 by the time November 3rd rolls around in Michigan alone says a great deal about the state of this special interest within our democracy.

32:17 And if you have to spend that much money the fact of the matter is that you are trying to push back against an electorate that you have not persuaded and that you are certainly not not carrying their support through any natural means.

32:30 Just very quickly Rasheed uh just to uh put in very simple terms what I think Eli just said the lobby the lobby has been forced to engage in smash mouth politics. And the best way and the most effective way for a lobby to work is to operate in the back channels and not be seen doing its business. Steve Rosen formerly of AIPAC made that argument very clearly those days are gone.

32:59 And when you're engaging in smash mouth politics in the age of the internet you are in deep trouble.

33:06 I I'm gonna add one point too and then move on just that I just want to highlight no no this is one of the the real contrasts in these two books and I want to highlight that for people who watch this that John and I didn't say actually very much about the effect of the lobby's activities and the special relationship on American politics more broadly.

33:27 We were focusing mostly on the effect it had on foreign policy we had a few comments along the way and we were certainly explaining how we thought the lobby worked. But we didn't say very much about what this was going to do to American democracy, other institutions. And what I and Eli do is show that in fact these are starting to have really dramatic implications for American for or American domestic institutions, both in terms of the role that money is playing, but also the fact that the charge of anti-Semitism which used to be focused on a small number of people basically people who were critical of the special relationship or critical of Israel's policies now has become a much more broadbrush

34:08 campaign to you know go after institutions like universities and others which are not seen as singing from the proper you know uh choir book uh as it were and and again they will readers will learn a lot about the broader domestic political impact that this has had from their book, which is an issue we did not talk about in great detail in ours.

34:32 And and just just to emphasize the the subtitle of our book, America and the Grip of a foreign power um exactly those the the ways in which the lobby has sought to suppress and stifle speech within the United States it should be particularly concerning to all Americans because they are not just advocating or trying to smear people as we've all been targeted as somehow anti-Semitic or or beyond the pale, because within the First Amendment they're completely entitled to make try to make that case.

35:03 The fact of the matter is that we've seen in the past several years the utilization of state power to try to shut down speech, to impose speech codes on university campuses, to withhold hundreds of millions of dollars in some cases, of federal research funding to universities until they impose these speech codes in the classrooms and on their campuses, trying to shut down any criticism of a foreign country 6,000 miles away, even going so far as trying to deport green card holders again for participating in protests or signing on to to op-eds that are critical of the US-Israel relationship.

35:40 And I think that that's uh certainly a new threat, one that we had not seen completely manifesting itself before, certainly not at this scale, and one that should give all Americans real cause for concern because this is again now we are starting to for to use levers of power that only the state can bring to bear.

36:01 Right. And I'd like to sharpen that point because there's something that is important in our book and I doesn't really appear in yours, it wasn't on the agenda and that is there really is a problem of of rising anti-Semitism in the United States that wasn't true in the and that's because of the lobby that's our and Israel's action of the Jewish people.

36:24 What the lobbyists come up with is the argument that Israel is the collective Jew and that new anti-Semitism means the criticisms of Israel actually attacks on all Jews. Well that produces a that teaches people that that to judge any Jew no matter what his or her attitude toward Israel is as responsible for what Israel is doing.

36:49 And the government our current administration is working hand in hand with the lobby to do things which is generating anti-Semitism and the one I think one of the most spectacular pieces of evidence of that is what happened with NEH the National Endowment for the Humanities canceled over 80% of its grants under the Trump administration because they quote unquote favored one group over another gays or women or blacks or Hispanics they were all canceled on DEI grounds.

37:18 Then the largest grant in NEH history was made in uh to the TICFA fund for its Jewish civilization project $10.4 million dollars which is all about privileging and honoring Jewish civilization as peculiarly uh and specially valuable as a model for America and for Judeo-Christian civilization now if that isn't a uh evidence of the uh of the of the transactional ties that exist between the state now and the lobby and what they're doing with it to attack institutions, attack freedom of speech in America, freedom of academic freedom, I don't think you could find a better uh a better case.

38:00 Rashid, could I just I I'm not in control of this so just go right yeah just just very quickly one of the things I learned when Steve and I wrote the book uh about the lobby was that you cannot refer to the Jews when you talk about Israel and Israeli foreign policy and how American Jews think about Israel because there's no one view.

38:26 And as Steve and I used to remark when we wrote the article and then the book and we got savagely attacked, virtually all of our public defenders were Jewish. And furthermore some of the harshest critics of Israel and the lobby over time have been Jewish. So to try and put Jews into one category and identify them with Israel and Benjamin Netanyahu is not simply wrong, but it's also as Ayn points out dangerous.

38:58 Well and it's a point of deep rage and anger for the lobby that Jewish Americans uh of which Ayn and I are uh are not uh more lockstep in line with the lobby and with Israel. And you know a couple of things they point to uh you know one clear one is that Jewish voters uh as a whole are not a swing vote.

39:19 Something like two-thirds of Jewish voters vote Democratic in every single election and they've done so for something like the past 40 years, meaning of any ethno-religious group, they are the most static in how they vote in their party affiliation. And that has covered a time period in which the Republican Party has objectively become way more pro-Israel and it has not resulted in any significant movement of the Jewish vote.

39:43 Furthermore when you look at issue ranking for Jewish voters Israel is and foreign policy more broadly is something like in the sixth or seventh position in pretty much every single election. And that's not unique to Jewish voters. That's most voters. So the fact is that Jewish voters actually vote like all other voters in this country and tend to vote with a very strong party allegiance that has no correlation to pro-Israel policies whatsoever.

