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Lobbying for Zionism on Both Sides of the Atlantic
How pro-Israel lobbying groups influence the Middle East policies of Britain, the US and others
In 1896, a Jewish state was a pipe dream. Zionists mooted places as diverse as Palestine and Argentina, and most Jews in Britain and the US remained aloof from the ideologists. Today support for Israel is a sine qua non of British and American political life, and the overwhelming majority of Jews identify as Zionists. How did this happen?
Ilan Pappe unveils how a lobby changed the map of the Middle East. Zionists exerted pressure on the Congress, cracked down on dissent in the Labour Party and relentlessly smeared critics. Groups funded by the Israeli state pushed for unprecedented military aid, recognition of unlawfully occupied territories and the erasure of Palestinian rights. Lobbying for Zionism shows us how a dangerous consensus was built – and how it might be dismantled.
In 1896, a Jewish state was a pipe dream. Zionists mooted places as diverse as Palestine and Argentina, and most Jews in Britain and the US remained aloof from the ideologists. Today support for Israel is a sine qua non of British and American political life, and the overwhelming majority of Jews identify as Zionists. How did this happen?
Ilan Pappe unveils how a lobby changed the map of the Middle East. Zionists exerted pressure on the Congress, cracked down on dissent in the Labour Party and relentlessly smeared critics. Groups funded by the Israeli state pushed for unprecedented military aid, recognition of unlawfully occupied territories and the erasure of Palestinian rights. Lobbying for Zionism shows us how a dangerous consensus was built – and how it might be dismantled.
608 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2024
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2148 people want to read
About the author
Ilan Pappé
89 books1,814 followersIlan Pappé is a professor with the College of Social Sciences and International Studies at the University of Exeter in the UK, director of the university's European Centre for Palestine Studies, co-director of the Exeter Centre for Ethno-Political Studies, and political activist. He was formerly a senior lecturer in political science at the University of Haifa (1984–2007) and chair of the Emil Touma Institute for Palestinian and Israeli Studies in Haifa (2000–2008).
Pappé is one of Israel's "New Historians" who, since the release of pertinent British and Israeli government documents in the early 1980s, have been rewriting the history of Israel's creation in 1948, and the corresponding expulsion or flight of 700,000 Palestinians in the same year. He has written that the expulsions were not decided on an ad hoc basis, as other historians have argued, but constituted the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, in accordance with Plan Dalet, drawn up in 1947 by Israel's future leaders. He blames the creation of Israel for the lack of peace in the Middle East, arguing that Zionism is more dangerous than Islamic militancy, and has called for an international boycott of Israeli academics.
His work has been both supported and criticized by other historians. Before he left Israel in 2008, he had been condemned in the Knesset, Israel's parliament; a minister of education had called for him to be sacked; his photograph had appeared in a newspaper at the centre of a target; and he had received several death threats.
Pappé is one of Israel's "New Historians" who, since the release of pertinent British and Israeli government documents in the early 1980s, have been rewriting the history of Israel's creation in 1948, and the corresponding expulsion or flight of 700,000 Palestinians in the same year. He has written that the expulsions were not decided on an ad hoc basis, as other historians have argued, but constituted the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, in accordance with Plan Dalet, drawn up in 1947 by Israel's future leaders. He blames the creation of Israel for the lack of peace in the Middle East, arguing that Zionism is more dangerous than Islamic militancy, and has called for an international boycott of Israeli academics.
His work has been both supported and criticized by other historians. Before he left Israel in 2008, he had been condemned in the Knesset, Israel's parliament; a minister of education had called for him to be sacked; his photograph had appeared in a newspaper at the centre of a target; and he had received several death threats.
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June 12, 2025
This is a better book that The Israel Lobby – and not only because it includes the UK – which is essential, since Israel is very unlikely to have ever existed without the UK helping to create it – but also because it goes into much more detail and over a larger historical period.
You might think that the main people pushing for the establishment of Israel over time have been Jews – but while there have always been Jews seeking to establish their own state, what is particularly fascinating here is how many of those very keen on this project have been fundamentalist Christians. Not least because they are deeply anti-Semitic and could think of nothing they would prefer than to have all Jews removed from Europe. That this also matched their Bible inspired ideas that the return of Jews to Palestine would bring about the return of Jesus and issue in the thousand year reign of God’s kingdom hardly made the whole thing any more logical or justifiable.
There is a longish discussion towards the end of this on the taking down of Jeremy Corbyn. I didn’t pay nearly enough attention to this at the time. In fact, I’m ashamed to say that I basically accepted the general view that he was yet another antisemite and deserved what he got. From reading this book, that clearly is not the case. We live in a strange world where the strongest supporters of Israel are likely to be actual antisemites and those who would literally put their lives on the line to protect Jews are accused unjustly of antisemitism.
Britain does not come out of this well, not that it ever does. As someone said recently, a a rule of thumb, every current tragedy in world affairs can be traced back to Britain. After World War One the right of nations to self-determination was a principle that was loudly proclaimed, if rarely acted upon. What was done to ensure there would be no democracy and no self-determination in the Middle East haunts us to this day. The imposed colonisation of Palestine is a case in point. As a Zionist at the time said of Palestine – contradicting the myth that it was a land without people – the bride is beautiful, but she is taken.
But it has been the US that has played an out-sided role in the subjugation of the Palestinian people. And, as always, chiefly for economic reasons. The role of the five sisters – all US oil companies – is one that deserves a closer look.
This is a book that traces the history of the various lobbies in both the UK and US that have pushed for the establishment and ongoing protection of Israel. It is remarkable how much power these lobbies have yielded. One of the myths of Israel has long been that it would be a kind of socialist utopia. How such a utopia could be built upon the graves of Palestinians ought to have spoken against this myth from the start, but it held a powerful sway upon the labour movement in the UK. So much so that the Labour Party there has long been one of Israel’s strongest supporters. This is how the book ends – with the collapse of this support base. This has become almost inevitable as Israeli politics has moved further and further to the right – but also because Israel is becoming less interested in the efforts of its lobby. As Israel becomes increasingly a theocracy, the idea of a chosen people facing a hostile world becomes its own reason for being.
This is a disturbing read and one that makes western complicity in the great injustice that is the Palestinian question inescapable. As such, it shows that we have a moral obligation to find a solution to this question that isn’t the final solution the extremists in Israel have planned. This is a gaping wound that will take years and hard work to fix. It will not be resolved by the application of band aids, but only through justice and reconciliation. It is not clear where such justice will come – but the eradication of 6 million Palestinians in Israel and the Occupied Territories is, in no sense, a just outcome. One holocaust cannot be used to justify a second.
You might think that the main people pushing for the establishment of Israel over time have been Jews – but while there have always been Jews seeking to establish their own state, what is particularly fascinating here is how many of those very keen on this project have been fundamentalist Christians. Not least because they are deeply anti-Semitic and could think of nothing they would prefer than to have all Jews removed from Europe. That this also matched their Bible inspired ideas that the return of Jews to Palestine would bring about the return of Jesus and issue in the thousand year reign of God’s kingdom hardly made the whole thing any more logical or justifiable.
There is a longish discussion towards the end of this on the taking down of Jeremy Corbyn. I didn’t pay nearly enough attention to this at the time. In fact, I’m ashamed to say that I basically accepted the general view that he was yet another antisemite and deserved what he got. From reading this book, that clearly is not the case. We live in a strange world where the strongest supporters of Israel are likely to be actual antisemites and those who would literally put their lives on the line to protect Jews are accused unjustly of antisemitism.
Britain does not come out of this well, not that it ever does. As someone said recently, a a rule of thumb, every current tragedy in world affairs can be traced back to Britain. After World War One the right of nations to self-determination was a principle that was loudly proclaimed, if rarely acted upon. What was done to ensure there would be no democracy and no self-determination in the Middle East haunts us to this day. The imposed colonisation of Palestine is a case in point. As a Zionist at the time said of Palestine – contradicting the myth that it was a land without people – the bride is beautiful, but she is taken.
But it has been the US that has played an out-sided role in the subjugation of the Palestinian people. And, as always, chiefly for economic reasons. The role of the five sisters – all US oil companies – is one that deserves a closer look.
This is a book that traces the history of the various lobbies in both the UK and US that have pushed for the establishment and ongoing protection of Israel. It is remarkable how much power these lobbies have yielded. One of the myths of Israel has long been that it would be a kind of socialist utopia. How such a utopia could be built upon the graves of Palestinians ought to have spoken against this myth from the start, but it held a powerful sway upon the labour movement in the UK. So much so that the Labour Party there has long been one of Israel’s strongest supporters. This is how the book ends – with the collapse of this support base. This has become almost inevitable as Israeli politics has moved further and further to the right – but also because Israel is becoming less interested in the efforts of its lobby. As Israel becomes increasingly a theocracy, the idea of a chosen people facing a hostile world becomes its own reason for being.
This is a disturbing read and one that makes western complicity in the great injustice that is the Palestinian question inescapable. As such, it shows that we have a moral obligation to find a solution to this question that isn’t the final solution the extremists in Israel have planned. This is a gaping wound that will take years and hard work to fix. It will not be resolved by the application of band aids, but only through justice and reconciliation. It is not clear where such justice will come – but the eradication of 6 million Palestinians in Israel and the Occupied Territories is, in no sense, a just outcome. One holocaust cannot be used to justify a second.
August 12, 2024
Zionist lobbying is about continiually controlling a faux underdog narrative. The Israeli military controls the narrative in Israel (we are innocent, Palestinians are terrorists, and only Jew haters disagree w/ us) while the Israel lobby controls the narrative in Britian and US through relentless PR pressure on both media & politicians, subverting Queen’s “We are the Champions” into “We are the Victims” played in an endless loop.
Brit early support for Zionism was also linked to “a curious mixture of anti-Semitism, imperialist avarice, distrust of the Muslim world and a desire to spite the French.” Asquith (British Prime Minister 1908-1916) felt David Lloyd George wasn’t as much an obsequious follower of Zionism as he “does not care a damn for the Jews or their past or their future but thinks it will be an outrage to let the Holy Places pass into the possession or under the protectorate of agnostic, atheistic France.” The Brits felt that protecting the Suez Canal for themselves meant ruling Palestine (p.40). The Brit Balfour Declaration of 1917 “was the first tangible success of the lobby. Building a Jewish state in Palestine was now recognized as an imperial British interest.” “The Palestinians had nothing equivalent to the Zionist lobby and their leadership had no idea what a powerful enemy they were facing.” “Israel’s consciousness of its illegitimacy and the consequent necessity of constant advocacy are a result of Zionism’s failure to complete the settler-colonial project it began in 1882, when the first Jewish settlers arrived in Palestine.”
Actual Quote from the Jewish National Fund: “Commercial propaganda essentially aspires to achieve the same goal we are trying to achieve, and that is to arouse as many people as possible for a known purpose to do something they would not have done without the propaganda. …We must inundate the Jewish people with slogans and pictures, to rivet their attention, to create an atmosphere of unrest …in every place a Jew sets foot in.”
Today’s US Islamophobes like Bill Maher will never tell you the long history of our Western interference with Arabs, beginning w/ how “most of the Arab world had already been divided into new nation states by the colonial powers, even before the war (WWI) ended.” The King/Crane Commission of 1919 was an attempt to understand BOTH sides of the Palestine takeover; it visited 1,500 locations over 42 days – unlike US political site visits to Israel today which are little more than fast photo ops as Tulsi Gabbard will tell you. The final King/Crane report was released (1922) too late (Wilson was out of office) to help the Palestinian cause even though it “clearly stated that Palestine’s non-Jewish population was emphatically against Zionist and that to subject them to ‘unlimited Jewish immigration’ would be a ‘gross violation’ of their rights.” But back then, you couldn’t have Brits and Yanks pausing to consider the soon to be dispossessed non-white indigenous of Palestine so soon after the Brits happily took Australia from the non-white Aboriginals and Yanks happily took the US from the non-white Natives. Thus, Brits, Yanks and Zionists share the same motto, “Taking Shit From Non-Whites Since…” – it’s just that each group’s motto has a different year.
Fun Facts: “On October 29th, 1956, Israel, France and Britain attacked Egypt from the land, sea, and air; Israel occupied most of the Sinai Peninsula.” It was US and Soviet pressure that forced Israel, France and Britain to chill out and pull out of Egypt (the Sinai and Port Said). Depressing Fact: “A Gallup Poll taken in 1945 found that seventy-six percent of Americans supported the Zionist colonization effort in Palestine.” Even so, there were clear dissenting voices in the US until after Israel’s 1967 War, when US politicians suddenly began giving Israel the reverence and awe they gave to Marilyn Monroe, baseball and Jesus. I always thought of Kermit Roosevelt ONLY as the douchebag (who overthrew the democratically elected leader of Iran in 1953 only to install a ruthless dictator) – but that Kermit was also an “Arabist” and as such was an anti-Zionist.
