The paper entitled “The
Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy” by professors John Mearsheimer
Stephen Walt has pushed the topic of the “Israel lobby” and its
influence over US foreign policy into a more prominent spotlight. [3]

Prominent scholar Noam Chomsky is a steadfast denier of the efficacy of such
a lobby -- so much so that he entitled his rejoinder to Marsheimer and Walt: “The
Israel Lobby?” [4] Chomsky circumspectly stays away from defining “the
lobby” and refers to it as such throughout his article.
In his book, Fateful Triangle: The United States, Israel & The Palestinians,
Chomsky devotes a section of a chapter to “Domestic Pressure Groups
and their Interests,” but only by way of quoting Seth Tillman does he
use the wording: “Israeli Lobby.” [5]

Chomsky discusses ‘Jewish interests’ being ‘Israel’s
interests’ but only through quoting others. [6]

One is hard-pressed to find instances of Chomsky, himself, using the wording “Israeli
lobby.” In a personal communication to Jeff Blankfort, a staunch critic
of the lobby, Chomsky does, however, acknowledge such a lobby by name. [7] 

Skirting the issue of whether the state designated “Israel” is
legitimate or not (is there a legal or moral basis for one group of people
to claim another people's homeland based on spurious historical rights? The
present author maintains there is not), there is still the matter of what “Israel” is.
Conventionally, a state is constituted as a geographic entity and its population.
Disregarding the fact that the state of “Israel” has
refused to define its borders, it must be noted that the population of “Israel” is
heterogeneous. Although it defines itself as a Jewish state, approximately
20 percent of its population is Arab and practices mainly Islam.

Given that most of Palestine has been annexed to the state of “Israel” through
violent force and that the Palestinians who were not ethnically cleansed had “Israeli” citizenship
bestowed upon them, it seems rather a leap of folly to refer to an “Israel
Lobby.” No one will argue that the “Israel Lobby” is
representing the interests of “Arab-Israelis.” As well as being
inaccurate, to refer to an “Israel Lobby” is disingenuous or worse.

“Israel” has been declared a Jewish state by its Zionist rulers.
But Jews are not a monolith and neither are “Israelis.”

Since the “Israel Lobby” does not represent “Arab-Israeli” interests,
and since it represents Jewish interests worldwide, the label “Jewish
lobby” (there is no need to capitalize the “l”) would be
much more accurate. Also, “Zionist lobby” would seem to be less
accurate because the lobby’s goals are not limited to Zionism but include
policies dedicated to the interests of certain Jewish “elites.” So
long as it is not implied that all Jews (since modern Jews never formed a coherent
ethnic or national group, but are peoples who have shared somewhat the
same religion, how can one address them as a homogenous group? For
instance, if a Ukrainian Jew renounces Judaism and declares atheism, then why
should he be treated as Jew that he is no longer?) are included as lobby members,
then there is no reason not to label the “Jewish lobby” for what
it is. Most people would not, after all, object to the label “Catholic
lobby” or “Arab lobby,” so why should the label “Jewish
lobby” be controversial?

Regarding the labeling, Blum responds, “I used ‘Israel Lobby’ because
that’s what the authors of the report I referred to used. And the purpose
of the lobby is to help Israel, not Jews per se.”

With all due respect to the incisive anti-imperialist Blum, he is remarkably
off base when he says: “the purpose of the lobby is to help Israel.” Since,
as stated, approximately one-fifth of “Israelis” are Arabs, and
since the lobby has no intention of helping them whatsoever, the purpose as
stated by Blum is, intentionally or not, fallacious. To be factually accurate,
one should state that the intention is to help the “Jews of Israel” and
not “Israel” per se. Blum, however, does see merit in changing
the designation of the “Israel lobby.”

Why the reluctance to clearly and accurately apply labels to crime-sanctioning
entities? In the case of “Israel,” Chomsky noted the “general
and often effective” Zionist use of ad hominem to silence dissent. [8]
Those people of conscience who dare to rebuke the crimes committed by the Zionists
must not cower at the insidious Zionist tactic of smearing its critics as “anti-Semites.”

