In one of my foreign policy classes I am writing a paper on US-Israeli relations and one of the books I came across is particularly pertinent to this class. The NYT's article here gives a nice summary of the arguments presented by two of the most prominent realist thinkers in the field. Their first argument is that a long, well documented, and violent history of anti-Semitism has resulted in such a climate that makes it nearly impossible to criticize Israel. They argue that the Israel Lobby is just like any interest group- the NRA, AARP, etc- except they have no counter-balancing organization. Therefore, they possess disproportionate influence, or using Olson's terminology "asymmetric power." They argue that because the public views anything other than pro-Israel as anti-semetic, the costs to a politician of questioning the current policies are extremely high.
Their second argument is about the concentrated benefits of this policy. Because the benefits are concentrated in such a small group of people, they have massive incentives to organize and lobby politicians. It is not that there is a vast, pernicious, well-connected conspiracy as racists argue. There exists a group who has strong incentives to organize, over-come collective action problems, and capture the concentrated benefits available to them. It is true that organizations have successfully lobbied for pro-Israel policies, but using Olson, and other authors we've read in this class, we see the sober person can see how concentrated benefits have given a group an incentive to organize and exert its influence.
Mearsheimer and Walt, do however, come to the dreary conclusion that Olson predicted. They argue that the US's consistent support for Israel has negatively effected US national security. To them, the latent group has not been brought to life by selective incentives and because the general public is such a large group it consistently falls short of the optimal amount of the collective good, in this case, national security.
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