Imperialism, Israel, and the Lobby
A Review of Ilan Pappé’s Lobbying for Zionism on Both Sides of the Atlantic
May 16, 2025
THE EXISTENCE OF AN “Israel lobby” is not, and cannot be, credibly denied. Organizations like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) in particular are well known, and critically they define themselves as a lobby. Ilan Pappé’s Lobbying for Zionism on Both Sides of the Atlantic explores the activities of AIPAC and numerous other bodies that have, over more than a century, passed the baton in what he likens to a relay of advocating for Jewish nationalism in Palestine, at the expense of its Indigenous inhabitants.
Much of the material in these eleven chapters, while perhaps brought together for the first time, is not new. But to my knowledge, this is the first volume to comprehensively cover the history of what I prefer to call the “Zionist movement” as it played out in both Britain and America—the two major imperial powers of the twentieth century whose support has been fundamental to the Zionist project in historic Palestine.
Rather than proceeding from the Balfour Declaration, Pappé goes back further, excavating the mid-nineteenth century origins of Zionism and tracing its emergence as a Christian eschatological tendency and response to antisemitism in Europe, before it took the unmistakable shape of the settler colonial project it has been ever since. He reminds us of the “strange concoction of antisemitism and ardent Zionism” at play when sections of the British political elite later threw their weight behind the Zionist project.1Ilan Pappé, Lobbying for Zionism on Both Sides of the Atlantic (London: One World Books, 2024), 34.
It was seen by some as a bulwark against communism. This is neatly illustrated in Winston Churchill’s 1920 article “Zionism versus Bolshevism: A Struggle for the Soul of the Jewish People.”2Pappé, Lobbying for Zionism, 67.
Pappé also shows that the Zionist movement’s key narrative was akin to that of other colonial projects: “The message coming from the Zionist lobby in London now was that a Zionist enclave was one way in which the white man could civilize the world.”3Pappé, Lobbying for Zionism, 37. Ultimately, he correctly emphasizes that it was fundamentally through appealing to British imperial interests that Zionism gained significance, quoting Zionist activist Max Nordau, for example, telling a 1919 conference in London: “We shall have to be the guards of the Suez Canal. We shall have to be the sentinels of your way to India via the Near East.”4Pappé, Lobbying for Zionism, 42.
Pappé tracks the evolution of the Zionist movement’s ideology and infrastructure right up to the present day, telling an important history that deserves to be more widely known and analyzed for its contribution to the genocide currently unfolding in Palestine. Bringing to bear his characteristic moral consistency, mastery of his subject matter, and engaging prose, Pappé tells the story with precision, compassion, and compelling detail.
He charts the deep roots of American Christian Zionism in the United States during the period in which the Balfour Declaration was being won in Britain, and the efforts of the movement to override the Wilsonian principle of self-determination, which Zionism blatantly contradicted. And instead of skipping from 1917 straight to 1948, Pappé dwells on Zionist activism during the British Mandate in Palestine.
Here, to his credit and in contrast to several other studies of the Zionist movement, he centers the critical role of Palestinian resistance to both British imperialism and Zionist settler colonialism. Meanwhile, he recounts with skill the way most European white leftists in this era embraced Zionism as a “socialist” movement that would develop the land of Palestine and its resources, which had purportedly been neglected by the native population.
Pappé observes insightfully that Chaim Weizmann, along with other key figures who were linchpins between Britain and the Zionist movement in Palestine during this period, made a conscious decision to abandon the explicitly colonial vocabulary of the movement’s founding ideologues such as Theodor Herzl, in favor of a more palatable, euphemistic language of “development.”5Pappé, Lobbying for Zionism, 69.
Pappé’s trademark ability to portray complex historical events in an accessible way is on full display. He demonstrates clearly that Israel was far from a fait accompli with the publication of the Balfour Declaration, exploring in detail the backtracking, internal conflicts, and vacillations of the British colonial rulers of Palestine during the Mandate.
