[link|http://www.danielpipes.org/article/604|The $36 Billion Bargain: Strategy and Politics in U.S. Assistance to Israel]

"Why does the U.S. government provide such generous support to Israel? Conventional wisdom points to American Jews, their votes, their political donations, and their well-organized lobbying efforts. Whole books (notably Paul Findley's They Dare to Speak Out and Edward Tivan's The Lobby) have been written to make this point.
A. F. K. Organski, professor of political science at the University of Michigan, has looked at the record of American aid to Israel and come to a different conclusion. He observed a striking fact: U.S. aid was very low before 1970 and very high afterwards. Noting that American Jews exerted about the same efforts on Israel's behalf before 1970 as after that date, he asked himself why the dramatically different aid levels? Logic holds that a constant factor cannot explain a variable event; obviously, the author concludes, American Jews cannot be the decisive factor here. To clinch this argument, he points out that it was Richard Nixon, a politician singularly not beholden to Jews (according to Henry Kissinger, he "delighted in telling associates and visitors that the 'Jewish lobby' had no effect on him") who raised the levels of aid.

Organski posits a contrary argument for the turn in 1970. For him, the critical change had to do with American attitudes toward Israel's utility. From Truman through Johnson, he shows, American administrations saw Israel as a weak state that could provide no help in the Great Game versus the Soviet Union; if anything, the Jewish state was perceived as a liability. Thanks to the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, Nixon saw Israeli military power as a significant benefit to the United States. This transformation was then completed in the aftermath of the 1973 war.
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Organski shows how it is in almost everyone's interest to forward the myth of the Jewish lobby. Jewish leaders clearly benefit from being perceived as having a decisive impact. Israeli leaders like to believe that they have influential friends. American policy makers exploit the Jewish lobby to explain away decisions that Arab leaders oppose. American opponents of aid love the lobby, for it strengthens their argument that close relations with Israel results from domestic considerations, not a sober assessment of foreign policy. Even Arab leaders cling to the myth, which makes unpalatable decisions made in Washington much easier for them to swallow."