web analytics

Tag Archives: AIPAC

AIPAC gathering aims at 2024 game plan for electing pro-Israel candidates

by

It has created a structure of video conferences and smaller local get-togethers as a substitute and has not scheduled large gatherings even as other groups have resumed their pre-pandemic conventions. Still, it has not counted out reviving the conferences.

WASHINGTON (JTA) — With a new right-wing government in Israel raising alarm bells among many in the United States, the timing seemed ripe for a gathering by AIPAC, which regularly convenes bigwigs to talk about the US-Israel relationship.

But the group’s conference this week in Washington is focusing not on that relationship but on American electoral politics.

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s “Political Leadership Forum” on Monday and Tuesday was closed to press.

But it offers the latest signal of how the group’s activities have evolved from the days when its policy conferences were feel-good affairs that sought to elevate pro-Israel policy above nitty-gritty politicking.

The forum brought in “1,000 of our top political leaders to strategize for the 2024 election cycle,” an AIPAC official told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

AIPAC’s political action committees include a conventional PAC, AIPAC PAC, which relies on smaller donations, and a Super PAC, United Democracy Project, which has unlimited spending power.

Together, the PACs raised over $50 million.

The success rate was high, with UDP’s preferred candidates prevailing in eight of the 10 races it involved itself in, and AIPAC PAC backing 342 winners out of 365.

Illustrative: Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer prepares to speak at the 2019 American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) policy conference, at Washington Convention Center, in Washington, March 25, 2019. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

That made AIPAC a force to be reckoned with in a shifting political landscape, but directly backing candidates also exacted a price at a complicated time in the history of US-Israel relations.

Liberals faulted AIPAC for backing more than 100 Republicans who would not certify Joe Biden’s presidential election even after a deadly insurrection aimed at keeping Congress from doing so.

Conservatives wondered why AIPAC was backing Democrats who backed the 2015 Iran nuclear deal so reviled by AIPAC.

A theme of the get-together this week was how to navigate that polarized environment.

Rep. Josh Gottheimer, a New Jersey Democrat, joined Brian Fitzpatrick, a Pennsylvania Republican, to discuss maintaining bipartisan support for Israel, at a time when a vocal Israel-critical minority maintains a degree of influence among Democrats.

“We are working to make sure that the US-Israel relationship remains bipartisan and durable,” Gottheimer said. Gottheimer and Fitzpatrick co-chair the bipartisan Problem-Solvers Caucus.

There was policy as well, with a video conference address by Israel’s freshly elected prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and one in person by Lloyd Austin, the US defense secretary.

Netanyahu suggested in his remarks that differences with Democrats over Iran policy were no longer as sharp as they were when Netanyahu faced down then-US president Barack Obama in 2015 over the Iran nuclear deal.

(AIPAC’s opposition to the deal at the time spurred a similar fly-in of top activists in a failed bid to quash it in Congress).

“It’s time to close ranks between Israel and the United States — and others,” Netanyahu said of the Iran issue.

“And I look forward to discussing this issue with President Biden and his team.

I think there is more of a meeting of the minds today than there has ever been.”

US President Joe Biden initially sought to revive the deal, which former US president Donald Trump quit in 2018, but those plans are moribund because of Iran’s deadly repression of pro-woman protests and its support for Russia in its war against Ukraine.

Then-US vice president Joe Biden is seen on large video screens as he addresses the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) Policy Conference in Washington, March 20, 2016. (AP Photo/Cliff Owen)

Meanwhile, the Biden administration is carefully monitoring the moves made by Netanyahu’s new government, formed in coalition with right-wing extremist parties.

The government is seeking to diminish the country’s judiciary, and some of its leaders are aggressively pursuing the annexation of the West Bank — a move that the Biden administration opposes.

Neither Netanyahu nor Gottheimer addressed Israel’s current political climate in the partial remarks that were released by their offices.

AIPAC shuttered its springtime policy conferences, which attracted more than 15,000 people, after its conference in March 2020 drew unwanted attention because two of the conference-goers appeared to be spreaders of the then-unfamiliar COVID-19 virus.

It has created a structure of video conferences and smaller local get-togethers as a substitute and has not scheduled large gatherings even as other groups have resumed their pre-pandemic conventions. Still, it has not counted out reviving the conferences.

