An old, familiar story

Here is a no-longer-shocking, but still appalling story of a now common tale -- that of a powerful, single-minded lobby and how it impacts American politics. Told by Philip Weiss, on his remarkable blog Mondoweiss, it is entitled "How the Israel lobby flexed its muscle to destroy New Jersey freeholder candidacy of a Lebanese-American who had expressed sympathy for Palestinians" (1/29/09).

Weiss writes: This morning Adam Horowitz wrote a post about Congressman Bill Pascrell's journey to supporting relief for the people of Gaza in the House. The post prompted a journalist friend to send along the following story about a supporter of Pascrell who had political ambition in New Jersey. As the journalist says, "It's a textbook example of the intimidating impact that 'the lobby' has on politicians -- an explanation of why we get 390-5 votes in the House on pro-Israel resolutions. I wrote this essay about it a while back, but obviously there's no place to publish it."

Weiss asked if he could publish it on his site and proceeded to do so. Here is the link:
Mondoweiss