Conman, convict, paedophile and a life terminated in circumstances of purported suicide.  The list for Jeffrey E. Epstein, figure of cosmic social and political influence in the United States, is long.  Trafficking in female flesh for his extensive client list, lubricated by his lover Ghislaine Maxwell, tends to be the crowning feature of most discussions about his sordid legacy.  Another shrouded aspect has been neglected.  

The fuss about releasing the Epstein files – the slowness with which the US Justice Department is undertaking that task, the erratic nature of its redactions, and what gold nuggets might be found – gives us a chance to examine the Israeli dimension in US politics.  In November, Ryan Grim and Murtaza Hussain of Drop Site News showed the seedier side of that dimension in exposing Epstein’s role in what can be loosely termed the Israeli lobby.  This involved a dedicated effort to discredit the work of two scholars, John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, who had done much to sketch the outlines of the very thing his own conduct affirmed.  

Originally commissioned in late 2002 by The Atlantic, the article, written as a working paper, was simply entitled “The Israeli Lobby”.  The subject, however, had become heated and worrying to the editors.  When the article was ready for publication, the United States was involved in a futile, bloody conflict in Iraq that Mearsheimer and Walt argued was “motivated in good part by a desire to make Israel more secure.”  The authors were offered a “kill fee” of $10,000 for their consent to pull the piece.  “That’s the fastest $10,000 we ever made,”

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