Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 05:22, 14 January 2008

Part of a series on
Antisemitism
Part of Jewish history and discrimination
History Timeline Reference
Definitions IHRA definition Jerusalem Declaration Nexus Document Three Ds
Geography Argentina Australia Austria Belarus Belgium Canada Chinese Chilean Costa Rican Europe France Dreyfus affair 21st-century Germany Greece Hungary Italy Japan New Zealand Norway Pakistan Palestine Romania Russia Imperial Russia Soviet Union Stalinist Saudi Arabia textbook controversy South Africa Spain Matar judíos Sweden Turkey Ukraine United Kingdom Conservative Party Labour Party USA History 21st century Venezuela
Manifestations Academic Arab Economic Gaza War ('08-'09) Israel-Hamas war ('23-'24) Holocaust denial Jewish Medieval Nazism Neo-Nazi Strasserism New Olympic Racial Religious Christian Christian Identity Creativity Islamic Nation of Islam Secondary COVID-19 Zionist
Antisemitic tropes Andinia Plan Blood libel Cohen Plan Cultural Bolshevism Cultural Marxism Deicide Finance control Franklin Prophecy Host desecration International Jewish conspiracy Jewish lobby Jewish war conspiracy theory Judensau Judeo-Bolshevism Żydokomuna Judeo-Masonism Kosher tax Media control QAnon Rootless cosmopolitan Doctors' plot Slánský trial Self-hating Jew Stab-in-the-back myth Well poisoning White genocide ZOG conspiracy
Antisemitic publications The Barnes Review Culture of Critique Currency Wars The Dearborn Independent Ethnic Cleansing (video game) La France juive Hitlers Zweites Buch Hunter (William Luther Pierce) 1988 Hamas Charter The International Jew La Libre Parole The Light Mein Kampf On the Jews and Their Lies Our Race Will Rule Undisputed Over The World Protocols of the Elders of Zion The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews Siege The Turner Diaries
Persecution Rhineland massacres Black Death persecutions Boycotts Expulsions Jewish quarter Ghettos in Europe Mellah The Holocaust Jewish hat Jewish quota Judensau Martyrdom in Judaism Nuremberg Laws Pale of Settlement Pogroms Russian Empire Russian Civil War Refuseniks Segregation Spanish Inquisition Yellow badge
Antisemitism on the Internet 4chan (/pol/) 8chan The Daily Stormer Disclose.tv Europa: The Last Battle Gab Goebbels Gap GoyimTV Groypers Jew Watch Metapedia The Occidental Observer Red Ice Renegade Tribune The Right Stuff (blog) StoneToss Stormfront Terrorgram Triple parentheses TruNews The Unz Review Veterans Today
Opposition Anti-Defamation League Campaign Against Antisemitism Community Security Trust Fundamental Rights Agency Philosemitism Simon Wiesenthal Center Southern Poverty Law Center Stephen Roth Institute Swedish Committee Against Antisemitism Union of Councils for Soviet Jews UN Watch U.S. National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism Wiener Holocaust Library Working definition of antisemitism (IHRA) Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism Three Ds of antisemitism Yad Vashem
Category
v t e

The Jewish lobby is a term referring to allegations that Jews exercise undue influence in a number of areas, including politics, government, business, the media, academia, popular culture, public policy, international relations, and international finance. According to George Michael, it is used most commonly by the far right, far left, and Islamists.

The expression is associated with antisemitic aspersions. Chip Berlet of Political Research Associates, an American research group that tracks right-wing extremists, writes that it combines the classic elements of anti-Semitic stereotyping and scapegoating, and is part of the discourse of conspiracism. 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 as reliance on a classic antisemitic stereotype. Dominique Vidal, writing in Le Monde diplomatique, says it is "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.

Usage

According to Mitchell Bard, director of the non-profit American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise (AICE), "...reference is often made to the 'Jewish lobby' in an effort to describe Jewish influence, but this term is both vague and inadequate." 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."

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."

Stephen Walt comments that he and co-author John Mearsheimer of The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy "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, Mearsheimer and Walt 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." David Cesarani, commenting in The Guardian on Richard Dawkins use of the term, states that "Mearsheimer and Walt would doubtless chide Dawkins for using the term 'Jewish lobby', which they studiously avoid in order to give no truck to anti-Jewish innuendo."

Michael Visontay, editor at the 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." Dominique Vidal, writing in Le Monde diplomatique, says that in France "only the far right used to refer to a 'Jewish lobby'", but that in 2004 it had been used by "a Jewish writer, Elisabeth Schemla".

