Is It Good for the Jews?: The Crisis of America's Israel Lobby

In 2005, two then-officials of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee were indicted for handing over classified information to a foreign power. That the power in question was assumed to be Israel brought fresh credibility to a conspiracy theory that had been floating around Washington for years: that a powerful “Jewish lobby” controls U.S. policy in the Middle East.

The run-up to the Iraq war had provided new grist for this theory. A group of largely Jewish neoconservatives were among...