Israel’s stranglehold on American politics

by

The Israel lobby’s buying off of nearly every senior politician in the United States, facilitated by our system of legalized bribery, is not an anti-Semitic trope.

It is a fact.

The lobby’s campaign of vicious character assassination, smearing and blacklisting against those who defend Palestinian rights—including the Jewish historian Norman Finkelstein and university students, many of them Jewish, in organizations such as Students for Justice in Palestine—is not an anti-Semitic trope.

It is a fact.

Twenty-four state governments’ passage of Israel lobby-backed legislation requiring their workers and contractors, under threat of dismissal, to sign a pro-Israel oath and promise not to support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement is not an anti-Semitic trope.

It is a fact.

The shameless decision in 2014 by all 100 U.S. senators, including Bernie Sanders, to pass a Soviet-style plebiscite proposed by the Israel lobby to affirm Israel’s “right to defend itself” during the 51 days it bombed and shelled homes, water treatment plants, power stations, hospitals and U.N. schools in Gaza, killing 2,251 Palestinians, including 551 children, is not an anti-Semitic trope.

It is a fact.

The U.S. refusal, including in the United Nations and other international bodies, to criticize Israel’s apartheid state and routine violation of international law is not an anti-Semitic trope.

It is a fact.

The well-funded campaigns by the Israel lobby, which works closely with Israel’s Ministry of Strategic Affairs, to discredit any American politician or academic who even slightly deviates from Israeli policy is not an anti-Semitic trope.

It is a fact.

(One infamous example of a U.S. politician kowtowing was the unconstitutional invitation by then-House Speaker John Boehner to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to address Congress in 2015 to denounce President Barack Obama’s Iranian nuclear agreement.)

The massive interference in our internal affairs by Israel and the Israel lobby, far exceeding that of any other country, including Russia or China, is not an anti-Semitic trope.

It is a fact.

Israel’s lackeys in the political class, along with bankrupt courtiers in the U.S. press, including former American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) employee Wolf Blitzer, are making a serious mistake, however, in refusing to acknowledge Israel’s outsized, transparent and often illegal meddling in the American political system and Israel’s brutal oppression of Palestinians.

It is too obvious and too egregious to hide.

The longer the ruling elites ignore this reality and censor and attack those such as Rep. Ilhan Omar who have the temerity to name this interference and the human rights abuses perpetrated by Israel, the more it gives credence to the racists, bigots, conspiracy theorists and white hate groups, many rooted in the Christian right, who are the real anti-Semites.

Israel and its lobby, rather than protecting Israel and Jews, are steadily nullifying their moral and ultimately political force.

Criticism of Israel and the ideology of Zionism is not anti-Semitic.

Criticism of Israel’s influence and control over U.S. foreign policy, and of Israeli efforts to silence those who champion Palestinian rights, is not anti-Semitic.

Criticism of Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians or its dangerous campaign to orchestrate a war with Iran is not anti-Semitic.

The more Israel and the Israel lobby abuse the charge of antisemitism, a charge the Israel lobby has leveled against British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, among many others, the more they lose their effectiveness against the dangerous anti-Semites whose ranks are growing within the far right and across the Muslim world.

Israel and its lobby do not care if its political allies, including those in the Christian right and the Trump White House, possess warped and racist attitudes about Jews.

The Christian right and many of those in the White House, while embracing Zionism, are also anti-Semitic.

President Donald Trump has called neo-Nazis “very fine people” and once tweeted an illustration of Hillary Clinton against a background of hundred-dollar bills and with the Star of David superimposed near her face.

The sole criterion of Israel and the Israel lobby in determining who to support and who to demonize is identifying who backs the far-right agenda of the apartheid state of Israel and who does not.

Genuine antisemitism is irrelevant. For Israel, the world is divided along the fault line of Palestinian rights.

Stand up for the Palestinians and you are an anti-Semite.

Cheer their marginalization, oppression and murder and you are a friend of the Jews.

Have Jewish leaders forgotten their own history?

Antisemitism is wrong and dangerous not only because it is bad for the Jews, but because the dark forces of ethnic and religious hatred, used by Israel and the lobby against critics, are bad for everyone, including the Jews and the Palestinians.