40:05 That's why what what Ayn just mentioned is so uh uh extraordinarily dangerous identifying everybody in the entire Jewish community of the United States with Israel is first of all a travesty it's false it's not right it's true of the institutions that purport to represent the community and of the lobby and of an older generation it's completely untrue of younger Jews completely untrue.

40:28 I mean the degree to which they dominated the encampments and campus not dominated but played the leading role I mean the Jewish voice for peace were one of the two leading organizations here at Colombia and and Jewish students were enormously present throughout in every university I've ever where I've talked to people who have been involved and yet the lobby and the institutions of the community claim that they and their extreme right wing pro-netanyo pro-settlement pro-oppression of the Palestinian position purports to be the the position of the entire Jewish community which is leading to danger I I agree with with Ayan I mean the degree to which anti-Semitism is going to be fed by this is quite

41:10 scary. I wanted to move on to something linked but but um but but uh somewhat separate which is a point that uh that uh ayan and and and Eli make uh towards the end of their book uh they talk about the fact that in the past Israel advocates have made a case for Israel have argued policy have talked about moral connections between the United States and Israel or have talked about strategic advantages that Israel provides or have have in most cases lyingly described Israel's relationship with the Palestinians as a as a benevolent one and so on and so forth.

41:50 And the point that they make is that Israel the the lobby can no longer defend Israeli policies they're indefensible. 2000 children what can possibly justify the killing of 2000 children in Gaza what can justify killing and maiming 10-12% of the Gaza population? No you can't justify it. So you can't talk about it you talk about something else and the where I'm going with this is what you do is something that frankly is not entirely new in the Zionist and slash Israeli playbook which is smearing ad hominem distracting doing anything but talking about whatever solid points are being made by critics of Israel.

42:33 This was brought home to me uh in two books that mainly talk about the period long before what your books talk about. Molly Crabappel's book about the Jewish wound uh and Ben Moser's book uh Anti-Zionism and Jewish history in which both of them described the means that various Zionist organizations at a time when Zionism was a minority position in Jewish communities worldwide up until the Holocaust in all of up until World War II basically sang from exactly that playbook.

43:06 They were a minority and they had to attack people at hominim because they couldn't argue on the merits of the case right up until the 30s they couldn't argue from the the founding of the Zionist movement 1896 uh Herzl right up through the 30s they couldn't argue on the merits of the case and that has that that that intellectual thuggery which all of us I think have experienced in one respect or another ad hominem slurs uh uh the the inter the the review recently of the of your book today in the Wall Street Journal they don't take on any of the points you make they don't dare take on the points you make it's all it's all it's all thug it's basically intellectual thuggery.

43:47 This has been a part of the playbook but for very many years as as I and and Elike uh point out uh Israel advocates were able to talk uh supposedly to the facts and to the policy issues They're not able to do that anymore. Why do you guys think this has happened? We've talked about public opinion change.

44:08 I think it's really important that they're obliged to do the kind of black money purchase of public opinion, the black money purchase of an electorate. Is now their entire arsenal.

44:32 I'd love to argue, and I'm sure you would love to argue, and Steve and John would get with it there's a whole generation of people we educated so that they are more sophisticated about the Middle East, about Israeli politics. That may have contributed, but the r what we argue is Israel became a crazy state.

44:51 It became a crazy state partly because of the unconditionality of and and uh enormous massive uh uh characteristic of American aid, which shifted, made it impossible for moderates in Israel who might have, who at least could be sold in America as ready for peace with their neighbors, social democrats, made them it impossible for them to win elections, and essentially made uh subsidized far right and politicians who could move to the right to pander to the most extreme fears and fantasies of Israelis.

45:27 We created that, this superabundant success of, I should say, of the lobby, not we in the United States, by hammerlocking American phone policy, created a changed what Amer Israeli democracy might have produced. But one of the things that it did was make it absolutely impossible for, as we've said, for the lobby to win arguments.

45:48 And I one of the things we talk about in the book is the the changing messages in the manuals distributed by the lobby for guiding how you encounter, how you defeat, how you check, respond to critics on campuses, to move away from substantive discussion toward criticizing arguments as anti-Semitic, then criticizing the people who make them as anti-Semitic, to uh to hire to have people like Frank Luntz, who know nothing about the Middle East, authoring these manuals when in the past the at least the people who wrote them knew something about the Israel and Arab Arab conflict.

46:22 This is all about how to spin, how to how to mobilize bias of your audience, how to change the subject. Uh so so to me, Israel becoming a state that is essentially a pariah in the international system. Uh uh, and this is accelerated by the Gaza genocide, but not started by it, is something that the lobby just has to uh accept.

46:47 They're doing it in two ways. One is the anti-Semitic the anti-Semitism, which hunt we talked about, but the other, which is only starting to come on the scene, is to develop uh uh an ideology of the United States and Israel fighting a global struggle on behalf of Judeo-Christian civilization uh against the red-green alliance, the neo-Marxists and the jihadis, backed by the degenerate Western uh European secular humanists.

47:16 And this is leading uh this is an argument that they make because partly they don't have to defend Israeli policies because civilization is at stake. Right. And uh I don't believe that this is going to win, but it's splitting, it's creating a segment of the lobby that wants to build a fortress, a fortress Jewish ghetto in the United States.

47:38 Don't send your kids to Harvard anymore, don't send them to Pennsylvania or Columbia, send them to Israel, to Florida, to Texas AM, anywhere, anywhere but uh the elite schools, and we should only invest in in Jewish communal activities. The ADL, the Anti-Defamation League, has already gone down that road.

