Michael Piper and Final Judgment

[Magda Hassan]

No other nation can make Congressmen quake in their boots with threats of adverse media coverage or funding pullouts the way Israel can.

Congressmen have never been known for their spine or principles. They'll bow and scrape to the Koch bothers too. And the Christian right. And who ever else is paying their real salary and pulling their strings.

There you go again. AIPAC has more influence than any other lobby in the US, but you don't want to accept that. The fact that the US Congress is corrupt doesn't alter this fact.

I accept it is powerful in relation to the size of Israel's population but it is just one of several powerful lobbies. I also see that the US sees it is in their interest to have influence in the region through Israel. The lobby is not all powerful and omnipotent. The US is not weak and vulnerable to it. It is a mutually beneficial relationship in many ways. As are other relationships with other lobbies for other reasons. Burundi which has roughly the same population probably wouldn't get the same traction if they had a lobby group but them it is not strategically important to the US either. Nor does it have a significant cultural attachment to the US in the way that Israel does. Things seem to be working just fine in congress for BAE, Lockheed Martin and Microsoft too. They just don't get the PR and the Mark Stapleton's publicising their pork barrels.