Overwhelmingly, a pro-Israel attitude is becoming a prerequisite for federal elected office. According to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, in 2010, every new member of Congress had an established relationship with AIPAC staff and almost every freshman member of Congress had submitted to AIPAC a position paper on U.S. Middle East policy.

In January, Rep. Jim Moran of Virginia, a Democrat, announced his intentions to not run for reelection, even though he was serving in a safe Democratic district and did not face a serious challenge for his seat. While Moran cited his frustration with the gridlock in Washington as a factor in his decision, some have pointed to the controversy surrounding his career — particularly, his 2003 comments about the Israel lobby being part of the United States’ decision to enter the Iraq War — as an influential issue.

It is curious how much primacy the Israeli point-of-view has — both inside and outside of Washington. In much of American and Western reporting on the Israeli-Palestinian and the Israeli-Iranian conflicts, for example, there appears to be an overwhelming bias toward covering the Israeli side of the story. Rarely is anything other than the result of the fighting shown on Western media regarding Palestine’s and Iran’s motivations for engaging Israel, such as Israel’s transgressions against them.

For example, the organization Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting found in 2009 that only 2 percent of all American news reports concerning the West Bank or the Gaza Strip actually refer to the territories as being occupied. In an earlier study, FAIR found that from September 2000 through March 2002, ABC, CBS and NBC overwhelmingly called Israeli attacks against Palestinians “retaliations.” In these reports, the word “retaliation” was used to justify Israeli action against Palestine 79 percent of the time, compared to just 9 percent of the time for Palestinian action against Israel.

Israel as a paper tiger

The relationship Washington has with the pro-Israel lobby presents a curious phenomenon, as Israel itself, according to Influence Explorer, spent only $1,250 on Washington lobbying efforts in 2013 — it spent only more than Mali, which spent nothing. In comparison, Sudan spent $5,000, Luxembourg $14,900, and Somalia over $173,000. Overwhelmingly, the pro-Israel lobby in America is composed of Americans — including members of pro-Israel Jewish groups, Zionists and fundamentalist Christians — who believe that a Jewish-controlled state of Israel is a prerequisite for the battle of Armageddon. In 2012, the pro-Israel lobby donated $15 million to the races, with over $12 million coming from individuals.

It can be argued that the growth of the conservative caucus in the Republican Party suggests that the pro-Israel lobby has grown to its strongest point in recent history. Recent events may suggest, however, that the pro-Israel lobby may be evolving into a paper tiger.

In the minds of many Americans, modern-day Israel has been commingled with the Western biblical Israel in such a way that the two cannot be easily separated. This creates a sense among many that defending the Jewish state is a matter of faith — even despite reports of atrocities and international crimes committed by Israel. According to a February Pew Research poll, 66 percent of the American public feels that the amount of support the U.S. offers Israel is not enough or is about right.

“When asked whether God gave Israel to the Jewish people, more Christians (55%) than Jews (40%) say yes (although virtually all of the discrepancy is explained by Jews’ lower levels of belief in God overall),” read the poll’s findings. “And the share of white evangelicals saying that God gave Israel to the Jews (82%) is on par with the percentage of Orthodox Jews who believe this (84%).”

Perceptions of preference

This gives the U.S. government the appearance of extraordinary sympathy with the Israeli government. In May, for example, Newsweek reported that Washington feels that Jerusalem “crossed red lines” in regards to Israel’s efforts to steal industrial and technical secrets from the U.S. military and from American companies under the cover of trade missions and joint defense technology contracts.

“No other country close to the United States continues to cross the line on espionage like the Israelis do,” said a former congressional staffer who attended a classified briefing in late 2013 on lowering visa restrictions on Israeli citizens.

It is currently being debated whether Israeli citizens should be allowed to enter the U.S. and stay for up to 90 days without a visa, but the regulation shift has been stalled due to concerns about Israel barring Arab-Americans from entering Israel.

“I don’t think anyone was surprised by these revelations,” the former aide said. “But when you step back and hear…that there are no other countries taking advantage of our security relationship the way the Israelis are for espionage purposes, it is quite shocking.”

These allegations have never surfaced publicly, though. The FBI will neither confirm nor deny that it briefed Congress on the issue. The State Department has indicated that it only advised Congress on visa reciprocity issues, while Israel has flatly denied the accusations of espionage, despite evidence to confirm its existence.

It has been alleged that there is an active campaign in Washington to deny any incidents of Israeli espionage. One such incident supporting this theory surrounds a report of an Israeli “agent” caught coming out of an air duct while attempting to bug then-Vice President Al Gore’s hotel room.

“The Secret Service had secured [Gore’s] room in advance and they all left except for one agent, who decided to take a long, slow time on the pot,” Newsweek reported, quoting a former senior U.S. intelligence operative. “So the room was all quiet and he hears a noise in the vent. And he sees the vent clips being moved from the inside. And then he sees a guy starting to exit the vent into the room. He kind of coughed and the guy went back into the vents.”

This information was quickly hushed up and not made available to the public, while Rep. Brad Sherman tried to explain away the concern.

“America spies on just about everybody,” he said. “And we have counter-espionage folks who operate on the assumption that everybody’s trying to spy on us.”

The conservatives and Israel

This determination to defend Israel, in fact, has little to do with Israel. On foreign affairs matters, Israel is actually losing ground with the U.S. In 2013, for example, Israel strongly favored and supported the U.S. bombing Syria in response to the discovery of chemical weapons in the possession of the administration of President Bashar Assad. Congressional pressure — especially from the Republicans and the conservative wing — forced the Obama administration to seek a diplomatic solution, despite Israel’s threat of acting against Syria alone.

“If the lobby — which is not one monolithic group, but numerous organizations, Jewish and Christian, as well as the Israeli government — were as powerful as many of their critics argue, then Eric Cantor wouldn’t have been defeated this week, and Barack Obama wouldn’t have been re-elected president,“ Roger Aronoff, editor and executive secretary with Accuracy in Media, a grassroots news media watchdog, told MintPress News.

“The bottom line is that the U.S. doesn’t always cooperate with or support Israel, and those in Congress or the White House who do, do so for a variety of reasons. But, the overwhelming reason that most American politicians support Israel most of the time, is that Israel is a good and important ally to America, and generally shares our democratic and ethical values, to the extent that free countries can be characterized as having such national values.”

In reality, the move toward Israel reflects more a change in the philosophical makeup of the current Congress than a change of attitude toward Israel. The 2010 elections resulted in the largest removal of incumbents from Congress in recent memory. These new members exhibit an increasingly hardened posture in line with what was previously considered to be an extreme position. This position — arguably demonstrated in the surprise defeat of recently-resigned House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, the sole non-Christian member of the House Republicans — reflects an increasingly xenophobic attitude among certain portions of the voting populace against that which is non-white or “un-American.”

This represents a party that is growing, in large steps, out-of-sync with the nation. The Republicans are becoming more male-centered, more Christian, more homogeneous in demographic and philosophy. While it is true that this will bring the nation closer to unconditional support of Israel, it is also eroding the potential for common ground and compromise that is essential for effective legislation.