This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Carolmooredc (talk | contribs) at 18:39, 24 March 2008 (→Antisemitic: put in link to lasky quote again). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.
Revision as of 18:39, 24 March 2008 by Carolmooredc (talk | contribs) (→Antisemitic: put in link to lasky quote again)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)
Jewish lobby is a term that has been used to describe organizations which claim to represent Jewish concerns in a number of areas, including politics, government, public policy, international relations, as well as business, international finance, the media, academia, and popular culture. Alternately, the term is used as part of antisemitic discourse to describe or allege conspiratorial claims of Jewish control in these same areas.
Usage
Descriptive
| Lobbying in the United States | |
|---|---|
| History | |
| Topics | |
| Major industrial and business lobbies | |
| Major single-issue lobbies | |
| Diaspora and ethnic lobbies | |
| See also | |
The B'nai B'rith Anti-Defamation Commission of Australia defines the "Jewish lobby" as "an unwieldy group of individuals and organisations devoted to supporting the needs and interests of the Jewish community." The article notes that: "The assumption, however, that Jews have a disproportionate power and influence over decision making is what transforms a descriptive reality about politics to an antisemitic argument about Jewish power."
In his Dictionary of Politics, Walter John Raymond defines "Jewish Lobby" as "A conglomeration of approximately thirty-four Jewish political organizations in the United States which make joint and separate efforts to lobby for their interests in the United States, as well as for the interests of the State of Israel." The Oxford English Dictionary uses the term as an example of a special interest lobby, quoting from a 1958 article in the Listener: "The United States Government, sensitive to the Jewish lobby .. backed the Jews". Dominique Vidal, writing in Le Monde diplomatique, states that in the United States "the self-described Jewish lobby is only one of many influence groups that have official standing with institutions and authorities."
In a 2004 speech, J.J. Goldberg, Editorial Director of the Jewish-American newspaper The Forward, stated: "The Jewish lobby ... is actually more than just a dozen organizations. The Anti-Defamation League, The American Jewish Committee, Hadassah, of course, AIPAC." In his earlier book Jewish Power, he had written that in the United States the "Jewish lobby" for decades played a leadership role in formulating American policy on issues such as civil rights, separation of church and state, and immigration, guided by a liberalism that was a complex mixture of Jewish tradition, the experience of persecution, and self interest. It was thrust into prominence following the Nixon Administration's sharp shift of American policy towards significant military and foreign aid support for Israel following the following the 1973 Yom Kippur war.
Antisemitic
Susan Jacobs of Manchester Metropolitan University states that the phrase, when used "without mentioning other ‘lobbies’ or differentiating Jews who have different political positions on a number of questions, including Israel and Palestine", is a contemporary form of the fear of a Jewish conspiracy. Robert S. Wistrich, of the International Center for the Study of Anti-Semitism, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, sees reference to the phrase, when used to describe an "all-powerful 'Jewish Lobby'" that controls Middle Eastern policy, as reliance on a classic antisemitic stereotype.
Dominique Vidal writes that in France, the term had been exclusively used by the French far right as "a phrase that combines standard anti-semitic fantasies about Jewish finance, media control and power; the term is the contemporary equivalent of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion." Bruno Bettelheim detested the term, arguing "The self-importance of Jews combined with the paranoia of the anti-Semite had created the image of this lobby."
Michael Visontay, editor of Australia's The Sydney Morning Herald, writes that "The way the phrase 'Jewish lobby has been bandied about in numerous letters implies there is something inherently sinister in lobbying when Jews do it." According to Geoffrey Brahm Levey and Philip Mendes, the term is used in Australia as a pejorative description of the way in which the Jewish community influences the Liberal Party "by talking to its leaders and making them aware of Jewish wishes and views".
] writes that in the United Kingdom "Jewish lobby" is used as an "even more pejorative" term for "the 'Israel lobby'". Michael Lasky describes the term as an "unfortunate phrase", and "imagines" that Alexander Walker's use of it while writing about the "Nazi" films of Leni Riefenstahl was not intended pejoratively.