The British Israel Lobby: By the 1920’s “the Zionist lobby had entrenched itself among Britian’s political elite.” Without decades of British “protection, the Zionist project of settler-colonialism, which was contingent on the mass displacement of the Palestinians, could not have materialized or been maintained.” And Britain “has never apologized for its role in creating over five million Palestinian refugees” and helping build a Zionist state within a state. By the 1970’s, support for Israel had become second nature for Brit politicians – “the default foreign policy.” Corbyn was considered “an existential threat to Israel” by Britain’s top three Jewish newspapers simply because he dared believe “in a just peace and stood with Palestinians to enable it.” Who knew if you merely believe in general human fairness, or even the Golden Rule, you are an “anti-Semite”?
Abba Hillel Silver changed the face of lobbying in the US, by making subordinating US interests to Zionist interests for the first time a bi-partisan game. Silver was the first lobbyist who basically said, “why the hell are we funding only the Democrats and betting they will win? Republicans like to bend over for our dollars as fast and eagerly as Democrats do, so why not easily own the complete political duopoly so neither political party will EVER lift a finger to stop us?” Deep questions, indeed. I picture looking straight down in the Capital at a frenzy of hundreds of Senators and Congress People grasping upwards for the descending blizzard of thousand-dollar bills released from the pockets of the Israel Lobby.
AIPAC knew that, you can always get around the US State Department by controlling Capitol Hill. This previously led American Zionists in 1922 to get Congress to pass a joint resolution in favor of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. To also bypass the State Department, AIPAC has long targeted US politicians early in their careers. As candy advertisers and sex traffickers all know – get them while they are young. And AIPAC has long made the targeting of newspapers and radio a very high priority. Can’t have people thinking what THEY want; you need them thinking what YOU want. This requires a Media Confusathon a.k.a. R U going to believe your lying eyes? Or me?
Zionist History: During WWII, American Zionists and FDR were often motivated by pressure to move Jews to Palestine as taking political pressure off US’s severe immigration policy (including Jews). The Qibya Massacre (69 villagers massacred and 45 houses blown up) was in 1953. Calling what’s happening in Gaza in 2024 a Genocide is accurate, however back in 1967 Israeli ambassador Avraham Harman with a straight face declared Israel was facing a genocide (p.255). The cheapest Zionist PR is projection - pretending you (and never the occupied) are the victim. Kissinger was an ardent Zionist before he started at the White House. He pledged Israel superiority over the Arabs while ignoring the projected power that Israel’s nuclear weapons already had.
After the ’67 War, US politicians learned that merely seeming balanced would have them condemned as anti-Israel, creating a culture where few US politicians DARED to look at the Palestinian side of the question again. Nixon courageously said, “In the Middle East the problem is Israel …Israel’s lobby is so strong that Congress is not reasonable …We have to have policies which don’t allow an obsession with one state to destroy our status in the Middle East.” In 2006 Jimmy Carter releases “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid” which got him labelled as an anti-Semite. Carter attributed his inability to help Palestinians while in office to the power of the Israel lobby even for a US president.” In the ‘80’s AIPAC weaponized anti-Semitism to silence critics on Capitol Hill. AIPAC developed a network on college campuses “to keep critics of Israel off campus” and “instructs students in how to harass speakers who do come on campus.” [this even exists on my former college campus.] Clinton believed that he couldn’t win the presidential election w/o the Jewish vote; but back then there was still a “peace camp”, and so Clinton could still “consider” the Palestinian viewpoint. The Second Intifada (2000) “killed off the Oslo Accords for good.”
The Last 25 Years: 9/11 put the US hawks in power, and the Israel lobby began linking Islam and Palestinians with terrorism. Netanyahu told the US Senate in 2002, “the urgent need to topple Saddam is paramount” and later said, “nothing less than dismantling his regime will do.” Not to be outdone Shimon Peres said, “Saddam Hussein is as dangerous as Bin Laden.” Quelle surprise that the US then went to war against Iraq. As Democratic Representative James Moran of Virginia explained to his constituents, “If it were not for the strong support of the Jewish community for this war with Iraq, we would not be doing this.” In 2004, Horse-faced John Kerry was such a rabid Zionist, that he depicted the Palestinian liberation struggle as terrorism, and w/ a straight face equated Palestinians wanting freedom with Al Qaeda. By the time Obama became president, the Israeli peace camp had disappeared, as Israel had moved further to the right. When Trump was president, he made no effort to consider the Palestinians.
One big reason for Israel pulling out of Gaza in 2005 was that Sharon could then be “free to punish the Strip without worrying about incurring collateral damage to Jewish settlers”. AIPAC did a “showdown” over the Iranian deal where AIPAC fought against liberal Zionist J Street and Obama on Iran. In 2013, AIPAC had a budget of $66 million, while now Ilan says it is around $300 million. AIPAC now has 365 politicians on BOTH sides of the aisle and has given them all so far over $17 million to buy their votes. Chuck “sold-out” Schumer said the problem w/ Palestinians is that they “don’t believe in the Torah” and according to Chuck, if the Torah says it’s “our” land, it’s therefore our land – case closed. Chuck did not explain why, if (according to the Torah) Palestine belongs ONLY to Jews, why century after century, did they make discernable effort to visit it (let alone reclaim it), from the natives (happily) living there?
The most important reason Zionists won’t accept a one state solution, where Israeli Jews live happily and peaceably side by side with their Palestinian neighbors (like in the US), was simply explained by Israel’s Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in 2007, “If the day comes when the two-state solution collapses, and we face a South African-style struggle for equal voting rights (with Palestinians) …then, as soon as that happens, the state of Israel is finished.” That’s so sad. Probably the same kind of sadness that white US Klan members had envisioning the end of Jim Crow. What? We’ll have to drink from the same drinking fountain? We’ll have to retire our racist ethnic superiority? Oh, why do we now have to have an REAL democracy? So sad…
Ilan in the end says this book is about the Israeli ��shield” created to “protect Israel from being held accountable for its violations of justice and humanitarian law.” Just as common sense finally led to installing seat belts in cars, or helmets on football players, so too should Israel have noticed that it is basically the oldest colonial military occupation requiring discriminatory laws and excessive force in a world that is clearly post-colonial. Ilan hopes to still be alive when Israel finally loses its games of “No One Tells Us What to Do” and “Gaza: Our Own Vietnam War”.
This book came out this month, so I had to read and review it immediately. As you can see, I learned a lot. On this exact topic, I also recommend to you to read “Architects of Repression: Israel Lobby” and “Israel’s Armor” both books by Walter Hixson, and “The Israel Lobby” by John Mearsheimer, and “Our American Israel” by Amy Kaplan. I’ve reviewed them all on Goodreads. Ilan’s book brought two new things to the table: First - it’s the first “post-October 7th” book on the Israel Lobby to be published. Second, all the other Israel Lobby books are ONLY about the US, so it was a real treat that this book deeply explains the crap decades of UK politicians have to deal with if they publicly dare consider Palestinians fellow humans. Great book, so glad I read it. Next week I review Ilan’s “Out of the Frame” book (which I just finished) and then I will have reviewed everything by Ilan on Goodreads.
Brit early support for Zionism was also linked to “a curious mixture of anti-Semitism, imperialist avarice, distrust of the Muslim world and a desire to spite the French.” Asquith (British Prime Minister 1908-1916) felt David Lloyd George wasn’t as much an obsequious follower of Zionism as he “does not care a damn for the Jews or their past or their future but thinks it will be an outrage to let the Holy Places pass into the possession or under the protectorate of agnostic, atheistic France.” The Brits felt that protecting the Suez Canal for themselves meant ruling Palestine (p.40). The Brit Balfour Declaration of 1917 “was the first tangible success of the lobby. Building a Jewish state in Palestine was now recognized as an imperial British interest.” “The Palestinians had nothing equivalent to the Zionist lobby and their leadership had no idea what a powerful enemy they were facing.” “Israel’s consciousness of its illegitimacy and the consequent necessity of constant advocacy are a result of Zionism’s failure to complete the settler-colonial project it began in 1882, when the first Jewish settlers arrived in Palestine.”
Actual Quote from the Jewish National Fund: “Commercial propaganda essentially aspires to achieve the same goal we are trying to achieve, and that is to arouse as many people as possible for a known purpose to do something they would not have done without the propaganda. …We must inundate the Jewish people with slogans and pictures, to rivet their attention, to create an atmosphere of unrest …in every place a Jew sets foot in.”
Today’s US Islamophobes like Bill Maher will never tell you the long history of our Western interference with Arabs, beginning w/ how “most of the Arab world had already been divided into new nation states by the colonial powers, even before the war (WWI) ended.” The King/Crane Commission of 1919 was an attempt to understand BOTH sides of the Palestine takeover; it visited 1,500 locations over 42 days – unlike US political site visits to Israel today which are little more than fast photo ops as Tulsi Gabbard will tell you. The final King/Crane report was released (1922) too late (Wilson was out of office) to help the Palestinian cause even though it “clearly stated that Palestine’s non-Jewish population was emphatically against Zionist and that to subject them to ‘unlimited Jewish immigration’ would be a ‘gross violation’ of their rights.” But back then, you couldn’t have Brits and Yanks pausing to consider the soon to be dispossessed non-white indigenous of Palestine so soon after the Brits happily took Australia from the non-white Aboriginals and Yanks happily took the US from the non-white Natives. Thus, Brits, Yanks and Zionists share the same motto, “Taking Shit From Non-Whites Since…” – it’s just that each group’s motto has a different year.
Fun Facts: “On October 29th, 1956, Israel, France and Britain attacked Egypt from the land, sea, and air; Israel occupied most of the Sinai Peninsula.” It was US and Soviet pressure that forced Israel, France and Britain to chill out and pull out of Egypt (the Sinai and Port Said). Depressing Fact: “A Gallup Poll taken in 1945 found that seventy-six percent of Americans supported the Zionist colonization effort in Palestine.” Even so, there were clear dissenting voices in the US until after Israel’s 1967 War, when US politicians suddenly began giving Israel the reverence and awe they gave to Marilyn Monroe, baseball and Jesus. I always thought of Kermit Roosevelt ONLY as the douchebag (who overthrew the democratically elected leader of Iran in 1953 only to install a ruthless dictator) – but that Kermit was also an “Arabist” and as such was an anti-Zionist.
The British Israel Lobby: By the 1920’s “the Zionist lobby had entrenched itself among Britian’s political elite.” Without decades of British “protection, the Zionist project of settler-colonialism, which was contingent on the mass displacement of the Palestinians, could not have materialized or been maintained.” And Britain “has never apologized for its role in creating over five million Palestinian refugees” and helping build a Zionist state within a state. By the 1970’s, support for Israel had become second nature for Brit politicians – “the default foreign policy.” Corbyn was considered “an existential threat to Israel” by Britain’s top three Jewish newspapers simply because he dared believe “in a just peace and stood with Palestinians to enable it.” Who knew if you merely believe in general human fairness, or even the Golden Rule, you are an “anti-Semite”?
Abba Hillel Silver changed the face of lobbying in the US, by making subordinating US interests to Zionist interests for the first time a bi-partisan game. Silver was the first lobbyist who basically said, “why the hell are we funding only the Democrats and betting they will win? Republicans like to bend over for our dollars as fast and eagerly as Democrats do, so why not easily own the complete political duopoly so neither political party will EVER lift a finger to stop us?” Deep questions, indeed. I picture looking straight down in the Capital at a frenzy of hundreds of Senators and Congress People grasping upwards for the descending blizzard of thousand-dollar bills released from the pockets of the Israel Lobby.
AIPAC knew that, you can always get around the US State Department by controlling Capitol Hill. This previously led American Zionists in 1922 to get Congress to pass a joint resolution in favor of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. To also bypass the State Department, AIPAC has long targeted US politicians early in their careers. As candy advertisers and sex traffickers all know – get them while they are young. And AIPAC has long made the targeting of newspapers and radio a very high priority. Can’t have people thinking what THEY want; you need them thinking what YOU want. This requires a Media Confusathon a.k.a. R U going to believe your lying eyes? Or me?
Zionist History: During WWII, American Zionists and FDR were often motivated by pressure to move Jews to Palestine as taking political pressure off US’s severe immigration policy (including Jews). The Qibya Massacre (69 villagers massacred and 45 houses blown up) was in 1953. Calling what’s happening in Gaza in 2024 a Genocide is accurate, however back in 1967 Israeli ambassador Avraham Harman with a straight face declared Israel was facing a genocide (p.255). The cheapest Zionist PR is projection - pretending you (and never the occupied) are the victim. Kissinger was an ardent Zionist before he started at the White House. He pledged Israel superiority over the Arabs while ignoring the projected power that Israel’s nuclear weapons already had.
