John Mearsheimer

And our argument is that this is not good for the United States because no two countries have the same interests all the time.

And when our interests conflict with Israel's interests, we should be able to do what we think is in our national interest, in America's national interest.

But the lobby tends to conflate America's national interests with Israel's national interests and wants the United States to support Israel no matter what.

We also argue, and I cannot emphasize this enough given what's going on in the world today, that the lobby's effects, the lobby has not been pushing policies that are in Israel's interest.

So our argument is that the lobby, right, the lobby pushes policies that are not in America's interest or not in Israel's interest.

Now, you're saying to yourself, what exactly does he mean by that?

What every president since Jimmy Carter has tried to do, as I said before, is to foster a two-state solution, to push Israel, which is the dominant player

In greater Israel.

Push Israel to accept the two-state solution.

And we have run into huge resistance from the lobby whenever we tried to—let's be blunt about it—coerce Israel, right?

In a perfect world where there was no lobby and—

An American president was free to put pressure on Israel, to coerce Israel.

I believe we would have gone a long way towards getting two-state solution.

And I believe this would have been in Israel's interest.

But we couldn't get a two-state solution because it was almost impossible to put meaningful pressure on Israel because of the lobby.

So this was not in Israel's interest and it was not in America's interest.

And that was the argument that we made.

And we, of course, got huge pushback for making that argument.

Well, first of all, I think you have to distinguish between Jews and Christians.

You want to remember that there are a huge number of Christian Zionists who are deeply committed to Israel no matter what, right?