Rep. Jim Moran (D-Va.) made a very big mistake, at least as far as the Democratic leadership in the House is concerned. He told the truth about AIPAC’s unhealthy influence on American politics:
In an interview with Tikkun, a California-based Jewish magazine, Moran said the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) is “the most powerful lobby and has pushed [the Iraq] war from the beginning. I don’t think they represent the mainstream of American Jewish thinking at all, but because they are so well organized, and their members are extraordinarily powerful — most of them are quite wealthy — they have been able to exert power.” […]
“The problem with addressing the groups who have argued strongly in favor of a long-term American military presence in the Middle East is that they raise arguments that are not related to the point,” Moran said. “I would like to have a reasonable, objective discussion about AIPAC’s foreign policy agenda. But it’s difficult to do that because any time you question their motives, you are accused of being anti-Semitic.”
And for that transgression, House Majority Leader, Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md) has decided Moran needs to be taken to the woodshed:
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) went after fellow Democrat Jim Moran of Virginia Tuesday, calling on him to retract his comments about the Israel lobby.
“His remarks were factually inaccurate and recall an old canard that is not true, that the Jewish community controls the media and the Congress,” Hoyer said at a news conference in the Capitol.
First of all, Moran never said the Jewish community controls the media and Congress, so Hoyer is the one lying. What Moran said was that AIPAC, the ultra conservative pro-Israeli lobby which doesn’t represent the views of the majority of Jewish Americans, is the most powerful lobby in Washington which pressed for, and has continued to support, President Bush’s war with Iraq, a statement which is factually true.
Indeed, AIPAC is so powerful that it was able to force Speaker Nancy Pelosi to remove language from legislation earlier this year that would have specifically required President Bush to get authorization from Congress before attacking Iran even though the majority of Americans oppose another war in the Middle East.
To take an example from these past few months of the Israel Lobby exercising its power, liberals in the House of Representatives in the spring of 2007 sought to include in the defense-funding budget an amendment that would require specific authorization from Congress before the Administration could use the defense budget monies for a military strike at Iran. The amendment failed. Most liberals in the U.S. today oppose preventive wars in general and a military strike against Iran in particular. So who supports such a move? The answer is: the right wing government of Israel and its champion in the U.S., the Israel Lobby.
Practically no one thinks it would be a smart idea (much less legally justified) for American forces to attack Iran outside of Joe Lieberman and Dick Cheney, and AIPAC obviously. Yet Pelosi was forced to back off a simple statement that merely reflects the mandates of the Constitution because AIPAC wants to leave President Bush every opportunity to attack Iran without any hindrance by Congress.
But dare to speak the truth about AIPAC’s influence on American foreign policy as it relates to Iraq, and they will quickly send the House Majority Leader out to verbally attack you. And why are Democrats doing this on behalf of a group that is fundamentally opposed to their party on most issues? It’s simple really. They are scared to death of AIPAC, as this story by Rabbi Michael Lerner, editor of TIKKUN MAGAZINE, and a proponent of a progressive “middle path” approach to Israeli-Palestinian relations illustrates:
When Tikkun held its 2004 conference in Washington to ask Congress to support our Resolution for Middle East Peace, we brought hundreds of people from around the U.S. to speak to their elected officials. Through the intervention of one Democratic Congressperson (not Moran) I was able to meet with about eight “Members” in a private meeting in which I was told that people would only sit there if their names were guaranteed confidentiality. They had all read the story in The Washington Post that day about the Tikkun Community/NSP and its efforts to present a “Progressive Middle Path” that would be both pro-Israel and pro-Palestine, based in large part on the Geneva Accord that had recently been signed by Yossi Beilin and Yassir Abed Rabbo. Tikkun had also raised money to pay for a full-page ad in The New York Times, signed by thousands of people, calling on the U.S. to support this path. Tikkun Community members had had meetings that day with hundreds of Congresspeople, and almost all of them had said the same thing: “We agree with your perspective, but we are not going to fight the Jewish community on this topic. As long as they feel the way they do, we are not going to make this our issue.”