It was external circumstances, not the Zionist lobby, that eventually strengthened the case for Zionism. It was not only the catastrophe of the Holocaust in Europe but also, and perhaps in particular, Western states’ refusal to take in significant numbers of Jewish refugees.6Pappé, Lobbying for Zionism, 83-84. Pappé argues that Jewish Zionists in Britain lobbied for the gates of Palestine—but not those of Britain itself—to be flung open to Jews fleeing persecution.
Likewise, in the US, Pappé recalls notorious episodes such as the St. Louis ocean liner and its mostly Jewish passengers being turned away from the port of Miami in 1939. He insists that the “moral cartography of the American Zionist lobby” was such that it “never seriously pushed for more Jews to be admitted into the US…[and instead argued that] the salvation of Jews lay in unlimited Jewish immigration into Palestine.”7Pappé, Lobbying for Zionism, 132.
Pappé is at pains to demonstrate that the first target of Zionist lobbying has always been Jewish communities. He cites a publication by the Jewish National Fund, a key organ of Zionist colonialism, which implores fellow Zionists to “inundate the Jewish people with slogans and pictures, to rivet their attention.”8Pappé, Lobbying for Zionism, 76.
Pappé is at pains to demonstrate that the first target of Zionist lobbying has always been Jewish communities.
And he notes that in the 1940s, a decade when American Zionists could draw a quarter of a million people to rally in support of Jewish nationalism, it was still necessary for the American Zionist Emergency Committee (a precursor to AIPAC) to instigate the formation of new coalitions. These would see Zionism dominate—but also divide—American Jewish communities, following the seminal Biltmore Conference in 1942.
Given the importance of this differentiation between Judaism as an ethnoreligious identity and Zionism as a political movement and ideology, it is disappointing that Pappé nowhere thoroughly deconstructs and dismantles the concept of dual loyalty. Moreover, it is unhelpful that he sometimes uses the phrase “Jewish lobby” to refer to Jewish Zionists in the same breath as speaking of the Christian Zionist lobby.
Indeed, for such a contentious topic, a surprising lack of analytical clarity is provided. For me, Pappé is not critical enough of John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, the realist international relations scholars whose 2007 book, The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy, essentially argued that the Israel lobby was undermining the US national interest. At times, Pappé himself appears to take the concept of the “national interest” to be objective and self-evident, despite the very work of pro-Israel bodies being to foster and maintain a certain perception of US interests that perfectly aligns with unconditional support for Israel.9For example, see Pappé, Lobbying for Zionism, 181.
When it comes to demonstrating the Zionist movement’s power, the problem with taking such a broad geographic and historical scope is that it allows little room for the tracing the process by which the movement grew in influence. At times, its power is simply asserted or assumed, and language such as “obedience” mischaracterizes the power relationship between AIPAC and various US presidents.10Pappé, Lobbying for Zionism, 332–3. In other episodes, the movement’s limitations are acknowledged, the nuances and complexities of its internal rivalries and affiliations spelled out.
Most importantly, though, the book suffers from an insufficiently theoretical lens in conceptualizing the boundaries of the lobby itself, and the intimately related nature and limits of its power. Large sections of the book focus almost exclusively on AIPAC, doing a disservice to readers’ understanding of the wider movement.
In other places, liberal Zionists such as the New Israel Fund appear to be treated as distinct from the lobby by dint of being at odds with AIPAC, despite being squarely within the Zionist camp, or the lines between the neoconservative movement and the Zionist movement become blurred. Lacking a substantial introduction, the book does have a preface that includes a brief section titled “What is a Lobby?” This section provides some discussion of definitions used variously by Mearsheimer, Walt, and historian Walter Hixson to tackle this subject—asserting correctly that the object of study should be viewed not as a single monolithic entity but as a complex and multifaceted network of groups acting in a loose coalition.
Acknowledging that most definitions are insufficient to capture the scope of the Zionist movement, Pappé therefore concludes in favor of “the most liberal definition.” However, even this limited exploration of the concept and practice of lobbying reveals its inability to do justice to the case at hand.
