The failure of the Israeli-Jewish campaign conducted behind the scenes in an effort to thwart the appointment of Chuck Hagel to the position of US defense secretary, in addition to the openly visible attempt in which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu played an active role trying to oust President Barack Obama from the White House, reminds me of a panel discussion held in the mid-1990s at the George McGovern (the Democratic presidential candidate in 1972) Center in Washington.

The discussion centered on coverage of the Middle East in the US media. One of the participants, an editor of an important Egyptian newspaper, claimed that “everyone knows the US media is controlled by Jews,” and immediately came to this conclusion: “Naturally, their reporting and analyses are skewed in Israel’s favor.” Martin Sieff, then a Washington Times correspondent, himself of Jewish origin, took issue with his Arab colleague’s claim. He listed one by one the names of the owners of large newspapers and television networks, who do not have a single Jewish gene in their bodies.

On our way to the parking lot, I remarked to Sieff that it’s a shame to undermine the prevailing belief in the Arab world that the Jews control the media, as well as the politics and economy of the United States. I explained that the myth of world Jewish domination is Israel’s most important deterrent force. One could term it “constructive anti-Semitism.”

For decades this myth was nurtured by the Jewish organizations in the United States, led by the Jewish pro-Israel lobby AIPAC, which acquired the reputation of being the second most powerful lobby in Washington (the most powerful being the National Rifle Association, which opposes gun control). Presidents show up at their annual conventions, dozens of members of Congress take part each year in AIPAC’s campaign drives for Israel and senators blindly sign petitions supporting the organization. The Jewish community, which constitutes some two percent of the US population, has succeeded in admirable fashion in increasing aid to Israel over the years, in promoting sanctions against Iran and in withholding aid from the Palestinian Authority.