That lobby we all know

The antisemitic trope of a global Jewish conspiracy goes back at least to the 1903 Protocols of the Elders of Zion – an early precursor to modern disinformation – but has proven incredibly tenacious. To this day one can find subscribers on both sides of the political aisle.

On the left it takes the shape of some scarcely defined “Jewish lobby” nefariously influencing public discourse and foreign policy towards the Middle East and Israel in particular. But while narratives are generally less extreme than on the right, they have penetrated much deeper into mainstream discourse.

Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on Palestine, whose reports and on Israel-Palestine are frequently cited by human rights groups and UN bodies has said in the past that the “Jewish lobby” was in control of the US. One of her predecessors, Richard Falk, posted a similarly spirited antisemitic cartoon depicting a  dog representing the US wearing a yarmulka, feasting on bloody bones and urinating on Lady Justice. UN High Commissioner for Human Rights at the time, Navi Pillay, declined to condemn Falk for the cartoon and is currently heading a 3-member UN Commission of Inquiry into the 2014 Gaza war. One of the members of the Commission, Miloon Kothari, as recently as 2022 in an interview with Mondoweiss voiced concern over the “Jewish lobby” controlling social media.

Jewish media control?

Jewish control of news outlets is a common conspiracy theory accompanying the “Jewish lobby” narrative. Unfortunately for Mr. Kothari the proposition not only lacks any factual basis but positively defies logic. The New York Times may have a Jewish editor-in-chief, but its main competitors – the Wall Street Journal belonging to the Murdoch family media conglomerate and the Jeff Bezos owned Washington Post – do not and would have every incentive to expose the Times’ blatant pro-Israel bias (which does not exist).

Along US partisan political lines, Murdoch (who is Christian) controlled conservative leaning Fox News has been far more supportive of Israel than progressive leaning MSNBC belonging to Brian Roberts’ (who is Jewish) Comcast media conglomerate.

Among the top 10 most influential news sources in the EU in 2023, Bloomberg (ranked 7^th) is the only one that could be suspected of ties to a “Jewish lobby” by even the most paranoid antisemite (again, with no evidence of any such ties or any pro-Israel bias to speak of). Not far behind Bloomberg is the BBC (ranked 9^th), which is openly hostile towards Israel.

Ranked 6^th is X, formerly known as Twitter, owned by South African billionaire Elon Musk, who has faced multiple allegations of antisemitism himself, which now mostly functions as a platform for pro-Russian (rather than pro-Israel) propaganda. TikTok, one of the most important news sources for the younger generation, is a Chinese-owned social media company where pro-Palestinian content outweighs pro-Israel content 20-to-1.

Jewish political control?

Another version of the conspiracy theory was suggested to me by a Palestinian friend, who told me he believed Jews constituted more than 50% of the US government. This too is not only false but completely off the mark.

Of the 26 members of the Cabinet, 7 (27%) are Jewish including White House Chief of Staff Jeff Zients, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, Attorney General Merrick Garland, Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen and Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas.

4 out of 50 state governors (8%) are Jewish: Josh Shapiro (Pennsylvania), J.B. Pritzker (Illinois), Jared Polis (Colorado), and Josh Green (Hawaii). It is also worth mentioning that all 4 of them belong to the Democratic Party which has been more critical of Israel than the Republicans since at least Obama took office.

9 out of 100 senators (9%) and 26 out of 435 members of the House of Representatives (6%) are Jewish. Apart from 2 Republican members of the House, all of them are Democrats. One of the 9 Supreme Court Justices (11%) is Jewish – Elena Kagan was appointed by Democratic president Barack Obama.

These numbers show that American Jews are certainly overrepresented in government, given that they constituted only 2.4% of the US adult population in 2020. A fairly benign explanation may be that high ranking politicians are disproportionately recruited from professions requiring higher education – with as much as 70% of members of congress having worked as lawyers, businesspeople (banking, insurance, finance and real estate) and physicians –, where Jews are traditionally overrepresented. According to the Pew Research Center American Jews are twice as likely as the general public to graduate from college and more than 2.5 times as likely to receive a postgraduate degree. Still, the numbers also mean that Jews are nowhere near holding a majority in any of the three branches of government.

Jewish financial control?

In its most common guise, the Jewish conspiracy is imagined playing out by exerting undue influence on acquiescent policy makers through the use of money and business.

In 2022 Forbes listed 267 billionaires with an estimated combined net worth of around $1.7 trillion. This may sound like a lot, but in the same year Forbes counted 2668 billionaires worldwide with an estimated combined net worth of $12.7 trillion (total private wealth was estimated at $454 trillion). This means that Jews constituted 10% of the world’s billionaires and controlled 13% of billionaire wealth, again far short of any kind of majority.