Caving in on a more accurate wording of a lobby that, among its positions,
advocates ethnic cleansing and killing of an indigenous people, and practices
racism against those indigenous remaining in their homeland, is complicity
through silence.

ENDNOTES

[1] William Blum, “The
Anti-Empire Report: What Would Royko Write?” CounterPunch,
6 April 2004.

[2] William Blum, “All
War, All the Time,” Anti-Empire Report, 22 April 2006.

[3] John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, “The
Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy,” KSG Faculty Research Working
Paper Number: RWP06-011, 13 March 2006

[4] Noam Chomsky, “The
Israel Lobby?” ZNet, 28 March 2006. James Petras wrote a compelling
refutation to Chomsky on this topic. See “Noam
Chomsky and the Pro-Israel Lobby: Fourteen Erroneous Theses,” uruknet.info,
3 April 2006.

[5] Noam Chomsky, Fateful Triangle: The United States, Israel & The Palestinians
(Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 1983, 1999), 13.

[6] Ibid., 15.

[7] Jeffrey Blankfort, “Damage
Control: Noam Chomsky and the Israel-Palestine Conflict,” Dissident
Voice, 25 May 2005.

[8] Chomsky, Fateful Triangle, op. cit., 15.

"John" is John Mearsheimer, a political scientist at the University of Chicago. Walt is a 50-year-old tenured professor at the John F Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. The two men have caused one of the most extraordinary political storms over the Middle East in recent American history by stating what to many non-Americans is obvious: that the US has been willing to set aside its own security and that of many of its allies in order to advance the interests of Israel, that Israel is a liability in the "war on terror", that the biggest Israeli lobby group, Aipac (the American Israel Public Affairs Committee), is in fact the agent of a foreign government and has a stranglehold on Congress - so much so that US policy towards Israel is not debated there - and that the lobby monitors and condemns academics who are critical of Israel.

"Anyone who criticises Israel's actions or argues that pro-Israel groups have significant influence over US Middle East policy," the authors have written, "...stands a good chance of being labelled an anti-Semite. Indeed, anyone who merely claims that there is an Israeli lobby runs the risk of being charged with anti-Semitism ... Anti-Semitism is something no-one wants to be accused of." This is strong stuff in a country where - to quote the late Edward Said - the "last taboo" (now that anyone can talk about blacks, gays and lesbians) is any serious discussion of America's relationship with Israel.

Walt is already the author of an elegantly written account of the resistance to US world political dominance, a work that includes more than 50 pages of references. Indeed, those who have read his Taming Political Power: The Global Response to US Primacy will note that the Israeli lobby gets a thumping in this earlier volume because Aipac "has repeatedly targeted members of Congress whom it deemed insufficiently friendly to Israel and helped drive them from office, often by channelling money to their opponents."

But how many people in America are putting their own heads above the parapet, now that Mearsheimer and Walt have launched a missile that would fall to the ground unexploded in any other country but which is detonating here at high speed? Not a lot. For a while, the mainstream US press and television - as pro-Israeli, biased and gutless as the two academics infer them to be - did not know whether to report on their conclusions (originally written for The Atlantic Monthly, whose editors apparently took fright, and subsequently reprinted in the London Review of Books in slightly truncated form) or to remain submissively silent. The New York Times, for example, only got round to covering the affair in depth well over two weeks after the report's publication, and then buried its article in the education section on page 19. The academic essay, according to the paper's headline, had created a "debate" about the lobby's influence.

They can say that again. Dore Gold, a former ambassador to the UN, who now heads an Israeli lobby group, kicked off by unwittingly proving that the Mearsheimer-Walt theory of "anti-Semitism" abuse is correct. "I believe," he said, "that anti-Semitism may be partly defined as asserting a Jewish conspiracy for doing the same thing non-Jews engage in." Congressman Eliot Engel of New York said that the study itself was "anti-Semitic" and deserved the American public's contempt.

