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A funny thing happened on July 23.

Or, rather, something didn't happen the day after.

On July 23, a number of major Arab organizations met with White House officials, including representatives from the National Security Council, FBI, and Department of Homeland Security. The following day, Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer, authors of the infamous "The Israel Lobby," joined the rest of the new "realist" foreign policy establishment in responding to this heavy lobbying effort with... total silence.

Which is exactly as it should be.

Lobbying, or petitioning the government for the resolution of your grievances, is part of a democratic republic designed to keep elected officials directly accountable to the citizenry. It isn't nefarious activity (though that is not to say that all lobbyists' intentions are pure), and supports rather than circumvents the democratic process.

The organized and well-funded lobbying efforts of special interest groups are not without their red flags, of course. John B. Judis, senior editor at The New Republic, was bothered enough by what he thought was the hijacking of the political process by special interests that he wrote a book about it called "The Paradox of American Democracy: Elites, Special Interests, and the Betrayal of Public Trust."

"Very few of these organizations have real members," he wrote of special interest groups. "Instead, they are run by Washington staff and funded by direct mail, and they survive by attempting to capture public attention for single issues. They defy the old-fashioned view that politics rests ultimately on a shared view of the national interest. Far from deepening citizen involvement in politics, the proliferation of these Washington organizations discourages it by making politics the exclusive province of paid hacks and single-issue fanatics."

This is, of course, a bit reductive. But Judis isn't alone in his concerns; the Founding Fathers had theirs as well.

Such as Goveurnor Morris, who played a starring role in writing the Constitution. A self-described aristocrat, Morris believed that voting rights in the hands of those who didn't own land would be an invitation for influence peddling.

"Give the votes to people who have no property, and they will sell them to the rich who will be able to buy them," he argued.

I suspect for the average citizen these concerns about influence peddling can be dispelled once we define the Israel "lobby." According to Walt/Mearsheimer, responding to a question from Foreign Policy magazine, "For representative examples of some of the thinking in groups in the lobby on contemporary issues, you can go to the [American Israel Public Affairs Committee] Web site; you can go to the Web site of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy; you can read Commentary magazine on Middle East issues, the Weekly Standard, or the Wall Street Journal editorial page.... You would also want to take a look at what Christian Zionist groups like Christians United for Israel have to say, because that's another important strand of the pro-Israel community."

In case you missed it, the Israel lobby includes AIPAC, a think tank, a popular magazine run by Jews, a conservative magazine run by (Jewish) people Walt and Mearsheimer don't like, the Wall Street Journal, evangelical Christians, etc.

In other words, there are two major categories of the Israel lobby: those who aren't publicly or sufficiently hostile to Israel, and the Jewish-controlled media. On the former, such a nebulous group is essentially meaningless, in order to allow for the accusation to be leveled at anyone Walt and Mearsheimer want to discredit instead of debate.

On the latter, Walt and Mearsheimer reveal why they aren't exercised by the Arab lobby. They are trading in classic anti-Semitic caricatures that, while they do not reveal Walt and Mearsheimer themselves to be anti-Semitic, allow the diaphanous duo to smuggle true anti-Semites into the debate to pad their wallets with an audience for book deals and lucrative speaking engagements.

David Rothkopf, a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, explained this clearly on his Foreign Policy magazine blog. It is ridiculous to argue, he writes, that the Israel lobby is more successful in shaping American policy than the farm lobby, the Cuba lobby, the oil lobby, African-American organizations, gay rights organizations, or even Arab groups.

"No, there is only one reason to argue that the Israel lobby is somehow special or of special significance," Rothkopf writes. "It is to suggest that American policy in the Middle East is being driven by the interests of an especially unsavory group of ultra-powerful people who are masters at manipulating Washington. And we know who they are right?"

So let the Arab lobby participate, as they have been for decades with impressive results. And let the Walts and the Mearsheimers and the J Streets and the Jesse Jacksons and the Jimmy Carters et al. howl as their werewolf alter egos come out only on the moons when pro-Israel Jews have the ear of the president.

Indeed, let them howl as the caravan of democracy moves on.

Seth Mandel is the managing editor of The Jewish State.