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polls show that the American people favor the "public option" in
health care, but that's not exactly the policy that health care reform
produced. Public opinion is an important factor, of course, but what
public officials decide to do almost always reflects a more complex
weighting of political factors (including the intensity of public
preferences, broader strategic considerations, the weight of organized
interests, etc.)
Second, to the extent that the American public does have a favorable
image of Israel -- and there's no question that it does -- that is at least
partly due to the lobby's own efforts to shape public discourse and
stifle negative commentary. The lobby doesn't "control the media,"
but "pro-Israel" groups like the ADL and CAMERA work actively to
influence how Israel is portrayed in the United States, aided by
reliably supportive publications like The New Republic. (As its
former editor-in-chief Marty Peretz once admitted, "there's a sort of
party line on Israel" at the journal). That's their privilege, of course,
but groups and individuals in the lobby have also tried to silence or
smear virtually any one who criticizes the "special relationship," and
all-too-often those efforts succeed (if perhaps less frequently than
they used to). If Americans were exposed to a more open discourse
such as the discourse that prevails in Europe or in Israel itself --
Israel's favorable image would almost certainly decrease (though by
no means disappear).
--
Third, and most important, the evidence suggests that the American
people are not in favor of a one-sided "special relationship" where
Israel gets unconditional American backing no matter what it does.
Although there is no question that Americans have a generally
favorable image of Israel and want the United States to help it survive
and prosper, they are not demanding that U.S. politicians back it to
the hilt or show the kind of craven adulation that Congress displayed
last week.
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