The media is flummoxed by the fact that so many politicians in Washington support Israel.

It makes no sense to them. After all, all the BEST people know that the Israelis are settler colonialist oppressors and that Palestinians are brown, and hence victims.

Their professors told them so! Look at those activists out of the streets!

Even the Queers are for Palestine, from the River to the Sea. Queers are at the top of the intersectional ladder, so the cause must be just.

. @WashingtonPost claims support for Israel on the Hill is a "reflection of the decades-long influence of a powerful lobby."

This is what happens when you have activists writing news. WaPo is unreadable.https://t.co/ddhNEzDdQ8

— Alana Goodman (@alanagoodman) November 7, 2023

As is always the case when people support a cause associated with the Joos, the ready-made explanation for the otherwise inexplicable lack of hatred for these swarthy Hebrews is that they are buying people off, and that is the explanation that Abigail Hauslohner of the Washington Post goes with.

That Israel is winning on Capitol Hill — even as a few dozen progressive Democrats in the House and Senate have grown more vocal in their calls for humanitarian relief for Palestinian civilians — is a reflection, to Israel’s staunchest proponents, of the Jewish state’s moral high ground.

“Hamas is a terrorist organization, period. The idea that Israel is an oppressor is a joke,” Rep. Michael Lawler (R-N.Y.) said last month in a floor speech. “There is no moral equivalency here.”

It is also a reflection of the decades-long influence of a powerful lobby, and an imbalance of exposure, as lawmakers — many of whom are not experts in international affairs — consider information and forge policy, other lawmakers and analysts said.

Stephen Walt, a professor of international affairs and foreign policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, said that while the Israel lobby has been active and influential for decades, there is “nothing comparable” on the other side. “There are no Palestinian American organizations of equal clout, of equal size,” he said.

Notice the framing: Israel’s supporters claim that they support the tiny country that was just victimized in the most brutal way because they have the moral high ground. But Stephen Walt, a notorious Israel-hater, tells us the real story: it is the wealthy Israel lobby. Palestinians have no voice, but Israel has lobbyists.

The Washington Post is dead wrong.

We support Israel because the *voters who elected us* overwhelmingly back Israel against the barbaric terrorists.

Unlike the Washington Post, most Americans have a moral compass and call tell good from evil. pic.twitter.com/i9m1lqs2tJ

— Tom Cotton (@TomCottonAR) November 7, 2023

Pro-Israel lobbyist groups and individuals contributed nearly $31 million to American congressional candidates during last year’s election cycle — more than six times the contributions candidates received from the gun rights lobby — according to Open Secrets, a Washington nonprofit that tracks campaign finance and lobbying data.

Torres, among the top 20 recipients in the House and Senate, received well over a quarter-million dollars from pro-Israel lobbyists during that election. His single biggest donor was the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the Open Secrets data shows.

AIPAC’s website says that 98 percent of candidates it backed won their elections, and that it “helped defeat” 13 candidates “who would have undermined the U.S.-Israel relationship.” In the last cycle, AIPAC backed 365 candidates across the political spectrum, ranging from members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus who have called for universal health care and higher taxes to Republican Freedom Caucus members who refused to certify the 2020 election and want to ban the victims of rape and incest from obtaining abortions. What they have in common is Israel. “We support pro-Israel candidates running against anti-Israel candidates,” AIPAC explains on its website.

In my experience, AIPAC is, in fact, powerful. And they are very effective. So is the NRA, the myriad of George Soros money-channeling organizations, and so on. And AIPAC doesn’t get close to the top 50 contributor organizations. George Soros is #1, double the nearest competitor according to Open Secrets. Soros, notoriously, funds many of the groups out there protesting Israel’s attack on Hamas.

AIPAC doesn’t even contribute to candidates, and JStreet, which does, contributed a relatively paltry sum. The “Jewish” lobby–groups and individuals who contribute based solely or mostly on Jewish issues, contributes about $15 million or so a year. To put that in perspective, Soros contributed almost $200 million in 2020, and the teachers’ unions almost $50 million.

So in terms of being big players? Not so much. Obviously, you would prefer to have their contributions if you can, but not enough to risk a backlash from your voters.

But they are the Joos! Jews have some magic nefarious power or something.

This article, as you can see from the quote above, is all about pushing the Narrative. Bad Republicans who want victims of rape and incest to become breeders!

“The average representative or the average senator has very little incentive to go against this consensus or this message of unconditional support” for Israel, said Walt, the academic. “There’s no upside for them. If they express strong support for Israel, they don’t get penalized. They don’t lose many voters and they might gain some. If they question U.S. support for Israel, then they’re going to face pressure in almost all cases.”

There is no upside because the people with the most passion about the conflict in America–outside the very young and the Arab communities–support Israel. And that has nothing to do with Jewish political power because Jews are highly concentrated in liberal states and cities (save Florida) and don’t exactly dominate political power in most of the country. Jews can do well electorally in much of the country (Minnesota has elected 2 Jewish Senators while I have lived here, Rudy Boschwitz and Paul Wellstone, but not based on Jewish money or power), but it has nothing to do with their Jewishness or nefarious Jewish lobbyists.

Israel has the backing of most people in Congress for 2 reasons: 1) Hamas committed heinous acts and must be destroyed, and 2) people who will vote even partly based on this issue tend to support Israel. In Districts where that is not true, the representatives are less supportive of Israel.

It is generally true that money can buy power, so it is not illegitimate to look for hidden motives in Washington. There are plenty. But in this case, the big money/big lobbying argument is pretty weak. If Congressmen felt a groundswell of opposition to supporting Israel no amount of money would sway their political instincts. The Joos just don’t have that kind of money to throw around, at least not on this issue. Many liberals Jews who contribute big bucks are not fans of Israel and hate Netanyahu.

As for whether Palestinians have a lobby to rival the Jews? Sure they do–academia and the MSM, which control the flow of information. They have taken every piece of Hamas propaganda and amplified it, even to the point of using Pallywood productions as fact. They write stories like this which insinuate the Joos have secret power over politicians, and they ignore the fact that Hamas is causing all this suffering for propaganda reasons.

We have seen how powerful these institutions are, and AIPAC can’t rival them for influence. Sure, lobbyists matter because relationships matter, and AIPAC exists to promote Israel, and is good at it. But the fact is that just like Israel, which punches above its weight class, it is still outgunned and outnumbered by its critics.