While some Jewish billionaires, like Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, support conservative and pro-Israel policies, most individuals on the list do not engage in political activism of any sort. Some, like Google co-founder Larry Page and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg are emphatically apolitical. Others, like Nick Pritzker and George Soros – ironically a frequent target of right-wing antisemitic conspiracy theories – support progressive and even anti-Zionist causes.

Powerful Israel lobby?

However, the brunt of the paranoid energy is directed towards the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), a pro-Israel lobbying organization frequently blamed by the left for the US government’s support of Israel. Indeed, listening to Israel critical political scientist John Mearsheimer, Marxist historian Ilan Pappé and Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein one could easily be forgiven for believing AIPAC has been single-handedly responsible for the last 60 years of US foreign policy in the Middle East – although they appear to disagree on who is culpable for the 2003 invasion of Iraq with Mearsheimer blaming the Israel lobby and Pappé blaming the oil lobby.

The image of AIPAC as an omnipotent political force is likely bolstered by the recent victories of AIPAC-supported pro-Israel Congressional candidates George Latimer and Wesley Bell against fiercely anti-Zionist incumbents Jamaal Bowman and Cori Bush in two closely contested Democratic primaries.

Believers in the vast powers of AIPAC will probably not be deterred by its failure to oust other anti-Zionist members of Congress who either faced no primary challenge at all, like Palestinian-American Rashida Tlaib, or had no realistic chance of losing, like Ilhan Omar, who referred to Jewish students supporting Israel as being “pro-genocide”. Nor will they be deterred by AIPAC’s failure to anoint Josh Shapiro – the highly popular Jewish Governor of the crucial swing state of Pennsylvania –as the Democratic Vice-presidential candidate. Even major policy defeats – the 2015 Iran nuclear deal comes to mind – seem to have no effect.

Unbearable double standards

But as is so often the case the most difficult aspects to stomach are the overt double standards.

The same people on the left turning hysterical over baseless claims of Jewish media control show not a shred of concern over Qatar-funded Al Jazeera failing to register as a foreign agent of Qatar after a 2020 Department of Justice ruling to that effect.

Al Jazeera, by far the most widely consumed news source in the Middle East and North Africa region, was banned in Israel earlier this year. Contrary to Israel critics’ attempts to cast the decision as a crackdown on free speech, the determination cannot be made unilaterally by the Israeli government out of dislike for unfavorable media coverage but must be preceded by a recommendation from intelligence agencies out of national security concerns and approved by an independent judge every 45 days. Indeed, the Tel Aviv-Jaffa District Court found a causal connection between consumption of Al Jazeera content and terror attacks inside Israel as well as a close connection between Al Jazeera and Hamas going so far as to suggest that Hamas views Al Jazeera as its public diplomacy arm.

So while the Wikipedia editorial community may have celebrated a victory over the “Jewish lobby” in declaring the Anti-Defamation League “generally unreliable” on the topics of the Israel-Palestine conflict and antisemitism (without much of any justification), it should be a source of great consternation to people who like to consult Wikipedia for brief overviews – such as myself – that Al Jazeera is still regarded as trustworthy.

In fact, with 77 out of 526 references (15%) Al Jazeera is the single most cited source in the “Gaza genocide” entry on Wikipedia (as of September 2024) with the number increasing to 100 references (19%) when including other Qatar-funded media outlets like Al-Araby Al-Jadeed, Middle East Monitor and Middle East Eye. (Incidentally, spots 2 and 3 go to the Journal of Genocide Research – which is the only academic journal cited in the Wikipedia entry and has faced allegations of anti-Zionist and antisemitic bias years prior to the current Gaza war – with 67 references (13%) and anti-Zionist British newspaper The Guardian with 32 references (6%), while all Israeli sources combined amount to only 29 references (5%) half of which are from left to far-left organizations such as Haaretz, +972 Magazine and B’Tselem.)

In the “Gaza Strip famine” entry (as of September 2024) Al Jazeera represents 148 out of 415 references (36%), far more than the 24 references (6%) to Israeli sources and even more than the 145 references (35%) to all of what might be considered independent sources – Reuters, CNN, Associated Press, Washington Post, New York Times, etc. – combined.

The same people registering dismay over AIPAC’s lobbying efforts show no concern over clandestine Iranian attempts to influence US politics either by sowing discord through funding of campus protests or by directing cyber-attacks at both presidential campaigns in an attempt to interfere in the upcoming election. Qatar has been funding US universities to the tune of $4.7 billion between 2001 and 2021 – outmatching nearly 100-to-1 AIPAC expenditures on lobbying and campaign contributions in a similar period – resulting in significantly increased levels of illiberal, anti-democratic and antisemitic sentiment at the targeted institutions.