You open this Pandora’s box of evils at your peril.

The interference by Israel in the American political system is amply documented, including in the Al-Jazeera four-part series The Lobby, which Israel and its supporters managed to block from being broadcast.

In the film, a pirated copy of which can be watched on the website Electronic Intifada, the leaders of the Israel lobby are repeatedly captured on a reporter’s hidden camera explaining how they, backed by the intelligence services within Israel, attack and silence American critics and use huge cash donations to control the American electoral process and political system.

The Israel lobby, lacking any plausible deniability, has remained stunningly silent about the film. The corporate press, in the face of pressure by the lobby, has ignored the documentary.

The series exposes the various machinations of the Israel lobby.

“We made sure that there were people [agents of the lobby] in every single congressional district,” M.J. Rosenberg, a former editor of the AIPAC policy journal Near East Report and now a critic of AIPAC, said in the film in an on-the-record interview with Al-Jazeera.

“You call [politicians] and say, ‘I’m calling from AIPAC in Washington.’ I did these calls.

‘We hear you’re good friends with Congressman So and So.’ ‘Oh my God, yes, we’ve been friends with so and so.’

‘Well, what does he think about Israel?’ ‘I never talked to him about Israel.’

‘Well, can I come down and talk to you? And help you figure out a way to talk to him about Israel?’ ‘No, just tell me. What should I say? I’ll just tell him.’ ”

Craig Holman, who campaigns for lobbying reform with Public Citizen, is another participant in the film who denounced the Israel lobby’s fundraising practices.

“Right now our current [federal] contribution limit from any person to a candidate is $2,700,” Holman says.

“That’s a lot of money. It can certainly buy … some gratitude with a lawmaker.

But if you really want to add punch to that type of buying of favors, what you do is you get 50 or 100 people together at an event like this, all chipping in $2,700 and then you bundle it all together and hand the total amount to the lawmaker.

At that point, we’re talking anywhere around a quarter-million dollars. So suddenly you’ve got a group of people with the same demand they want from the lawmaker, handing over a quarter of a million dollars. That buys a lawmaker.”

One of the fundraising events captured in the film was for Anthony Brown, a Democrat who successfully ran for Congress in Maryland in 2016.

“You strategically pick the ones who are in close races and [whom you] want to build relationships with,” David Ochs, the founder of HaLev and an activist for Israel, says in the documentary.

“We want the Jewish community to go face to face in this small environment—50, 30, 40 people, and say, ‘This is what’s important to us.’ ”

“They’re actually buying these officeholders,” Public Citizen’s Holman says in the documentary.

Speaking from the lobby’s point of view, he says “we’re chipping in all this money so we can hand over $100,000 or $200,000 to the officeholder so we can buy them.”

“What [the] group is doing to avoid that [federal] disclosure requirement is it isn’t taking money and putting it in its own account and then handing it over to the officeholder,” Holman says of the Israel lobby.

“It’s just collecting credit card information and turning that over directly to the candidate.

Therefore, it’s not violating the earmarking law and they’re not reporting this.

All we can see on the campaign finance reports are the individuals who contributed.

But there are no records on those campaign finance reports that they weren’t together in a bundling group who are all at this event.

All we’d know is Person A gave $2,700; Person B gave $2,700. And we’d have no idea they’re working in tandem with each other.”

The Israel lobby also flies hundreds of members of Congress, often with their families, to Israel every year for lavish junkets at expensive resorts.

These Congress members run up individual bills that frequently exceed $20,000.

The Honest Leadership and Open Government Act of 2007 attempted to restrict lobbyists from offering paid trips lasting more than one day to members of Congress.

But AIPAC, which has never been forced to register as a foreign agent, used its clout to insert a clause in the act to exclude so-called educational trips organized by charities that do not hire lobbyists.

AIPAC is affiliated with such a charity, called the American Israel Education Foundation.

“It doesn’t have an office,” Holman says about the foundation. “It doesn’t have any employees.

It’s just a tax form they [Israel lobby agents] file. Gives some dinners, gives some wonderful resorts to stay at, entertainment, all of which is packed up into one of these trips.