Sitting in that room I heard a clearer articulation of what our Tikkun people were hearing in these other meetings: A pronounced fear of AIPAC and what it could do to them. At the meeting I was at, every Member of Congress tried to explain why Nancy Pelosi would never let me address the Democratic Caucus of the House (at that time, the minority caucus): House Democrats are too fearful of what AIPAC might do in response. I told these Members of Congress that I didn’t believe them; that I thought that House of Representative liberals were just pretending to be fearful of AIPAC in order to avoid a battle and stand up publicly for Tikkun’s middle path position. But then they began to tell me specific stories from their own experience of the threats they had received from the Israel Lobby people about being labeled as “anti-Israel.” They told me stories of it being impossible to convene a private meeting of Democrats who would want to challenge the Israel Lobby because when they had tried that they had found that every name of the attendees was in the hands of AIPAC lobbyists within an hour of the conclusion of that meeting and many of the attendees had been subject to immediate and intense pressure as though they had decided to abandon Israel (which they had not, nor is that what Tikkun calls for). And what they told me rang true: that AIPAC and the Israel Lobby had a large constituency of single-issue voters who would support a challenge to them in their next primaries, or possibly even in the general elections, should they not retain AIPAC’s approval. A perfectly legitimate tactic by AIPAC, but used in this instance to support very bad policies.
So much for electing Democrats to change the course. They say one thing to us, but when push comes to shove, they will follow AIPAC’s lead. Which is why we are still in Iraq, why the inauguration of a Democratic President in January, 2009 doesn’t necessarily insure a withdrawal of US forces from Iraq, and why Congress will likely stand impotently by if Bush decides to give the order to attack Iran.
I don’t know if AIPAC is the reason we are still in Iraq (there are additional imperial agendas in that mix), but you are of course right that the liberal Dems are terrified of AIPAC.
I long ago ran a rag tag campaign for a local school board candidate who was a terrified that the local AIPAC leaders would discover a trip to Palestine in the candidate’s past. This would have been enough to bring a full scale push to defeat my candidate. This is not paranoia. It is the reality of US politics.
Well, maybe I overstated my case to make a point. But certainly one reason many Dem “Bush Dogs” may be opposed to setting a timetable to withdraw from Iraq may have something to do with AIPAC’s influence.
Booed Pelosi during her speech before a large AIPAC audience when she mentioned the need to withdraw from Iraq. No question that AIPAC sees Iraq as part of a larger transformation of the Middle East, through Lebanon and Syria, that ends in the subjugation of Iran. And who is to complete this little domino strategy? No need to ask.
Thanks for Frontpaging this, Steven! This is the challenge those of us who want an evenhanded approach from our reps face:
Have you started reading the Mearsheimer/Walt book yet?
There are pending questions surrounding AIPAC: the Franklyn case for one, and should AIPAC not be required to register as a foreign agent?
In the executive summary of “The Ties that Bind: Arms Industry Influence in the Bush Administration and Beyond”, prepared by William D. Hartung and Michelle Ciarrocca, one can read the following:
So yes, one cannot lay all US and the World’s ills at AIPAC’s door, but there are some mighty damning linkages that need to be explored, and not just in think tanks and other secretive institutions.
Indeed the loathsome and frightening relation between the military-industrial complex and government (society even) as it pertains to Israel (and by extension the US) has been explored here and here.
Needless to say, Hillary is impressed at the defense. This, the latest from her on the resolution of Israeli-Palestinian conflict, reported by the UJA Frederation of NY: she is already negotiating on Israel’s behalf.
Clinton gets boost from rabbi poll,
calls for undivided Jerusalem
By Ron Kampeas
WASHINGTON (JTA) — In her new position paper on Israel, Hillary Rodham Clinton comes not only to praise the Jewish state but to bury doubts that she would be any less vigilant in its protection than the Bush administration.
The position paper, published this week, goes so far as to outflank President Bush from the right.
It says Clinton, the U.S. senator from New York and frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination “believes that Israel’s right to exist in safety as a Jewish state, with defensible borders and an undivided Jerusalem as its capital, secure from violence and terrorism, must never be questioned.”
