Coleman Hughes: The Myth of the All-Powerful Israel Lobby

There has been a lot of discussion today about my podcast episode with Glenn Greenwald—much of it revisiting the same arguments I debated with Dave Smith in October. Both claim that an all-powerful Israel lobby effectively controls American foreign policy.

The idea that the most powerful country the world has ever known is being puppeteered by a country the size of New Jersey—and by a group that collectively accounts for 0.2 percent of the world’s population—is an extraordinary claim. You would expect overwhelming evidence. In reality, there’s little to substantiate it.

Criticize America’s foreign and domestic policy as much as you want—there’s plenty to criticize. But don’t blame it on Israel or its supporters.

The centerpiece of this narrative is a historical claim: that Israel got the United States into the Iraq War. In reality, Israel’s prime minister came to the White House to caution President Bush against invading Iraq, warning that it would empower Iran, Israel’s real enemy. Bush listened politely, then ignored him and invaded anyway, because American presidents make their own choices, for good and for ill.

At the same time, the IDF chief of military intelligence said on TV in the fall of 2002 that Israel did not believe Saddam Hussein could obtain nuclear weapons, contradicting U.S. intelligence assessments. It’s hard to imagine a clearer discouragement. Again, the United States ignored this and proceeded for its own reasons.

So why did the United States invade Iraq in 2003?

The 9/11 attack created an atmosphere of extreme threat sensitivity among the U.S. security establishment. The failure to preemptively destroy al-Qaeda in the 1990s was suddenly seen as a huge mistake never to be repeated. The lesson that the U.S. took from this was that we must preemptively act against theoretical security threats, even if they’re low probability and thousands of miles away.

Saddam Hussein fit that framework. He had been reckless since the 1980s, invading multiple countries, and importantly, previously hiding his nuclear program from the CIA. In 1991, when the CIA discovered that Saddam was a year to a year and a half away from a nuke, they were stunned. That lesson led them to discount the absence of a smoking gun in the lead-up to 2003: If Saddam had hidden it before, he could be hiding it again.

People often cite Benjamin Netanyahu’s 2002 pro-war testimony before Congress as proof of Israeli influence. Netanyahu, while now the prime minister of Israel, was then a private citizen and had no power at the time. Meanwhile, Israel’s actual leadership expressed caution before the invasion. More importantly, Bush and crew made the final decision to invade Iraq before that testimony even happened. There is no evidence that Netanyahu’s testimony moved anyone’s needle.

If Israel did not get us into Iraq, where is the evidence for the “all-powerful” Israel lobby?

Glenn brought up in our debate that there are anti-BDS laws at the state level in some 38 states, as if this is proof of the Israel lobby’s incredible power. To be clear, I oppose these laws (designed to block a campaign to “boycott, divest from, and sanction” Israel) on principle: the government should not require contractors to take a position in a foreign conflict as a condition of doing business—a basic matter of freedom of conscience. But in reality, the anti-BDS laws perfectly demarcate the limits of the lobby’s power.

State governments are relatively easy to lobby. The federal government is far more difficult. Notably, all anti-BDS legislation has failed at the federal level. The idea that a lobby that is too weak to pass even a single federal contracting law could orchestrate the United States’ involvement in multiple wars is ridiculous.

For comparison, dozens of U.S. states—and the federal government, in 2019—have passed resolutions or legislation recognizing the Armenian genocide, largely due to advocacy from the Armenia lobby. These decisions arguably strained relations with Turkey, a NATO ally far more powerful than Armenia. Does that mean the Armenia lobby controls America? The logic does not hold.

The Israel lobby is relatively small. According to OpenSecrets data on lobbying expenditures, industries like finance and energy spend many times more—finance, insurance, and real estate by about 142 times and oil and gas by almost 30 times. If raw spending translated directly into control, far larger domestic industries would dominate U.S. foreign policy.

Additionally, there are numerous instances where Israel failed to get what it wanted. The United States did not recognize Israeli sovereignty over Golan Heights for almost 40 years, and that would have required only the stroke of a pen. In 2007, Israel asked the United States to bomb Syria’s nuclear program. Bush said no. Israel asked Condoleezza Rice to add one word to Bush’s Palestine speech in 2002—to change Palestine to New Palestine. Condi dismissed it out of hand. Most significantly, the Israel lobby pulled out the full extent of its power to block the Iran nuclear deal. It failed.

