The LRB Podcast, live: Beyond the Israel Lobby

Twenty years ago, the London Review of Books published a controversial piece by the political scientists John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, in which they argued that the Israel lobby had succeeded in diverting US foreign policy ‘far from what the national interest would suggest, while simultaneously convincing Americans that US interests and those of Israel are essentially identical’. This ‘special relationship’ had not only sanctioned the oppression of Palestinians and the occupation of their land; it had led the world's most powerful country into wars that had destabilised the entire region.

Today Israel is isolated on the international stage and US public opinion is increasingly critical, especially among younger people. Two days on from Israel’s legislative elections, US editor Adam Shatz chairs a conversation about the current state of US-Israel relations for a live recording of the LRB Podcast. He’ll be joined by Robert Malley of the International Crisis Group, who advised three US administrations on Middle Eastern affairs; Ian Lustick, a political scientist at the University of Pennsylvania and the author, with Eli Clifton, of Israel’s Lobby; and Nadia Abu El-Haj, an anthropologist at Barnard College, who has written widely on Israel-Palestine.

Part of a series of events around the LRB’s annual Autumn Lecture in New York City, which will take place at the New School on Wednesday, 28 October at 7.30 p.m.