Walt has no time for this argument. "We are not saying there is a conspiracy, or a cabal. The Israeli lobby has every right to carry on its work - all Americans like to lobby. What we are saying is that this lobby has a negative influence on US national interests and that this should be discussed. There are vexing problems out in the Middle East and we need to be able to discuss them openly. The Hamas government, for example - how do we deal with this? There may not be complete solutions, but we have to try and have all the information available."

Walt doesn't exactly admit to being shocked by some of the responses to his work - it's all part of his desire to keep "discourse" in the academic arena, I suspect, though it probably won't work. But no-one could be anything but angered by his Harvard colleague, Alan Dershowitz, who announced that the two scholars recycled accusations that "would be seized on by bigots to promote their anti-Semitic agendas". The two are preparing a reply to Dershowitz's 45-page attack, but could probably have done without praise from the white supremacist and ex-Ku Klux Klan head David Duke - adulation which allowed newspapers to lump the name of Duke with the names of Mearsheimer and Walt. "Of Israel, Harvard and David Duke," ran the Washington Post's reprehensible headline.

The Wall Street Journal, ever Israel's friend in the American press, took an even weirder line on the case. "As Ex-Lobbyists of Pro-Israel Group Face Court, Article Queries Sway on Mideast Policy" its headline proclaimed to astonished readers. Neither Mearsheimer nor Walt had mentioned the trial of two Aipac lobbyists - due to begin next month - who are charged under the Espionage Act with receiving and disseminating classified information provided by a former Pentagon Middle East analyst. The defence team for Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman has indicated that it may call Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley to the stand.

Almost a third of the Journal's report is taken up with the Rosen-Weissman trial, adding that the indictment details how the two men "allegedly sought to promote a hawkish US policy toward Iran by trading favours with a number of senior US officials. Lawrence Franklin, the former Pentagon official, has pleaded guilty to misusing classified information. Mr Franklin was charged with orally passing on information about a draft National Security Council paper on Iran to the two lobbyists... as well as other classified information. Mr Franklin was sentenced in December to nearly 13 years in prison..."

The Wall Street Journal report goes on to say that lawyers and "many Jewish leaders" - who are not identified - "say the actions of the former Aipac employees were no different from how thousands of Washington lobbyists work. They say the indictment marks the first time in US history that American citizens... have been charged with receiving and disseminating state secrets in conversations." The paper goes on to say that "several members of Congress have expressed concern about the case since it broke in 2004, fearing that the Justice Department may be targeting pro-Israel lobbying groups, such as Aipac. These officials (sic) say they're eager to see the legal process run its course, but are concerned about the lack of transparency in the case."

As far as Dershowitz is concerned, it isn't hard for me to sympathise with the terrible pair. He it was who shouted abuse at me during an Irish radio interview when I said that we had to ask the question "Why?" after the 11 September 2001 international crimes against humanity. I was a "dangerous man", Dershowitz shouted over the air, adding that to be "anti-American" - my thought-crime for asking the "Why?" question - was the same as being anti-Semitic. I must, however, also acknowledge another interest. Twelve years ago, one of the Israeli lobby groups that Mearsheimer and Walt fingers prevented any second showing of a film series on Muslims in which I participated for Channel 4 and the Discovery Channel - by stating that my "claim" that Israel was building large Jewish settlements on Arab land was "an egregious falsehood". I was, according to another Israeli support group, "a Henry Higgins with fangs", who was "drooling venom into the living rooms of America."

Such nonsense continues to this day. In Australia to launch my new book on the Middle East, for instance, I repeatedly stated that Israel - contrary to the anti-Semitic conspiracy theorists - was not responsible for the crimes of 11 September 2001. Yet the Australian Jewish News claimed that I "stopped just millimetres short of suggesting that Israel was the cause of the 9/11 attacks. The audience reportedly (and predictably) showered him in accolades."