It’s a very, very effective tool at influence peddling.”

The investment by Israel and is backers is worth it.

The United States Congress in 2018 authorized a $38 billion defense aid package for Israel over the next decade and has spent over $5.6 trillion during the last 18 years fighting futile wars that Israel and its lobby pushed for in the Middle East.

“If you wander off the reservation and become critical of Israel, you not only will not get money, AIPAC will go to great lengths to find someone who will run against you,” John Mearsheimer, professor of political science at the University of Chicago and co-author of The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, says in the documentary.

“And they support that person very generously.

The end result is you’re likely to lose your seat in Congress.”

The film focuses in part on former Rep. Jim Moran, who was in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1991 to 2015 and who was an open critic of the Israel lobby.

“They have questionnaires,” Moran says about AIPAC in the film. “Anyone running for Congress is [presented with a demand from AIPAC] to fill out a questionnaire.

And they evaluate the depth of your commitment to Israel on the basis of that questionnaire. And then you have an interview with local people. If you get AIPAC support, then more often than not you’re going to win.”

“You are told that ‘Israel continues to be under siege from hundreds of millions of its neighbors who are Muslims and they hate Israel and Jewish people,’ ” Moran says.

“You’re told, ‘They have only survived because of the United States, because of American politicians like you who support us.’ ”

“You realize it’s not just the money,” he goes on. “A number of concerned activists will send out postcards, make phone calls, they’ll organize.

That’s the democratic process. They understand the democratic process.”

“They threaten,” M.J. Rosenberg says of the Israel lobby leaders’ response to elected officials who become critical of Israel.

“They immediately threaten. Even if [politicians] know AIPAC can’t defeat them, AIPAC can make their lives more difficult.

They can make sure that their next town meeting or something, some members of the Jewish congregation jump up and say, ‘But you’re anti-Israel!’ ”

Moran was targeted by the Israel lobby because he raised questions about the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force Act, which authorized the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Moran told a Jewish constituent at a town hall meeting in his district that “if the Jewish community was opposed to the war, I think that would make a difference” in whether the United States would invade Iraq.

He was immediately accused by the Israel lobby of being an anti-Semite and fostering the belief that there was a Jewish conspiracy to push America into war.

“There was a conservative rabbi in my district who was assigned to me, I assume, by AIPAC,” Moran says.

“He warned me that if I voiced my views about the Israeli lobby that my career would be over, and implied that it would be done through the [Washington] Post.

Sure enough, The Washington Post editorialized brutally. Everyone ganged up.”

The film shows a screen shot of a 2003 headline in The Washington Post: “Sorry, Mr. Moran, You’re Not Fit For Public Office.” In following years there were a number of other negative commentaries.

In the film, Eric Gallagher, then with The Israel Project, tells the undercover reporter that AIPAC has a close relationship with the Washington Post editorial board.

Moran says, “The principal editorial board of the Post itself has been a very effective instrument because they have been able to maintain their credibility.

It’s a great paper in every other way. Because they have such credibility, they’re extremely effective.”

“Both of my daughters married Jewish men,” Moran says. “My grandchildren are Jewish. Anybody who considers me an anti-Semite is ignorant.”

AIPAC, while it presents itself as an impartial supporter of Israel, has long been an arm of the Israeli right.

It vehemently opposed the Oslo Accord and the peace process with the Palestinians engineered by Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.

It poured money and resources into the 1992 Israeli election campaign to back Rabin’s political opponents in the Likud party.

Rabin did not invite the leaders of the Israel lobby to his inauguration and, according to an aide in his office, referred to the leaders of the Israel lobby as “scumbags.”

He repeatedly denounced the lobby as an impediment to Israel’s security and democracy.

The Israeli newspaper Haaretz characterized Rabin’s remarks to American Jewish leaders during a visit to the United States as “brutal.”

“You have hurt Israel,” the newspaper quoted Rabin as saying. “I will not allow you to conduct my dealings with the [U.S.] administration.”

Washington Jewish Week reported that Rabin told the AIPAC leadership, “You failed at everything. You waged lost battles. … You caused damage to Israel. … You’re too negative. … You create too much antagonism.”

