Drake professor author of this article, Ismael Hossein-Zadeh, Ph.D.
Professor of Economics.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HH31Ak01.html
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1692967/posts

There is an unspoken, de facto alliance between these two extremely powerful interests - an alliance that might be called the military-industrial-Zionist alliance.

The institutional framework of the alliance consists of a web of closely knit think-tanks that are founded and financed primarily by the armaments lobby and the Israeli lobby. [color="Red"]These corporate-backed militaristic think-tanks include the American Enterprise Institute, Center for Security Policy, Middle East Media Research Institute, Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Middle East Forum, National Institute for Public Policy and the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs.
These think-tanks, which might appropriately be called institutes of war and militarism, are staffed and directed mainly by the neo-conservative champions of the military-industrial-Zionist alliance, that is, by the proponents of unilateral wars of aggression. There is strong evidence that the major plans of the Bush administration's foreign policy have been drawn up largely by these think-tanks, often in collaboration, directly or indirectly, with the Pentagon, the arms lobby, and the Israeli lobby. These warmongering think-tanks and their neo-conservative champions serve as direct links, or conveyer belts, between the armaments and Israeli lobbies on the one hand, and the Bush administration and its congressional allies on the other.

Take the Center for Security Policy (CSP), for example. It boasts that "no fewer than 22 former advisory board members are close associates in the Bush administration ... A sixth of the center's revenue comes directly from defense corporations." The center's alumni in key posts in the Bush administration include its former chair of the board, Douglas Feith, who served for more than four years as under secretary of defense for policy, Pentagon comptroller Dov Zakheim, former Defense Policy Board chair Richard Perle, and longtime friend and financial supporter Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

In its 1998 annual report, the center "listed virtually every weapons-maker that had supported it from its founding, from Lockheed, Martin Marietta, Northrop, Grumman and Boeing, to the later 'merged' incarnations of same - Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and so forth". [5]

Likewise, the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), a major lobbying think-tank for the military-industrial-Zionist alliance, can boast of being the metaphorical alma mater of a number of powerful members of the Bush administration. For example, Vice President Dick Cheney and his wife Lynne Cheney, State Department arms-control official John Bolton (now US ambassador to the UN), and the former chair of the Defense Policy Board, Richard Perle, all have had long-standing ties with the institute.

....It is true that most of the neo-conservative militarists who have been behind the recent US military aggressions in the Middle East have long been active supporters of Israel's right-wing politicians and/or leaders. It is also no secret that there is a close collaboration over issues of war and militarism among militant Zionism, neo-conservative forces in and around the Bush administration, and jingoistic think-tanks such as AEI, PNAC, CSP and JINSA.

It does not follow, however, that, as some critics argue, the US-Israeli relationship represents a case of "tail wagging the dog", that is, US foreign policy in the Middle East is shaped by the Israeli/Zionist leaders. While no doubt the powerful Zionist lobby exerts considerable influence over US foreign policy in the Middle East, the efficacy and the extent of that influence depend, ultimately, on the real economic and geopolitical interests of US foreign-policy makers.

In other words, US policymakers on the Middle East would go along with the desires and demands of the radical Zionist lobby only if such demands also tended to serve the special interests that those policymakers represented or served, that is, if there were a convergence of interests over those demands.