47:57 It is absolutely explicitly given up all its programming to fight bigotry and is only focused on weaponizing uses of anti-Semitism.

48:06 Can I piggyback on what Ian said? I of course agree with him in his response to your question about what's changed. Uh but also you do not want to underestimate the importance of the new historians in Israel uh who in the late 1980s, early 1990s began to lay out in a very public and detailed and sophisticated fashion how Israel was created, how Israel treated the Palestinians.

48:36 It was of enormous importance. Furthermore, if you had the development in the United States of a small coterie of scholars at respectable or elite institutions who began to tell the same story and to give you just three names Ryan Lustig, Rasheed Halidi, and Norman Finkelstein. You guys really mattered.

49:00 So the discourse was changing because the body of literature that was available for scholars and lay people to look at to understand what was going on was expanding and it was telling the truth. And the final point I would make, which is of enormous importance, is the internet. You cannot underestimate how important the internet is for changing the discourse about Israel over time.

49:28 Just take the Gaza genocide, right? It was on public display. You could see it with your very eyes.

49:35 Not through the mainstream corporate media, through the internet, through social media. Exactly.

49:41 I want to piggyback on John. Uh so far. So one of the other differences between the two books is that we didn't say very much about Israeli domestic politics. We had some warnings in there about where we thought it might go, and we were worried about how unconditional support was not helping uh Israel internally, but we did not discuss it in detail.

50:04 They devote a whole chapter, uh the Israel is a crazy state argument, uh, to exploring the domestic implications in Israel itself. That's uh that's new. Uh second, I agree with John's point about the discourse has changed, so it's much harder to blow smoke about policy uh anymore. It's just a far more open uh set of discussions.

50:25 The third point I'd make, though, is that even the attempt now to smear people, which is uh is happening, I don't think is nearly as effective as it used to be. It's not able to marginalize people who are critical uh in quite the same way. Um, and I think in part because the lobby's been so discredited in some of its prior defenses that when they come and attack somebody, in most cases attacking people who are quite obviously not anti-Semitic.

50:54 They're just critical of Israeli policy, or they have doubts about whether or not American unconditional support is a good idea. This is not anti-Semitism, and most people can see that. Right? So the smearing, I think, is no longer as effective. The one part that is worrisome to me, and it gets back to our earlier discussion, is of course the lobby has made an alliance of with the sort of right-wing culture warriors who don't care at all about the Middle East, don't care at all about Israel, want to go after various institutions for their own political reasons.

51:28 And you could argue that's almost a parallel to what you were saying. You know, sometimes the lobby has worked with the military-industrial complex or with oil companies. Today, parts of the lobby work with the Chris Rufos and others of the world who are, I would think, unreliable allies over time, but are part of this broader war on sort of both rational thought, honest discourse, all in the service of political agendas of various kinds.

51:55 I think you're completely right. And they've lost the they've lost the narrative, they've lost the discursive. They cannot argue. But what they have gained because of the alliance you just talked about is state power. So you now have the state mandating that saying this or saying that about Israel is anti-Semitic.

52:14 And you will be punished in law. You'll be punished. Uh uh, your university will bring you up before some kangaroo court for violations of Title VI, which are nothing to do with discrimination. Uh, and again, uh, one of the great things about the book, the recent book, the Eli and Eye talked about, is this politics of feeling.

52:34 How people feel. I feel that this expression of intifada or this of somebody wearing a Palestinian kafie or somebody talking rip saying river to the sea makes me feel unsafe. And the state is now punishing people for these kinds of violations of the feelings of a tiny subset, as it happens, of university students, for example.

53:01 Uh, this is this is brand new. Uh now you may be right, uh Steve. That alliance may dissolve within two years or three years or less, but right now it has the power of the state behind it. Eli, you wanted to say something.

53:14 I wanted to quickly just turn back to John's point about social media and the the medium uh changing. And as a result, the lobby couldn't control what was getting out and uh what people were seeing and hearing. Uh and I think that uh while that is all true, I worry that focusing on that can overshadow sometimes the fact that the message itself, the facts on the ground, became impossible to defend.

53:45 And this goes back to your point, Rashid, about 20,000 dead children, maybe as much as 100,000 uh dead civilians in Gaza. That's something that cuts across every um aspect of our political spectrum in the United States and globally. People find that offensive. People find that horrendous. That leads to, you know, you watch people like Tucker Carlson speaking exactly to that, addressing Christian evangelicals groups that have in the past been been fervently Christian Zionist and reaching them by saying, you know, there's a lot of dead kids here.

54:20 And this is something that our country is playing a role in. And people don't like that. And I think to get around that. It's hard to get around that. And yes, you can try to control it, you can try to get the mainstream media to somehow sanitize it, which they have to a degree. Um and we can certainly point to the role of social media in going around that.

54:41 Uh but all of this gets back to the fact that the simple facts on the ground are going to cost you public support and going to make it very, very hard to utilize the arguments that they had successfully used in the past uh to justify uh the U.S.-Israel relationship and maintaining the status quo.

55:00 But again, this is because the facts on the ground were completely obscured for us before social media and independent media and so on.

55:07 Aaron Ross Powell, Jr. That's why it's so s this striking contrast between a discursive defeat, the inability to actually argue anything, and what the state and the states are doing right now, there's a bill now being uh presented in the Pennsylvania legislature to make the IHRA hoax as the official definition of anti-Semitism that will expand prosecutions and criminalization of criticism of Israel.

