AIPAC influence on Capitol Hill goes beyond campaign money. Lobbying groups exercise influence by providing a legislative subsidy to sympathetic lawmakers. They supply overworked staffs with direct assistance in analyzing issues, framing legislation, and offering talking points and speeches.

Every member of Congress receives AIPAC biweekly newsletter Near East Report. AIPAC personnel are also available to help staffers when issues affecting Israel arise.

Douglas Bloomfield was a former AIPAC staff member. He said "It is common for members of Congress and their staffs to turn to AIPAC first when they need information, before calling the Library of Congress, the Congressional Research Service, committee staff or administration experts." More important he notes that AIPAC is "often called upon to draft speeches, work on legislation, advise on tactics, perform research, collect co-sponsors and marshal votes."

To seal the deal an AIPAC sister organization funds free congressional trips to Israel. The group is called American Israel Education Foundation (AIEF). These junkets burnish a legislator pro-Israel credentials and facilitate fund-raising. They also expose him or her to policy preferences and basic worldview of Israel leaders.

About 10 percent of all congressional trips overseas are to Israel. Israel is but one of nearly two hundred countries in the world. Center for Public Integrity reports that AIEF spent nearly $1 million on these visits from January 2000 to mid-2005. AIPAC and other Jewish groups lobbied hard and successfully to make sure new ethics rules did not interfere with these visits. The rules were enacted after Jack Abramoff and Tom DeLay scandals.

Source: The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, 2007, a book written by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt