If It Quacks Like a Duck, Is It a Canard?

Carter has repeatedly fallen back -- possibly unconsciously -- on traditional anti-Semitic canards. In the Los Angeles Times last month, he declared it "politically suicide" for a politician to advocate a "balanced position" on the crisis.

--Deborah Lipstadt

A canard is "a false or baseless, usually derogatory story, report, or rumor. Lipstadt is mistaken here. A politician who advocated anything less than reflexive obeisance to a pro-Israel line would have an abbreviated political future.

Can any observer doubt that there is an effective pro-Israel political network in the U.S.?

Various ethnic groups have or had their own causes (boycotting South Africa, Cyprus, the Armenian genocide, "captive nations," boycotting Cuba), as the First Amendment permits. Some who point out that the pro-Israel network is effective may be anti-Semites; some aren't. But it's no canard because it's true.

UPDATE: A canard can be hard to kill.