55:34 This is this at a time uh when the governor will be presented with a politically fraught choice. Uh would will he support this? Will he not? But from my point of view, what and we've asked this before, what accounts for this gap between policy, what the politicians are doing or even considering doing, and what the public is believing and wanting?

55:59 And uh one of the things that uh we've suggested is to look at the NRA as a kind of cautionary tale here. They long ago lost the argument about whether whether it would be better to control attack uh control uh assault weapons or have them locked when they're not used. But they can't, but the policies don't change.

56:19 Uh so there is an ability that lobbies have, if they know how to operate behind the scenes, as the Israel lobby certainly does, uh, to prolong the period in which there is a gap between what climate change wants and what policy is. Climate change.

56:33 The energy lobby has a lock-on policy. Well, that's a good one. We're going down the steep, steep incline towards an abyss. And everybody realizes that. But the energy lobby, just like the NRA, has policy uh under its control. Go ahead, John.

56:49 Just very quickly, we addressed this issue in our book, and Steve actually wrote those sections, so he's the expert on this. But his point to me, which we incorporated into the book, is that if you look at how the American political system is constituted, it is right for interest groups to come in and manipulate the system.

57:09 It's a very peculiar set of institutions that we have. Excuse me. And it's important to understand that those institutions allow the NRA and the Israel lobby, the Cuban lobby, you name it, uh, to get their way, even when public opinion points 180 degrees in the opposite direction.

57:27 I I think this can go back to some of the Greek philosophers talking about the problems with democracy. I mean, they were they were talking about the demos, they weren't talking about interest groups, but essentially uh look at France, look at uh the United Kingdom, look at Germany. Some of the same exact uh uh procedures uh play out in their political systems with all the differences.

57:48 They didn't have citizens united, but you know, that's a big difference.

57:53 Big difference. A big difference. So you're becoming an Aristotelian in your older age.

57:57 Yeah, when I want to not think about the Middle East, I go back and read the classics. It's my refuge. Um I I wanted to bring one or two other things up. Um in reading this the vitriolic and stupid review in the Wall Street Journal of Israel's lobby, of uh uh uh Eli and Ion's book, the thing that came to mind was if I were if I were the authors and I felt like responding to this rubbish, all I would do is quote uh President Washington's farewell address, but you guys quote on page 15 at length and just send that to the Wall Street Journal.

58:36 Say, if this doesn't describe what this lobby does, you know, shoot me. I think you really, you absolutely nailed it with that. I've always thought about the founders and the framers and their their deep, deep, deep distrust of the United States playing a certain kind of role in the world and how far the United States has deviated from that since certainly since into the from the 20th century onwards.

59:00 Um, but in particular, the way in which uh uh uh Washington talked about faction. I mean, it it links exactly to the discussion that we're having. I don't know if anybody wants to mention to talk about this, but it struck me as something that we should always be throwing it out there uh as is do we really want to be this tightly linked to this specific country and this specific interest group in all of our policies, as far as the Middle East is concerned?

59:27 And even broad, more broadly and more dangerously, insofar as public discourse, the First Amendment, and academic freedom are concerned. I mean, I left, you mentioned this in the book, I left, I stopped teaching at Columbia after I retired because they decided IHRA was the basis on which they would adjudicate Title VI complaints.

59:44 And at that point, half of what I wanted to say in classroom would bring me up before these kangaroo courts run by idiot administrators operating on the basis of this ludicrous definition of anti-Semitism, which has nothing to do with Jew hatred, which is what anti-Semitism is, and entirely to do with protecting Israel from any possible criticism.

1:00:03 I wasn't going to go through that meat grinder. Why would I do that? Just so that I could say what, as as uh John said, a bunch of Israeli scholars and a bunch of Palestinian scholars said 30 and 40 years ago, Israel did this, this, this, and this in 1948, or this is the case as far as Gaza is concerned.

1:00:21 You know, facts are suddenly become evidence, prima facie evidence of anti-Semitism.

1:00:27 I wanted to pick up something I think is is adjacent to what you were just saying, and it's a point that I make occasionally, which is uh, you know, one of the other political costs here is the enormous amount of bandwidth a country of roughly 10 million people takes in American political discourse. I mean, we're spending an hour plus talking about it as well.

1:00:50 But uh, you know, people can write books about it. If you just read Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, New York Times, every day there are stories. The amount of time that every president, right, uh, has to spend dealing with this one small country in various ways. And often very resentfully, you know, they tell their aides they're angry at Prime Minister X or When they leave office, they tell us the truth, yeah.

1:01:17 Right. But the point is, it's just this is and uh there's only 24 hours a day, seven days in a week. The most precious commodity in most governments is the time of senior officials. And look at all the time and attention that Obama devoted to this, that George W. Bush devoted to this, that Trump has devoted to it in various ways.

1:01:36 I think I counted at once point that Anthony Blinken went to the Middle East uh to Israel something like a dozen times, 15 times in the four years that he was Secretary of State. He went to the entire continent of Africa four times. Right? So the amount of time it takes uh in our political system, the amount of bandwidth it occupies, prevents us from focusing on a whole series of other problems that are likely to have much more impact on America's overall well-being over time.

1:02:06 And that's again a consequence of a relatively uh well-organized, well-funded, a small number of people who have managed to exploit the nature of the American political system to force politicians to spend all this time on this one little country.

1:02:23 You'll be interested, Stephen, that back in the 80s, I asked Charlie Charles Maines, the editor of foreign policy, when it used to be, I published a couple of articles there on Israel in the Middle East. And I asked him once, I said, why are there so many articles on this topic? Every single issue. He said, I and if we're up to my readers, they would all be about Israel.

