Much has been written and spoken in recent months about the so-called "Israel lobby" in American politics, a movement allegedly made up of influential American Jewish organizations and individuals who cumulatively exercise a "stranglehold" over the U.S. Congress, skewing our foreign policy in directions inimical to the nation's proper aims and interests. As I and others have tried to show, this notion is a pernicious slander, and a lie.⁴ The truth is that, for a variety of historical reasons, the degree of influence exercised by American Jews in the political arena has always been limited; when it comes to Israel in particular, American governments have acted in different ways at different times, but always out of their sense of the American national interest and with the backing of the American people. [snip]

Muslim-Americans have become a group avidly sought after by both parties, a group whose numbers are growing and whose group preferences, strongly expressed, are and will continue to be taken into account. In the foreseeable future, it is highly unlikely that American Jews, whose numbers are in any case hardly increasing, can play such a role. They can certainly not do so as long as they remain unthinkingly wedded to a party that is paying them ever less heed.

At any rate, and thanks in part to the stubbornly lopsided Jewish allegiance to the Democratic party, the influence wielded by the Jewish community has not been increasing but receding, even while the numerical representation of Jews in public office has grown. Not only is the Democratic party of today farther than ever from the Democratic party of Jewish memory, but the steadfast lack of interest shown by American Jews in the Republican party has robbed them of any possibility of being courted by either party as a potentially valuable swing vote. Worst of all is that this reality continues to be denied by Jewish spokesmen who most need to recognize and confront it