In 2006 Chris Davies, MEP for the northwest of England was forced to resign as leader of the Liberal Democrats group in the European Parliament after writing to a constituent “I shall denounce the influence of the Jewish lobby that seems to have far too great a say over the political decision-making process in many countries.” In comments to TotallyJewish.Com he "confessed he didn’t know the difference between referring to the ‘pro Israel lobby’ and the ‘Jewish lobby’," and added “I’m quite prepared to accept that I don’t understand the semantics of some of these things.” Commenting on Davies' use of the term, The Guardian's David Hirsh writes Davies "has had to resign because his laudable instinct to side with the underdog was not tempered by care, thought or self-education." He compared Davies' rhetoric with the "care to avoid openly antisemitic rhetoric taken by sophisticates like Mearsheimer and Walt and Robert Fisk."
A 2007 New York Sun editorial accused Richard Dawkins, a British evolutionary biologist, atheist and writer who is author of The God Delusion, of repeating antisemitic conspiracy theories after using the term in an interview published in The Guardian. In the interview Dawkins said: "When you think about how fantastically successful the Jewish lobby has been, though, in fact, they are less numerous I am told - religious Jews anyway - than atheists and more or less monopolise American foreign policy as far as many people can see. So if atheists could achieve a small fraction of that influence, the world would be a better place." In a National Review column discussing the influence of "high-profile atheists" on the American left, Arthur C. Brooks wrote that Dawkins claim was "anti-Semitic, slanders religion, and asserts victimhood."
Criticism
There have been a variety of criticisms of uses of the term "Jewish Lobby." Mitchell Bard, director of the non-profit American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise (AICE), writes that: "Reference is often made to the 'Jewish lobby' in an effort to describe Jewish influence, but this term is both vague and inadequate. While it is true that American Jews are sometimes represented by lobbyists, such direct efforts to influence policy-makers are but a small part of the lobby’s ability to shape policy." Bard argues the term Israel lobby is more accurate, because it is comprises both formal and informal elements (which includes public opinion), and "...because a large proportion of the lobby is made up of non-Jews."
In his 2004 speech J. J. Goldberg said: "There has been an awful lot of talk in the last few years about the rise of the Jewish lobby and the influence of the Jewish lobby. It used to be that you couldn’t talk about this sort of thing. When I wrote "Jewish Power" in 1996 ... I was accused by various Jewish lobbyists of inflating and buying into the old myths of international Jewish conspiracies simply by the use of the title." He added: "There is such a thing as a Jewish lobby, that the network of organizations that works together to put across what might be called the Jewish community’s view on world affairs is not insignificant, it’s not an invention, but it is not some sort of all-powerful octopus that it’s sometimes portrayed as these days."
In 2004, The Independent reported that David Johnson, a US diplomat based in the United Kingdom caused controversy at a Royal Institute of International Affairs lecture after "publicly implying that a reference to the 'Jewish lobby' in the United States is an anti-Semitic remark." A member of the audience objected to Johnson's remarks and garnered a round of applause after retorting "There is nothing racial about drawing attention to the existence of a particular ethnic group".
Professors Stephen Walt (Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University) and John Mearsheimer (University of Chicago), authors of The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, write that while "AIPAC and the Conference of Presidents and the Israeli media themselves refer to America’s ‘Jewish Lobby’." They also write that they themselves "never use the term 'Jewish lobby' because the lobby is defined by its political agenda, not by religion or ethnicity." In a letter to the editor of The New York Times, they state "Indeed, we explicitly rejected this label as inaccurate and misleading, both because the lobby includes non-Jews like the Christian Zionists and because many Jewish Americans do not support the hard-line policies favored by its most powerful elements."
See also
- Lobbying in the United States
- Ethnic interest groups in the United States
- Diaspora politics in the United States
- Israel lobby in the United States
- Israel lobby in the United Kingdom
- Antisemitism
References
- ^ Walter John Raymond. The Dictionary of Politics: Selected American and Foreign Political and Legal Terms, Brunswick Publishing Corporation, 1992, p. 253.
