Jihad el-Khazen, Al-Hayat, 14/09/07. Twenty years before Mearsheimer and Walt published their work [The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy] , a book entitled They Dare to Speak out: People and Institutions Confront Israel's Lobby was published by Paul Findley, a Republican Congressman from the state of Illinois. When he called the Palestinian Liberation Organization, the Jewish lobby brought him down after launching an open and bitter campaign against him.
I have the Arabic translation of Findley's original book They Dare to Speak out: the Zionist Lobby and America's Domestic and Foreign Policies. The author published another edition of his book with important additions in 2003, but they did not discuss in detail the activities of the Jewish lobby since the 1990s till now. The list of the lobby victims is long. I personally mention Senator Richard Percy, Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, who was surprised at the enormous clout of the lobby over American foreign policy. In a television program, he wondered how Israel and its prime minister can be stronger than the whole of Congress and the American president in directing American foreign policy.
Andrew Hurley published Holocaust II? Saving Israel from Suicide in 1990. He thinks that American support for radical Israeli policies will make Israel meet its doom. The book includes an abstract of one part of an old series of the Sixty Minutes television program that goes back to 1988. It discusses the lobby and its clout, and how it brought down congressmen like Findley, Percy, William Fulbright [Former United States Senator J. William Fulbright, Chairman of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee, stated repeatedly in 1973, “
In 1995 John Mulhall, a Catholic priest, published his book America and the Founding of Israel: an Investigation of the Morality of America's Role. Mulhall explains the role of American Zionists in making the United States endorse the creation of Israel in Palestine despite the opposition of thinkers and professional diplomats. The author examines the roles played by American presidents starting from Wilson and up to Truman. Finally, Mulhall came up with the conclusion that the United States is greatly indebted to the Palestinians.
Professor Mazin Qumsiyeh is one of the best Arab experts in the Jewish lobby and Israeli activities in the United States as he lives and work in it. In a recent article by him, he lists a number of books on the lobby, America, and Israel.
- An Alliance against Babylon: the United States, Israel, and Iraq was written by John Cooley whom I met when I worked for the Reuters News Agency in Beirut. Cooley is the correspondent of the Christian Science Monitor in the Middle East, and I find him one of the best American journalists who have worked in Beirut.
The book was published in 2005 and it is based on published and unpublished documents. He covers the history of Mesopotamia from the time of Babylon till today's Iraq. There is also a chapter on American aid to Saddam Hussein in his war against Iran and its dealing with Iran at the same time so that the two parties persist in killing each other. The final chapter discusses the occupation of Iraq and asks if the country will end up as a democracy or as a partitioned entity, and it also discusses the role of the Israeli intelligence in paving the way for partition, and the relations between Israel and the Kurds and Turkey.
- The Power of Israel in the United States by James Petras, published in 2006, includes significant examples on the Israeli role in seeking a war with Iraq. Then it examines the issue of American oil companies and says that their interests are jeopardized if the United States prevents them from doing business with Iran and if the United States engages in wars on behalf of Israel.
- The Host and the Parasite - How Israel's Fifth Column Consumed America, by Greg Felton, was published in 2007. The book comprises consolidated details on the conspiracies of the lobby, of Israeli terror, and on Israel's role in massacres like Qana, Sabra and Shatila, along with explanations on how the lobby controls the United States that in turn controls the United Nations and international organizations. The book also offers an interesting explanation of the work done by pro-Israeli research centers, such as The Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, The Washington Institute for the Near East, The New Century American Plan, and The American Enterprise Institute. Each of these institutions has played a role in involving the Bush administration in the war against Iraq.
These books are important and useful. The common denominator to them is that big publishing houses declined to publish them, so the authors resorted to small or specialized ones. The book written by Mearsheimer and Walt remains one of the most important books on the Israeli lobby and the direction of American foreign policy against the interests of the United States. However, I need to conclude with President Jimmy Carter's book Palestine: Peace not Apartheid. The book has faced a fierce campaign by the lobby and Israel's supporters who have tried to deny the racism of the occupation. Yet, this campaign has done a service to the book by making a bestseller in America. President Carter has resisted the campaign and replied in a convincing manner, which earned him more fans.
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