1:02:50 And and again, you get this scenario. Successive U.S. presidents have said this is not how they want to spend their time. It's not just outside observers saying this. And, you know, Steam, I think you've been saying it since before U.S. presidents were saying it. But the fact of the matter remains, you know, Obama, Trump, Biden, uh, Trump again have all said that this is not where you know the majority of the bandwidth of American military or diplomatic uh thinking or planning uh should be devoted.

1:03:18 I want to make what I think is an important point that is built into chapter three, which is the chapter on crazy states in I and Eli's book. And that is, I think that they are arguing that Israel is going to get crazier over time. They define it as a crazy state today. But in the second part of that chapter, they have what I think is a very important discussion about Israeli self-identification, how Israel identifies itself.

1:03:49 And the argument is that Zionism in the beginning viewed itself as just a different form of nationalism. It was a Jewish state. If you go back to the title of Herzl's famous book, the Jewish state, right? Nation-state, Jewish state. It was a nation-state among other nation-states. And the argument that they make in the second part of the book is that that sense of self-identification is changing in a fundamental way, where uh Israel views itself as being in a very special category and viewing the rest of the world as the enemy.

1:04:29 They're all potential Nazis. Uh and you therefore think about the rest of the world. And this includes the West and includes the United States as well, as the enemy. And Israel is all alone in this world. And by the way, there is this new Israeli military doctrine that everybody's been talking about over the past two weeks, which I'm sure everybody's familiar with.

1:04:54 And as I was reading about that doctrine, I kept thinking of the second.

1:05:01 Explain to your viewers what you're talking about, because we know, but they may not.

1:05:05 Well, the doctrine basically says that Israel is pretty much on its own moving forward. It can't rely on the United States anymore. Sparta among the nations. Sparta among the nations, right. Israel is very different than other nation states. And furthermore, it basically argues for a greater Israel and a highly aggressive foreign policy in pursuit of that greater Israel, which is completely consistent with what Eli and Ian say.

1:05:33 Trevor Burrus, Jr. I highlight that that doctrine that you're talking about, the development of it, was funded by the Israel lobbies, funded by Tikvah into it into the think tanks in Israel that are produced it. It is also an outgrowth of Gush Amunim, of the bloc of the faithful that was behind the massive settlement project in the West Bank.

1:05:53 Their position is I and I wrote a book about them in the 80s, was always that, well, it's like Abraham. You know, uh when God speaks directly to Abraham, tells him to kill his son, that shows that when you have a people like the Jews to whom God speaks directly, regular ethical laws that govern the behavior of other nations don't apply to the Jews, don't apply to a Jewish state.

1:06:17 What has happened is that that idea, that core fundamentalist idea, has uh become the mainstream idea of the Israeli right. And that is what is governing Israel now. So it's and and when you talk about this new doctrine, it's actually to expand Israel geographically, to occupy portions of uh essentially all the countries around it, and to develop a massive army to do that.

1:06:46 One of the things it doesn't go into is where are we going to get the manpower to do it? We're not gonna talk about that problem, but that is a massive problem, in part because of emigration rates that are uh reacting to this craziness in Israel, uh, and because of something that uh uh the the ultra-orthodox, what I would call the draft resistance movement.

1:07:08 They are unwilling to provide the manpower for their own reasons uh that the IDF needs to carry out that kind of program.

1:07:17 But their percentage of the population is increasing. They're about 14 percent now, and by 2050, estimates are there'll be 33 percent of the population. Well, it turns out that's good news. Well, that's what I'm that's on one hand.

1:07:31 The most dovenous part of the Israeli Jewish population, on the other hand, they're doing what the other part should do, which is resisting the draft.

1:07:40 But to go back to this sort of expansive military doctrine, you know, every country has extreme factions. That's not unique. It's certainly not unique to Israel. What is unique, however, is that they are able to pursue it while being largely shielded from the natural consequences that any other country of their size, certainly in the region or anywhere in the world, would experience if you were to be engaging in sort of endless wars with one's neighbors and maintaining an occupation uh over people who certainly do not receive uh the same democratic rights that others who are in the same controlled territory do.

1:08:15 This is something that is unique in Israel's case, and I think can only be ascribed to the successes of the lobby and protecting, you know, in more recent cases, you know, Israel from the ICC or from censure in the United Nations or from isolation in sort of in the global community, in the sense of countries, particularly in Europe or the United States, not wanting to sell weapons.

1:08:36 All of these are the sorts of consequences that naturally would occur from these sorts of excesses. But in that, and this goes back to sort of something we've talked about a number of times, which is that, in a sense, that lobby is a victim of its own success, that they have now managed to enable Israel to pursue an agenda to some degree of success that has made it impossible to defend when it comes to uh in the court of public opinion in the United States, let alone globally.

1:09:04 Okay, I'm gonna ask the four of you. You're all political scientists, I think, by training. Is that correct?

1:09:10 I I I am the only non-PD on this. Uh, but I I can recuse myself. No policy person.

1:09:18 Um I mean, we have just laid out, you you all four of you laid out different stages of the history of this uh in your books, the degree to which it's no longer possible to defend Israeli policies. Um and we've laid out in this discussion some of the reasons for that. Uh I I would stress what John said, actually.

1:09:42 I think that the shift within academia started partly by the revisionist historians, but by many others, not just me and you and I and so on, a very large number of people over, including people who are not cutting-edge critics of Israel. They simply wrote the truth about Israeli society or about Palestinian society or about Middle East politics.