Ungodly wealth

The same people feigning concern over $1.7 trillion of Jewish billionaire wealth should be horrified to learn that this roughly coincides with the value of Aramco, the Saudi state oil company entirely controlled by the Saudi royal family, which additionally controls the Saudi Public Investment Fund worth another $1 trillion. The House of Nahyan, Abu Dhabi’s ruling family, manages the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority worth $1 trillion, the Mubadala Investment Company worth $300 billion, the Abu Dhabi Developmental Holding Company worth $200 billion, and the Emirates Investment Authority worth $87 billion in addition to $300 billion of private wealth for a combined $1.9 trillion in assets under management. The Kuwaiti royal family, the House of Sabah, controls $1 trillion inside the Kuwait Investment Authority as well as $360 billion in private wealth. The Al-Thani royal family of Qatar boasts a whopping $330 billion private fortune along with the $500 billion in the Qatar Investment Authority. In total these four families control nearly $7 trillion in assets, probably more than all the world’s Jews taken together. When it comes to concentrated wealth there is simply no match to the Arab Gulf State royals.

Geopolitically, the contrast in influence is even more stark. Indeed, part of the explanation for the UN’s obsessive antipathy toward Israel is surely the fact that Israel with its population of less than 10 million and $500 billion annual GDP represents 0.1% of the global population and 0.5% of global GDP whereas the 21 member states of the Arab League represent nearly 500 million people – 6% of the global population – and $3.5 trillion annual GDP – over 3% of global GDP. These numbers increase to 2 billion people – 25% of the global population – and nearly $9 trillion GDP – more than 8% of global output – when including all 56 member states – nearly a third of all UN members – of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC).

The oil weapon

Most importantly, what is falsely alleged of Jews – that they control media or the finance industry – is actually true (to an extent) of Muslims with respect to the oil industry. Arab countries – especially Saudi Arabia, Iraq, the UAE and Kuwait – are responsible for 40-45% of global crude oil exports with the number increasing to 50-55% when including all OIC members – notably Nigeria, Kazakhstan and Iran. Additionally, the Arab petroleum exporting countries have historically not been shy about weaponizing this power.

Arguably the most successful Middle East lobbying campaign was the October 1973 to March 1974 Saudi-led oil embargo against Western countries that had supported Israel in the Yom Kippur war. The price of oil quadrupled almost overnight and triggered a worldwide recession that ended a 30-year postwar economic expansion and initiated a decade of stagflation.

Together with Soviet threats of direct military engagement the embargo hastened to arrival of UN Security Council Resolution 338 calling for a ceasefire which passed on October 22, 1973, 3 days after the embargo went into effect. Within two weeks the Foreign Ministers of the European Community (EC) – a precursor to the European Union – issued a joint statement urging a peace settlement which stressed “the need for Israel to end the territorial occupation” and that “account must be taken of the legitimate rights of the Palestinians.”

Even though the PLO was founded in 1964, it was only in the aftermath of the oil embargo that the PLO gained wider international recognition. Within a year, in October 1974, Yassir Arafat was invited to speak at the UN. Israel and the United States objected, but 3 of the 9 EC member states – France, Italy and Ireland – voted in favor, the rest abstained. Shortly thereafter the PLO was granted observer status in the General Assembly. At the time the PLO was internationally renowned for its terrorist attacks against the State of Israel – most recently the May 1974 Ma’alot Massacre with 30 dead (mostly children) and 70 injured. The PLO had also just adopted the 10 Point Program vowing to “employ all means, and first and foremost armed struggle, to liberate Palestinian territory”. In 1975 the UN General Assembly adopted resolution 3379 equating Zionism with racism.

A method championed by Nobel laureate Bob Shiller in the emerging field of Narrative Economics is to look at the frequency of word occurrences in books and newspaper articles to infer the prevalence of certain cultural narratives over time.

When examining the frequency with which expressions tied to the conflict, like “Occupied Arab Territories”, “Middle East Conflict”, “Palestinian Liberation Organization” and “Zionism”, occur in print media we can observe all of them peaking during or immediately following the oil embargo. This, too, would suggest that the oil embargo was a much more potent tool to promote the Palestinian cause than was the purportedly reprehensible act of occupation in 1967 which itself drew far less Western attention.

Word occurrences over time. Source: Google Ngram Viewer

No Jewish lobbying effort has ever achieved this kind of impact. And yet concern over the “Arab lobby” or “Muslim lobby” is nowhere to be found. The “Jewish lobby”, on the other hand, continues to inspire works of historical fiction masquerading as works of history. At the very least we should forcefully reject such notions as either wildly misinformed or in the case of people who ought to know better – I am thinking of political commentators, veteran historians and seasoned politicians – as extraordinarily malicious.

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A slightly longer German version of this article first appeared on the website of the Austrian think tank Mena-Watch.