The Lobby: Jewish Political Power and American Foreign Policy

This is one of the most important books published in the 1980s dealing with the question of US foreign policy and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Never heard of it, you say? Small wonder. It's sad to comtemplate how this book reads like the parent to the much better known and more recently published "The Israel Lobby And American Foreign Policy" by professors John Mearshirmer and Stephen Walt. Tivnan, a journalist, has done a masterful job in laying out the problems presented to the US in it's policies toward the Palestinians and the Israelis by the remoreseless, relentless, take-no-prisoners, bare-knuckled political approach of AIPAC and the other various groups which make up what is called "The Israel Lobby." [The only substantial difference between then and now is the growth of the tragically self-deluded "Christian Fundamantalists" who, in pursuit of their bizarre theology, advocate unquestioned support of every very questionable word and deed of Israel.] Indeed, so prescient is Tivnan in his analysis that it's barely an exaggerastion to write that the great work of Mearshirmer and Walt is but an extended footnote to the ground so competently and so cogently surveyed by Tivan two decades earlier. By all means, read this book. And then read the work of Mearshirmer and Walt. And than get angry, get very angry, and ask yourself to what extent does US support of Israel help or hinder the security and welfare of the US and it's citizenry.