AIPAC Policy Conference Attendees Should Consider The Source
American Israeli Political Committee (AIPAC) will hold its annual Policy Conference cum love fest this week. AIPAC is the powerful Israeli lobbying group that equates disagreement with the right wing, scandal ridden Ehud Olmert and his government or any disapproval of Israel policies with anti-Semitism.
A report in Asia Times: "They're all here - and they're all ready to party. The three United States presidential candidates - John McCain, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Madam House speaker Nancy Pelosi. Most US senators and virtually half of the US Congress. Vice President Dick Cheney's wife, Lynne. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Embattled Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. And a host of Jewish and non-Jewish political and academic heavy-hitters among the 7,000 participants.
"The top leadership - mostly former AIPAC presidents - is always more hawkish on the Middle East than most Jewish Americans. AIPAC only dropped its opposition to a Palestinian state - without endorsing it - when Ehud Barak became Israeli prime minister in 1999.
"AIPAC maintains a virtual stranglehold over the US Congress... AIPAC should not be crossed. It rewards those who support its agenda, and punishes those who don't. In the end, it's all about money - specifically campaign contributions...
For pro-AIPAC politicians, money simply pours from all over the US.
"Every member of the US Congress receives AIPAC's bi-weekly newsletter, the Near East Report. Walt and Mearsheimer stress that Congressmen and their staff "usually turn to AIPAC when they need info; AIPAC is called upon to draft speeches, work on legislation, advise on tactics, research, collect co-sponsors and marshal votes".
"It has become relatively fashionable for some members of the Israeli lobby to deny any involvement in the build-up towards the war on Iraq. But few remember what AIPAC executive director Howard Kohr told the New York Sun in January 2003: 'Quietly lobbying Congress to approve the use of force in Iraq was one of AIPAC's successes over the past year.'
"Meanwhile, the power of the lobby seems unassailable. In March 2007, the US Congress was trying to attach a provision to a Pentagon spending bill that would have required President George W Bush to get congressional approval before attacking Iran. AIPAC was strongly against it - because it viewed the legislation as taking the military option "off the table". The provision was killed. Congressman Dennis Kucinich said this was due to AIPAC.
"During AIPAC's jamboree in 2004, Bush received 23 standing ovations defending his Iraq policy. Last year, the star was Cheney, making the case for the troop "surge" in Iraq. Pelosi was dutifully present. But it was pastor John Hagee, whose endorsement McCain recently refused, who really made a killing - even though Hagee maintains that "anti-Semitism is the result of the Jews' rebellion against God".
As MoJo Blog explains: "In an interview today, an official from the American Jewish Committee would not criticize Pastor John Hagee for his explication, in a recently resurfaced sermon, of Hitler as a "hunter" sent by God to drive European Jews to Palestine.Rabbi Gary Greenebaum, AJC's US Director of Interreligious Affairs, told me that he accepted Hagee's "clarification" of the sermon...
"But as the Huffington Post accurately reported last week, Hagee's clarification doesn't actually include an apology or a disavowal of the sermon. Here's the tape of the sermon at issue, in which Hagee also says that 'They [the Jewish people] are physically alive but they're not spiritually alive.'
"The short answer is no. I submitted requests for comment about Hagee and his sermon to three organizations: the American Jewish Committee, the Anti-Defamation League, and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. The first two groups closely monitor anti-Semitism and regularly issue statements decrying insensitivity to Jews by prominent figures like Hagee. As for AIPAC, Hagee had a prominent speaking role at its annual policy conference last year.
And David Brog, executive director of Christians United for Israel, the organization of which Hagee is founder and national chairman, is slated to speak at AIPAC's 2008 policy conference next month.
"...The ADL and AIPAC, to my knowledge, have not commented on Hagee's sermon and they didn't respond to my requests.
"The enduring lesson here is that you can say almost whatever you want about Jews or the Holocaust, as long as you're perceived as a supporter of Israel. As the ADL's Abe Foxman put it last year: 'I think there is a role for [Pastor John Hagee]. He has earned a certain recognition with the community because of his support for Israel.' "
That is the right wing, hypocritical AIPAC. But change may be on the way.
