Mehdi Hasan's Zeteo has a new documentary out on AIPAC, asking whether the "Israel lobby" is really an agent of a foreign power. A shadowy, fabulously rich network pulling Washington's strings: it's one of the most enduring antisemitic tropes of our age. So I did Mehdi a favour and checked the numbers. Over the past decade, Israel ranked tenth for registered foreign lobbying spending, behind China, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE and even the Marshall Islands. AIPAC came 191st among Washington's lobbies. The entire pro-Israel lobbying category spent less than gun-rights groups, and a fraction of what the drug companies spend. Elections? AIPAC's super PAC spends serious money. But it competes in a system where outside groups have poured in nearly $2 billion this cycle, and six organisations have each spent over $60 million. Strangely, Zeteo seems far less curious about Riyadh, Beijing or Doha. The truth about the Israel lobby. Link to my new column here 👇 jakewallissimons.com

Mehdi Hasan has found a new villain. Or rather, an old one. Zeteo, the Israelophobic media outfit he founded after MSNBC dropped his show, has spent the past two years training its fire on the Jewish state, and its latest offering goes straight for the jugular. Night Flower: Inside Aipac’s Fight for Influence, which premiered in Chicago this week and is available globally, takes aim at the dreaded American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac) and asks whether it is an agent of a foreign power. Cue anonymous insiders, disaffected former staffers and a cameo from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. You don’t need to be a historian to recognise the shape of the story: a shadowy network, fabulously rich, pulling the strings of the world’s most powerful government on behalf of the Jews. Yup, the all-powerful “Israel lobby” is one of the most enduring antisemitic tropes of our age, the lightly sanitised heir to an old conspiracy theory. The film’s principal revelations? An anonymous former staffer feels that Aipac sometimes seems to be “doing Israel’s bidding”, and Keith Weissman, a former employee, who admits passing information from a Pentagon source to the Israeli embassy two decades ago, an episode that led to espionage charges that were dropped in 2009. Aipac, for its part, insists it takes “direction from one place: the Aipac Board”. Pretty feeble, no? But here’s the thing. The Israel lobby is easy to mythologise, but it is also surprisingly easy to measure. Foreign lobbying in America is a matter of public record, and so is domestic lobbying and election spending. So, as a favour to Mehdi Hasan, I dug into the numbers. I looked at what Israel spends compared with everybody else; what Aipac spends compared with the rest of Washington; and where its real power lies. What I found bears almost no resemblance to the legend. Let me explain... New post. Link in first reply

Former British diplomat @Ameer_Kotecha tells me and @Mr_Andrew_Fox that Britain is “playing a dangerous game” in trashing our relationship with Israel. Link in first reply