Commenting on commenting on Chris Davies, MEP for the northwest of England's use of the term, The Guardian's David Hirsh feels that the term indicates a lack of "care, thought" and "self-education." Davies resigned after having used the term in an e-mail considered inappropriate by the public and the Liberal Democrats.

Reviewing Queen Noor of Jordan's memoir Leap of Faith: Memoirs of an Unexpected Life, Kenneth Jacobson of the Anti-Defamation League writes that though she refers to the "Zionist lobby", "...Queen Noor is not so insensitive or crass as to actually use the phrase 'Jewish Lobby,'." Joseph Lelyveld, in a The New York Review of Books review of Jimmy Carter's Palestine Peace Not Apartheid points out that Carter "doesn't resort to the term 'Jewish lobby'".

See also

• Anti-Zionism
• New antisemitism
• American Jewish Committee
• American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)
• Israel lobby in the United States
• Zionist Occupation Government

References

1. Aaronovitch, David. "Message to the left: there is no all-powerful Jewish lobby", The Guardian, May 27, 2003
2. ^ Berlet, Chip. "ZOG Ate My Brain," New Internationalist, 372, October 2004.
3. The myth of the "Jewish lobby" by Vijay Prasad in the Frontline (India's National Magazine) Volume 20 - Issue 20, September 27 - October 10, 2003.
4. Michael, George. The Enemy of my Enemy: The Alarming Convergence of Militant Islam and the Extreme Right, 2006, pp. 46-47 & 228-238.
5. Ramadan, Tariq. "Muslims and Anti-Semitism", UN Chronicle, June 10, 2005:

   "Much like the situation across the Muslim world, there exists in the West today a discourse which is anti-Semitic, seeking legitimacy in certain Islamic texts and support in the present situation in Palestine. This is the attitude of not only the marginalized youth but also of intellectuals and Imams, who see the manipulative hand of the “Jewish lobby” at each turn or every political setback."

6. ^ 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:

   "As is well-known, the Procotols was a forged document written in Russia in 1897, alleging that a worldwide Jewish conspiracy existed. This document attempted to explain a seeming contradiction: Jews were (are) prominent both in capitalist and in socialist/communist circles: the ‘explanation’ was that both were shams: capitalist and communist Jews were not really at odds, as it might seem. They were in fact united (secretly) in a bid for world domination. Although this conspiracy theory lay at the heart of Nazism it is also widespread outside neo-fascist groupings. Many of these are right-wing/neo-Nazi (e.g. Pamyat in Russia) but the Protocols have had some influence on movements with some claim to progressive credentials. The Protocols have also had some influence elsewhere, so that Eyptian and Syrian state-sponsored TV serials have produced soaps which dramatise the allegations of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (Mohamed, 2002; Kaba and Tubiana, 2002).
   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."

7. ^ Klug, Brian & Wistrich, Robert S. "Correspondence between Prof. Robert Wistrich and Brian Klug: When Is Opposition to Israel and Its Policies Anti-Semitic?", International Center for the Study of Anti-Semitism, Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Retrieved January 11, 2008:

   "Does he or she rely on classic anti-Semitic stereotypes in so doing: for example, by dredging up the alleged Jewish/Zionist 'conspiracy' to dominate the world, or by evoking Jewish/Israeli 'warmongers' who supposedly run American foreign policy; or through referring to an all-powerful "Jewish Lobby" that prevents justice in the Middle East."

8. ^ Vidal, Dominique. "France: racism is indivisible", Le Monde diplomatique, May 2004.
9. 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
10. Sutton, Nina (David Sharp trans.) Bettelheim: A Life and a Legacy, BasicBooks, p. 486. ISBN 0465006353
11. John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt: Authors, "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy", Washington Post, Book World Live, October 9, 2007. Accessed January 7, 2008.
12. Mearsheime, John and Walt, Stephen. "The Israel lobby", letters to the editor, October 14, 2007.
13. Cesarani, David. "Exerting influence", The Guardian, October 8, 2007.
14. Visontay, Michael. "Free speech for some, others pay", The Sydney Morning Herald, November 14, 2003.
15. Hirsh, David. "Revenge of the Jewish lobby?", The Guardian, May 5, 2006.
16. Jacobson, Kenneth. "Queen Noor's Blind Spots", Anti-Defamation League, May 12, 2003.
17. Lelyveld, Joseph. "Jimmy Carter and Apartheid", The New York Review of Books, Volume 54, Number 5 · March 29, 2007.

• Conspiracy theories
• Discrimination
• Antisemitism
• Lobbying