Is the pro-Israel media lobby losing its grip?

Polls show that the American public increasingly sees two sides to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict -- despite the best efforts of the neoconservative punditocracy.

By Eric Boehlert

Apr 17, 2002 | The current chaos in the Middle East has left partisans on both sides angry and bitter. Among the most frustrated, though, may be the pro-Israel pundits who have dominated the debate in the U.S. for decades.

Israel's aggressive incursion into the West Bank, in which 5,000 Palestinians have been arrested and hundreds killed, may mark a turning point in how the conflict is seen in the United States. Suddenly the pro-Israel media mantra -- that Israel's fight is America's fight, and that the two countries aren't simply allies, but brothers in arms with inseparable goals -- is being viewed with some new skepticism.

Polls show Americans remain strongly committed to Israel's security. Yet there's evidence that the nation's cadre of relentlessly pro-Israeli commentators, most of them neoconservatives, have quietly lost their corner on American public opinion. Instead of shaping it, they're caught chasing it.

Their media crusade to topple Iraq's Saddam Hussein, for instance, seems to be foundering, thanks to weeks of Israeli/Palestinian chaos. A majority of Americans told NBC/Wall Street Journal pollsters that an Iraqi invasion should be delayed until Middle East violence subsides. And other major national polls show that Americans increasingly question the premises of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's incursion into the West Bank, Israel's most aggressive military operation in two decades, and how it will achieve peace.

Most of these same conservatives are coming off the high of the war in Afghanistan, when hawkish pundits backed the U.S. action with a full throat, spoke in perfect pitch with the White House's bellicose tone, and found much of their bloodlust matched by the American public. So their recent impotence has led to some unpleasant, and unusual, bitterness directed at President Bush.

On Capitol Hill, where the pro-Israel political lobby is considered one of the Beltway's most powerful, steadfast support for Israel remains the norm. But it was odd on Monday to hear the mostly Jewish crowd boo longtime pro-Israel hawk Paul Wolfowitz, now a deputy defense secretary, merely for suggesting at a Washington rally that innocent Palestinians hurt in the current conflict deserve some sympathy too. The crowd clearly opposed Secretary of State Colin Powell's peace mission, as well as President Bush's attempts to get Sharon to rein in his military operation.

The boos for Wolfowitz were a measure of how embattled many pro-Israel American Jewish hawks feel, especially given Bush's call last week for Israel to withdraw from the Palestinian territories "without delay" (a call, it must be noted, that Sharon has ignored with impunity). Clearly Israel's media lobby is not having the success it once did calling the shots in Washington and maintaining public support.

The dynamics could soon change, particularly if another wave of suicide bombers is unleashed. But for now, a Palestinian perspective that was once almost completely absent from America's mainstream press is being heard by Americans.

Next Page: Is Bill O'Reilly getting fed up with Israel?

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