After the ’67 War, US politicians learned that merely seeming balanced would have them condemned as anti-Israel, creating a culture where few US politicians DARED to look at the Palestinian side of the question again. Nixon courageously said, “In the Middle East the problem is Israel …Israel’s lobby is so strong that Congress is not reasonable …We have to have policies which don’t allow an obsession with one state to destroy our status in the Middle East.” In 2006 Jimmy Carter releases “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid” which got him labelled as an anti-Semite. Carter attributed his inability to help Palestinians while in office to the power of the Israel lobby even for a US president.” In the ‘80’s AIPAC weaponized anti-Semitism to silence critics on Capitol Hill. AIPAC developed a network on college campuses “to keep critics of Israel off campus” and “instructs students in how to harass speakers who do come on campus.” [this even exists on my former college campus.] Clinton believed that he couldn’t win the presidential election w/o the Jewish vote; but back then there was still a “peace camp”, and so Clinton could still “consider” the Palestinian viewpoint. The Second Intifada (2000) “killed off the Oslo Accords for good.”
The Last 25 Years: 9/11 put the US hawks in power, and the Israel lobby began linking Islam and Palestinians with terrorism. Netanyahu told the US Senate in 2002, “the urgent need to topple Saddam is paramount” and later said, “nothing less than dismantling his regime will do.” Not to be outdone Shimon Peres said, “Saddam Hussein is as dangerous as Bin Laden.” Quelle surprise that the US then went to war against Iraq. As Democratic Representative James Moran of Virginia explained to his constituents, “If it were not for the strong support of the Jewish community for this war with Iraq, we would not be doing this.” In 2004, Horse-faced John Kerry was such a rabid Zionist, that he depicted the Palestinian liberation struggle as terrorism, and w/ a straight face equated Palestinians wanting freedom with Al Qaeda. By the time Obama became president, the Israeli peace camp had disappeared, as Israel had moved further to the right. When Trump was president, he made no effort to consider the Palestinians.
One big reason for Israel pulling out of Gaza in 2005 was that Sharon could then be “free to punish the Strip without worrying about incurring collateral damage to Jewish settlers”. AIPAC did a “showdown” over the Iranian deal where AIPAC fought against liberal Zionist J Street and Obama on Iran. In 2013, AIPAC had a budget of $66 million, while now Ilan says it is around $300 million. AIPAC now has 365 politicians on BOTH sides of the aisle and has given them all so far over $17 million to buy their votes. Chuck “sold-out” Schumer said the problem w/ Palestinians is that they “don’t believe in the Torah” and according to Chuck, if the Torah says it’s “our” land, it’s therefore our land – case closed. Chuck did not explain why, if (according to the Torah) Palestine belongs ONLY to Jews, why century after century, did they make discernable effort to visit it (let alone reclaim it), from the natives (happily) living there?
The most important reason Zionists won’t accept a one state solution, where Israeli Jews live happily and peaceably side by side with their Palestinian neighbors (like in the US), was simply explained by Israel’s Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in 2007, “If the day comes when the two-state solution collapses, and we face a South African-style struggle for equal voting rights (with Palestinians) …then, as soon as that happens, the state of Israel is finished.” That’s so sad. Probably the same kind of sadness that white US Klan members had envisioning the end of Jim Crow. What? We’ll have to drink from the same drinking fountain? We’ll have to retire our racist ethnic superiority? Oh, why do we now have to have an REAL democracy? So sad…
Ilan in the end says this book is about the Israeli ��shield” created to “protect Israel from being held accountable for its violations of justice and humanitarian law.” Just as common sense finally led to installing seat belts in cars, or helmets on football players, so too should Israel have noticed that it is basically the oldest colonial military occupation requiring discriminatory laws and excessive force in a world that is clearly post-colonial. Ilan hopes to still be alive when Israel finally loses its games of “No One Tells Us What to Do” and “Gaza: Our Own Vietnam War”.
This book came out this month, so I had to read and review it immediately. As you can see, I learned a lot. On this exact topic, I also recommend to you to read “Architects of Repression: Israel Lobby” and “Israel’s Armor” both books by Walter Hixson, and “The Israel Lobby” by John Mearsheimer, and “Our American Israel” by Amy Kaplan. I’ve reviewed them all on Goodreads. Ilan’s book brought two new things to the table: First - it’s the first “post-October 7th” book on the Israel Lobby to be published. Second, all the other Israel Lobby books are ONLY about the US, so it was a real treat that this book deeply explains the crap decades of UK politicians have to deal with if they publicly dare consider Palestinians fellow humans. Great book, so glad I read it. Next week I review Ilan’s “Out of the Frame” book (which I just finished) and then I will have reviewed everything by Ilan on Goodreads.
September 16, 2024
This isn’t my best review, but please keep in mind I’m also quite tired (which always seems to be the case when I’m writing reviews, lol).
My second book by the brilliant academician Ilan Pappe, Lobbying for Zionism on Both Sides of the Atlantic, stops telling us what the majority of people already educated on the Israeli-Palestinian struggle are aware of: the inevitable, incredulous truth behind the creation of the state of Israel - how it was founded not on some random patch of deserted Middle Eastern land as a “homeland for oppressed Jews” - but rather, the extremist ideological movement of Zionism, fundamentally nationalist in character and always with the end goal being to eliminate or best segregate “the other”(Arabs, once the indigenous peoples, now called the Palestinians).
As we have seen time and time again, the Israeli military and government has become more radical, more brutal in its repression and violence against the remaining Palestinian civilian population - blatantly ignoring the findings, publishings, evidence, and calls from human rights watch organizations to end the occupation and economic stranglehold over Palestine - instead opting to destroy as much of the Palestinian people and culture as it can, while the rest of the world continues to turn a blind eye.
But this is nothing new. It’s been happening ever since the Zionists first started officially building settlements on land that didn’t belong to them, thanks to the ill-conceived Balfour Declaration, culminating in the departure of the British in 1947, leading to Partition and war, and the day of Israel’s independence in 1948. A day of celebration for the Israelis, the darkest day for the region’s Arab population - or the Nakba as it is most commonly called (Arabic for “catastrophe”).
The Six Day War of 1967 would further entrench the Palestinians into a nightmarish occupation, a state of apartheid, with many global outcries and attempts by world leaders to restore the country to its pre-1967 borders for decades to come.
The significance in this book isn’t in telling us what we already know about these atrocities and the later “operations” carried out by the Israeli government to continue their goals of eradication and segregation, but rather, why they continue to occur, despite the incontrovertible truths which have been revealed and the seeming agreement by the global community that Israel is not engaging in any practical measure of self-defense, but rather, in ethic cleansing and other clear acts of crimes against humanity.
Not only is it explained just how important Israel’s technology and “battled-tested” security weapons and tactics (on the occupied Palestinian territories) have become to repressive regimes the world over - including, of course, its main ally and big brother sponsor state, the U.S. - in Antony Loewenstein’s The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation Around the World, this book furthers our understanding of how Israel has continued, with complete impunity, to act outside the realms of international law.
By aggressively becoming the most powerful and well-financed lobbying groups in the UK and the U.S. throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, especially capitalizing on “Holocaust propaganda” - the pro-Zionist groups often made strange bedfellows: wealthy anti-Semitic businessmen and powerful politicians, for example - rallying in concert with pro-Zionist Jews.
Let us not be mistaken: while MOST extreme Zionists are Jews, not ALL (or even most) Jews are Zionists who support Israel and its goals. The Zionist cause only goes so far in their support of Jews worldwide: they’re willing to look the other way when other states abuse their Jewish populations - just so long as these states keep funding and supporting the Jews in the state of Israel.
The only true goal they have is an extremist nationalist one, one that won’t permit for the death of even one Jew inside the borders of Israel without massive retaliation; yet as mentioned in the paragraph above, has little concern for any abuses of Jews not living in “the holy land.”
As the back of the book states, ”Over 150 years, Zionist lobbying groups transformed Israel into an untouchable state. This is a magisterial history of the most successful advertising campaign the world has ever seen.”
Over the years, these lobbying groups have effectively grown, become more powerful, and gained more influence and allies inside Congress and Parliament. Lies and propaganda perpetrated by the Zionist groups stopped being challenged and instead became established policy, even if these policymakers weren’t entirely sure as to why they were being forced to take a certain position in which they knew little about.
The few that have challenged the incredibly powerful Zionist lobbying groups have seen their careers ruined, as even the most innocuous statement of support for equality between Israelis and Palestinians became tantamount to anti-Semitism. As Pappe has observed, the death of 1200 civilian Jews is certainly a tragedy, but to continue to compare all events such as these with the Holocaust risks downplaying the significance of that singular world tragedy.
Even Pappe himself, an Israeli historian, has been chased out of Israel and now resides in the UK (“shockingly”, he moved there in 2008, while his breakthrough book The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine was published in 2006. Coincidence? Certainly not). He even mentions in the book’s prologue how, in 2015, during a conference at the U.K.’s University of Exeter (where he currently teaches Palestinian Studies) he and a small group of his graduate students and younger colleagues had organized an academic conference to share their papers on “Settler Colonialism in Palestine.”
He further explains that this is not some widespread, well-known event, but an invite-only conference in which a handful of individuals would present their papers. Yet, a small mention on the university’s website managed to attract the attention of the pro-Israel lobby, which immediately called for the event’s cancellation, branding it, as usual, as “anti-Semitic.” While the university allowed the conference to continue, they did give in to negotiations with the lobbyists, who insisted on having “two pro-Israel lobbyists allowed to take part in the conference.”
What was so bizarre about this request was the fact that these were just random lobbyists. They weren’t academic scholars, looking to debate the pro-Palestinian argument in any meaningful way. They simply wanted to shut any criticism down, and when that failed, they were forced to awkwardly sit and monitor it, with no actual academic points to contribute.
I bring this part up so extensively because it goes to show just how wide-reaching these lobbying groups are, and how much of an overreaction they have to a small, scholarly conference. That begs the question of just how much have they meddled in events/votes/policies which actually affect the state of Israel, and how far they’ve gone to silence any dissent against Israeli government policies.
The book does a phenomenal job of detailing just to what extent the pro-Israel lobby has involved itself in US and UK affairs over the beginning of the 1900s, all of the way through Joe Biden’s current White House tenure. Alas, I had taken quotes and notes while reading this book, but failed to keep them together and organized.
I’d check out my GR pal Randall’s four-star review for a more thorough and informative read. For me, it’s essential reading as all pro-Palestinian history should be, and because of this importance, I’m rounding up from 4 1/2 stars. (Also, I see pro-Zionist bots who clearly haven’t read the book have rated it one-star, so it’s also important to offset that).
My second book by the brilliant academician Ilan Pappe, Lobbying for Zionism on Both Sides of the Atlantic, stops telling us what the majority of people already educated on the Israeli-Palestinian struggle are aware of: the inevitable, incredulous truth behind the creation of the state of Israel - how it was founded not on some random patch of deserted Middle Eastern land as a “homeland for oppressed Jews” - but rather, the extremist ideological movement of Zionism, fundamentally nationalist in character and always with the end goal being to eliminate or best segregate “the other”(Arabs, once the indigenous peoples, now called the Palestinians).
As we have seen time and time again, the Israeli military and government has become more radical, more brutal in its repression and violence against the remaining Palestinian civilian population - blatantly ignoring the findings, publishings, evidence, and calls from human rights watch organizations to end the occupation and economic stranglehold over Palestine - instead opting to destroy as much of the Palestinian people and culture as it can, while the rest of the world continues to turn a blind eye.
But this is nothing new. It’s been happening ever since the Zionists first started officially building settlements on land that didn’t belong to them, thanks to the ill-conceived Balfour Declaration, culminating in the departure of the British in 1947, leading to Partition and war, and the day of Israel’s independence in 1948. A day of celebration for the Israelis, the darkest day for the region’s Arab population - or the Nakba as it is most commonly called (Arabic for “catastrophe”).
The Six Day War of 1967 would further entrench the Palestinians into a nightmarish occupation, a state of apartheid, with many global outcries and attempts by world leaders to restore the country to its pre-1967 borders for decades to come.
The significance in this book isn’t in telling us what we already know about these atrocities and the later “operations” carried out by the Israeli government to continue their goals of eradication and segregation, but rather, why they continue to occur, despite the incontrovertible truths which have been revealed and the seeming agreement by the global community that Israel is not engaging in any practical measure of self-defense, but rather, in ethic cleansing and other clear acts of crimes against humanity.
Not only is it explained just how important Israel’s technology and “battled-tested” security weapons and tactics (on the occupied Palestinian territories) have become to repressive regimes the world over - including, of course, its main ally and big brother sponsor state, the U.S. - in Antony Loewenstein’s The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation Around the World, this book furthers our understanding of how Israel has continued, with complete impunity, to act outside the realms of international law.