- ^ The Media, Stereotypes and the Jewish Lobby, the B'nai B'rith Anti-Defamation Commission, Inc. (Australia).
- The Oxford English Dictionary, p. 1074, 2nd Edition, 1989
- ^ Vidal, Dominique. "France: racism is indivisible", Le Monde diplomatique, May 2004.
- ^ American Foreign Policy and The Jewish Lobby, J.J. Goldberg, Speech before the Los Angeles World Affairs Council, March 22, 2004
- Jonathan Jeremy Goldberg.Jewish Power: Inside the American Jewish Establishment. Basic Books, 1996, Chapter 2, especially 24.
- ^ Jacobs, Dr. Susan. "AntiSemitism and other forms of racism Continuities, discontinuities, (and some conspiracies….)" Paper presented at the 2005 CRONEM (Centre for Research on Nationalism, Ethnicity and Multiculturalism) Conference, Roehampton University, Southlands College, 14th-15th June 2005:
That some type of shadowy Jewish conspiracy exists is commonsense, taken-for-granted element in many quarters: e.g. rumours that the predominance of neo-conservatives in the USA is a ‘Jewish conspiracy’ (Greenspan, 2003; Berlet, 2004; Interview, 2004 ). Perhaps even more common is a vague suspicion that such a conspiracy might exist but that it is impolite to articulate this. A contemporary form of this fear is the phrase ‘the Jewish lobby’ without mentioning other ‘lobbies’ or differentiating Jews who have different political positions on a number of questions, including Israel and Palestine."
- Sutton, Nina (David Sharp trans.) Bettelheim: A Life and a Legacy, BasicBooks, p. 486. ISBN 0465006353
- Visontay, Michael. "Free speech for some, others pay", The Sydney Morning Herald, November 14, 2003.
- Geoffrey Brahm Levey, Philip Mendes. Jews and Australian Politics, Sussex Academic Press, 2004, ISBN 1903900727, p. 91.
- Safire, William. Safire's New Political Dictionary: The Definitive Guide to the New Language, Random House, 1993, p. 120. ISBN 0679420681
In Great Britain the "Israel lobby" is called, even more pejoratively, "the Jewish lobby," as in this Financial Times usage in 1977...
- ' Lasky, Melvin J. The Language of Journalism, Transaction Publishers, 2000, p. 147. ISBN 0765800012
- Hirsh, David. "Revenge of the Jewish lobby?", The Guardian, May 5, 2006.
- Alex Sholem, MEP Disciplined Over Slur, TotallyJewish.Com, May 4, 2006.
- Suppressed Scholarship, New York Sun, October 4, 2007
- Ewen MacAskill, Atheists arise: Dawkins spreads the A-word among America's unbelievers, The Guardian, October 1, 2007. In an article called "The Out Campaign" on his personal website Dawkins similarly writes: "Atheists are more numerous than religious Jews, yet they wield a tiny fraction of the political power, apparently because they have never got their act together in the way the Jewish lobby so brilliantly has: the famous 'herding cats' problem again."
- Atheists Hold Sway Among American Left, CBS news reprinted from National Review, December 2, 2007.
- Mitchell Bard, The Israeli and Arab Lobbies, Jewish Virtual Library. Accessed February 22, 2008.
- Bard, Mitchell. The Water's Edge and Beyond: Defining the Limits to Domestic Influence on United States Middle East Policy, Transaction publishers, 1991, p. 6. ISBN 088738286X
- Dejevsky, Mary, US diplomat declares use of `Jewish lobby' term unacceptable, The Independent, January 24 2004
- Mearsheimer, John and Walt, Stephen. The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, Farrah, Strauss and Giroux, 2007, p. 188.
- Mearsheimer, John and Walt, Stephen. "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy", Washington Post, Book World Live, October 9, 2007. Accessed January 7, 2008.
- Mearsheimer, John and Walt, Stephen. "The Israel lobby", letters to the editor, October 14, 2007.