By Dr. Lawrence Davidson
Professor of Middle East history, West Chester University, West Chester, PA,
snip
How do we translate this? Essentially what Cantor did was tell the leader of a foreign country that he will protect that country from the official policies of the President of the United States–the person charged by the Constitution to carry out the nation’s foreign policy. Actually, the Congress, both Republicans and Democrats, have been supplying just this sort of protection for a very long time. But they have always done so surreptitiously. What is different with Cantor is that he has done this quite publically, letting us all know about it in a notice on his official stationary.
What Eric Cantor did on November 10th was illegal. He broke the law. The Law he boasted about violating is known as the Logan Act. This act makes it a felony for an American citizen “without authority of the United States” to interact “with any foreign government or any officer or agent thereof” with the intent to influence that government’s behavior on any disputes with the United States. There are obviously disputes between the Obama administration and the Netanyahu government. And here comes Eric Cantor to tell the Israeli Prime Minister that he and the Republican Party will use the power of the House of Representatives to protect Israel from U.S. government policy. If that is not a communication made in such a way as to influence the behavior of a foreign power, nothing is! In addition, Cantor cannot claim ignorance of the law, for there can be no doubt that he is aware of the Logan Act. We know this to be true because he tried to use it against Nancy Pelosi in 2007 after she met briefly with President Assad of Syria. Pelosi, of course, met with the Syrian government with the full knowledge and approval of the State Department. Cantor, on the other, had no official sanction whatsoever.
So what did Cantor think he was doing on November 10th? The probable answer is that he was not thinking at all. Men like Cantor are so imbued with the notion of a “special relationship” that they have lost sight of the fact that Israel is a foreign country. After all, Israel has had a powerful special interest lobby operating in this country, distributing money to politicians on both sides of the aisle, for so long that it seems quite natural. Does Mr. Cantor realize that he can now be hoisted on his own petard–the Logan Act?
And herein lies the risk for American Jews. What seems so natural inside the Beltway, is losing its normalcy in the country at large. There is so much objectively unnatural about the U.S.- Israel relationship that if the general public actually starts paying attention things might turn nasty. There are the billions of dollars that go to a economically advanced country even when the US economy is hurting; there are all those UN vetoes that protect the same country in its incessant violation of international law; there is the fact that this money and protection is going to a land characterized by racist practices that would be illegal if carried out in the United States; there is the Israeli lobby’s involvement in the launching of the second Iraq war, and on it goes. What if the American people get angry about all of this? Who are they going to blame? The politicians? Probably. The Israelis and their Zionist lobby? For sure. And, because the Zionists are so insistent that Israel and Judaism are one in the same, the public may generalize out their discontent to American Jews in general.
http://www.intifada-palestine.com/2010/11/eric-cantor-and-the-provoking-of-american-antisemitism-by-dr-lawrence-davidson/ 
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