By aggressively becoming the most powerful and well-financed lobbying groups in the UK and the U.S. throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, especially capitalizing on “Holocaust propaganda” - the pro-Zionist groups often made strange bedfellows: wealthy anti-Semitic businessmen and powerful politicians, for example - rallying in concert with pro-Zionist Jews.
Let us not be mistaken: while MOST extreme Zionists are Jews, not ALL (or even most) Jews are Zionists who support Israel and its goals. The Zionist cause only goes so far in their support of Jews worldwide: they’re willing to look the other way when other states abuse their Jewish populations - just so long as these states keep funding and supporting the Jews in the state of Israel.
The only true goal they have is an extremist nationalist one, one that won’t permit for the death of even one Jew inside the borders of Israel without massive retaliation; yet as mentioned in the paragraph above, has little concern for any abuses of Jews not living in “the holy land.”
As the back of the book states, ”Over 150 years, Zionist lobbying groups transformed Israel into an untouchable state. This is a magisterial history of the most successful advertising campaign the world has ever seen.”
Over the years, these lobbying groups have effectively grown, become more powerful, and gained more influence and allies inside Congress and Parliament. Lies and propaganda perpetrated by the Zionist groups stopped being challenged and instead became established policy, even if these policymakers weren’t entirely sure as to why they were being forced to take a certain position in which they knew little about.
The few that have challenged the incredibly powerful Zionist lobbying groups have seen their careers ruined, as even the most innocuous statement of support for equality between Israelis and Palestinians became tantamount to anti-Semitism. As Pappe has observed, the death of 1200 civilian Jews is certainly a tragedy, but to continue to compare all events such as these with the Holocaust risks downplaying the significance of that singular world tragedy.
Even Pappe himself, an Israeli historian, has been chased out of Israel and now resides in the UK (“shockingly”, he moved there in 2008, while his breakthrough book The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine was published in 2006. Coincidence? Certainly not). He even mentions in the book’s prologue how, in 2015, during a conference at the U.K.’s University of Exeter (where he currently teaches Palestinian Studies) he and a small group of his graduate students and younger colleagues had organized an academic conference to share their papers on “Settler Colonialism in Palestine.”
He further explains that this is not some widespread, well-known event, but an invite-only conference in which a handful of individuals would present their papers. Yet, a small mention on the university’s website managed to attract the attention of the pro-Israel lobby, which immediately called for the event’s cancellation, branding it, as usual, as “anti-Semitic.” While the university allowed the conference to continue, they did give in to negotiations with the lobbyists, who insisted on having “two pro-Israel lobbyists allowed to take part in the conference.”
What was so bizarre about this request was the fact that these were just random lobbyists. They weren’t academic scholars, looking to debate the pro-Palestinian argument in any meaningful way. They simply wanted to shut any criticism down, and when that failed, they were forced to awkwardly sit and monitor it, with no actual academic points to contribute.
I bring this part up so extensively because it goes to show just how wide-reaching these lobbying groups are, and how much of an overreaction they have to a small, scholarly conference. That begs the question of just how much have they meddled in events/votes/policies which actually affect the state of Israel, and how far they’ve gone to silence any dissent against Israeli government policies.
The book does a phenomenal job of detailing just to what extent the pro-Israel lobby has involved itself in US and UK affairs over the beginning of the 1900s, all of the way through Joe Biden’s current White House tenure. Alas, I had taken quotes and notes while reading this book, but failed to keep them together and organized.
I’d check out my GR pal Randall’s four-star review for a more thorough and informative read. For me, it’s essential reading as all pro-Palestinian history should be, and because of this importance, I’m rounding up from 4 1/2 stars. (Also, I see pro-Zionist bots who clearly haven’t read the book have rated it one-star, so it’s also important to offset that).
June 28, 2024
As a Palestinian, I am deeply grateful for Professor Ilan Pappe's work on the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In his latest book, Lobbying for Zionism on Both Sides of the Atlantic, he explores the history of the Zionist lobby. Pappe details how Zionist lobbying began in the late 19th century with Christian Zionists teaming up with Jewish Zionists, driven by religious and nationalist motivations to establish a Jewish state. This collaboration initially focused on influencing the British government and later expanded to the U.S. after World War II. Here, neo-conservatives, alongside Christian and Jewish Zionists, advocated for Israel as a strategic ally against communism. Over the decades, this lobbying has evolved to include modern-day efforts such as labeling critics of Israel as antisemitic and pressuring politicians to support Israeli policies unconditionally, significantly shaping political support for Israel. These efforts have secured substantial military aid and diplomatic backing, often at the expense of Palestinian rights and narratives.
The conclusion of the book addresses Israel's ongoing struggle for international legitimacy despite its economic and military strength. Pappe highlights the significant political shift following the 2022 election of a right-wing, messianic government, which sparked widespread protests in Israel and revealed deep societal divides between secular democrats and religious nationalists. He emphasizes that Zionist lobbying has historically focused on securing political and material support rather than engaging with the Palestinian narrative. This approach, he warns, has eroded Israel's moral legitimacy and increased its disconnect from global civil society, potentially leading to serious economic and legal challenges. Pappe argues that Israel's future legitimacy depends on resolving the conflict with the Palestinians and aligning its policies with global human rights standards. I conclude with his last words in this book:
At the end of the day, many people in the twenty-first century cannot continue to accept a colonisation project requiring military occupation and discriminatory laws to sustain itself. There is a point at which the lobby cannot endorse this brutal reality and continue to be seen as moral in the eyes of the rest of the world. I believe and hope this point will be reached within our lifetimes.
The conclusion of the book addresses Israel's ongoing struggle for international legitimacy despite its economic and military strength. Pappe highlights the significant political shift following the 2022 election of a right-wing, messianic government, which sparked widespread protests in Israel and revealed deep societal divides between secular democrats and religious nationalists. He emphasizes that Zionist lobbying has historically focused on securing political and material support rather than engaging with the Palestinian narrative. This approach, he warns, has eroded Israel's moral legitimacy and increased its disconnect from global civil society, potentially leading to serious economic and legal challenges. Pappe argues that Israel's future legitimacy depends on resolving the conflict with the Palestinians and aligning its policies with global human rights standards. I conclude with his last words in this book:
At the end of the day, many people in the twenty-first century cannot continue to accept a colonisation project requiring military occupation and discriminatory laws to sustain itself. There is a point at which the lobby cannot endorse this brutal reality and continue to be seen as moral in the eyes of the rest of the world. I believe and hope this point will be reached within our lifetimes.
November 13, 2024
Many things in this book blew my mind. It is definitely worth the read for anyone interested in the history of the bizarre relationships (and overwhelming support) that the governments of both the US and the UK have with Israel. As always, historian Ilan Pappé offers a nuanced and compassionate work that does not shy away from presenting the Antisemitic, orientalist, colonial, racist, and Islamophobic reasoning behind various political decisions backed by evidence and in some cases the analysis of other historians whose expertise is the politician in question. He also points to cases where the reasoning is more geopolitical. In all cases the pressure of the pro Israel lobby (both Christian and Jewish) was more often than not overwhelming.
Biggest takeaway that everyone needs to be aware of if they want to effect policy: write and call your representatives relentlessly! Make sure all of your friends do too. I’m serious. That is overwhelmingly what shaped this situation. People annoying their representatives and news outlets. Call your representative today!
Biggest takeaway that everyone needs to be aware of if they want to effect policy: write and call your representatives relentlessly! Make sure all of your friends do too. I’m serious. That is overwhelmingly what shaped this situation. People annoying their representatives and news outlets. Call your representative today!
November 5, 2024
Very dense analysis that walks you through the history and formation of the most powerful lobbying groups behind Zionism through the last 100+ years. Worth the time it takes to get through as it helps to navigate the minefield of the broader, obfuscating conversations you'll encounter online regarding Zionism.
February 13, 2025
Extremely helpful and informative book. Gives an incredibly in-depth history of Zionism and the influence in the creation of Israhell by both GB and the USA. I highly recommend this, it’s dense as hell, but it’s still an accessible read.
October 21, 2024
Brazenly criminal
November 5, 2025
Such an important read for learning the complete history of the Zionist lobby from the 1700s through 2024.
I was completely unfamiliar with the topic apart from the news / viral social media posts and now feel like I have a basic understanding on the history of the pro-Israel lobby, its tactics, and why it’s so powerful in the USA and the UK.
Definitely looking forward to reading more by Ilan Pappé.
I was completely unfamiliar with the topic apart from the news / viral social media posts and now feel like I have a basic understanding on the history of the pro-Israel lobby, its tactics, and why it’s so powerful in the USA and the UK.
Definitely looking forward to reading more by Ilan Pappé.
December 30, 2024
I finished listening to this book around two months back on Audible. I have only surface level knowledge on the topic gathered from YouTube and Twitter and contemporary commentary. With that background, I initially found the book difficult to listen to; maybe something for advanced readers on the topic. As I progressed, I found the book to be very detailed covering the birth of Zionism and the lobbying bodies.
The book helped me understand the narratives we see around the Israeli occupation of Palestine, and how these narratives mask the colonial motives of England and America. For example, tactics like defending Israel as a home for Jews, conflating Anti-Zionism with antisemitism. Even though America propped up the idea of a Jewish state, it didn’t take as many Jewish refugees as it could. It was fascinating listening to how much influence the lobbying bodies had on both sides of the Atlantic using tactics like targeting Anti-Zionist politicians and funding rivals of such politicians.
All in all, I found the book quite interesting.
The book helped me understand the narratives we see around the Israeli occupation of Palestine, and how these narratives mask the colonial motives of England and America. For example, tactics like defending Israel as a home for Jews, conflating Anti-Zionism with antisemitism. Even though America propped up the idea of a Jewish state, it didn’t take as many Jewish refugees as it could. It was fascinating listening to how much influence the lobbying bodies had on both sides of the Atlantic using tactics like targeting Anti-Zionist politicians and funding rivals of such politicians.
All in all, I found the book quite interesting.
September 12, 2024
Ilan Pappe‘s meticulous and exhaustive analysis of the lobby for Zionism is logically and factually faultless. Beginning in 19th century Britain and the United States, Pappe describes a peculiar coalition of Jewish and Christian religious Zionists as well as anti-Semites who have altogether sought since then to confer a national identity upon a religious faith in the form of modern Israel. This European colonization of Palestine ignored her indigenous peoples. Yet, as Pappe goes on to show, the only hope to legitimize the political state of Israel will require the embracing moral support of the very same Palestinian people Israel has sought to expel or imprison in the West Bank and Gaza. Of course, the devil is in the details, and the details of Zionist Lobbying in Britain and the United States are perversely perfidious for the futures of Israelis and Palestinians.
March 28, 2025
A well-written and comprehensive analysis of how the Zionist lobby was established, how it has evolved over time, the way it works and to what extent it has influenced (and still very much does) UK and US foreign policy. I found it really interesting and also easy to read, I recommend to anyone who is interested in the topic.
November 6, 2024
Very illuminating insight into the machinations of the Israeli lobby.
August 15, 2025
I really liked Ilan Pappe's book (perhaps liked is the wrong word) Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine and so was interested to read this book covering the zionist lobby in the UK and America. This is a very controversial topic and is difficult to discuss objectively without falling into antisemitic tropes. I think it's overall pretty informative but I thought the first half of the book was better than the second. Pappe talks about the cooperation between Christian Zionist fundamentalists and Jewish Zionists in detail, and about how both movements influenced each other. He also goes into detail about how some early Zionist organisations viewed the colonisation of Palestine as their primary objective, even more so than fighting antisemitism. Although this is all stuff I knew, it is depressing to see it laid out in detail and even more depressing that the Palestinians were almost entirely ignored (to the extent that many early Zionists didn't realise they existed at all).
The book however is not without its flaws. In some of the early chapters Turkey and Iran are referred to as being part of the 'Arab World' and as far as I know these countries do not self define as such. Additionally, later on it points out for example, the scandals surrounding Jeremy Corbyn as him being a victim of the zionist lobby who wanted to get him out of the Labour Party leadership. While it's definitely the case that the main zionist groups in the country wanted him out, I think the book dismisses or glosses over the fact that there was real antisemitism in the party at that time (done mostly by his supporters rather than Corbyn himself) and the actual problems with his leadership. Corbyn at one point also had a show on PressTV, the Iranian state channel which has been known to air extremely questionable conspiracy theories, as well as the Iranian state also having persecuted Jews. I feel that Pappe missed an opportunity here to point out lobbyists are able to exploit actual issues to their own advantage, but instead he kind of made it seem like there was no issues with Corbyn and some of the others who were 'cancelled'.
However, this book was overall an informative read, if a bit dry in places.