Here is what I wrote in an April posting: "A new Jewish lobbying group, a voice of reason, is making the scene in the US. It is a timely entrance.
"For too long, right wing supporters in the US of conservative governments in Israel have dominated the discussion and too many American politicians have equated unquestioning support for Israeli governments' wrongheaded policies as proof of their support for Israel, which was myopic.
"The Olmert administration is not indicative of all of Israel, just as this terrible Bush administration is not indicative of all the US, and healthy debates have been ongoing in Israel, especially in the press, about Olmert's troubling government and its problematic policies.
"However, in the US, any questioning of Israel's very conservative government policies has been equated with an anti-Israel stance, which is completely false.
"Real friends tell each other when they are wrong. The Bush administration has been damaging to the US and the Olmert government has been damaging to Israel and both have been disastrous for each other.
"As IPS News reports, "A new group of prominent U.S. Jews who believe that the so-called "Israel Lobby" has been dominated for too long by neo-conservatives and other Likud-oriented hawks has launched a new organisation to help fund political candidates who favour a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and a stronger U.S. role in achieving it.
"Almost two years in the making, the "J Street" project plans to spend some 1.5 million dollars -- about half of which has been pledged to date -- in its first year of operation, a portion of which will go to supporting half a dozen Congressional campaigns for candidates who share its pro-peace and pro-Israel views.
" 'For too long, the loudest American voices on Israel have come from the far right,' noted Jeremy Ben-Ami, a founder and director of both J Street and its political-action affiliate, JStreetPac.
"The launch of the new group, which will be led by an advisory council of 100 prominent U.S. Jewish leaders and philanthropists, is aimed primarily at challenging the longstanding dominance of several major Jewish lobby organisations, particularly the powerful American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), whose leadership has generally opposed substantial Israeli concessions in negotiations with Palestinians and Israel's other Arab neighbours.
"AIPAC has also cultivated alliances with prominent right-wing Christian Zionists, such as John Hagee, the Texas televangelist who keynoted AIPAC's annual convention last year.
"Those alliances have created growing discomfort within the larger U.S. Jewish community which, in any event, tends to hold less hawkish views about Israel and its relations with its neighbours than those urged by AIPAC and other more-rightwing national Jewish institutions, according to recent surveys of Jewish opinion by the American Jewish Committee.
" 'For the sake of Israel, the United States and the world, it is time for American political discourse to re-engage with reality," wrote Ben-Ami, whose grandparents were among the founders of Tel Aviv and whose father was a militant in the right-wing Revisionist Movement, in a column published Tuesday by the Jewish national daily, The Forward."
Congressional and presidential candidates paying obeisance to AIPAC should listen to J Street and JStreetPac, for balanced information about Israeli policy.
They should also read Uri Avnery, Avi Shlaim and Tony Karon for realistic insight about Israel and its policies.
Stop swallowing AIPAC right wing propaganda without question and stop unquestionably supporting right wing conservative Israeli leaders, who like the Bush administration in the US, disregard the will of its people.
As I said before, "Real friends tell each other when they are wrong."
While Jimmy Carter won't be present at the AIPAC conference here is what Jonathan Tasini has to say about the US' eminent former president and elder statesman: ""Half my family still lives in Israel. I have seen enough bloodshed, tears, and parents burying their children to last many lifetimes.
"So, I write this from a deep, personal experience--not one that comes from just ideological slogans lobbed from the comfy confines of the U.S., nor from the perspective of some ideologues who see one side or another in this conflict as evil incarnate or pure goodness.
"I've never quite understood the notion that you boycott talking to somehow until they agree to your conditions--and maybe that would make me a bad diplomat. In my labor world, sometimes you do go out on strike but that comes after a long process of talking to people who do not have your interests in mind--and would like you go away. Now, it is true that most employers aren't likely these days--at least, in this country--to take out guns and begin firing at you. But, most adversaries, when you are actively engaged in real conversation, not posturing, will usually hold their fire, too.
"But, for a moment, I wanted to just give thanks--on Passover--to President Carter who just wants to hear what people have to say. We should give space to people who explore conversations and seek to find common ground."