The full article is on the JTA site, but they require you to register in order to read it. Cagey.
We have all heard of Republican Lite from the DLC camp, but this tops anything Bush has come up with since he, in kingly fashion, gave Sharon big chunks of the West Bank, the Palestinians be damned.
If Clinton is elected President I firmly believe we will still have troops in Iraq in 2012.
Didn’t she actually state as much? It is all starting to sound like Bush all over again. And she is leading the pack. Highly disturbing.
I hate to defend Hillary a little for once, but she is a senator from New York, and senators from New York have always tended to go more out of their way to support Israel than the average senator, for the obvious reason that there is a large Jewish population in the New York metropolitan area.
Clinton has eight years to resolve the conflict. Instead, he stood by while a frail and deceptive Oslo process was convened and implimented in a manner that contradicted any possibility of resolution: during Clinton’s reign, settlements, the development of Israeli towns and cities in the West Bank and Gaza doubled. He had to know what was happening.
Then in a last gasp attempt, that he had to know would fail—settlements were off the table—he tried to convene a peace process that went, expectedly, nowhere. Then he conspired with the proIsrael group headed by his own advisor, Dennis Ross, to blame Arafat for not accepting what was claimed to be a “generous offer,” albeit the case that nothing was to be put down on paper. The Israelis refused any paper bound negotiations. The hard Zionists were in charge then; and the hard Zionists are in charge now. Bantustans is the max Israeli position as it was when Rabin (and Peres) first claimed, no more blood and tears.
Now Clinton has renewed the Rabin position: bantustans. Take it or leave it, as Barak put it in 2000. Peres’ recent proposal is no different. The truth is, there’s not even enough room for bantustans.
That is, Bill had eight years, and now Hillary has renewed the Rabin position (“Jerusalem will never again be divided”).
I seem to recall someone trying to get AIPAC to be force listed as a foriegn agent instead of a pac. It did not go over very well at all.
Washington Note‘s Clemons blogged on this not too long ago.
Why did the AIPAC become so powerful in the first place???!! They are just a segment of our population. I personally do not like them controlling whether or not if any of my family goes to war unjustfully for their sake! I do not like them to tell me what I am to live like or whom I am to like. Frankly they are driving me so against the Jewish nation altogether. I hate this in me for I have some jewish friends that do not think like the AIPAC. This is just not right…That is why we do not need lobbyist anywhere, in any shape or form. Is this what Hill was referring to when she said not all lobbyist were bad. I beg her pardon!!!! When my very own congressman a blue dog and spent his summer time over in Israel and not here to listen to me and his district…that bothers me terribly! I have been reading a lot about the AIPAC. I do not like their behaviour any more than I like thugs of any group. They to me anyhow, are cutting their own throats, with the rest of us Americans…oh wait I forgot the evengenicals…whoops….my bad
BrendaStewart, I pray you never ever confuse AIPAC with the “Jewish nation”. That’s what it wants us to do … in order to in the end justify its existence. FWIW, you will find a page that I prepared on the voices of dissent. It’s not much but still I hope you find it helpful.
Also if you have not done so already, please watch this absolutely heart-wrenching video.
Excellant point. AIPAC represents a minority right wing perspective which does not speak to the best interests of Israel. Articles have been written by Israelis criticizing AIPAC’s anti-Israel stance on many issues. Likewise, there is no monolithic opinion concerning Israel among American Jews. Most support a two state solution, and by that they do not mean a bantustan state, but a sovereign one.
Thank you FG…I appreciate all you can do to help me understand all of this. I know my friends of which I see only on occassion, do not gather me in their conversations. Hugs…
Thank you for these links.
You more than welcome, Alice! I’ve learnt so much from other commentators myself. Whoever ‘invented’ the Internet surely deserves a most special place in heaven!
Good post. Amazing to find progressives in the blogosphere nowadays.
Good discussion. I doubt you could have it at Daily Kos.
