Think of America’s pro-Israel lobbyists and names like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA), or the American Jewish Committee (AJC) will spring to mind. These are all wealthy, powerful organizations that unconditionally support the government of Israel, promote US-Israel relations, and lobby Congress and the White House accordingly.
On those rare occasions that an American lawmaker steps out of line, they will do their utmost to ensure that his or her political career is abruptly ended. Ask former representatives Cynthia McKinney or Paul Findley, they have first-hand knowledge of the lobby’s ruthless machinations.
Indeed, AIPAC’s President Howard Friedman has admitted that his organization vets candidates running for Congress, who are asked to “author a ‘position paper’ on their views of the US-Israel relationship — so it’s clear where they stand on the subject.”
Incredible isn’t it? It couldn’t happen anywhere else. It’s not hard to imagine the retort such a request would elicit from aspiring British or Australian parliamentarians.
If a newspaper dares to print anything that they construe to be anti-Israel, they pressurize advertisers to go elsewhere and attempt to get the offending editor or journalist sacked. Ask the historian, professor and writer Tony Judt, who was removed from the editorial board of the New Republic all because he wrote an article calling for Israel’s conversion to a binational state.
THE same is true for university professors who deviate from the lobby’s Middle East script. Anyone who tilts toward the Palestinian point of view is in danger of losing his/her tenure. Ask author and political scientist Norman Finkelstein, who was sacked from De Paul University and had a speaking engagement canceled at Clark University following the lobby’s use of heavy-handed tactics.
In the style of an old-fashioned mafia, those who pay protection in the form of pro-Israel sycophancy are kept safe. In other words, they’re a scary bunch. So scary, in fact, that mighty Congress has fallen under their sway to the extent that even Arab-American lawmakers heed their virtual diktats, for fear of becoming a target.
On Tuesday, the House of Representatives is set to approve a nonbinding resolution — backed (perhaps even instigated) by pro-Israel groups including AIPAC — charging the Goldstone report on war crimes committed in Gaza as “irredeemably biased and unworthy of further consideration or legitimacy because “it was based on a flawed and biased mandate.”
The resolution also urges the White House to adopt a similar stance and to unhesitatingly authorize the use of America’s UN Security Council veto should the report go before the UNSC. Given President Barack Obama’s capitulation to Israel on settlement expansion, there’s little arm-twisting needed on that score.
I wonder how many worthy representatives have even bothered to study the report’s 550 pages. Few read the Patriot Act or the Stimulus bills before they were passed into law, so it’s probably safe to conclude not many. They’ve been programmed to behave like automatons whenever Israel is criticized regardless of the rights or wrongs. Never mind that Judge Goldstone is a self-professed pro-Israel Zionist himself or that Israel refused to cooperate with the UN investigatory team.
Spokesperson for AIPAC Josh Block said “Congress is sending a strong message that the United States will not stand for turning the victim into the perpetrator.”
ONCE again, pro-Israel lobbyists can smugly pat one another on the back and toast a job well done…well, not all of them. Watch out AIPAC! There is a new kid on your block J Street. No, this isn’t a boy band or a hip-hop troop on America’s Got Talent. Just 18 months old, J Street is the latest addition to America’s pro-Israel lobby, but nobody from AIPAC or the ADL is rushing to its headquarters with neighborly plates of homemade cookies.
J Street members aren’t scurrying around the Internet in search of candidates for anti-Semitic labels or pondering on which hapless academic to destroy next. They revere the Jewish state and the Zionist principle just as much as the AIPAC lot, but in an entirely different way. These guys believe that Israel’s long-term interests rest upon the peace process and if it strays from that goal, then they are not afraid to use tough love. According to the blurb on J Street’s website, they “seek to change the direction of American policy in the Middle East and to broaden the public and policy debate in the US about the Middle East.” They “support strong American leadership to end the Arab-Israeli and Palestinian-Israeli conflicts peacefully and diplomatically…”
At the end of last month, J Street held its first conference attended by 1,500 participants. Its Executive Directory Jeremy Ben-Ami served as Bill Clinton’s deputy policy adviser and was a policy adviser to Howard Dean’s presidential campaign. His father was born in Tel Aviv and much of his family lives in Israel, he says. In his welcoming speech he set out J Street’s objectives, which include ending conflict, failure to compromise, terror and bloodshed.
Ours is “a voice that cares not simply about our people’s destiny but about the future of the Palestinian people — not just because it is in our interest, but because Palestinian children deserve a future and freedom, hope and happiness every bit as much as Jewish children,” he said. “A voice that rejects racism and prejudice as much when it is directed at our community as when it is directed at those of other backgrounds, particularly Muslims.”
Unlike AIPAC and Co., J Street isn’t cheering Congress’ condemnation of the Goldstone report. Ben-Ami believes the resolution should not be passed as currently drafted because “it is factually inaccurate and contains gross misrepresentations” about the Gaza war crimes report. Instead, he wants the resolution to call upon Israelis and Palestinians to launch their own independent investigations.
J Street maintains that it speaks on behalf of the silent majority of American Jews who back a two-state solution and want their government to seriously engage toward that end. If that’s so, then, at last, they have a forum for alternative dialogue, which may inspire the hitherto gagged to speak up.