The Israel lobby, after Rabin’s assassination in 1995 by a right-wing Jewish fanatic and the 1996 electoral victory by Likud under the leadership of Netanyahu, returned to the good graces of the Israeli government.

The lobby, as Israel has lurched further and further to the right and adopted ever more overtly racist policies toward the Palestinians under Netanyahu, has become more intrusive in American political life.

Israel’s apartheid state, racism and murderous assaults on unarmed Palestinians increasingly alienate many of its traditional supporters, including young American Jews.

Israel, unable to justify its human rights abuses and atrocities, has opted for harsher forms of control including censoring, spying on and attacking its critics.

It has pressured the U.S. State Department to redefine antisemitism under a three-point test known as the Three Ds: the making of statements that “demonize” Israel; statements that apply “double standards” for Israel; statements that “delegitimize” the state of Israel.

This definition is being pushed by the Israel lobby in state legislatures and on college campuses.

It spreads the hate talk of Islamophobia, including by sponsoring the showing of the racist film “Unmasked Judeophobia” on college campuses on Holocaust Remembrance Day.

The film argues that Muslims embrace a Nazi-like antisemitism and are seeking to carry out another holocaust against Jews.

Nearly all American Muslims targeted by law enforcement since 9/11 were singled out for their outspokenness about Palestinian rights.

Most of those arrested had no connection to al-Qaida, Hatem Bazian, lecturer in the department of Near Eastern studies at UC Berkeley, says in the film—“no relationship whatsoever to what is called transnational terrorism.”

There are fractures in the Democratic Party, evidenced when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi faced a revolt by younger, more progressive members of the House over her proposal to pass an antisemitism resolution pushed by the Israel lobby and designed to shame Rep. Omar.

A reworded resolution, one that did not please the lobby, was passed, condemning anti-Muslim bias and white supremacy and citing “African-Americans, Native Americans, and other people of color, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, immigrants and others” victimized by bigotry.

Israel’s dominance of the Democratic Party is eroding.

It is losing legitimacy in the eyes of the public.

Israel’s tactics, for this reason, will become more vicious and underhanded.

Its interference in the democratic process will be characterized less by an attempt to persuade and more by the use of money to ensure fealty to its policies, censorship, the enforcement of legally binding oaths in favor of Israel to blunt the BDS movement, and the kind of racist hate talk it unleashed against Rep. Omar.

The lobby, as Rabin understood, was never a true friend of Israel.

Zionist AIPAC Undermines Progressive Democrats in Contested Primaries

by

SUMMER LEE FACES AIPAC SPENDING ONSLAUGHT IN FINAL DAYS OF PENNSYLVANIA PRIMARY

 

AT THE END of March, EMILY’s List, the Democratic organization that backs women candidates who support abortion rights, commissioned a poll to test the state of the U.S. House race in Pennsylvania’s 12th District.

 What they found heartened them: The group’s pick, state Rep. Summer Lee, enjoyed a commanding 25-point lead over her closest competitor, attorney Steve Irwin, drawing 38 to his 13 percent.

When voters were presented with more information about the candidates, Lee drew 49 percent of respondents’ support to Irwin’s 21, and a third contender, University of Pittsburgh law professor Jerry Dickinson, got 15. 

The poll, conducted by GQR, also found Lee holding a comfortable +29 approval rating among likely primary voters.

For Irwin, a former Republican U.S. Senate staffer, it would take something of a miracle to turn numbers like that around in the six weeks that remained.

But ahead of Tuesday’s contest, Irwin’s backers have attempted to close the gap with something else: a tsunami of outside spending, funneled through two major pro-Israel organizations that have made it their mission to undermine progressive Democrats in contested primaries.

Only Zionists and Jews in the U.S. State Department – Near East (1998) – Kay Griggs

In less than a month, the United Democracy Project — the political action committee for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC — poured more than $1 million into ads in Pennsylvania’s 12th District.

The bulk of the messaging attacked Lee, though just over $100,000 went to materials supporting Irwin. In total, United Democracy Project has spent more than $2.3 million on the race so far.

Our Israeli State Dept

Lee is one of several progressive House candidates who have come into the crosshairs of AIPAC and its counterpart Democratic Majority for Israel, which AIPAC’s operatives launched in 2019.

