(Article written few years back)
The events of the past weeks in Palestine have been a near-total triumph for Zionism in the United States for the first time since the modern re-emergence of the Palestinian national movement in the late 1960s. Political as well as public discourse has so definitively transformed Israel into the victim during the recent clashes, that even though 140 Palestinian lives were lost and close to 5,000 casualties have been reported, it is still something called "Palestinian violence" that has disrupted the smooth and orderly flow of the "peace process."
There is now a small litany of phrases that every editorial commentator either repeats verbatim or relies on as an unspoken assumption: these have been engraved in ears, minds, and memories as a guide for the perplexed, a manual or machine for turning out phrases that have clogged the air for at least a month.

A small, potentially embarrassing episode has occurred since I wrote my last article on this subject two weeks ago. Martin Indyk, US ambassador (for the second time during the Clinton administration) to Israel, has abruptly been stripped of his diplomatic security clearance by the State Department. The story put about is that he used his laptop computer without using proper security measures, and therefore may have disclosed information or released it to unauthorized persons. As a result, he now cannot enter or leave the State Department without an escort, cannot remain in Israel, and must now submit to a full investigation.
We may never find out what really happened. But what is public knowledge and has nevertheless not been discussed in the media is the scandal of Indyk's appointment in the first place.

This is the first article in a series on the misunderstood and misjudged role of American Zionism in the question of Palestine. In my opinion, the role of organized Zionist groups and activities in the United States has not been sufficiently addressed during the period of the "peace process," a neglect that I find absolutely astonishing, given that Palestinian policy has been essentially to throw our fate as a people in the lap of the United States without any strategic awareness of how US policy is in effect dominated, if not completely controlled, by a small minority of people whose views about Middle East peace are in some way more extreme than even those of the Israeli Likud.
Let me give a small example.