[Audio] George Kenney asks James Petras about the \’Israel Lobby,\’ what\’s behind it, what makes it different than the tobacco lobby, the NRA, or the AARP. Total runtime fifty six minutes.

In the UK press one frequently finds tough criticism of Israel. See, for example, this recent essay by Mark Steel in the Independent, a thoroughly mainstream UK paper [proving me wrong the paper pulled the article sometime in the last 24 hours, but you can still find it at Mark’s site]. One cannot imagine a similar essay appearing in the New York Times, or the Washington Post, or the Los Angeles Times, or the Wall Street Journal, or USA Today, or indeed any other major American newspaper. Why not? Perhaps more taboo than mentioning the ‘Israel Lobby,’ is asking what’s behind it, what makes it different than the tobacco lobby, the NRA, or the AARP? To get at this vexing issue I turned to an extraordinarily distinguished leftist academic, Dr. James Petras. Jim is one of the very, very few people that I know of who reasons sensibly about the problem of Zionist influence and who isn’t afraid to speak out. And he’s an amazing conversationalist. It was kind of Jim to talk with me and I’ll try to live up to his example. Seek justice without fear or favor.

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http://www.electricpolitics.com/podcast/2009/01/the_art_of_plain_speaking.html