1:10:04 And that has now become standard. You cannot say some of the things that people said in the 40s and the 50s in an uh in a respectable academic environment. You cannot say those things. They're they're nonsense, they're false. Everybody knows certain things about the history and the politics and the societies that we're talking about.

1:10:21 Given all of that, my my question is this the United States and Western Europe generally are the absolutely essential base for Israel getting away with what it does. Uh you both laid this out in different ways. All four of you have laid in both points. I'm going to ask you guys to do something I wouldn't do as a historian, which is to predict when does the disconnect, and how and why and where will the disconnect come as between the overwhelming lack of sympathy of every single Western country surveyed by Pew, for example, for Israel, and their growing sympathy for the Palestinians.

1:11:01 When does that and how does that affect policy? And when and how does that finally lead to somebody reigning in this, what you've described, the two of you have described as a crazy state. You cannot demolish 60 villages in Lebanon without the United States letting you do it. You cannot occupy further territories in Syria without the United States letting you do it, or more territory in Gaza, or kill 1,400 Palestinians in Gaza during a so-called ceasefire.

1:11:26 Without the United States and Western Europe, basically letting you do it, arming you, and you all talk about your voice, running interference with Israel and security council. When does this connect between public opinion? Every time I've seen it, the numbers get with 60% disappointment, it's up to 62% in the last call.

1:11:50 When does this begin to affect policy? All four of you are real experts. I am not. And I don't predict the future, you guys. Actually, I have to say, John and and Steve did a pretty damn good job of predicting the future. And you two now Eli had taken it up.

1:12:07 So please. When it comes to prediction, it's interesting that our original prediction uh in the manuscript that was submitted was that Israel would drag the United States into a war against Iran. By the time you're right, it was going to be going to press. We had to change the conclusion to an explanation from a prediction.

1:12:27 But I that's a very good question. And I uh don't shy away from it. I have I've made a lot of predictions. I'm very proud of my record. I'll I'll answer your question. I think that that change can come quite quickly, but it requires uh under the current conditions, but it requires one thing. It requires the politicians, and mainly in the Democratic Party, but not only, to figure out a way to be truthful and successful at the same time.

1:12:54 And that means giving up the two-state solution myth and talking uh and grounding their position on uh equality of opportunity, uh political equality, and liberal democracy, and then dissociating America from Israeli policies, not trying to orchestrate a solution, and realizing that this is going to be a long-term uh uh process.

1:13:19 So getting us out of that, I think what I'm trying to say is politicians if the Democrats come into power, and I think they will, they still need not to be suckered by an Isencoat uh government that in now the uh now Israel is no longer a crazy state, it's Connecticut again. Uh and and develop this new position that I've just tried to articulate, in which you don't tie your wisdom on the Middle East to uh uh deep involvement with Israel, you don't tie it to uh uh uh a two-state solution, you don't tie it to territorial compromise, you tie it to uh uh fairness and equality of all those governed by the same regime between the river and the sea.

1:14:06 And you say what you think at the UN and you don't give this massive aid uh to Israel. I think that's a position that can develop, and it would be that kind of disconnect. But it politicians have to come to the realization that they can win and be truthful at the same time. And we have two elections coming up.

1:14:23 I would just go s slightly upstream of that and say that uh I think you see change when it becomes uh recognizably politically untenable uh to continue uh endorsing and uh indeed imposing these status quo policies. And we've already seen some hints that this might be the emerging reality. Uh and one thing I always like to point to are the polls uh in the post-mortem of the uh of the 2024 election, where the number one reason given by voters who had voted for Joe Biden in 2020 and had withheld their vote from Kamala Harris in 2024, then either meant they voted for Trump or they chose not to vote more than write in, was Ganson.

1:15:05 Um that you know that doesn't mean that that necessarily tilted the election, but that's a really important metric to look at.

1:15:11 It might well have, as you guys point out, these were twin states. It might well have these statistics come from. Trevor Burrus, Jr. I think it went for Trump that had gone for Biden.

1:15:18 Trevor Burrus, Jr. Exactly. So I think the really next interesting test will be watching how Democratic presidential primary candidates position themselves coming into 2028. Trevor Burrus, Jr.: Uh because if things continue on the trajectory that we've been talking about here, um I think it's going to be new completely new pressure on uh on presidential candidates who want to appeal to a broad base uh nationwide to strike out in a different direction on this, despite all the money uh that's being uh spent to try to maintain not just the status quo policies, but deeply unpopular policies.

1:15:56 Trevor Burrus Not just by Republican right-wingers. Not just by Republican. If you look at the money that the former mayor of New York just put in, tens of millions of dollars spokesman explicitly said, we will be giving this to centrist, i.e., right-wing Democrats and not DSA people, i.e., we want to preserve the Israel, the pro-Israel status of the entire leadership of the Democratic Party and reinforce those right-wing Democrats who will continue to be.

1:16:22 Bloomberg was one of those plutocrats that we profile in the book on the left. And also on the Democratic Party, we identify Reid Hoffman, Haim Saban as all playing uh similar roles to those folks on the right that are more household names.

1:16:37 Well, um Yeah, I mean, so first of all, I've I've long had this fantasy that uh someday a presidential press secretary goes out and says our policy is to support a two-state solution, and all the reporters just bust a gut laughing. Uh that they they think that's that's silly. We may so I'd make three points.

1:16:56 I mean, first of all, I think uh like Ian, the change can actually come quite quickly, which is one of the reasons the lobby has always fought so fiercely, because if the momentum starts flowing away from them, uh you know, then it becomes easier for the next person to uh to take issue, uh, et cetera.

