[Stephen Walt] Obama meets the Lobby

Stephen Walt provides some rather misleading analysis in Obama meets the Lobby:

First, although a few individuals in the Israel lobby continue to downplay its influence, the very fact that this meeting was held is additional testimony to its important role in shaping U.S. Middle East policy. Why was Barack Obama taking time from his busy schedule to meet with the heads of groups like AIPAC, the Anti-Defamation League, J Street, Hadassah, and the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations (among others)? Simple: he knows that these groups have a lot of political power. He also knows that the success of his Middle East policy depends in large part on getting significant support from them. In a political system like ours, where well-organized interest groups routinely wield disproportionate influence over the issues they care about, holding a White House sit-down with these key leaders was smart politics.

Second, the meeting also makes it clear that there have been significant changes within the lobby over the past several years, and that there is an evident rift between those who think the United States should continue to the same "special relationship" with Israel, and those who believe that it would be in Israel and America’s interest if Washington adopted a more candid and nuanced policy toward the Jewish state. It is noteworthy that the invitees included representatives from both J Street and Americans for Peace Now -- groups that openly favor a two-state solution and have been backing Obama's campaign to halt all construction in the settlements. Maybe even more noteworthy, the more hard-line groups were remarkably restrained in defending the settlement enterprise.

There is no other lobby that holds meetings like this one. Do we see the heads of organiztions with the Cuban, agricultural or gun lobbies holding meetings like this one with the President of the USA? We do not because those lobbies only lobby while the Israel lobby is the public face of the Zionist virtual colonial motherland (or Judonia).

Obama took part in an executive branch to executive branch meeting with the public face of the leadership of Judonia or to be more precise with the highest level of the paid employees within Judonia's executive branch. The actual Zionist political economic oligarchs were absent

• because they shun publicity and
• because as merely the president of an intimidated and dependent client state within the Zionist imperial system Obama ranks lower than a Zionist plutocrat (albeit higher than the Israeli prime minister).

The virutal state analysis of the Israel Lobby is supported by the ongoing blatant effort of Judonia to manipulate Dutch and EU politics by supporting Geert Wilders and by earlier and ongoing less blatant but relatively successful efforts at manipulating the British, French, and German governments. While the USA has manipulated European governments in the past, no other US lobby has so explicitly interfered in European politics or law as the Israel Lobby currently is doing.

The Israel Lobby functions internationally in an effectively governmental or imperial role.

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