Talk:Israel lobby in the United States

Areas for Improvement

Some initial thoughts. --Ben Houston 01:28, 27 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Coverage of "the visible campaign undertaken in 1982 by the Israeli lobby to defeat pro-Arab Congressman Paul Findley of Illinois" (Bard's words)
Coverage of real anti-Semitism that involves conspiracy theories about the Israel lobby and Jewish influence.
More coverage of the origins -- the sources I had didn't really cover it.
Integration of more sources into the article.

Word of Caution: This article is not Mearsheimer-Walt

Unlike the article about the controversial John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt paper, this article is not about making the argument that Mearsheimer and Walt were making: that the Israel lobby has excessive and detrimental to US interests -- that debate can stay in The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy. This is an article that covers the "Israel lobby" in a board and NPOV descriptive way and as such coverage of the Mearsheimer-Walt "Israel lobby" paper controversy should at most be a small subsection. --Ben Houston 01:28, 27 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Purpose of article?

Is this an article about the POV of Mitchell Bard? If that is the case this violates WP:NPOV, that reads: The neutral point of view is a means of dealing with conflicting views. The policy requires that, where there are or have been conflicting views, these should be presented fairly, but not asserted.

Suggest to merge any useful information with Israel-United_States_relations ≈ jossi ≈ t • @ 16:44, 27 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Good point Jossi. I marked it as a stub for the time being basically because, when I put it together yesterday evening, I relied mostly on one reference. Your criticism is useful and I'll expand it today to address it. Thank you. I also created this article Arab lobby in the United States -- could you have a look at it as well? Best. --Ben Houston 16:50, 27 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Also, I should note that there is a whole category devoted to Category:United States-Israeli relations. It is not necessary to merge all articles on the topic into one super article. --Ben Houston 16:59, 27 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Of course not, but having an article that presents the POV of a single person is frowned upon, in particular when the subject is controversial. See WP:POVFORK ≈ jossi ≈ t • @ 17:31, 27 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I understand that some are scared of this topic, but as long as you stay away from the crack pots its pretty average stuff. The source, Bard, is the executive director of a group that promotes the US-Israel relationship and also runs the Jewish Virtual Library -- he is just talking honest about a subject he is very close to. The merger into The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy isn't really appropriate -- that article's thesis is that the Israel lobby influences US foreign policy to the determent to the US's interests, that is a controversial thesis. This article is not about that thesis. Requiring that any discussion of the ISrael lobby be centered around that thesis is unreasonable and leads implicitly to NPOV coverage of the issue. Also, you are aware that the second sentence of the AIPAC article is this one: "Describing itself as 'America's Pro-Israel Lobby,' it is a mass-membership organization including both Jews and non-Jews, and is considered one of the most powerful political lobbies in the United States." The existence of a Israel lobby or Pro-Israel lobby is not in question, but there is currently no article that covers the full topic it in an NPOV fashion. This is what I am aiming for. The trick is to stay precise and use good sources. --Ben Houston 17:43, 27 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

"Some are scared of this topic"? Ben, the problem I see is that some people are obsessed with this topic! As for your discussion of a merger, I was not aware that a Wikipedia article was supposed to have a "thesis." I thought it is supposed to have a topic, and this article and The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy have the same topic. If the latter article also has a "thesis," especially if it is as you describe it, then that needs to be corrected by editing to make the article NPOV, and this one-source article should be merged into it. 6SJ7 18:21, 27 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Your are misunderstanding something key: The article The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy is about a paper (the title of the paper is, coincidentally "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy") that puts forward a very specific and very controversial thesis. Thus when I say "thesis" I was refering to the thesis of that working paper that is the topic of that article.

In contrast, this article's topic is the boarder topic of the Israel lobby with the goal of putting things into context. I am still working on the article and incorporating more sources. --Ben Houston 19:01, 27 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I also thought that when you said "article" you were talking about a Wikipedia article, not an article somewhere else that is the subject of a Wikipedia article. But that underlines the big problem here, on which I agree with Jossi. A working paper here and article there, all about essentially the same topic, should not each have their own article on Wikipedia, it should be part of a single article about the subject. There are probably only a handful of individual articles and working papers that are individually notable enough to warrant their own article (see for example, X Article.) 6SJ7 19:44, 27 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I see. My mistake. ≈ jossi ≈ t • @ 19:09, 27 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal: Merge with The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy

Yet, it would be better to merge all the POVs into one article that describes them rather than separate ones, as these are actually POV forks. ≈ jossi ≈ t • @ 19:10, 27 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I agree, and I think the title should be "Conspiracy theories about the 'Israel lobby'". 6SJ7 19:37, 27 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Conspiracy theories about the Israel lobby? My sources at the moment are Jewish Virtual Library, The New Yorker, the Washington Post, The Nation, Foreign Policy in Focus and the New York Review of Books. Also, AIPAC describes itself as "America's Pro-Israel Lobby" -- thus there is no need to put "Israel lobby" in scare quotes. We should have a section that describes why some feel that there is no Israel lobby and also in the section on anti-Semitic conspiracies we should include the debate where the line should be drawn between reasonable debate and conspiracy theories. --Ben Houston 19:47, 27 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Relax, I was mostly kidding about the title. As for there being a pro-Israel lobby, of course there is, there is also a Saudi Arabia lobby, a dairy lobby, a China lobby, an aviation industry lobby, and hundreds if not thousands of others, but I do not see them attracting similar amounts of attention. 6SJ7 20:07, 27 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

"I do not see them attracting similar amounts of attention." Did you know that yesterday I first wrote the article Arab lobby in the United States. When I started to link these articles to others they were in relatively equivalent states. Here are the versions of both articles at the time I called it a night Israel lobby in the United States and Arab lobby in the United States. Since then, to no real surprise on my part, only this article has attracted criticism, so much that people have questioned whether it deserves to exist. Naturally, I have responded to the concerns of critics by putting more effort into the article. This results in this article being longer and more developed than the one I wrote on the Arab lobby -- which, it seems, opens me to criticism, such as yours, that I am giving disproportionate attention into this article. Honestly, think about this for a second -- is the cause of this disproportionate attention really just me or is there something more going on here? My strong belief is that the cause of the disproportionate attention to this area as a whole both in Wikipedia and in the media is the result of a complex interaction between a number of factors, it is not as simple as your off hand criticism of the disproportionate attention suggests at first glance. --Ben Houston 20:26, 27 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]