1:17:14 So I think change can come quickly. I think uh the costs of the Iran war uh that is so clearly tied to the bad advice that Trump got from Netanyahu, uh so clearly seen as the United States fighting uh with Israel. I think that uh fighting for Israel. Yeah, for for for Israel, exactly. Um and the fact that if you look sort of uh take a longer view, I think one of the implications of this war is it's going to make external powers, including the United States, far more reluctant to get involved in the Middle East.

1:17:46 The region is going to be uh on its own in ways it has not been in the past, as people realize that military power simply does not accomplish it.

1:17:55 You would think Afghanistan and Iraq were not in the world.

1:17:57 You would think, but you know, but you know, the the illusion is has died hard, but is I think uh I think dying. Uh and then the third thing, and this may be more optimistic, is I do think we are starting to see the groundswell of a uh populist backlash against billionaires, uh against the role that some of these people play, not just on this issue, but on lots of other issues.

1:18:21 And so you sort of put all of that together, something that tried to make a serious run at diminishing plutocratic influence on our politics would have the unintended consequence of also diminishing the lobby's impact on American Middle East policy. So again, this can all happen uh fairly quickly. Uh, that's your your glass half-full interpretation or your set of predictions for the future.

1:18:46 John I would say that I think that generational change matters a lot. My experience just talking to people about the Israel-Palestine issue is that most people who are my age, the baby boomers, were heavily influenced by the Exodus myths. And here I'm talking about Leon Yurit's. The movie and the book.

1:19:11 Yeah, the movie and the book. Not the exodus across the Red Sea. Yes, exactly. And it it's very hard to move people who were baby boomers off dead center on this issue.

1:19:24 I'm going to stop you because every time I'm addressing an older audience, I ask them how many of you have read the book or seen the movie? And the number of hands that chewed up tells me I'll never get anywhere with this audience. Keep going.

1:19:35 Yeah. But but as you know, because you have younger kids, as we all do, uh grandkids who are adults. Yeah. And their their views and their friends' views on Israel are very different. And this is reflected in the American Jewish community as well as in the broader population. So younger Jews are much more critical of Israel than older Jews are.

1:20:02 And the sad truth is, Rasheed, that guys like you and I don't have that much more time on the planet. And when people in our generation go away and they're replaced by all these younger people who have uh critical views of Israel, I think that will have an effect on policy. So you're basically putting your hopes uh on reaper.

1:20:28 I've actually said young people on the young generation. I've actually I've actually said exactly what you're saying. I I honestly think that some of these institutions of the Jewish community and some of these uh uh media uh conglomerates that are now owned by folks of though of that generation um are gonna see a big shift when people who are now in their 30s, 40s, and 50s or 20s inherit.

1:20:54 And it's gonna be very interesting, not just on this issue, I hope, on issues like the climate and so on and so forth. You'll have people who are sane and not subject to these myths that they were inculcated with insofar as Palestine's concerned, not just the way in which the Holocaust was understood in terms of the establishment of Israel, the way in which the Eichmann trial was played, and it's very importantly that film and that book, uh Exodus.

1:21:20 And finally, the way in which the 67 War, all of those things formed that generation from the 50s into the 60s, that is our generation, our baby booms. And those folks are most, but for the most part, as you say, absolutely hopeless. Uh, whereas their children and grandchildren are in a completely different place in many cases.

1:21:38 I have a I have a friend who is in a reading group of people of our age, and she said every single one of the women in her reading group is fighting with their children and grandchildren over Palestine. Every single one is fighting with their kids or their grandkids over Palestine. It's a well-to-do Upper West Side group, of whom I bet a majority are Jewish, and they're all fighting with their kids and their grandkids over this issue.

1:22:01 I want to I want to ask one last I want to finish on a grim note because I think I think what you all have said uh I tend to agree with. I think you're overoptimistic, but I tend to agree with you all. Um I want to go back to a really grim statistic that that um uh Eli and Ayan bring up in their book, which is the degree to which the statistics on anti-Semitism are being cooked to include criticism of Israel, or rather to basically feature criticism of Israel as a central element.

1:22:33 Uh you mentioned that uh the uh anti-discrimination leaks statistics for anti-Semitism tripled uh between 2021 and 2024, between 2021, 2022, and 2023-2024, such that almost 60% of incidents were related to Zionism in Israel. So essentially, critiques of Israel and Zionism over Gaza's by and large suddenly became the cause for a rise in anti-Semitism.

1:23:02 Um, and uh my fear here is that this may not go away. So this has been written into laws. Laws have to be either repealed or amended. You have you have the power of the state behind it, even if there's a different administration in two years, even if it is much less committed to an Israel-first policy or whatever, insofar as far as foreign policy is concerned.

1:23:29 The after-effect of this in terms of discourse, the after-effect of this in terms of universities. I mean, the place that this started in a certain sense was universities. Public opinion started changing among young people, in particular educated young people. As a result of what John said, the work over many decades of scholars who chipped away at every stupid myth that Israel had established as fact.

1:23:54 And the the clampdown on our universities is is horrifying. I mean, uh uh Steve knows people fired, as I know people forced to leave Colombia. We all know people. And the ones who are silent. You thought at the University of Pennsylvania where they fired the president. We all have experiences. And and for everyone actually fired, there are dozens who are silenced.

1:24:17 Uh uh, we still have a vigil outside of Colombia on a on the part of mainly tenured faculty because the contingent faculty are know they'll lose their jobs if they open their mouth. This is not going to change as quickly as public opinion is changing. It might not even change as fast as policy on Israel changes.

