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Comment by DSingularity | Hacker News Reader

It’s not purely geopolitical but I think the top 3 factors for this:

1, the most powerful political organization in the US is AIPAC. More powerful than any other lobbyist and can tip the scales in almost any election.

2, the services provided by Israel to support US-backed dictatorships in the Middle East (eg the NSO group)

3, the military industrial complex loves the Israeli customer because they are dependable, repeating customers (Israel has been bombing the Palestinians and its regional neighbors for decades now)

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Could you provide a source for AIPAC being the most powerful political organization in the US? That seems surprising given that they spend a fraction of what other lobbying groups do. How is that measured?

> That seems surprising given that they spend a fraction Probably by design to “seem to” spend only small amount of money, so that even people who know how to search on google for key facts won’t immediately see their outsized influence.

From an nytimes article [0] on this topic and lot of anecdotes on fall outs from taking policy positions against israel (not anti-Semitic)

“ Unlike the National Rifle Association, the Human Rights Campaign and other powerful grass-roots advocacy organizations, Aipac, which is bipartisan, does not endorse or raise money for candidates. But its members do, with the organization’s strong encouragement.”

“Traveling to Israel on a trip financed by Aipac’s education arm is practically a rite of passage for freshman members of Congress.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/04/us/politics/aipac-congres...

Does this convincingly show AIPAC is "the most powerful political organization in the US"?

More than the Democratic party? More than the Republican party?

More than these groups? https://largest.org/people/lobbying-groups/

I probably would rephrase parent’s comment as “one of the Most powerful political organization”

As a congressman/woman while considering a policy position against Israel AIPAC is probably the most powerful. Any case comparison of strength between corporate funded lobbyists and an organization with singular ideological is pointless.

What's the super charitable reading of "can tip the scales in almost any election"?

The parent commenter talked about political organizations generally. They didn't specify non-corporate funded lobbying.

Also, it's reductive and I would argue misleading to say AIPAC has a "singular ideology" (as opposed to some sort of umbrella of overlapping ideologies, somewhat akin to groups like the Democratic the Republican parties in the US).

Its probably more appropriate to say that they are one of the most powerful lobbyist groups simply because it’s hard to quantify and compare power.

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