The groups justify their spending with a hard-line stance opposing any criticism of the Israeli state — even as the Israel Defense Forces relentlessly attack Palestinian civilians, journalists, and mourners.

In reality, this stance enables the pro-Israel lobby to attack progressives on any number of fronts.

“When you look at who DMFI has spent money attacking,” says a new video released Monday by Organize for Justice, a sister organization of Justice Democrats, which recruited Lee to run, “they [also] just so happen to want to hold Israel, the biggest recipient of U.S. aid, accountable for how they spend billions of American tax dollars.”

Lee tweeted last May that the indiscriminate use of the phrase “Israel has the right to defend itself” is standard fare for the justification of atrocities committed against marginalized people.

At the time, Israeli police had recently attacked worshippers at the Al Aqsa Mosque.

“As we fight against injustice here in the mvmnt for Blk lives, we must stand against injustice everywhere,” Lee wrote.

“Inhumanities against the Palestinian ppl cannot be tolerated or justified.”

While the Jewish Chronicle questioned Irwin about his challenger’s tweets six months later, claiming that they had been “understood by some as anti-Zionist and antisemitic,” Pittsburgh’s WESA noted that the Chronicle did not identify anyone who had made that claim.

“Even some Irwin supporters seem wary of accusing Lee of antisemitism,” the news station pointed out.


AIPAC’s United Democracy Project ran an April 22 ad that suggested that Lee isn’t really a Democrat.

Two days prior, the group had released a slate of endorsements including more than 100 Republican candidates who voted to overturn the 2020 election results.

“Groups like AIPAC and DMFI don’t have much name recognition even amongst Democratic primary voters, and even amongst high-level operatives and journalists,” Justice Democrats spokesperson Waleed Shahid told The Intercept.

“Some of the people at the highest levels of Democratic Party politics have no idea what these groups are, what their political goals are.”

Bipartisan criticism had been mounting for over a month, when some of the endorsements were released.

In a March letter to its members, AIPAC defended its growing slate, writing: “This is no moment for the pro-Israel movement to become selective about its friends.”

REP. MIKE DOYLE, the longtime Pennsylvania Democrat who Lee and Irwin are competing to replace, wasn’t shy to pick sides in the contest that quickly pitted progressives against the local party machine.

Doyle and Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., weighed in on the same day: While Doyle announced his support for Irwin, Sanders endorsed Lee.

“You don’t get anything done being Bernie Sanders or the Squad,” the congressman said last week.

Irwin, who led a division at his Pittsburgh law firm offering services in “union avoidance,” has been buoyed by almost $3 million in outside spending — most of it from political action committees associated with DMFI and AIPAC.

Progressive groups including Justice Democrats, Working Families Party PAC, and the Congressional Progressive Caucus PAC have spent just over $1.7 million to support Lee’s campaign. The PAC for J Street, a nonprofit that advocates for progressive foreign policy toward Israel, made a joint endorsement of Lee and Dickinson in April.

Last month, AIPAC sent a fundraising email with the subject line “Act Now: Anti-Israel Forces Want to Silence You” that attacked Lee and two other congressional candidates in North Carolina, Erica Smith and Nida Allam — both also progressive women of color — as “anti-Israel candidates.”

 Mark Mellman, the head of DMFI, claimed to The Intercept last month that criticism from the U.S. left emboldens the Israeli right.

“The anti-Israel far left has propped up the Israeli right and done tremendous damage to the prospects for peace between Israel and the Palestinians,” he said.

After AIPAC’s United Democracy Project released its April ad scorning the notion that Lee “calls herself a Democrat,” several party members backing Lee’s campaign, including State House Democratic Minority Leader Joanna McClinton and Pittsburgh Mayor Ed Gainey, condemned the messaging and called on Irwin to denounce it, Pittsburgh’s TribLive reported.

“As Democrats from across the commonwealth, we find it shameful that you would team up with a corporate super PAC that has endorsed over 100+ pro-insurrectionist Republicans to attack and smear our Democratic colleague, state Rep. Summer Lee, as not a Democrat,” the group wrote.

“When you are literally on the same side as insurrectionists, I guess the only way to defend yourself is to attack the lone Black woman in the race that has done more to expand and turn out our electorate for Democrats than anyone in this race.”