This was untrue. There was no applause and no accolades and I never stopped "millimetres" short of accusing Israel of these crimes against humanity. The story in the Australian Jewish News is a lie.

So I have to say that - from my own humble experience - Mearsheimer and Walt have a point. And for a man who says he has not been to Israel for 20 years - or Egypt, though he says he had a "great time" in both countries - Walt rightly doesn't claim any on-the-ground expertise. "I've never flown into Afghanistan on a rickety plane, or stood at a checkpoint and seen a bus coming and not known if there is a suicide bomber aboard," he says.

Noam Chomsky, America's foremost moral philosopher and linguistics academic - so critical of Israel that he does not even have a regular newspaper column - does travel widely in the region and acknowledges the ruthlessness of the Israeli lobby. But he suggests that American corporate business has more to do with US policy in the Middle East than Israel's supporters - proving, I suppose, that the Left in the United States has an infinite capacity for fratricide. Walt doesn't say he's on the left, but he and Mearsheimer objected to the invasion of Iraq, a once lonely stand that now appears to be as politically acceptable as they hope - rather forlornly - that discussion of the Israeli lobby will become.

Walt sits in a Malaysian restaurant with me, patiently (though I can hear the irritation in his voice) explaining that the conspiracy theories about him are nonsense. His stepping down as dean of the Kennedy School was a decision taken before the publication of his report, he says. No one is throwing him out. The much-publicised Harvard disclaimer of ownership to the essay - far from being a gesture of fear and criticism by the university as his would-be supporters have claimed - was mainly drafted by Walt himself, since Mearsheimer, a friend as well as colleague, was a Chicago scholar, not a Harvard don.

But something surely has to give.

Across the United States, there is growing evidence that the Israeli and neo-conservative lobbies are acquiring ever greater power. The cancellation by a New York theatre company of My Name is Rachel Corrie - a play based on the writings of the young American girl crushed to death by an Israeli bulldozer in Gaza in 2003 - has deeply shocked liberal Jewish Americans, not least because it was Jewish American complaints that got the performance pulled.

"How can the West condemn the Islamic world for not accepting Mohamed cartoons," Philip Weiss asked in The Nation, "when a Western writer who speaks out on behalf of Palestinians is silenced? And why is it that Europe and Israel itself have a healthier debate over Palestinian human rights than we can have here?" Corrie died trying to prevent the destruction of a Palestinian home. Enemies of the play falsely claim that she was trying to stop the Israelis from collapsing a tunnel used to smuggle weapons. Hateful e-mails were written about Corrie. Weiss quotes one that reads: "Rachel Corrie won't get 72 virgins but she got what she wanted."

Saree Makdisi - a close relative of the late Edward Said - has revealed how a right-wing website is offering cash for University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) students who report on the political leanings of their professors, especially their views on the Middle East. Those in need of dirty money at UCLA should be aware that class notes, handouts and illicit recordings of lectures will now receive a bounty of $100. "I earned my own inaccurate and defamatory 'profile'," Makdisi says, "...not for what I have said in my classes on English poets such as Wordsworth and Blake - my academic speciality, which the website avoids mentioning - but rather for what I have written in newspapers about Middle Eastern politics."

Mearsheimer and Walt include a study of such tactics in their report. "In September 2002," they write, "Martin Kramer and Daniel Pipes, two passionately pro-Israel neo-conservatives, established a website (www.campus-watch.org) that posted dossiers on suspect academics and encouraged students to report behaviour that might be considered hostile to Israel... the website still invites students to report 'anti-Israel' activity."

Perhaps the most incendiary paragraph in the essay - albeit one whose contents have been confirmed in the Israeli press - discusses Israel's pressure on the United States to invade Iraq. "Israeli intelligence officials had given Washington a variety of alarming reports about Iraq's WMD programmes," the two academics write, quoting a retired Israeli general as saying: "Israeli intelligence was a full partner to the picture presented by American and British intelligence regarding Iraq's non-conventional capabilities."