The Zionist movement has always done more than plain lobbying and has always been transnational. Unlike lobbies that seek to influence national or international policies, the Zionist movement helped bring a new state into being and then entered into a power-sharing relationship with that new state when laws like the 1952 World Zionist Organization-Jewish Agency (Status) Law conferred quasi-governmental status on key organs of the movement.
A much more fruitful analytical framework is available, namely the Marxist theory of social movements from above and below set out by sociologists Laurence Cox and Alf Gunvald Nilsen.11Laurence Cox and Alf Gunvald Nilsen, We Make Our Own History Marxism and Social Movements in the Twilight of Neoliberalism (London: Pluto Press, 2014). Their masterful book, We Make Our Own History, reconceptualizes the classic debate between structure and agency by positioning social structures as the product of collective agency over time.
Though of course we do not make our own history in circumstances of our choosing, Cox’s and Nilsen’s attentiveness to the power of social movements pushes back against structural overdeterminism and restores our ability to see that no part of the history of Palestine, from 1948 partition to 2024 genocide, has been inevitable. While we can never ignore geopolitical relationships, nor should we deny that domestic politics is an arena of conflict where understandings of the far from self-evident “national interest” are contested. As Pappé puts it, “Power needs to be obtained, sustained and defended.”12Pappé, Lobbying for Zionism, 511.
Intense disagreement swirls over how we should interpret the significance of pro-Israel pressure groups. While supporters of Israel falsely dismiss anyone interested in critiquing their activities as antisemitic, allies of the Palestinians are split in a more interesting way. Some attribute huge power to Israel lobbyists; among such critical voices is Asa Winstanley, who attributes the downfall of Jeremy Corbyn in Britain primarily to Israel’s advocates.13Asa Winstanley, Weaponizing Anti-Semitism: How the Israel Lobby Brought Down Jeremy Corbyn (London: Pluto Press, 2023).
Others downplay that power or at least argue strongly against explaining Western support for Israel chiefly by way of reference to pro-Israel lobbying. Adam Hanieh, for instance, notes that such “false and politically dangerous” viewpoints often exhibit tunnel vision, overlooking wider geopolitical systems, and ultimately get “the relationship between Western states and Israel fundamentally wrong.”14Adam Hanieh, “Framing Palestine: Israel, the Gulf states, and American power in the Middle East,” TNI, June 13, 2024.
It’s a shame that Pappé’s Lobbying for Zionism on Both Sides of the Atlantic doesn’t engage these tensions or make use of Cox’s and Nilsen’s concept of social movements from above. Nonetheless, though not Pappé’s most important work, this is a valuable contribution to the literature on the Zionist movement. It helps to consolidate the topic as a legitimate field of study, being taken forward by projects like the Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism. In the last analysis, the critique and defeat of the Zionist movement is a necessary precondition for Palestinians’ liberation to succeed. ×
Notes & References
- Ilan Pappé, Lobbying for Zionism on Both Sides of the Atlantic (London: One World Books, 2024), 34.
- Pappé, Lobbying for Zionism,
- Pappé, Lobbying for Zionism,
- Pappé, Lobbying for Zionism,
- Pappé, Lobbying for Zionism,
- Pappé, Lobbying for Zionism, 83–84.
- Pappé, Lobbying for Zionism,
- Pappé, Lobbying for Zionism,
- For example, see Pappé, Lobbying for Zionism,
- Pappé, Lobbying for Zionism, 332–3.
- Laurence Cox and Alf Gunvald Nilsen, We Make Our Own History Marxism and Social Movements in the Twilight of Neoliberalism (London: Pluto Press, 2014).
- Pappé, Lobbying for Zionism,
- Asa Winstanley, Weaponizing Anti-Semitism: How the Israel Lobby Brought Down Jeremy Corbyn (London: Pluto Press, 2023).
- Adam Hanieh, “Framing Palestine: Israel, the Gulf states, and American power in the Middle East,” TNI, June 13, 2024.