Irwin’s campaign told the outlet that while the candidate cannot control super PAC spending or messaging, the ads “appear to be true.”

A spokesperson pointed to Lee’s criticism of Joe Biden during the 2020 presidential primary, including an observation of the then-candidate’s “casual racism,” and said, “In the scheme of things, Rep. Lee has far more explaining to do.”

(Like many of the president’s left-leaning critics, Lee later went on to campaign for Biden.)

Irwin’s campaign did not respond to The Intercept’s request for comment.

U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), speaks at the 2019 American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) Policy Conference, at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, March 26, 2019. (Photo by Cheriss May/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., speaks at the 2019 American Israel Public Affairs Committee Policy Conference in Washington, D.C., on March 26, 2019.

 

Photo: Cheriss May/NurPhoto via Getty Images

IF SHE WINS on Tuesday and again in November, Lee will be the first Black woman elected to Congress from Pennsylvania.

She has led efforts to end cash bail at the state level, and she is running for federal office on a platform that includes the Green New Deal, Medicare For All, and the promotion of labor unions.

Beyond Sanders and Justice Democrats, she has earned endorsements from Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass.; Congressional Progressive Caucus chair Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash.; and the sitting members of the House Squad.

The idea of having “a Black woman as a congressperson, on its face, is very attractive,” Irwin said in March at a town hall held by the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh.

Though he “supported [Lee] when we first met,” Irwin said, “I know how she’s worked with other people in the community, I know how she’s worked with people in business, I know how she’s worked with people in the House and government, and I can tell you that it does not indicate that it would be as conducive to getting things done.”

Responding in a tweet, Lee said the comments were evidence of “misogynoir” facing “COUNTLESS qualified Blk women who threaten white male hegemony.

And as we see it doesnt just come from Republicans.” Irwin’s campaign did not respond publicly to the criticism.

“Almost $3 million was spent trying to stop Pennsylvanians from electing their first Black Congresswoman — imagine if that money was instead being used to protect Democrats’ majority in November.”

“We are once again seeing what happens when Republican-backed corporate power is threatened by a working class Black woman fighting to bring people-powered leadership to her community,” Justice Democrats candidate communications manager Usamah Andrabi said in a statement to The Intercept.

“Almost $3 million was spent trying to stop Pennsylvanians from electing their first Black Congresswoman — imagine if that money was instead being used to protect Democrats’ majority in November.”

Dickinson, meanwhile, has called on Irwin to drop out of the race for unrelated reasons: TribLive reported in March that one of the people who circulated petitions for his campaign forged several hundred signatures, though he likely would have qualified for the ballot anyway.

Lee criticized the campaign for approving the forged petitions but did not call on him to drop out.

The same month, the AFL-CIO declined to endorse his campaign after learning of his “labor avoidance” role, leaving union support split in the race.

The money, however, is with Irwin. Lee’s campaign has raised just over $700,000, Dickinson’s almost $700,000, and Irwin’s $1.2 million.

The influx of outside spending from DMFI and AIPAC on Irwin’s side, and from Justice Democrats and WFP on Lee’s, comes on top of those reserves.

“Every single member of the Democratic leadership in Congress, as well as President Obama, the head of the Congressional Black Caucus and 20 members of the House Progressive Caucus have been endorsed by AIPAC,” Irwin’s spokesperson reminded TribLive.

“Steve Irwin is proud to stand up for the Jewish state of Israel and America’s strongest ally in the Middle East.”

‘Abraham Accords’ Discredit the US

by

Corrupt side deals and more payoffs to Israel

AIPAC is now quickly advancing relations operating almost as a “shadow” US State Department.

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) continues to lobby Congress for more support for the so-called “Abraham Accords.”

This Trump administration initiative sought to transcend the spectacular failure of the “Deal of the Century” initiative that called for Palestinian acquiescence to annexation and renunciation of sovereignty rights in exchange for vague and uncertain economic development projects.

After Palestinians rejected the deal, the Trump administration pivoted to forging a string of spectacularly corrupt deals with Arab dictatorships.