The book however is not without its flaws. In some of the early chapters Turkey and Iran are referred to as being part of the 'Arab World' and as far as I know these countries do not self define as such. Additionally, later on it points out for example, the scandals surrounding Jeremy Corbyn as him being a victim of the zionist lobby who wanted to get him out of the Labour Party leadership. While it's definitely the case that the main zionist groups in the country wanted him out, I think the book dismisses or glosses over the fact that there was real antisemitism in the party at that time (done mostly by his supporters rather than Corbyn himself) and the actual problems with his leadership. Corbyn at one point also had a show on PressTV, the Iranian state channel which has been known to air extremely questionable conspiracy theories, as well as the Iranian state also having persecuted Jews. I feel that Pappe missed an opportunity here to point out lobbyists are able to exploit actual issues to their own advantage, but instead he kind of made it seem like there was no issues with Corbyn and some of the others who were 'cancelled'.
However, this book was overall an informative read, if a bit dry in places.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 23, 2025
Lobbying for Zionism on Both Sides of the Atlantic, Ilan Pappe, 2024, 590 pages, ISBN 9780861544028, Dewey 327.7305694
AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) is the most powerful lobby in Washington. pp. 382, 358.
During the Nazi attempt to exterminate Jews, Britain, the U.S., and most other countries closed their doors to Jewish immigrants, due to antisemitism and xenophobia. pp. 83-87. In 1939, 83% of Americans opposed further immigration, out of economic anxiety, fear, mistrust, and racism. pp. 128-132. Zionists did not push for Jews to be admitted to the U.S.: Zionists wanted them sent to Palestine. Britain at the time was restricting Jewish migration into Palestine. pp. 132-136.
The Zionist lobby learned in the USA and UK how small a role moral considerations play in politics. Politicians want to stay in power. Period. Easy to buy or intimidate. p. 506. The Zionist lobby now also seeks power for the sake of power. pp. 508-509.
AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) got an investigative documentary of the Israel lobby censored in the USA. It's called /The Lobby--USA/, and is now available only on youtube. p. 419.
/Scofield's Bible/, Cyrus Scofield, 1909, is an annotated King James Version that turns the Bible into a Zionist manifesto, calling on U.S. Christians to support the coming state of Israel unconditionally. Result: "Fifty million evangelical Bible-believing Christians unite with five million American Jews standing together for Israel." --John Hagee, founder of Christians United for Israel, 2015. pp. 102, 365.
Christian theologian Reinhold Niebur (1892-1971), in his book, /Children of Light and Children of Darkness/, 1944, ridiculed as naive those who sought egalitarianism, anti-colonialism, and anti-imperialism. Niebur's creed was anti-communism: for him, the West needed Zionist Israel as a shield against the USSR and its Arab allies. p. 137.
SEE ALSO
The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs https://www.wrmea.org/special-topics/...
Al Jazeera https://www.aljazeera.com
Current Affairs https://www.currentaffairs.org/hs-sea...
more books https://www.goodreads.com/review/list...
AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) is the most powerful lobby in Washington. pp. 382, 358.
During the Nazi attempt to exterminate Jews, Britain, the U.S., and most other countries closed their doors to Jewish immigrants, due to antisemitism and xenophobia. pp. 83-87. In 1939, 83% of Americans opposed further immigration, out of economic anxiety, fear, mistrust, and racism. pp. 128-132. Zionists did not push for Jews to be admitted to the U.S.: Zionists wanted them sent to Palestine. Britain at the time was restricting Jewish migration into Palestine. pp. 132-136.
The Zionist lobby learned in the USA and UK how small a role moral considerations play in politics. Politicians want to stay in power. Period. Easy to buy or intimidate. p. 506. The Zionist lobby now also seeks power for the sake of power. pp. 508-509.
AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) got an investigative documentary of the Israel lobby censored in the USA. It's called /The Lobby--USA/, and is now available only on youtube. p. 419.
/Scofield's Bible/, Cyrus Scofield, 1909, is an annotated King James Version that turns the Bible into a Zionist manifesto, calling on U.S. Christians to support the coming state of Israel unconditionally. Result: "Fifty million evangelical Bible-believing Christians unite with five million American Jews standing together for Israel." --John Hagee, founder of Christians United for Israel, 2015. pp. 102, 365.
Christian theologian Reinhold Niebur (1892-1971), in his book, /Children of Light and Children of Darkness/, 1944, ridiculed as naive those who sought egalitarianism, anti-colonialism, and anti-imperialism. Niebur's creed was anti-communism: for him, the West needed Zionist Israel as a shield against the USSR and its Arab allies. p. 137.
SEE ALSO
The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs https://www.wrmea.org/special-topics/...
Al Jazeera https://www.aljazeera.com
Current Affairs https://www.currentaffairs.org/hs-sea...
more books https://www.goodreads.com/review/list...
August 16, 2025
Making history read like a story that keeps you up at night takes special talent, and Ilan Pappe has that talent to the fullest. This book traces the story of Zionism, from its beginnings as a raw idea in the 19th century to its steady rise into the state of Israel we know today, an invincible state with a free pass to break international law and regulation without facing consequences.
Spanning three centuries (19th, 20th, and 21st) across both the UK and the US, the narrative unfolds in chronological order, weaving together political maneuvers, ideological shifts, and behind-the-scenes lobbying. The examples Pappe highlights are, at times, nothing short of mind-boggling, showing an unflinching look at lobbying and the dirtiest kinds of political games
I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to understand Zionism, its origins, and its rise.
Spanning three centuries (19th, 20th, and 21st) across both the UK and the US, the narrative unfolds in chronological order, weaving together political maneuvers, ideological shifts, and behind-the-scenes lobbying. The examples Pappe highlights are, at times, nothing short of mind-boggling, showing an unflinching look at lobbying and the dirtiest kinds of political games
I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to understand Zionism, its origins, and its rise.
July 26, 2025
I have mixed feelings about this book. I understand Pappe’s political perspective and I think he makes some good points. However I also think that he focuses so much on a vaguely defined and nebulous “Israel lobby” which encompasses a variety of groups including most notably AIPAC. There’s no doubt that AIPAC is powerful, spends large sums of money on both democratic and republican campaigns, and even boasts of its own omnipotence.
I’m a bit wary of Pappe’s explanation that “the Israel lobby” is the only reason for US support for Israel, at the expense of any other possible explanation such as strategic aims in an important region of the world. I agree that AIPAC is bad, and that they often smear politicians who have legitimate criticisms of Israel. I worry that people who read this book without any other context on Israel/Palestine will see the power of “the lobby” as the only explanation, when I would personally argue that Israel serves US empire and is a useful proxy for the U.S. against Iran and other state or nonstate actors which wish to reshape the regional order. Nevertheless, the book is informative and seems to be well-researched and coherent. The conclusion in particular was a good analysis of the present and future crisis of Israel/Palestine in light of October 7 and Israel’s assault on Gaza.
I’m a bit wary of Pappe’s explanation that “the Israel lobby” is the only reason for US support for Israel, at the expense of any other possible explanation such as strategic aims in an important region of the world. I agree that AIPAC is bad, and that they often smear politicians who have legitimate criticisms of Israel. I worry that people who read this book without any other context on Israel/Palestine will see the power of “the lobby” as the only explanation, when I would personally argue that Israel serves US empire and is a useful proxy for the U.S. against Iran and other state or nonstate actors which wish to reshape the regional order. Nevertheless, the book is informative and seems to be well-researched and coherent. The conclusion in particular was a good analysis of the present and future crisis of Israel/Palestine in light of October 7 and Israel’s assault on Gaza.
August 12, 2025
A curious case of Stockholm Syndrome
November 9, 2025
Very important read for anyone even remotely interested in understanding how our world works and the influence of pro-Israeli lobbying in both the UK and the USA. It would have been great for Pappé to include something about how the Israel lobby also influences the EU, though for a book that’s already over 600 pages long, that would probably have been overkill.
The book begins by explaining the origins of the Israeli state and goes on to describe some of the subsequent atrocities committed by its government against the Palestinians (the original 1948 Nakba, the 1956 occupation of the Gaza Strip, the Six-Day War in 1967, the First and Second Intifadas, and the current Israel-Hamas war). What the Israelis have effectively done is create a sort of open-air concentration camp in Gaza, surrounding it with segregation walls and tightly controlling everything that goes in (food, medicine, and other vital resources) through a series of checkpoints. It’s essentially a giant prison camp, one of the most densely populated areas in the world, with around 2 million people, a very large percentage of them children. The Israeli lobby conveniently ignores this reality when it advocates for Israel and justifies the endless bombing of civilians, all while denying humanitarian aid and making it impossible for them to leave. A medieval-style siege.
However, while the atrocities committed against the Palestinians are crucial to understanding the broader issue, they are actually a minor part of this book. The main focus is political: how the state of Israel was formed, how it has survived and expanded its power and territory over the last century, and how it continues to try to salvage its reputation through foreign influence and lobbying abroad. Pappé outlines some of the most common and effective tactics used by lobbyists, like funding politicians and political campaigns, sponsoring trips to Israel, and, perhaps my favourite just because of how ridiculous it is, labelling anyone even remotely critical of Israel as antisemitic. As if opposing genocide and ethnic cleansing had anything to do with that. Also, ironically, this tactic is actually probably fuelling MORE antisemitism. What’s striking is how the examples Pappé presents show that these intimidation methods really WORK, and have worked consistently for decades.
The political reality we live in now is that the world has largely abandoned the Palestinians. Even though some politicians publicly condemn Israel’s actions, they continue to pledge unlimited financial and military support, starting wars (like Iraq) and bombing countries (like Iran) on its behalf, all while Israel bulldozes Palestinian villages and starts conflicts left and right throughout the Middle East.
I gave this book four stars because I did find some questionable information, for example regarding the case of Leo Frank, a Jewish factory worker accused of raping a young girl (the accusation was made by a black man) and subsequently lynched (unjustly according to Pappé) by an angry mob in 1915. Though some historians, like Pappé, now claim Frank was innocent, many people remain skeptical of the idea that at a time of extreme racism, a white man would have been convicted solely on a black man’s testimony without strong evidence. Of course, this is just one line in the book, but I genuinely would recommend doing some further reading on some of the figures and events mentioned.
Structurally, the book can also feel a bit confusing. Although the general order is chronological (19th, 20th, and 21st centuries), Pappé sometimes jumps between dates, for example, starting a chapter in 2002, then moving to 2010 and 2011, before going back to 2002. I think it could have been structured a little better, though again this is a minor issue and doesn’t detract from the value of the content overall.
The book begins by explaining the origins of the Israeli state and goes on to describe some of the subsequent atrocities committed by its government against the Palestinians (the original 1948 Nakba, the 1956 occupation of the Gaza Strip, the Six-Day War in 1967, the First and Second Intifadas, and the current Israel-Hamas war). What the Israelis have effectively done is create a sort of open-air concentration camp in Gaza, surrounding it with segregation walls and tightly controlling everything that goes in (food, medicine, and other vital resources) through a series of checkpoints. It’s essentially a giant prison camp, one of the most densely populated areas in the world, with around 2 million people, a very large percentage of them children. The Israeli lobby conveniently ignores this reality when it advocates for Israel and justifies the endless bombing of civilians, all while denying humanitarian aid and making it impossible for them to leave. A medieval-style siege.
However, while the atrocities committed against the Palestinians are crucial to understanding the broader issue, they are actually a minor part of this book. The main focus is political: how the state of Israel was formed, how it has survived and expanded its power and territory over the last century, and how it continues to try to salvage its reputation through foreign influence and lobbying abroad. Pappé outlines some of the most common and effective tactics used by lobbyists, like funding politicians and political campaigns, sponsoring trips to Israel, and, perhaps my favourite just because of how ridiculous it is, labelling anyone even remotely critical of Israel as antisemitic. As if opposing genocide and ethnic cleansing had anything to do with that. Also, ironically, this tactic is actually probably fuelling MORE antisemitism. What’s striking is how the examples Pappé presents show that these intimidation methods really WORK, and have worked consistently for decades.
The political reality we live in now is that the world has largely abandoned the Palestinians. Even though some politicians publicly condemn Israel’s actions, they continue to pledge unlimited financial and military support, starting wars (like Iraq) and bombing countries (like Iran) on its behalf, all while Israel bulldozes Palestinian villages and starts conflicts left and right throughout the Middle East.
I gave this book four stars because I did find some questionable information, for example regarding the case of Leo Frank, a Jewish factory worker accused of raping a young girl (the accusation was made by a black man) and subsequently lynched (unjustly according to Pappé) by an angry mob in 1915. Though some historians, like Pappé, now claim Frank was innocent, many people remain skeptical of the idea that at a time of extreme racism, a white man would have been convicted solely on a black man’s testimony without strong evidence. Of course, this is just one line in the book, but I genuinely would recommend doing some further reading on some of the figures and events mentioned.