A report in Asia Times: "They're all here - and they're all ready to party. The three United States presidential candidates - John McCain, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Madam House speaker Nancy Pelosi. Most US senators and virtually half of the US Congress. Vice President Dick Cheney's wife, Lynne. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Embattled Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. And a host of Jewish and non-Jewish political and academic heavy-hitters among the 7,000 participants.
"The top leadership - mostly former AIPAC presidents - is always more hawkish on the Middle East than most Jewish Americans. AIPAC only dropped its opposition to a Palestinian state - without endorsing it - when Ehud Barak became Israeli prime minister in 1999.
"AIPAC maintains a virtual stranglehold over the US Congress... AIPAC should not be crossed. It rewards those who support its agenda, and punishes those who don't. In the end, it's all about money - specifically campaign contributions...
For pro-AIPAC politicians, money simply pours from all over the US.
"Every member of the US Congress receives AIPAC's bi-weekly newsletter, the Near East Report. Walt and Mearsheimer stress that Congressmen and their staff "usually turn to AIPAC when they need info; AIPAC is called upon to draft speeches, work on legislation, advise on tactics, research, collect co-sponsors and marshal votes".
"It has become relatively fashionable for some members of the Israeli lobby to deny any involvement in the build-up towards the war on Iraq. But few remember what AIPAC executive director Howard Kohr told the New York Sun in January 2003: 'Quietly lobbying Congress to approve the use of force in Iraq was one of AIPAC's successes over the past year.'
"Meanwhile, the power of the lobby seems unassailable. In March 2007, the US Congress was trying to attach a provision to a Pentagon spending bill that would have required President George W Bush to get congressional approval before attacking Iran. AIPAC was strongly against it - because it viewed the legislation as taking the military option "off the table". The provision was killed. Congressman Dennis Kucinich said this was due to AIPAC.
"During AIPAC's jamboree in 2004, Bush received 23 standing ovations defending his Iraq policy. Last year, the star was Cheney, making the case for the troop "surge" in Iraq. Pelosi was dutifully present. But it was pastor John Hagee, whose endorsement McCain recently refused, who really made a killing - even though Hagee maintains that "anti-Semitism is the result of the Jews' rebellion against God".
As MoJo Blog explains: "In an interview today, an official from the American Jewish Committee would not criticize Pastor John Hagee for his explication, in a recently resurfaced sermon, of Hitler as a "hunter" sent by God to drive European Jews to Palestine.Rabbi Gary Greenebaum, AJC's US Director of Interreligious Affairs, told me that he accepted Hagee's "clarification" of the sermon...
"But as the Huffington Post accurately reported last week, Hagee's clarification doesn't actually include an apology or a disavowal of the sermon. Here's the tape of the sermon at issue, in which Hagee also says that 'They [the Jewish people] are physically alive but they're not spiritually alive.'
"Here's the question I set out to answer last week: would the most prominent Jewish and "pro-Israel" groups in the country finally take Hagee to task for his outrageous comments and for seeing Jews primarily in terms of their role in his eschatology?
"The short answer is no. I submitted requests for comment about Hagee and his sermon to three organizations: the American Jewish Committee, the Anti-Defamation League, and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. The first two groups closely monitor anti-Semitism and regularly issue statements decrying insensitivity to Jews by prominent figures like Hagee. As for AIPAC, Hagee had a prominent speaking role at its annual policy conference last year.
And David Brog, executive director of Christians United for Israel, the organization of which Hagee is founder and national chairman, is slated to speak at AIPAC's 2008 policy conference next month.
"...The ADL and AIPAC, to my knowledge, have not commented on Hagee's sermon and they didn't respond to my requests.
"The enduring lesson here is that you can say almost whatever you want about Jews or the Holocaust, as long as you're perceived as a supporter of Israel. As the ADL's Abe Foxman put it last year: 'I think there is a role for [Pastor John Hagee]. He has earned a certain recognition with the community because of his support for Israel.' "
That is the right wing, hypocritical AIPAC. But change may be on the way.
Here is what I wrote in an April posting: "A new Jewish lobbying group, a voice of reason, is making the scene in the US. It is a timely entrance.