Glenn and Dave will dismiss this argument with the line “Yeah, those are exceptions that prove the rule. They don’t always get what they want. They just mostly do.” But when asked for evidence, they return to the same weak claims: the Iraq War, this Iran war, anti-BDS law, and foreign aid to Israel.

The United States annually sends $3–4 billion in military aid to Israel. To some, that seems extraordinary. In reality, it’s in line with America’s military posture all over the world.

The United States maintains hundreds of military bases worldwide and spends vast sums sustaining its global presence. For example, the U.S. stations 30,000 American troops in South Korea and loses $3–4 billion every year because of its deployment there. But no one argues that an all-powerful South Korea lobby controls American foreign policy.

Glenn tried to argue that the fact that we have troops deployed in South Korea makes the $4 billion a year we lose there a lesser commitment than the aid to Israel. But if the situation were reversed—if we had troops deployed in Tel Aviv and not Seoul—then he’d argue the opposite! Dave and Glenn are always reasoning backward from their conclusion—they start from the premise that Israel controls us, and fill in the reasons afterward.

An intellectually honest America Firster would question the entire global military posture, arguing to get out of South Korea, Europe, and the Middle East. Instead, they focus more on Israel than on any of the other spending that we do. There is no explanation for this other than Israel derangement syndrome.

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By the way, approximately 80 percent of aid to Israel returns to the U.S. economy because it is largely spent with American companies. Legally, it’s foreign aid, but economically, it functions more like a domestic subsidy supporting U.S. workers.

Which brings us to the current Iran war. In my debate with Glenn, the only direct evidence he could give that somehow Israel had pulled us into the war was a comment from Secretary of State Marco Rubio suggesting the U.S. acted in part because it expected Israel to strike Iran first, and the resignation letter from counterterrorism official Joe Kent.

Rubio explained that “we knew that there was going to be an Israeli action. . . [and] if we didn’t preemptively go after them. . . we would suffer higher casualties.” This comment had nothing to do with the Israel lobby or Israel having power over our decision-making apparatus. It was that Israel was about to attack Iran, and U.S. bases in the Middle East would be affected, so it made sense tactically to attack first. His point was about war tactics and initiative, not Israeli control over U.S. decision-making.

As for Kent, he’s not credible. Kent wrote in his resignation letter that “Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby.” To put Kent’s conspiracy-filled theories into perspective, consider that Kent insinuated on Tucker Carlson’s show on March 18 that Israel might have been behind the Trump assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania. Follow this logic: Trump is the most pro-Israel president in history. Why would Israel have tried to kill him in 2024—in order to get a President Vance or Harris? Kent is so far out of touch with reality that he cannot be taken as a credible witness.

There is a simple explanation for the Iran war: Trump has been tough on Iran for decades. He believes that Iran tried to kill him and he took that personally. Iran’s regime has been branding themselves as the common enemy of America and Israel since 1979. Iran is the number-one exporter of terror regionally and worldwide. No state is close. They’ve bragged about enriching kilograms of uranium to 60 percent—a fact verified by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Every single country that has made it that far has gone on to develop nukes. There are, literally, zero exceptions. We know they’re angling for a bomb. It was only a matter of when they chose to sprint from the 10-yard line to the end zone.

America benefits from a weaker, non-nuclear Iran. Lots of countries also benefit from a weaker Iran—Israel and Saudi Arabia, primarily. That’s what it means to have a common enemy. But just because they benefit too doesn’t mean they manipulated us.

Moreover, Trump, being amazingly shameless, is invulnerable to blackmail, and refuses to be told what to do. That’s why he fires every adviser who tries to push him around, and replaces them with yes-men. (That is not a great quality, but it does make the foreign influence theory that much more ridiculous.)

In sum, the Israel lobby is real, but not uniquely powerful. Like many other lobbies, it can secure modest legislative achievements—and mostly at the state level. The idea that it dictates, or even significantly influences, our foreign policy is total nonsense driven by ideology.