Structurally, the book can also feel a bit confusing. Although the general order is chronological (19th, 20th, and 21st centuries), Pappé sometimes jumps between dates, for example, starting a chapter in 2002, then moving to 2010 and 2011, before going back to 2002. I think it could have been structured a little better, though again this is a minor issue and doesn’t detract from the value of the content overall.
April 12, 2025
Pappe has been called “one of the world’s sloppiest historians,” and I’m afraid this book will do little to dispel that accusation. I’ve read only the first two chapters, but I have already encountered numerous errors, and perhaps even an instance of plagiarism. I’ll share some of them with you below.
I would normally wait until I’ve read at least most of the book before posting a review, but I am doing so now to warn prospective readers that they should read this book with a very critical eye.
Before I list some of Pappe’s errors, I should say that I am not remotely an expert on Zionism or the so-called Israel lobby. I’ve done some reading about Zionism but know very little about the Israel lobby, and this is my first book on the subject. Additionally, this is only the second book of Pappe’s I have read, and its apparent shoddiness may be an aberration.
The general outline of Pappe’s book and the thrust of his thesis — that the Israel lobby largely explains US and British support for Israel — may well be correct. But that doesn’t mean we should excuse his errors and indiscretions, which may well amount to plagiarism in at least one case.
In the first chapter, he writes that Scottish clergyman and Christian Zionist Alexander Keith “was probably the first to coin the term ‘a land without people for a people without a land.’”
As far as I can tell, it’s true that Keith was the first person to use an expression to that effect, but it might be a bit misleading to say that he “coined” that exact saying. Here’s what Keith actually wrote, referring to the Jews:
“Therefore are they wanderers throughout the world, who have nowhere found a place on which the sole of their foot could rest—a people without a country; even as their own land, as subsequently to be shown, is in a great measure a country without a people.”
Now, you might say that I’m nitpicking about the definition of the word “coin,” and I would probably agree. But that’s not the only thing wrong with Pappe’s citation.
Pappe cites the correct work, Keith’s 1843 book “The Land of Israel According to the Covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob.” But he incorrectly cites page 43 — the phrase actually appears on page 34.
It’s probably just a typo. No big deal, right?
Well, Pappe appears to have reproduced that typo from a 2008 article written by Diana Muir, who also incorrectly cited page 43.
That means Pappe cited the original source without even reading it. He simply copied Muir’s (mistaken) citation. The worst part about it is: He didn’t cite her article. I wouldn’t go so far as to call that plagiarism, but it’s not the work of a careful scholar.
And there’s more.
Take the very next citation. He writes that Lord Shaftesbury began lobbying for Zionism in 1839 and quotes him as saying that his aim was to “restore the Jews to the holy land.” (His citation: Victoria Clark, “Allies for Armageddon: The Rise of Christian Zionism,”New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007, p. 67.)
But the “restore” quote from Shaftesbury doesn’t appear on page 67 — or anywhere else in Clark’s book. Using the PDF search function, some version of the word “restore” appears at least 28 times in Clark’s book, and it’s true that Shaftesbury did want to “restore” the Jews to Palestine and made statements to that effect. But the quote cited by Pappe is nowhere to be found. Meaning, Pappe cited the wrong source, wrote it down incorrectly, or simply made it up. My guess is that it was probably the second of those possibilities.
Unfortunately for Pappe — and his trusting readers — the errors don’t stop there.
On the very next page, Pappe quotes what he says is a letter from Shaftesbury to British prime minister Henry John Temple:
“A country without a nation’ is in need of ‘a nation without a country’ ... Is there such a thing? To be sure there is, the ancient and rightful lords of the soil, the Jews!” (His citation: Edwin Hodder, The Life and Work of the Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, K.G., volume 2, London: Cassel and Company, p. 478).
The problem is that that quote doesn’t appear anywhere in Hodder’s book.
But it does appear in an article by Adam Garfinkle — who Pappe cites in his next citation! Pappe attributes another quote to Garfinkle’s article, which doesn’t appear there either. It seems he got his sources mixed up.
If your head is spinning at this point, you are not alone.
There are many other mistakes, but I’ll leave you with one final example.
Writing about London’s Frederick Charrington in the 1800s, Pappe quotes from a website: “‘He had a pleasant disposition, was reasonably clever and extremely wealthy’ is how the Tower Hamlets Mission website describes him.” This attribution is accurate.
He then writes that “Some go even further in portraying him as practically a saint,” implying a different source. But instead, he reproduces a passage from that same website — virtually word for word — without quotation marks and without citing the website again.
Here’s what Pappe wrote: “at the age of nineteen, having read the Gospel, he felt moved to convert and become a faithful Christian. About a year later he was walking through Whitechapel and saw a poorly dressed woman with her children, trying to get her husband to come out of a public house and give her some money for food. The husband was furious and knocked her into the gutter. Charrington went to help and was also knocked to the ground. When he looked up, he saw his name on the sign above the pub and decided that he wanted nothing more to do with the brewery business. He went home and told his father that he was leaving the family business and his inheritance to devote his life to helping the poor in the East End. He opened a school, led a fight to clean up the music halls, and became an ardent worker for the temperance movement and a member of the London County Council for Mile End.”
And here’s what the website says: “At the age of 19 having read the Gospel he had a conversion experience and became a Christian. About a year later as he was walking through Whitechapel and saw a poorly dressed woman with her children trying to get her husband to come out of a public house and give her some money for food. The husband was furious and came out and knocked her into the gutter. Fred Charrington went to help and was also knocked to the ground. When he looked up he saw his name on the sign above the pub and decided that he wanted nothing more to do with the brewery business. He went home and told his father that he was leaving the family business and his inheritance to devote his life to helping the poor in the East End. Fred Charrington opened a school, led a fight to clean up the Music Halls, became an ardent worker for the Temperance Movement and a member of the London County Council for Mile End.”
The only reason this wouldn’t be plagiarism is that he cited the website in the preceding passage, but he still should have cited the website again, and instead of changing a word here and there — presumably to make it seem like his own writing — he should have simply quoted the passage in its original form.
To Pappe’s credit, he has always admitted that he is not a neutral or objective historian.
He writes in the preface:
“I could be accused of being biased; I accept this charge freely. I am aware that many aspiring professional historians are told early in their careers not to write a polemical history as it would undermine the scholarly validity of their work. This is probably a wise warning for historians who are on the cusp of being initiated into the academic community as fellow scholars. But with time, they will discover for themselves the cogency of Bertrand Russell’s words in his autobiography: ‘I was sometimes accused by reviewers of writing not a true history but a biased account of the events that I arbitrarily chose to write of. But to my mind, a man without a bias cannot write interesting history – if, indeed, such a man exists.’”
But there’s a difference between being biased and failing to meet the minimum standards of historical scholarship. Unfortunately, Pappe is guilty of both.
This is a shame because I find myself agreeing with Pappe’s mission of sticking up for the Palestinians and criticizing Israel’s excesses. But he doesn’t do those causes any good when he succumbs to sloppy scholarship like this.
I would normally wait until I’ve read at least most of the book before posting a review, but I am doing so now to warn prospective readers that they should read this book with a very critical eye.
Before I list some of Pappe’s errors, I should say that I am not remotely an expert on Zionism or the so-called Israel lobby. I’ve done some reading about Zionism but know very little about the Israel lobby, and this is my first book on the subject. Additionally, this is only the second book of Pappe’s I have read, and its apparent shoddiness may be an aberration.
The general outline of Pappe’s book and the thrust of his thesis — that the Israel lobby largely explains US and British support for Israel — may well be correct. But that doesn’t mean we should excuse his errors and indiscretions, which may well amount to plagiarism in at least one case.
In the first chapter, he writes that Scottish clergyman and Christian Zionist Alexander Keith “was probably the first to coin the term ‘a land without people for a people without a land.’”
As far as I can tell, it’s true that Keith was the first person to use an expression to that effect, but it might be a bit misleading to say that he “coined” that exact saying. Here’s what Keith actually wrote, referring to the Jews:
“Therefore are they wanderers throughout the world, who have nowhere found a place on which the sole of their foot could rest—a people without a country; even as their own land, as subsequently to be shown, is in a great measure a country without a people.”
Now, you might say that I’m nitpicking about the definition of the word “coin,” and I would probably agree. But that’s not the only thing wrong with Pappe’s citation.
Pappe cites the correct work, Keith’s 1843 book “The Land of Israel According to the Covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob.” But he incorrectly cites page 43 — the phrase actually appears on page 34.
It’s probably just a typo. No big deal, right?
Well, Pappe appears to have reproduced that typo from a 2008 article written by Diana Muir, who also incorrectly cited page 43.
That means Pappe cited the original source without even reading it. He simply copied Muir’s (mistaken) citation. The worst part about it is: He didn’t cite her article. I wouldn’t go so far as to call that plagiarism, but it’s not the work of a careful scholar.
And there’s more.
Take the very next citation. He writes that Lord Shaftesbury began lobbying for Zionism in 1839 and quotes him as saying that his aim was to “restore the Jews to the holy land.” (His citation: Victoria Clark, “Allies for Armageddon: The Rise of Christian Zionism,”New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007, p. 67.)
But the “restore” quote from Shaftesbury doesn’t appear on page 67 — or anywhere else in Clark’s book. Using the PDF search function, some version of the word “restore” appears at least 28 times in Clark’s book, and it’s true that Shaftesbury did want to “restore” the Jews to Palestine and made statements to that effect. But the quote cited by Pappe is nowhere to be found. Meaning, Pappe cited the wrong source, wrote it down incorrectly, or simply made it up. My guess is that it was probably the second of those possibilities.
Unfortunately for Pappe — and his trusting readers — the errors don’t stop there.
On the very next page, Pappe quotes what he says is a letter from Shaftesbury to British prime minister Henry John Temple:
“A country without a nation’ is in need of ‘a nation without a country’ ... Is there such a thing? To be sure there is, the ancient and rightful lords of the soil, the Jews!” (His citation: Edwin Hodder, The Life and Work of the Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, K.G., volume 2, London: Cassel and Company, p. 478).
The problem is that that quote doesn’t appear anywhere in Hodder’s book.
But it does appear in an article by Adam Garfinkle — who Pappe cites in his next citation! Pappe attributes another quote to Garfinkle’s article, which doesn’t appear there either. It seems he got his sources mixed up.
If your head is spinning at this point, you are not alone.
There are many other mistakes, but I’ll leave you with one final example.
Writing about London’s Frederick Charrington in the 1800s, Pappe quotes from a website: “‘He had a pleasant disposition, was reasonably clever and extremely wealthy’ is how the Tower Hamlets Mission website describes him.” This attribution is accurate.
He then writes that “Some go even further in portraying him as practically a saint,” implying a different source. But instead, he reproduces a passage from that same website — virtually word for word — without quotation marks and without citing the website again.
Here’s what Pappe wrote: “at the age of nineteen, having read the Gospel, he felt moved to convert and become a faithful Christian. About a year later he was walking through Whitechapel and saw a poorly dressed woman with her children, trying to get her husband to come out of a public house and give her some money for food. The husband was furious and knocked her into the gutter. Charrington went to help and was also knocked to the ground. When he looked up, he saw his name on the sign above the pub and decided that he wanted nothing more to do with the brewery business. He went home and told his father that he was leaving the family business and his inheritance to devote his life to helping the poor in the East End. He opened a school, led a fight to clean up the music halls, and became an ardent worker for the temperance movement and a member of the London County Council for Mile End.”
And here’s what the website says: “At the age of 19 having read the Gospel he had a conversion experience and became a Christian. About a year later as he was walking through Whitechapel and saw a poorly dressed woman with her children trying to get her husband to come out of a public house and give her some money for food. The husband was furious and came out and knocked her into the gutter. Fred Charrington went to help and was also knocked to the ground. When he looked up he saw his name on the sign above the pub and decided that he wanted nothing more to do with the brewery business. He went home and told his father that he was leaving the family business and his inheritance to devote his life to helping the poor in the East End. Fred Charrington opened a school, led a fight to clean up the Music Halls, became an ardent worker for the Temperance Movement and a member of the London County Council for Mile End.”
The only reason this wouldn’t be plagiarism is that he cited the website in the preceding passage, but he still should have cited the website again, and instead of changing a word here and there — presumably to make it seem like his own writing — he should have simply quoted the passage in its original form.
To Pappe’s credit, he has always admitted that he is not a neutral or objective historian.
He writes in the preface:
“I could be accused of being biased; I accept this charge freely. I am aware that many aspiring professional historians are told early in their careers not to write a polemical history as it would undermine the scholarly validity of their work. This is probably a wise warning for historians who are on the cusp of being initiated into the academic community as fellow scholars. But with time, they will discover for themselves the cogency of Bertrand Russell’s words in his autobiography: ‘I was sometimes accused by reviewers of writing not a true history but a biased account of the events that I arbitrarily chose to write of. But to my mind, a man without a bias cannot write interesting history – if, indeed, such a man exists.’”
