Israel's Lobby
America in the Grip of a Foreign Power
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- Pre-Order
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- Expected 11 Aug 2026
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- 17,99 €
Publisher Description
An unflinching exposé of Israel's Lobby, showing how its outsized influence works against our national interests and threatens our freedom.
The greatest story in geopolitics and in American domestic affairs is how the far-right government of a small Middle Eastern country came to hold a controlling interest in United States foreign policy. Israel’s lobby is now in a position to police the speech of American politicians, college students and journalists, and coerce and persuade the White House to back unpopular, costly, and ultimately national security-threatening policies. From the Biden administration’s unwillingness to bring American leverage to bear an end to genocidal violence that only harmed our national security interests, to the Trump administration’s role in lifting the parole restrictions on a spy who had sold vital government secrets, American subservience to its putative client state, Israel, is a vivid and vexing example of the tail wagging the dog.
Israel’s Lobby combines investigative journalism and political science to tie together the stories of American and Israeli oligarchs capturing the policymaking process in successive presidential administrations and the geopolitical, national security and domestic consequences of American foreign policy effectively sold to the highest bidder. Eli Clifton and Ian Lustick explain how shifts in global politics, Israel’s lurch to the extreme right, and the evisceration of American campaign finance laws make the influence of Israel’s lobby more costly and more dangerous today than it ever was before, why the lobby launched an antisemitism witch hunt to suppress opponents rather than attempt to defend Israel's policies, and how the Lobby not only distorts American policy but helps make Israel a “crazy” state.
Israel’s Lobby follows the money and lifts the veil on a seemingly unassailable feature of American politics, importantly detailing how we can unite around traditional American values and the importance of substantive debate to resist Israel-first vigilantism.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This alarming exposé from journalist Clifton and political scientist Lustick (Paradigm Lost) spotlights the significant influence of the pro-Israel lobby on American foreign and domestic policy. The authors examine the ways in which a "panoply" of pro-Israel groups, among them PACs like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, as well as think tanks, philanthropic organizations, and individual megadonors, exert pressure on America's political ecosystem. They describe, for example, how AIPAC heavily funds primary challengers of incumbent critics of Israel; how Sheldon and Miriam Adelson "set the precedent for how megadonors shape campaigns" and influence politicians in office (such as the infamous 2021 transporting of convicted Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard back to Israel aboard the Adelsons' private jet, with Trump's blessing); and how the lobby advocates for crackdowns on free speech that "prevent public discussion" of Israel's actions. The book is most revelatory when surveying how several presidents' "own assessment of the nation's interests were supplanted" by the lobby, starting in 1948 with President Truman, who recognized the state of Israel despite being "torn" about Palestine, or highlighting lesser-known attempts to sway policy, such as AIPAC's $27 million effort to prevent the 2015 U.S. nuclear deal with Iran. Clifton and Lustick trenchantly warn that the U.S. is risking its own standing to "serve the ambitions of what has become a rogue state." It's a serious wake-up call.