1:24:33 So I just want to leave you with that grim note. Uh if anybody I think I like to do that.

1:24:39 For me, one of the one of the most important points we make in the book is the chutzpah, the unbelievable chutzpah that the Americ Anti-Defamation League had in using its reputation for being anti-bigotry so as to advance statistics that were completely cooked. And you know, I teach my students how could I ask the students, how can you double the amount of crime in a society without changing anyone's behavior?

1:25:09 And if a lot of students can't figure that out. I said, all you have to do is pass a law that makes the behavior criminal. And that's what ADL did. Right after October 7th, literally the day after, they changed the definition to adopt the IHRA definition, just as protests against October 8th exploded.

1:25:30 So then, oh my goodness, October 7th triggered an increase in anti-Semitism when they shifted the definition the day that day, the day after. And no one, no one that I have seen has gone into their method and said this. We are doing it for almost the first time.

1:25:51 This is the first the first place I've actually seen this published. Your book. The hoax of IHRA. Well, that's you, you, you brilliantly dismantled in the book. Uh, I mean, it's worth reading just for this chapter on the witch hunt. It's worth reading for many reasons. Steve, I see you, I see you shoving it a bit.

1:26:14 Well, my last comment, I think, and that is just uh to echo the grim note uh in one way. I worry a lot that this kind of overreach on the part of the ADL and other groups as well will ultimately generate a backlash. Yeah. An anti-Semitic backlash. An anti- a genuine anti-Semitic backlash among various people and various groups who have had that strand in their thinking, groups on the far right, et cetera, but also with more sympathy.

1:26:42 Yeah, uh, yes, and the left. And you know, that that in a sense, doing this kind of manipulation, using state power to do it, um, you know, is the kind of thing that makes people very angry over time, and the overreaction could be, you know, actually uh much worse than what we've dealt with in the past.

1:27:04 And uh that worries me a lot. I think these groups are playing with fire in using this in the short term and the long term, it does actually worry me a lot.

1:27:12 Again, going back to the history, uh, I know we're talking policy here, but going back to the history, as as Molly Crabappel and as uh Ben Moser say, in many eras, the anti-Semites were the best allies of the Zionists. And this Israeli government has basically taken that and made it its playbook. Yes, we want you to see that they're all anti-Semitic because it'll drive you towards us.

1:27:34 It'll make people emigrate and come to Israel. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

1:27:36 I mean, I think it's very abundantly obvious at this point that the ADL and a number of these Jewish institutions uh that had stated that they're that that part of their mission was to combat anti-Semitism either do not care very much about anti-Semitism or may even welcome it in some in some in some cases.

1:27:55 Uh and I think in the case of the ADL and APAC, two really interesting ones to look at. Over the course of the current election season, they have repeatedly gone out there and said that criticism of APACs and pro-Israel super PACs roles in our election is a form of anti-Semitism. Now, in doing that, they are effectively endorsing the dual loyalty trope, saying that Jewish Americans engaging in our democracy are synonymous with Israel's lobby.

1:28:22 Um, and that that is a very dangerous, very dangerous position for them to take. Uh the ADL actually has a great article up on their website about the dangers of the dual loyalty trope. Uh it would be lovely if they could actually do more to try to combat it, instead of, it seems like, endorsing it uh with uh a great deal of frequency if you listen to the statements made by Jonathan Greenblatt over the past several years.

1:28:44 Okay. Uh John, you're the only one who hasn't weighed in. Go for it. And I think and then I think we're done, unless somebody has something else to say.

1:28:51 My final observation. It's it's your YouTube channel. In the spring of 2024, there were protests all across the country at different campuses. And the government and the lobby made the case that this was all due to anti-Semitism, that all of these campuses had become hotbeds of anti-Semitism. I said at the time, and I would like to say now, I have been in the academic world, starting with my undergraduate education in 1966 and my graduate education in 1971 for a long, long time.

1:29:28 And before 2024, I never heard anybody in academia make the argument that there was an anti-Semitism problem at a university or a college in the United States. I just never heard it. And I must say, I never heard a colleague make an anti-Semitic comment. It was just unthinkable. And there were huge numbers of Jews in academia at the university, at the professorial level, at the student level, in terms of deans, provosts, and presidents and so forth and so on.

1:30:03 And nobody commented on whether those people were Jewish or not. It just didn't matter. But all of a sudden, all of a sudden, in the spring of 2024, it's like uh the campuses have been taken over by Nazis. Uh, all these anti-Semites are coming out of the woodwork. This is all ludicrous, and it just illustrates the game that the lobby was playing in conjunction, and this is a theme you've been enunciating through this discussion, uh Rasheed, and cannot be emphasized enough, with the cooperation of the state.

1:30:38 In recent years, it's not just the lobby, it's the lobby operating with the state. And that's a deadly combination.

1:30:46 Well, thank you, all four of you. Um and thanks to everybody putting this uh episode together. Um I I it was a it was a pleasure and very educational for me to listen to the four of you, whom I've been very happy to talk to in many cases and to read uh in the past. But uh the pleasure of going back over John and Steve's book and reading Eli and Ian's book is something that I think everybody who watched this should also undertake.

1:31:14 If you haven't read the Israel lobby and US foreign policy in the past, you should read it now. And if you haven't read Israel's lobby, America in the grip of a foreign policy go out and buy it. Uh it's it these are these are essential for understanding the situation that we're all in. Thank you.

1:31:31 Thank you.

1:31:32 Thank you.