But there’s a difference between being biased and failing to meet the minimum standards of historical scholarship. Unfortunately, Pappe is guilty of both.
This is a shame because I find myself agreeing with Pappe’s mission of sticking up for the Palestinians and criticizing Israel’s excesses. But he doesn’t do those causes any good when he succumbs to sloppy scholarship like this.
July 7, 2024
Only a study of a particular political lobby related to the most important strip of land in the world could be this necessary. Somehow the land of Palestine affects everyone - i.e. every American taxpayer is directly funding a genocide. There is critical historical context here brought up to date after October 7, 2023 that I guarantee will shed some light on actions and their motivations you've seen in your personal life, not to mention the international events we're witnessing. Pappe is an Israeli, and a renowned scholar and founder of the European Center for Palestine Studies at the University of Exeter in the UK.
Controlling narratives is everything in what we perceive as the modern Israeli State. The lobby developed, designed, threatned, bribed and forced these narratives into our lives over the past century, beginning with the narrative of necessity to take over the land. I saw a lot of the origins of the Christian Zionism I was raised under. Weaponizing the Holocaust through combining it with Scofield interpretations of scripture directed towards parts of the world that resonated well with messages of "uplifing the savages" and "fulfillment of prophecy" combined with an already preseent racism and huge opportunites for corporate exploitation...well this was the perfect lobbying environment . The ways to pervert the truth, play on emotions and construct familiar victim narratives was endless.
Yet the lobby has found itself working overtime because Zionism foundationally believes in the superiority of a group of people. Others are less than - this is no recipe for peaceful co-existence so at its extreme we end up with genocide in Gaza which has to got to give the Israel lobby a disadvantage presently on stress levels in the office. At "best" we've had a brutal military occupation which tortures vast amounts of Palestinians on a daily basis for nearly a century.
Pappe says we can only dream of a day when the lobby is irrelevant as they can no longer hold the narrative which has been responsible for every major act of Israeli violence and for the takeover of the land in the first place. We can hope so...as this would mean the current apartheid occupation would be dismantled. And I see some hope as since October 7, more people than ever are becoming interested enough to dive past the headlines that Israeli hasbara is so effective at writing.
It's distressing though that apathy awakening requires violence on genocidal levels as the lobby wants nothing more than to prevent further research. Just feed them well constructed soundbites that satisfy dopamine cravings so they look away. Pappe provides incredible sourcing and quotes the most important figures with footnotes, bibliography, citations and index comprising nearly 35% of the book.
The failure of the lobby is critical to ending the occupation and anything we can do to educate, inform and contribute to a changed narrative only helps in that effort.
Controlling narratives is everything in what we perceive as the modern Israeli State. The lobby developed, designed, threatned, bribed and forced these narratives into our lives over the past century, beginning with the narrative of necessity to take over the land. I saw a lot of the origins of the Christian Zionism I was raised under. Weaponizing the Holocaust through combining it with Scofield interpretations of scripture directed towards parts of the world that resonated well with messages of "uplifing the savages" and "fulfillment of prophecy" combined with an already preseent racism and huge opportunites for corporate exploitation...well this was the perfect lobbying environment . The ways to pervert the truth, play on emotions and construct familiar victim narratives was endless.
Yet the lobby has found itself working overtime because Zionism foundationally believes in the superiority of a group of people. Others are less than - this is no recipe for peaceful co-existence so at its extreme we end up with genocide in Gaza which has to got to give the Israel lobby a disadvantage presently on stress levels in the office. At "best" we've had a brutal military occupation which tortures vast amounts of Palestinians on a daily basis for nearly a century.
Pappe says we can only dream of a day when the lobby is irrelevant as they can no longer hold the narrative which has been responsible for every major act of Israeli violence and for the takeover of the land in the first place. We can hope so...as this would mean the current apartheid occupation would be dismantled. And I see some hope as since October 7, more people than ever are becoming interested enough to dive past the headlines that Israeli hasbara is so effective at writing.
It's distressing though that apathy awakening requires violence on genocidal levels as the lobby wants nothing more than to prevent further research. Just feed them well constructed soundbites that satisfy dopamine cravings so they look away. Pappe provides incredible sourcing and quotes the most important figures with footnotes, bibliography, citations and index comprising nearly 35% of the book.
The failure of the lobby is critical to ending the occupation and anything we can do to educate, inform and contribute to a changed narrative only helps in that effort.
December 20, 2025
Ilhan Pappe is probably the most formidable writer on Middle Eastern affairs in the 21st century. His work, Lobbying for Zionism, is a captivating outline of events taking place in Palestine reaching out to the clasp the sensational politics of today. He breaks down into manageable chunks the politics of Palestine with a noticeable left wing bias which is quite refreshing for the reader. He, kind of says it as it is in all its gory detailed glory.
Pappe leaves very little out and he certainly takes no prisoners when he pushes back on Israel’s attempts to wipe out the Palestinians, women and children included. The focus of his work reaches far beyond the conventional sense of conflict studies. Pappe begins with the consequences of the Balfour Declaration. This is a policy declaration which you don’t find today’s politicians talking about it. It was this piece of paper that sentenced to death every Palestinian and being of a young age would not exempt you from Israeli death squads as we have learnt.
Pappe spends a long time discussing the impact of Israeli Lobbying on the politics of Western governments. There is a rational reason for this, the Lobbying industry is complex and widely varied with a differing characters playing their part on behalf of Israel. Each lobbying role played with precision to change the politics of that specific country to favour Israel with dire circumstances befalling the leading politicians if they fail to do so.
When one says the age old phrase that politicians are ‘bought and paid for’, this concept could not be more true of British and US politicians who has had significant financial and economic investments to promote individual careers. Bank accounts have been over flowing with cash. Journalists fear the loss of their careers if they fail to play out the Lobbyists demands as we have seen unfold since October 7th.
Ilhan Pappe brings together his work by defining the impact on civil society in the West and how protest movements have sprung up in opposition to the mass slaughter of innocent Palestinians by the Israeli state’s military apparatus.
This work is definitely worth an investment of your time and effort to look at the blind side of Israeli and Palestinian politics. The parts the establishment don’t wish you to know about. It was worth every minute of my time reading this great piece of work.
Pappe leaves very little out and he certainly takes no prisoners when he pushes back on Israel’s attempts to wipe out the Palestinians, women and children included. The focus of his work reaches far beyond the conventional sense of conflict studies. Pappe begins with the consequences of the Balfour Declaration. This is a policy declaration which you don’t find today’s politicians talking about it. It was this piece of paper that sentenced to death every Palestinian and being of a young age would not exempt you from Israeli death squads as we have learnt.
Pappe spends a long time discussing the impact of Israeli Lobbying on the politics of Western governments. There is a rational reason for this, the Lobbying industry is complex and widely varied with a differing characters playing their part on behalf of Israel. Each lobbying role played with precision to change the politics of that specific country to favour Israel with dire circumstances befalling the leading politicians if they fail to do so.
When one says the age old phrase that politicians are ‘bought and paid for’, this concept could not be more true of British and US politicians who has had significant financial and economic investments to promote individual careers. Bank accounts have been over flowing with cash. Journalists fear the loss of their careers if they fail to play out the Lobbyists demands as we have seen unfold since October 7th.
Ilhan Pappe brings together his work by defining the impact on civil society in the West and how protest movements have sprung up in opposition to the mass slaughter of innocent Palestinians by the Israeli state’s military apparatus.
This work is definitely worth an investment of your time and effort to look at the blind side of Israeli and Palestinian politics. The parts the establishment don’t wish you to know about. It was worth every minute of my time reading this great piece of work.
September 9, 2025
إضافة مهمة جدا لقائمة الأعمال التي اهتمت باللوبيات الداعمة لإسرائيل وأثرها البالغ في تاريخ الحركة الصهيونية ثم قيام الدولة ودعمها لتصبح الكيان الأقوى في المنطقة.
الكتاب كان أكثر تفصيلا من المرجع الأشهر في هذا المبحث: (اللوبي) لمؤلفيه الأستاذين جورج ميرشايمر وستيفن والت ، من حيث أنه يعود بالقاريء الى جذور الحركة الصهيونية والحقيقة الهامة أن مؤسسيها الأوائل ومن زرعوا بذور فكرتها في عقول الصهاينة اليهود لم يكونوا يهوداً ، بل كانوا مسيحيين متدينيين اختلفت غاياتهم وأهدافهم بين ازدراء وعنصرية ضد اليهود دفعتهم الى حل لما سمي بالمسألة اليهودية بالتخلص التام من وجودهم الديموغارفي في أوروبا ، وبين مسيحيين يرون أن نزول المسيح و بداية العهد الألفي السعيد الذي يبشر به الكتاب المقدس لن يتم إلا بعودة اليهود الى الأرض المقدسة.
الإضافة الهامة الأخرى كانت التفصيل في دور بريطانيا المهم جدا في تسهيل الوجود الصهيوني في فلسطين ثم دعم الدولة الإسرائيلية بعد قيامها ورعايتها عن طريق الحكومات المتعاقبة من الحزبين والظغط الذي يمارسه اللوبي الصهيوني هناك من خلال النقابات والجمعيات على هذه الحكومات والبرلمان وقرارهما الداخلي و الخارجي عندما يتعلق الأمر بإسرائيل ومصالحاها ، بشكل لا يختلف كثيرا عن تأثير AIPAC والهيئات والجمعيات الأصغر منها في الولايات المتحدة وتأثيرها القوي على صناعة القرار في البيت الأبيض والكونغرس بغرفتيه.
يقدم الكتاب صورة قاتمة جدا عن واقع القضية الفلسطينية وحقوق الشعب الفلسطيني في سياق السيطرة الكبيرة لداعمي إسرائيل على دوائر صناعة القرار السياسي في الغرب ، لكنه بالمقابل يستفيض أيضا في عرض التغير الكبير الذي يُلاحظ في نظرة الشباب والنشطاء السياسيين المستقلين والحركات الاجتماعية والجمعيات الحقوقية والخيرية للصراع الفلسطيني الإسرائيلي وكيف تتكبد الدولة العبرية خسائر كبيرة في صراع السرديات والمجتمع المدني ، وكيف ترصد كل سنة مبالغ ضخمة وتؤسس الهيئات وحتى الوزارات وتطلق الحملات الدعائية في محاولات عبثية لتطويق السردية الفلسطينية وتغيير المزاج العام للشباب لصالح الرواية الإسرائيلية التي تبشّر بإسرائيل كواحدة للديمقراطية والحريات الغربية في محيط عربي ديكتاتوري متشدد ومعاد للحريات.
الصفحات الأخيرة للكتاب كانت حديثا مقتضبا لإيلان بابي عن أحداث ال7 من أكتوبر وما تلاها من إجرام ووحشية إسرائيلية في قطاع غزة ، مؤكدا أن العملية وما أعقبها لن يغيرا كثيرا من واقع الأمور ، وأن إسرائيل ستستمر ف عربدتها واحتلالها وانتهاكاتها مادام اللوبي الصهيوني في الغرب عموما وفي الولايات المتحدة خصوصا قويا ولا يواجه أي تهديد حقيقي في المدى المنظور.
الكتاب كان أكثر تفصيلا من المرجع الأشهر في هذا المبحث: (اللوبي) لمؤلفيه الأستاذين جورج ميرشايمر وستيفن والت ، من حيث أنه يعود بالقاريء الى جذور الحركة الصهيونية والحقيقة الهامة أن مؤسسيها الأوائل ومن زرعوا بذور فكرتها في عقول الصهاينة اليهود لم يكونوا يهوداً ، بل كانوا مسيحيين متدينيين اختلفت غاياتهم وأهدافهم بين ازدراء وعنصرية ضد اليهود دفعتهم الى حل لما سمي بالمسألة اليهودية بالتخلص التام من وجودهم الديموغارفي في أوروبا ، وبين مسيحيين يرون أن نزول المسيح و بداية العهد الألفي السعيد الذي يبشر به الكتاب المقدس لن يتم إلا بعودة اليهود الى الأرض المقدسة.
الإضافة الهامة الأخرى كانت التفصيل في دور بريطانيا المهم جدا في تسهيل الوجود الصهيوني في فلسطين ثم دعم الدولة الإسرائيلية بعد قيامها ورعايتها عن طريق الحكومات المتعاقبة من الحزبين والظغط الذي يمارسه اللوبي الصهيوني هناك من خلال النقابات والجمعيات على هذه الحكومات والبرلمان وقرارهما الداخلي و الخارجي عندما يتعلق الأمر بإسرائيل ومصالحاها ، بشكل لا يختلف كثيرا عن تأثير AIPAC والهيئات والجمعيات الأصغر منها في الولايات المتحدة وتأثيرها القوي على صناعة القرار في البيت الأبيض والكونغرس بغرفتيه.
