I was considering commenting on the power of the Israeli Lobby in light of all the fuss about the book the book, The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy, by professors John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt. I had seen a bit of that power myself when I worked as a newsman.
I began with a Google search for a couple of incidents I personally knew about, one of them being the shooting down of a civilian airliner in the 70s. I don't know whether I has anything to do with the power of the Israel lobby today, but I had a devil of a time finding any information with Google and Ask.com, and some of that came from anti-Semitic websites, not the best of sources.
Finally I found some good information from a website called Swans, written by the fellow called Deck Deckert. [g] I had written the piece, The Untouchable Israelis, on April 8, 2002. It started:
"There are a lot of taboos and untouchable stories in the Establishment Media -- corporate crime, racism, the insanity of the failed drug war, criticism of the war budget, corporate control of government, Bush gaffes, etc..
"But one of the oldest and currently the most powerful taboo is this: One must never speak ill of Israel. No matter how savage or barbaric Israel's actions, the American media, following the example of the American government, offers unquestioning support.
"The key word is 'unquestioning' -- no criticism, no expressions of doubt. Anyone who dares express the mildest criticism of Israel is likely to be hit with the nuclear bomb of public discourse -- a label of anti-Semitism."
I went on to relate a couple of personal incidents I had witnessed as a newsman, including that airliner downing. On Feb. 21, 1973, Israeli fighter planes shot down a Libyan civilian airliner, killing all on board. It wasn't the downing of an airliner — there have been numerous incidents of airliners being shot down in war zones --- it was the aftermath.
As I said in the Swans piece, "When the story broke, I passed it on to the news editor and prepared to handle the updates and the sidebars ... I was expecting details about weather conditions that contributed to the crash, profiles of some of the people who died, interviews with their families, analysis of why Israel would shoot down an airliner, comments from U.S. and Israeli authorities and public figures. I waited in vain. Updates were sparse, sidebars nearly non-existent. ...the story was essentially a one-edition splash and then disappeared."
In contrast, when 10 years later the Soviet Union shot down a Korean airliner, the media and politicians became hysterical. They averred that the incident was proof that the Soviet Union was the Evil Empire. TV newscasts and newspapers were filled with stories about the depravity of the Soviets, features about the passengers lost in the shootdown, and the condemnation by politicians and pundits of all types. The story went on for weeks.
But Israel has always escaped that kind of scrutiny in America.
Anyone interested in reading the whole story I wrote on Swans five years ago, can find it at:
http://www.swans.com/library/art8/rdeck018.html