World Politics News   Articles for World Politics Course

M.J. Rosenberg is a former member of the American-Israel Political Action Committee (AIPAC), one of the strongest supporters of Israel in the US.  He has written a very thoughtful (and very critical) essay on the possible outcomes of the planned speech by Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu to the US Congress.   Perhaps the most important criticism made by Rosenberg is this comment:

Netanyahu’s speech to Congress, coupled with his statement that he represents all Jews, threatens to upset the whole applecart that has been constructed since 1950. By doing so, he is undermining Israel’s support from the community that is the foundation of Israel’s strong political position in the United States….If American Jews feel that they are being forced to choose between the United States and Israel, there can be little doubt that they will choose the country they live in and to which they have always been devoted. Netanyahu is playing with fire when he even hints at such a choice.

Rosenberg should be taken seriously.  We will have to see how the speech, if it is given, is received on 3 March.

Two new social science studies (one conducted by two of our colleagues from the University of Massachusetts) have probed the extent to which wealthy donors to political campaigns can influence voting in Congress.   The studies are sobering.  They indicate that the votes of Congresspeople correlate more strongly with the views of their donors more than the do with the views of their constituents.  Moreover, the studies found that the views of large donors tend to be more extreme than the views of even partisans of the representatives.

It appears as if Germany has rejected Greece’s most recent proposal for a debt deal.  The Greeks are clearly getting worn down and they have begun to make concessions that had been completely rejected by the new Syriza government even last week.  But it is hard to appreciate the depth of Greek economic misery under the current austerity programs.  All the available data suggest that Greece is going through an economic downturn that dwarfs even the misery of the Great Depression in the 1930s.   But the Germans remain adamant.