يقدم الكتاب صورة قاتمة جدا عن واقع القضية الفلسطينية وحقوق الشعب الفلسطيني في سياق السيطرة الكبيرة لداعمي إسرائيل على دوائر صناعة القرار السياسي في الغرب ، لكنه بالمقابل يستفيض أيضا في عرض التغير الكبير الذي يُلاحظ في نظرة الشباب والنشطاء السياسيين المستقلين والحركات الاجتماعية والجمعيات الحقوقية والخيرية للصراع الفلسطيني الإسرائيلي وكيف تتكبد الدولة العبرية خسائر كبيرة في صراع السرديات والمجتمع المدني ، وكيف ترصد كل سنة مبالغ ضخمة وتؤسس الهيئات وحتى الوزارات وتطلق الحملات الدعائية في محاولات عبثية لتطويق السردية الفلسطينية وتغيير المزاج العام للشباب لصالح الرواية الإسرائيلية التي تبشّر بإسرائيل كواحدة للديمقراطية والحريات الغربية في محيط عربي ديكتاتوري متشدد ومعاد للحريات.
الصفحات الأخيرة للكتاب كانت حديثا مقتضبا لإيلان بابي عن أحداث ال7 من أكتوبر وما تلاها من إجرام ووحشية إسرائيلية في قطاع غزة ، مؤكدا أن العملية وما أعقبها لن يغيرا كثيرا من واقع الأمور ، وأن إسرائيل ستستمر ف عربدتها واحتلالها وانتهاكاتها مادام اللوبي الصهيوني في الغرب عموما وفي الولايات المتحدة خصوصا قويا ولا يواجه أي تهديد حقيقي في المدى المنظور.
December 6, 2024
Pappé’s nonfiction writing style—measured, no stone left unturned, primary source heavy—was the best way to cover this topic. This was so detailed. But it was worth it!
My favourite part of this book was its emphasis on understanding the origin of the Zionist lobby. Because, well before Israel existed, this lobby was fully entrenched in the upper echelons of our governments.
✨ And the origins of the Zionist lobby (from the 1800s to mid-1900s) were NOTHING like you’d expect. Early lobbyists for Zionism were mostly not Jewish. In fact, they were mostly antisemitic. The early Zionist lobby was an alliance between anti-immigrant types (who wanted to redirect Eastern European Jewish immigrants fleeing pogroms to somewhere besides the UK) and British imperialists who coveted parts of the soon-to-crumble Ottoman Empire. With some Evangelical Christians who wanted to bring about Armageddon sprinkled in. And later some rightwing anti-communists who antisemitically associated Jews with the Bolsheviks (looking at you, Churchill).
Most Jews weren’t onboard with the early lobbying efforts. And the speech Pappé included *against* the Balfour Declaration of 1917 by the only Jewish member of Parliament at the time is something I can’t stop thinking about—especially because he’s said to have been “close to weeping” as he spoke 😢
This book felt like the other side of the coin of Pappé’s history of Israel books—it answered the “But how are they getting away with this?!” question.
Yes, we went into detail (and I mean DETAIL) about how the lobby promoted politicians they expected to give carte blanche to Israel’s actions and punished politicians they expected wouldn’t.
But this book wasn’t a story about: “how has Israel, a foreign government, gained so much control over our democracies?” No, the story was: how is this lobby a uniquely British and American phenomenon? Which brought so much clarity to this particular political problem. Loved it.
My favourite part of this book was its emphasis on understanding the origin of the Zionist lobby. Because, well before Israel existed, this lobby was fully entrenched in the upper echelons of our governments.
✨ And the origins of the Zionist lobby (from the 1800s to mid-1900s) were NOTHING like you’d expect. Early lobbyists for Zionism were mostly not Jewish. In fact, they were mostly antisemitic. The early Zionist lobby was an alliance between anti-immigrant types (who wanted to redirect Eastern European Jewish immigrants fleeing pogroms to somewhere besides the UK) and British imperialists who coveted parts of the soon-to-crumble Ottoman Empire. With some Evangelical Christians who wanted to bring about Armageddon sprinkled in. And later some rightwing anti-communists who antisemitically associated Jews with the Bolsheviks (looking at you, Churchill).
Most Jews weren’t onboard with the early lobbying efforts. And the speech Pappé included *against* the Balfour Declaration of 1917 by the only Jewish member of Parliament at the time is something I can’t stop thinking about—especially because he’s said to have been “close to weeping” as he spoke 😢
This book felt like the other side of the coin of Pappé’s history of Israel books—it answered the “But how are they getting away with this?!” question.
Yes, we went into detail (and I mean DETAIL) about how the lobby promoted politicians they expected to give carte blanche to Israel’s actions and punished politicians they expected wouldn’t.
But this book wasn’t a story about: “how has Israel, a foreign government, gained so much control over our democracies?” No, the story was: how is this lobby a uniquely British and American phenomenon? Which brought so much clarity to this particular political problem. Loved it.
November 27, 2024
Unfortunately this was a DNF for me. I don't usually rate books I don't finish, but I read a significant portion of this one and the flaws that led to my abandoning the book were pervasive throughout the 200+ pages I read...
Pappé is obviously a good historian. He knows a lot of details. What completely disengaged me from the book was Pappé's overwhelming bias, in the sense that he had nothing good to say about people who had any zionist tendencies at all. He wrote any person who supported Israel for any reason as a bad character - either they were "easily" won over, or they were anti-semitic, or they spoke like a terrorist, or they built ugly buildings, or they ate weird food, or they didn't stand up for Palestinians enough, or they ALL had some - often unsubstantiated but always assumed - ill-motive for being pro-Israel.
Don't get me wrong, I did learn a lot and I think Pappé has obviously seen some significant wrong doing on the part of Israel. But I don't think this particular book is a good starting point for someone who is interested in learning more about the complexities that exist between Palestinians and Israelis. This book has so many moving parts and functional characters that it's nearly impossible to remember all the names and acronyms for the different players and organizations throughout the nearly 100 years that he covers. Pappé attempts to give color to the dry material, but it's an incredibly biased color and it seriously detracts from the credibility of the book. He officially lost me when he started condemning the Israelis for their architecture and their taste in food and tried to explain how that somehow was a slight on Palestinians....
Rated a 2 since some of the material was factual and interesting.
Pappé is obviously a good historian. He knows a lot of details. What completely disengaged me from the book was Pappé's overwhelming bias, in the sense that he had nothing good to say about people who had any zionist tendencies at all. He wrote any person who supported Israel for any reason as a bad character - either they were "easily" won over, or they were anti-semitic, or they spoke like a terrorist, or they built ugly buildings, or they ate weird food, or they didn't stand up for Palestinians enough, or they ALL had some - often unsubstantiated but always assumed - ill-motive for being pro-Israel.
Don't get me wrong, I did learn a lot and I think Pappé has obviously seen some significant wrong doing on the part of Israel. But I don't think this particular book is a good starting point for someone who is interested in learning more about the complexities that exist between Palestinians and Israelis. This book has so many moving parts and functional characters that it's nearly impossible to remember all the names and acronyms for the different players and organizations throughout the nearly 100 years that he covers. Pappé attempts to give color to the dry material, but it's an incredibly biased color and it seriously detracts from the credibility of the book. He officially lost me when he started condemning the Israelis for their architecture and their taste in food and tried to explain how that somehow was a slight on Palestinians....
Rated a 2 since some of the material was factual and interesting.
March 2, 2025
Really?? LoL . You keep wasting time talking and writing about zionism and conspiracies. Why didnt anyone, Chattering about Zionism and so on, he did the same and fought them with their methods??? Why all this crying, slapping, wailing and howling??? Do it and strengthen your cause, if you have one and fight. Aren't you bored with this old narrative? This is what makes them smart. And it is their right to support their cause, regardless of whether you are for or against. Basically, there is no cause in the universe that is unanimously agreed upon. They achieved their religious and historical goal, while the other side sold their properties and left. Those who remained among them adapted to the new state and some wanted to be stubborn. Why didn't the Arabs in the fifties and sixties accept that the borders of the two states were divided equally and the Arabs' share was even larger. But they wanted to fight and kill, all the Arabs to get back what is said, their lands. Anyway, talk is free and there are no customs fees. Everyone can talk nonsense and nothing will change the reality.
January 4, 2026
I thought this was an interesting book. A granny recommended this book to me, and of course, I went to work on it. Thank you, Granny; I appreciate it.
This book is essentially about the influence of Jewish lobbies in advocating for changes to governmental policies and alterations to public opinion on the topic of Zionism, from both England and the USA, from as early as the 1860s in Britain. Then, as their empire weighed down, they moved to America.
This was a long book, and there is definitely a lot I could discuss about it. The book is written well, with loads of information and names that spearheaded the Zionist movement for the creation of Israel in 1948. What I really desire to know is how the lobbyists had so much influence over the two most powerful nations of that time and today. How were, and are, they still able to have influence over America and England? Though BIPAC failed in England, in America, AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) is still going strong. How is it that political figures, before taking office, must show their support for Israel? Every American president makes the pilgrimage to kiss the Western Wall in Israel. Why? This, dear reader, has piqued my interest. Are they truly the chosen people? This book doesn’t answer that; it merely shows how firm Israel’s grip is around the necks of every influential American and British politician.
I strongly recommend this book.
Thank you.
This book is essentially about the influence of Jewish lobbies in advocating for changes to governmental policies and alterations to public opinion on the topic of Zionism, from both England and the USA, from as early as the 1860s in Britain. Then, as their empire weighed down, they moved to America.
This was a long book, and there is definitely a lot I could discuss about it. The book is written well, with loads of information and names that spearheaded the Zionist movement for the creation of Israel in 1948. What I really desire to know is how the lobbyists had so much influence over the two most powerful nations of that time and today. How were, and are, they still able to have influence over America and England? Though BIPAC failed in England, in America, AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) is still going strong. How is it that political figures, before taking office, must show their support for Israel? Every American president makes the pilgrimage to kiss the Western Wall in Israel. Why? This, dear reader, has piqued my interest. Are they truly the chosen people? This book doesn’t answer that; it merely shows how firm Israel’s grip is around the necks of every influential American and British politician.
I strongly recommend this book.
Thank you.
January 10, 2026
One of the best books I have read on Zionism and the Israeli lobby, though it took a while, contains 600 odd pages.
The deep hand that AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) is the most powerful lobby in Washington and has their deep claws in the US civil society and its politics. They literally bullied the senate and the many presidents if things didn’t go as per their agenda. They can turn the table and have the power. AIPAC spends large sums of money on both Democratic and Republican campaigns and even boasts of its own omnipotence.
The only president who stood against the Israeli lobby was Jimmy Carter, who authored this book, “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid”, which created a lot of controversy and was unofficially banned in Israel. And he met with a lot of resistance from inside the congress and the powerful AIPAC lobby.
The deep hand that AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) is the most powerful lobby in Washington and has their deep claws in the US civil society and its politics. They literally bullied the senate and the many presidents if things didn’t go as per their agenda. They can turn the table and have the power. AIPAC spends large sums of money on both Democratic and Republican campaigns and even boasts of its own omnipotence.
The only president who stood against the Israeli lobby was Jimmy Carter, who authored this book, “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid”, which created a lot of controversy and was unofficially banned in Israel. And he met with a lot of resistance from inside the congress and the powerful AIPAC lobby.
May 13, 2025
The book on the same subject by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt in 2008 was far better researched and written. When one considers the seriousness of the subject and the political impact of the lobby, this book could have been much better written, better researched and the author could have done a better job keeping his own personal biases out of it, as Mearsheimer and Walt did when they wrote on the same subject. I had high hopes for this book when I picked it up and was ultimately disappointed.
Nonetheless, there is still enough good information contained in this book to make it one which is worth reading. For that reason, I would still recommend it to others.
Nonetheless, there is still enough good information contained in this book to make it one which is worth reading. For that reason, I would still recommend it to others.
October 7, 2025
4.75 ⭐️
‘The Palestinians were not the challenge: the challenge was how to justify what was done to them.’
‘Israel needs to persuade the world, and itself, of the moral validity of the Zionist project and consequently the state of Israel. I would go as far as to say that up to this day the foremost groups the lobby wants to win over are those among the Jews and the Zionists who find it difficult to be fully convinced that Judaism is not a religion but a national identity, and more importantly, that this redefinition of Jewish identity justifies the settler-colonial project of establishing Israel in historical Palestine.’
‘The Palestinians were not the challenge: the challenge was how to justify what was done to them.’
‘Israel needs to persuade the world, and itself, of the moral validity of the Zionist project and consequently the state of Israel. I would go as far as to say that up to this day the foremost groups the lobby wants to win over are those among the Jews and the Zionists who find it difficult to be fully convinced that Judaism is not a religion but a national identity, and more importantly, that this redefinition of Jewish identity justifies the settler-colonial project of establishing Israel in historical Palestine.’
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