Walt says he might take a year's sabbatical - though he doesn't want to get typecast as a "lobby" critic - because he needs a rest after his recent administrative post. There will be Israeli lobbyists, no doubt, who would he happy if he made that sabbatical a permanent one. I somehow doubt he will.

Here you have Fox News - a network that bludgeons viewers with Orwellian
pledges of being "fair and balanced." The network employed Snow
for 7 years
as its purportedly "objective" host of "Fox News Sunday" -
it's supposedly most "objective" show. And now, with the seamless
appointment of Snow as the chief spokesman for America's right-wing government,
the public is just supposed to accept it as mundane. Washington reporters
barely bat an eye at the elimination of the boundary between media and
government - god forbid they should look skeptically on the whole affair
lest they may not be invited to the next White House Christmas party. In
fact, many seem downright giddy that one of their friends on the D.C. cocktail
party circuit got the job.

Meanwhile, Fox News continues to pledge a devotion to objectivity. Worse,
instead of raising objections to one of its leading "objective" voices
now becoming the President's spokesman, Fox
is trumpeting the move on its website (even more ridiculous - it was
actually trumpeting
the early speculation of Snow's move before he took the job). As for
Democrats - you remember them, they are supposed to be the opposition party
- Fox News loudly tells us that "they say that aside from Tony being
a good journalist, he's
also a fair guy, who they think will be a welcome face in the room
with the blue curtain."

This is "business as usual" in Washington. It is a place where
Democratic and Republican politicians bloviate about supposedly wanting
to clean up government - all while working
feverishly to kill any serious reform legislation, all while they and
their staffs happily sell off their government experience to the highest
corporate bidder. It is a place where the few remaining hard-working journalists
focusing on real issues in the nation's capital are shoved to the side
in favor of the coiffed, ill-informed political pundit corps that sees
nothing even vaguely problematic about the Soviet-state-run-media quality
of trading in media badges for federal ID badges. It is a place where many
major media organizations' leading voices are more interested in being
mouthpieces for power, rather than challenging it. It is a place where
the most blatant lies, myths, half-truths and hypocrisy is buried under
a sea of government and media propaganda designed to make us believe nothing
is wrong.

But no matter how many Tony Snows tell us everything is A.O.K. - either
from behind an anchor's desk or from behind a White House podium - the
public isn't stupid. We know what's going on. And at some point - whether
that's November 2006, November 2008 or some other point - we're going to
take our government back.

The muted response in the US media to this development contrasts sharply with the deluge of reportage and opinion that accompanied the outraged response in the Islamic World to the publication of the Danish cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed. Sure nobody was killed in New York over this - but in a country where 1st Amendment protection of free speech is supposed to be hallowed ground, the difference in the treatment of the two episodes by mainstream US media speaks volumes about how far media outlets will go to avoid even the appearance of offending the sensitivities of the pro Israel lobby.

Other examples of media appeasement of this lobby are not hard to find and the irony is that some newspapers in the country that is being "protected" by this lobby - Israel, are far bolder and outspoken in their reportage and critical opinion of Israeli excesses than US media. For example Haaretz reported in its March 23rd edition results from an annual poll "The Index of Racism Towards Arab Palestinian Citizens" that revealed 68% of Jews would refuse to live in the same building as an Arab and 63% of Jewish Israelis maintain that their fellow Arab citizens are a "security and demographic threat to the state". 40% believe that "the state needs to support the emigration of Arab citizens". Not a mention of this poll could be found in any major US publication. Nor would any US publication dare to reprint a Haaretz columnist that described foreign policy advisors Richard Perle and Douglas Feith as "walking a fine line between their loyalty to American Governments....and Israeli interests."

