More Tripe, Vicar? Stephen Sizer plans book on the "influence" of the "Zionist Lobby" in the UK

A recent article noted:

'If you estimated the amount of money a country spends on lobbying the United States based on critical media coverage of that lobbying, you’d probably put Israel at the top of the list. But a new study by the Sunlight Foundation reveals that not only isn’t Israel a big spender, it practically doesn’t even make the list. Of the 84 countries surveyed, Israel ranked 83rd, spending just $1,250 to lobby America in 2013. (The only country that ranked lower was Mali, which spent nothing at all.) By contrast, other key American allies unloaded massive sums to influence the U.S. government. Topping the list is the United Arab Emirates with $14.2 million. It is followed by Germany ($12 million), Canada ($11.2 million), and Saudi Arabia ($11.1 million)....

The survey also exposes the double standards of the discourse surrounding the allegedly all-powerful Israel lobby and its purported “stranglehold” on Congress. Last October, Jack Straw, the former foreign minister of the United Kingdom, claimed that the lobby’s “unlimited funds” enable it to dictate American policy in the Middle East. Similar assertions have been advanced by former President Jimmy Carter, and political scientists Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer, as well as many less respectable sources. Indeed, discussion of the Israel lobby’s supposedly malign influence is a staple of countless critiques of the U.S.-Israel relationship. Yet somehow, the massive foreign expenditures of other American allies like Saudi Arabia and Germany to sway U.S. policy – which dwarf the purely domestic spending of pro-Israel groups – rarely face similar scrutiny. Only Israel’s comparably meager efforts are repeatedly stigmatized, delegitimized and endowed with sinister overtones....'

On the other side of the Herring Pond, our old friend the Anglican vicar of Virginia Water is a very busy man in the anti-Israel cause.  Tracts, tweets, and travels are all part of his perpetual crusade against the Jewish State and Christian Zionism.  And now, he plans a new tome.  An unnamed publisher (Quartet Books? The Palestine Soldarity Campaign? The Rouhani Press? Alas, he does not say!) has asked him to train his torch upon the "Zionist Lobby" and as a result he is asking his Facebook followers whether they know of "published sources that elaborate on the influence of the Zionist Lobby in the UK on the media, press, business, banks, universities, politics and Parliament" that can aid him in this task:

Already, he's had many a suggestion.

Richard Silverstein refers him to Asa Winstanley (who blogs at The Electronic Intifada) and to a certain ridiculous British serial troll who infests blogs like mine with foolish comments and operates a scurrilous website in the bowels of cyberspace that insults leading Zionists in the UK even to the point of defamation).

A couple of followers suggest Peter Oborne's shameful Channel 4 documentary "Inside The Zionist Lobby".

Here are some of the other suggestions so far:

Such tripe, eh?

Perhaps it is only a matter of time before the offal served up by that old duffer of an anti-Jewish Zionist conspiracy theorist Alan Hart (ex-BBC, ex-ITN) is added to the vicar's recommended menu.

Not to mention the offal provided by Stuart Littlewood, like Hart a contributor to the antisemitic Redress website.

Swallow tripe to vomit tripe, I suppose one could say.

More tea instead, vicar?

Go on.  Here's a cuppa for you, brewed by Tom Gross, regarding Oborne's documentary referred to above:

'Whereas there is a pro-Israel lobby with some influence in the U.S. (though not the kind of influence ascribed to it by anti-Semites), contrary to what Channel 4 and others think, there is no effective pro-Israel lobby in Britain.

The complete lack of any effective pro-Israel lobby in Britain (as opposed to well organized anti-Israel groups) goes a long way to explaining why some of the coverage of Israel in the British media is among the worst in the world, and sometimes rivals the Iranian and Egyptian media for its sheer nastiness.

It also explains why Britain failed to back Israel ... at the U.N. General Assembly vote on the Goldstone report into Israeli war crimes, while other democracies – including the U.S., Italy, Germany, Canada, Australia, the Netherlands, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, Ukraine, Macedonia and the Czech Republic – did vote with Israel.'