Nevertheless, I remain convinced that the Israeli lobby is generously funded, well organised, and in the end, a lobby many times more powerful than mere numbers of Jewish Americans would suggest.

But in the end they are one of many powerful lobbies - oil, motor, defence, media, and so on, together with the ‘national/ethnic’ ones along the lines you mention.

I read the original article, and although it is compelling and many of its findings are no doubt true, I think they overstated the influence that such a lobby can have on people who are acting according to adtheir own deluded mixed up, ill-thought out, badly judged amoral game plan.

As Jim Holt said at the end of his It’s the Oil article in the LRB:

“Still, there is reason to be sceptical of the picture I have drawn: it implies that a secret and highly ambitious plan turned out just the way its devisers foresaw, and that almost never happens.”

And I’d say, ditto for the idea that the Jewish lobby in the US is influencing US foreign policy.

Its interesting though in relation to the visiting of King Abdullah to Britian. No one is suggesting that American and British Saudi’s are organising themselves into a lobby and pressing the US Government and Britian to support them absolutely, no matter how ikky their domestic politics are. And yet they support them anyway, dispite the complications that this involves.