Uri Avnery, a one time Knesset(Israeli Parliament) member, a persistent critic of Israeli policy, was surprised on visits to the US by the presence of large number of mainstream media representatives at the press conferences he held in the US. Curious to see how his views would be reported he was "stunned" that "not a single word" appeared in any US news outlet. Unsuccessful attempts were made by the Anti Defamation League(ADL), described by Mr. Avnery as the "thought police of the Jewish establishment " to cancel his lectures in the US.

It seems that the mainstream media will even ignore an ex US President if he dares to criticize Israel. President Jimmy Carter commented recently on how "Israel's occupation of Palestine has obstructed a comprehensive peace agreement in the Holy Land". No national media outlet reprinted or made reference to what he wrote.

Counterspin, a Public Radio show revealed last week the results of a media analysis of national newspaper op-ed pieces on the Middle East that demonstrated a clear two to one (and for some newspapers like the New York Times, a four to one) ratio of pro Israel contributions.

Haaretz journalists such as Amira Hass and Gideon Levy are well known in Israel for writing about Israeli abuses of Palestinians under occupation, yet they are largely unknown to American readers. Why? Because to reprint their articles in major US newspapers would breach the silent code of self censorship imposed by editors in the US and incur the wrath of the ever watchful pro Israel lobby.

Intimidation of writers, academics, media takes many forms. Recently two senior American academics, Professor John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt wrote a detailed study of the growing influence of the Israeli lobby. The piece was submitted to the Atlantic Monthly who refused to touch it despite the academic pedigree of the authors. Stephen Walt is a Dean at Harvard who insisted that their logo be removed from the title page. Not one US publication would publish it, so the authors were forced to approach the London Review of Books who decided to publish it. Predictably the LRB (whose editor, Mary Kay Wilmer, is Jewish) and the study's authors, have been inundated with accusations of anti Semitism by among others, Congressman Eliot Engel and have been accused of being "liars" and "bigots" by Alan Dershowitz. One can legitimately criticize the study for over-stating the power of the Israel lobby, as Noam Chomsky has: for example the energy and arms lobby both arguably have more political clout than Israel.. However it is hard to deny the assertion that Israel's influence on successive US Governments is totally disproportionate to its size. It has no oil or other energy clout and yet no other foreign lobby seems to come close to matching its power in Congress. To prove the point that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, Indian Americans, according to the NY Times, openly model their attempts to influence US-India policy on the extremely effective tactics used by AIPAC.

Many of those who have found themselves on the receiving end of intimidation from pro Israel Jews are, in many cases Jewish. Jews for Peace, Noam Chomsky, Norman Finklestein and other Jewish writers and activists who have spoken out against Israel's occupation and US support for it, have all experienced pressure and personal attacks. The classic accusation is that Jews who criticize Israel are "self hating Jews" - an allegation that perhaps says more about the accusers than the accused.

Celebrities have also felt the unwelcome attentions of the Pro Israel lobby. Tony Kushner, a well know playwright and screenwriter in an interview with "The Nation" (3/16/06) spoke about his experience with the pro Israel lobby over the film "Munich" for which he was the screenwriter: "there is a very, very highly organized attack machinery that will come after you if you express any kind of dissent about Israel's policies, and it's a very unpleasant to be caught in the cross hairs."

The question has to be asked: how long can America's First Amendment be held to ransom and how long can Americans be kept in the dark by well organized zealots determined to preserve the status quo.

Lawmakers acknowledge that the bill is more limited in its scope and impact than the provisions promised by congressional leaders immediately after Abramoff's guilty plea to federal charges of bribery, conspiracy, tax evasion and mail fraud nearly four months ago. But they say they do not feel compelled to push more stringent measures partly because voters do not appear to be demanding them. "We're all being rushed into a bill," said Rep. David L. Hobson (R-Ohio). "We panicked, and we let the media get us panicked."

Rep. Nancy L. Johnson (R-Conn.), a former ethics committee chairwoman, said passage of the bill will have no political consequences because "people are quite convinced that the rhetoric of reform is just political."