"For too long, right wing supporters in the US of conservative governments in Israel have dominated the discussion and too many American politicians have equated unquestioning support for Israeli governments' wrongheaded policies as proof of their support for Israel, which was myopic.
"The Olmert administration is not indicative of all of Israel, just as this terrible Bush administration is not indicative of all the US, and healthy debates have been ongoing in Israel, especially in the press, about Olmert's troubling government and its problematic policies.
"However, in the US, any questioning of Israel's very conservative government policies has been equated with an anti-Israel stance, which is completely false.
"Real friends tell each other when they are wrong. The Bush administration has been damaging to the US and the Olmert government has been damaging to Israel and both have been disastrous for each other.
"As IPS News reports, "A new group of prominent U.S. Jews who believe that the so-called "Israel Lobby" has been dominated for too long by neo-conservatives and other Likud-oriented hawks has launched a new organisation to help fund political candidates who favour a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and a stronger U.S. role in achieving it.
"Almost two years in the making, the "J Street" project plans to spend some 1.5 million dollars -- about half of which has been pledged to date -- in its first year of operation, a portion of which will go to supporting half a dozen Congressional campaigns for candidates who share its pro-peace and pro-Israel views.
" 'For too long, the loudest American voices on Israel have come from the far right,' noted Jeremy Ben-Ami, a founder and director of both J Street and its political-action affiliate, JStreetPac.
"The launch of the new group, which will be led by an advisory council of 100 prominent U.S. Jewish leaders and philanthropists, is aimed primarily at challenging the longstanding dominance of several major Jewish lobby organisations, particularly the powerful American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), whose leadership has generally opposed substantial Israeli concessions in negotiations with Palestinians and Israel's other Arab neighbours.
"AIPAC has also cultivated alliances with prominent right-wing Christian Zionists, such as John Hagee, the Texas televangelist who keynoted AIPAC's annual convention last year.
"Those alliances have created growing discomfort within the larger U.S. Jewish community which, in any event, tends to hold less hawkish views about Israel and its relations with its neighbours than those urged by AIPAC and other more-rightwing national Jewish institutions, according to recent surveys of Jewish opinion by the American Jewish Committee.
" 'For the sake of Israel, the United States and the world, it is time for American political discourse to re-engage with reality," wrote Ben-Ami, whose grandparents were among the founders of Tel Aviv and whose father was a militant in the right-wing Revisionist Movement, in a column published Tuesday by the Jewish national daily, The Forward."
Congressional and presidential candidates paying obeisance to AIPAC should listen to J Street and JStreetPac, for balanced information about Israeli policy.
They should also read Uri Avnery, Avi Shlaim and Tony Karon for realistic insight about Israel and its policies.
Stop swallowing AIPAC right wing propaganda without question and stop unquestionably supporting right wing conservative Israeli leaders, who like the Bush administration in the US, disregard the will of its people.
As I said before, "Real friends tell each other when they are wrong."
While Jimmy Carter won't be present at the AIPAC conference here is what Jonathan Tasini has to say about the US' eminent former president and elder statesman: ""Half my family still lives in Israel. I have seen enough bloodshed, tears, and parents burying their children to last many lifetimes.
"So, I write this from a deep, personal experience--not one that comes from just ideological slogans lobbed from the comfy confines of the U.S., nor from the perspective of some ideologues who see one side or another in this conflict as evil incarnate or pure goodness.
"I've never quite understood the notion that you boycott talking to somehow until they agree to your conditions--and maybe that would make me a bad diplomat. In my labor world, sometimes you do go out on strike but that comes after a long process of talking to people who do not have your interests in mind--and would like you go away. Now, it is true that most employers aren't likely these days--at least, in this country--to take out guns and begin firing at you. But, most adversaries, when you are actively engaged in real conversation, not posturing, will usually hold their fire, too.
"But, for a moment, I wanted to just give thanks--on Passover--to President Carter who just wants to hear what people have to say. We should give space to people who explore conversations and seek to find common ground."
Posted by Kaz at 6/2/2008 2:57 PM 
Categories: Religion, Politics, Ethics, Global Engagement, Foreign Policy, Iraq, Repuglicans
Categories: Religion, Politics, Ethics, Global Engagement, Foreign Policy, Iraq, Repuglicans
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