Student associations at schools in the northeastern United States have demanded the attorney general probe the New York Police Department’s (NYPD) “secret surveillance” of students in their associations. The demand comes after investigative reporting published by the Associated Press revealed the NYPD conducted surveillance of Muslim students at Rutgers University, Yale, Columbia, New York University (NYU), University of Buffalo and other schools.

The US has no problem with pressuring, even meddling in a country’s affairs, if only to get the outcome it desires—whatever will be best for US interests. Yet, it knows that it must consider all the variables, stick to talking points and not apply too much or too little pressure in order to achieve success in getting whatever the US wants from a country’s government.

In midsummer 2006, while my wife and kids were on our yearly trip down to Seattle, to be with our extended Norwegian-Jewish-Cambodian-Icelandic-Swedish-Texan family, the so-called Israel-Hezbollah War was in full rage. My brother-in-law and I were watching Wolf Blitzer on CNN, as he interviewed one pro-Israel talking head expert after another, describing the war not just from the Israeli point of view, but from a right-wing Israeli standpoint.

After the program, he lamented that the voice for Israel in the American media, in public affairs and in politics is almost always from a perspective much further from the right than it should be to reflect the views of the average Israeli, or those of the American Jewish community. He longed for a new organization, based from the positions of moderates, to counter the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and other hawkish pro-Israel groups.

“But,” Lee lamented, “that’ll never happen.”

Some say it has now happened.