Some Republican leaders assert that lawmakers are hearing little from constituents about the congressional corruption scandal, even though it has received considerable media attention. Jo Maney, spokeswoman for Rep. David Dreier (R-Calif.), a chief architect of the House ethics bill, said: "Many members have told him [Dreier] that they are not hearing about corruption and lobbying reform at home. They hear more about immigration, gas prices." Still, Dreier and Hastert "feel strongly" that the ethics bill "is the right thing to do" and that it will "improve the public's perception of the integrity of the House of Representatives," Maney added.

A Washington Post-ABC News poll this month showed that 63 percent of Americans called "corruption in Washington" important to their vote. Democrats are eager to use the lobbying controversy as part of their campaign to win back control of Congress this year, and they contend that the corruption issue can be a powerful Election Day weapon.

A poll this month by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press showed the public giving Democrats an edge on the ethics issue. Twenty-eight percent of Americans said they think the Republican Party governs in an honest and ethical way, compared with 36 percent who said the Democrats are more ethical, according to the survey. By a ratio of 45 percent to 28 percent, respondents said that Republicans are influenced more by lobbyists and special interests than are Democrats.

Democratic strategists say that the ethics issue does not carry a lot of weight by itself. They say that, to win over voters, they must link Republicans' alleged coziness with lobbyists to failures in Washington to address specific public needs, such as health-care coverage and economic security. "It is up to us to show the public what this means to them," said House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). For example, she said: "If [we] want to reduce our dependence on foreign oil, and therefore improve our national security situation, you can't do it if you are a Republican because you are too wedded to the oil companies."

Republicans won back control of the House and the Senate in 1994 after making Democratic political corruption part of the larger issue of arrogance of power and poor performance in government, according to Michael J. Malbin, executive director of the nonpartisan Campaign Finance Institute. The Democrats' burden now, he said, is to make that larger connection to voters.

Republicans counter that Democrats have ethical problems of their own that blunt their effort to portray the GOP as the party of corruption. Two Democratic congressmen are facing separate, official inquiries about their connections to private pleaders: Reps. Alan B. Mollohan (W.Va.) and William J. Jefferson (La.). Both say they have done nothing wrong.

"The Democrat party runs a real risk here of being the pot that calls the kettle black," said Tracey Schmitt, press secretary of the Republican National Committee.

Some lawmakers and political analysts believe that voters could punish incumbents during the November elections if Congress passes a minimalist ethics bill. The chances of such a backlash could rise, these critics say, if there are more indictments or guilty pleas later this year. Abramoff and two former aides to Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) are cooperating with federal authorities in a wide-ranging investigation of political favors done in return for gifts, trips, payments and campaign contributions. DeLay, a once-powerful House majority leader, is fighting a criminal indictment in Texas on charges of political money laundering.

Some congressional historians assert that GOP leaders would be taking a risk in assuming that the lobbying bill is of such low voter priority that they could push through a modest plan without paying a political cost. "When you combine [the ethics issue] with the general dissatisfaction with the way in which we are governed," said L. Sandy Maisel, a professor of government at Colby College, "I think the breaking point might be near."

Today, the House plans to vote on a bill that would require lobbyists to file quarterly instead of semiannual disclosures and to include in those reports the donations they give to federal candidates and political action committees. Lobbyists would also have to make public the amount of any gift that they give to lawmakers or congressional aides. In addition, appropriations bills would have to list any earmarks that they contain, as well as the sponsors of those projects. Ethics training would become mandatory in the House under the legislation.

Government watchdog groups have complained that the legislation would not change much about how lawmakers and lobbyists interact. "It's a reform bill in name only, and they're hoping no one will notice," said Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, a conservative public interest organization, said one reason for the bill's weakness is that the public is not riled up about lobbying abuses. "The American people take the view that both parties are involved and there's not much surprising about it," he said.