Politics / August 17, 2026
A vital discussion on the state of the Israel lobby.
Israel’s Lobby is a new book by Eli Clifton and Ian Lustick
One of the greatest stories in American domestic affairs is how the far-right government of a small Middle Eastern country came to hold a controlling interest in United States foreign policy. Eli Clifton and Ian Lustick’s new book, Israel’s Lobby, combines investigative journalism and political science to tie together the stories of American and Israeli oligarchs capturing the policymaking process in successive presidential administrations and the geopolitical, and domestic consequences of American foreign policy sold to the highest bidder. But are long-held assumptions finally shifting? If so, how and to what consequence? Nation editor and publisher Katrina vanden Heuvel, author and Nation columnist Jeet Heer, author and activist Daniel Levy, and Clifton and Lustick discussed these questions on August 12 in a no-holds-barred conversation.
Jeet Heer
Jeet Heer is a national affairs correspondent for The Nation and host of the weekly Nation podcast, The Time of Monsters. He also pens the monthly column “Morbid Symptoms.” The author of In Love with Art: Francoise Mouly’s Adventures in Comics with Art Spiegelman (2013) and Sweet Lechery: Reviews, Essays and Profiles (2014), Heer has written for numerous publications, including The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, The American Prospect, The Guardian, The New Republic, and The Boston Globe.
Katrina vanden Heuvel
Katrina vanden Heuvel is editor and publisher of The Nation, America’s leading source of progressive politics and culture. An expert on international affairs and US politics, she is an award-winning columnist and frequent contributor to The Guardian. Vanden Heuvel is the author of several books, including The Change I Believe In: Fighting for Progress in the Age of Obama, and co-author (with Stephen F. Cohen) of Voices of Glasnost: Interviews with Gorbachev’s Reformers.