Excellant post. Can’t agree more that it is somewhat novel to have a reasonable discussion on this issue. No doubt political life is more complex than it seems, but a strong component of it in the foreign policy realm is AIPAC and the other players in the Israel Lobby. Mearshiermer and Walt did a serve that may end up helping the discussion, and perhaps Israel in the end. The Palestinians are just not going away.
partitioned at least in part because it among all Israel’s neighbors posed the greatest ‘threat’ to the policies of the Israeli state vis a vis the Palestinians. Partition is the most effective solution (absent the ‘final’ one) because the three (or more) fractured, dissociated, competing regions will be so occupied with their internecine, sectarian squabbles and slaughters that they will be unable to mount any serious threat to apartheid Israel for decades, even generations.
Excellent observation. Cripple Iraq, next, get the US to cripple Iran. The agendas of the Israeli neocons and the US neocons in synch. One hand washes the other, quid pro quo, but what do the Israeli neocons give back for American blood and tax dollars and interest payments? Front row seats for the Armageddon?
AIPAC is a Jewish organization that claims to represent the interests of American Jews — but it does not. It doesn’t even represent the real interests of Israel. AIPAC is a scam, and in essence, the scam is very simple. It can be understood by focusing on the relationship between Cheney and the neocons. As we all know, it is an extremely close relationship. And yet, Cheney is not a neocon. Cheney is a military-industrial complex apparatchik. He doesn’t give a sh-t about Jews or Israel. For that matter. he doesn’t give a sh-t about the Christian right that supports Israel. So what’s the deal? Simply this — Cheney embodies the most aggressive and powerful interests in the whole US economy and politics. A long time ago a group of young Jews, who have since become known as the neocons, figured out that they — and Israel — could achieve maximum power by allying themselves hand-and-glove with the American military-industrial complex, or at least those parts of it that they had access to.
And what does the military-industrial complex get in return? Here’s the other brilliant part. The classic warning about the potential dangers of the m-i complex was issued by Dwight Eisenhower in 1960. It would never have occurred to anyone to call him an antisemite for what he said. But now, one hears very little about the role of the military industries and their financiers in instigating and protecting Bush and Cheney. Instead one hears about the neocons and AIPAC. And if you criticize them, you are an antisemite – so you can’t. The only trouble is that their priorities are not those of Americans, not those of American Jews, not those of Israelis. The neocons are just as guilty as the m-i complex, they are being used but that is fine with them because they want to be used, since in return they get great power. However, at the end of the day, they are the bright shiny object distracting us from Cheney and everything he stands for: basically, death.
What they are, for Jews, is something that has long recurred throughout Jewish history: They are “the king’s Jews” — self-appointed, they represent the king, not the Jews. Most American Jews, like most Americans in general, do not have the kind of servile mentality to be attracted to such sociopaths. But some people are always attracted to power, especially when they think (wrongly) that it will protect them. They do not see that in reality it is endangering them.
I absolutely agree – 150%! In his treatise on Analyzing US Empire in an Era of Transnational Capitalism, political scientist Doug Stokes lays it all bare as he exposes the true beneficiaries of the mayhem that has been unleashed upon this World. Once again, Jews are being set up, but this time in a much more insidious way, with some of them openly joining the predatory camp. The point you make about that camp then becoming more difficult to be scrutinized and condemned is so very right!
Who funds AIPAC, anyways?
Would it make sense for moderate Jews to form their own PAC which could then be used to give cover to progressives who don’t want to go along with the AIPAC agenda?
People like the Bronfman family. However, indirectly, AIPAC is funded through the US aid to Israel. So ultimately, the US taxpayer funds AIPAC.
At some point this policy is going to backfire, and God help the Jews — most of whom do not support AIPAC–when it does. If we are truly defeated militarily in the Middle East, someone will be looking for a scapegoat, and there is one at hand. The scape-goaters will not be Democrats, but will come from the ranks of Pat Buchanan Ronal Paul Right, and will lodge in what’s left of the Republican Party. There will be just enough verisimilitude in the charge to make angry, hurt, uninformed and defeated people believe it.
We have seen this scenario before. A revival is not impossible.