Informal Lobby
Support for Israel is strong among American Christians of all denominations. Informal Christian support for Israel includes a broad range varieties support for Israel ranging from the programming and news coverage on the Christian Broadcasting Network and the Christian Television Network to the more informal support of the annual Day of Prayer for the Peace of Jerusalem.
Informal lobbying also includes the activities of Jewish groups. Some scholars view Jewish lobbying on behalf of Israel as one of many examples of a US ethnic group lobbying on behalf of an ethnic homeland, which has met with a degree of success largely because Israel is strongly supported by a far larger and more influential Christian movement that shares its goals. In a 2006 article in the London Review of Books, Professors John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt wrote:
In its basic operations, the Israel Lobby is no different from the farm lobby, steel or textile workers’ unions, or other ethnic lobbies. There is nothing improper about American Jews and their Christian allies attempting to sway US policy: the Lobby’s activities are not a conspiracy of the sort depicted in tracts like the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. For the most part, the individuals and groups that comprise it are only doing what other special interest groups do, but doing it very much better. By contrast, pro-Arab interest groups, in so far as they exist at all, are weak, which makes the Israel Lobby’s task even easier.
Bard defines the Jewish "informal lobby" as the indirect means through which "Jewish voting behavior and American public opinion" influence "U.S. Middle East policy." Bard describes the motivation underlying the informal lobby as follows:
"American Jews recognize the importance of support for Israel because of the dire consequences that could follow from the alternative. Despite the fact that Israel is often referred to now as the fourth most powerful country in the world, the perceived threat to Israel is not military defeat, it is annihilation. At the same time, American Jews are frightened of what might happen in the United States if they do not have political power."
Read more about this topic: Israel Lobby In The United States, Structure
Famous quotes containing the words informal and/or lobby:
“We as a nation need to be reeducated about the necessary and sufficient conditions for making human beings human. We need to be reeducated not as parents—but as workers, neighbors, and friends; and as members of the organizations, committees, boards—and, especially, the informal networks that control our social institutions and thereby determine the conditions of life for our families and their children.”
—Urie Bronfenbrenner (b. 1917)
“And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”
—Bible: New Testament Jesus, in John, 8:32.
These words are inscribed on the wall of the main lobby at the CIA headquarters, Langley, Virginia.