The so-called Abraham Accords attempt to fracture their formerly unified but tepid and inconsistent opposition to recognizing Israel until there was just solution to the violent settler colonization and expulsion of Palestinians that brought Israel into being.

To date UAE, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan have signed onto the Abraham Accords because of corrupt “side deals” that further degrade the already rock-bottom international reputation of the United States.

The deals accurately boost the perception that Israel’s U.S. lobby exercises vast and undue influence over American foreign policy.

There was initial hope that the Biden administration would take a principled stand and refuse to honor the side deals. That hope has been dashed.

For UAE the side deal was approval of a $23 billion advanced jet fighter sale to UAE. On April 13, 2021 the Biden administration approved the deal.

Members of the Israel affinity ecosystem such as the American Jewish Committee are fighting hard for the Biden administration to not abandon other equally unsavory Abraham Accord side deals.

Sudan signed onto an accord in a joint ceremony with former Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin after the US promised to remove Sudan from its list of state sponsors of terrorism.

This “removal in exchange for Israel recognition” revealed yet again the entirely political, rather than fact-based, nature of such US designations.

The US further promised a $1 billion bridge loan to help move Sudan back into the realm of acceptable international borrowers.

In the case of Morocco, the “side deal” was recognizing Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara.

When Spain left its former desert colony in the 1970s, Morocco secretly negotiated to take over half the territory with the other going to Mauritania.

An ensuing guerilla war by Western Sahara inhabitants and Morocco’s occupation led to the deaths of tens of thousands.

The Trump administration exited a longstanding policy of considering the area disputed territory and intervened to recognize Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara.

The overarching reason was to win Morocco’s signature on an Abraham Accord rather than any US interest or new diplomatic breakthrough.

The US thus became the only country in the world to recognize sovereignty, while upending any hope for UN efforts to secure a more just and fair outcome.

In January David Schenker, Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs opened a US consulate in occupied Western Sahara, even as Western Sahara renewed a request for U.N. membership.

The US also pledged $5 billion in US International Development Finance Corporation funds to Morocco.

The US State Department under Anthony Blinken has “welcomed Morocco’s steps to improve relations with Israel and noted the Morocco-Israel relationship will bring long-term benefits for both countries.”

Clerk of the House of Representatives AIPAC Quarterly Lobbying Reports

The irony is, that even as American pundits continue to fret over Russian and Chinese influence, Israeli foreign influence in the US has only grown.

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) quietly raised $1.1 billion over the past decade to advance Israeli government policies from within the US.

Far too few Americans know AIPAC was ordered to register as an Israeli foreign agent in 1962 when it operated as the unincorporated lobbying division of the American Zionist Council.

This order came after millions in Israeli funds gushed into US public relations and lobbying campaigns.

Although AIPAC directors maintain close and ongoing ties to Israeli government officials in order to better translate their aid and policy requests into US law, the US Department of Justice has long refused to properly enforce its own order and regulate the lobbying group under the Foreign Agents Registration Act.

Combined with overt coordinated and stealth political action committees funding Congressional candidates, AIPAC has achieve massive undue foreign influence over Congress, making Israel the leading recipient of US foreign aid, even though it is unlawful under US law regulating aid to rogue nuclear weapons states.

Although US opinion polls continually signal public opposition to foreign aid to Israel, Congress remains captive to what historian Walter Hixson has recently determined is “the most powerful lobby advancing the interests of a foreign country in all of American history.”

Israeli Knesset member briefs AIPAC’s Board of Directors on January 12, 2021, Source: Twitter

It is doubtful the US would have recognized Moroccan claims over Western Sahara if Israel and its US lobby had not gotten involved.

AIPAC is now quickly advancing relations operating almost as a “shadow” US State Department.

On May 6, AIPAC will hold a three-way video conference between Morocco’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Nasser Bourita and Israel’s Minister of National Infrastructure, Energy and Water and the Israeli Ministry of Defense and an official from Nobel Energy which is developing liquid natural gas from the Israeli Leviathan fields.

AIPAC has ramped up Abraham Accord direct lobbying expenditures over the past three quarters as a top priority and it is no wonder why.

Most of the proposed US expenditures on the Trump-era “peace” accords were destined to accrue mostly to Israeli recipients.

An opaque fund arranged by the US International Development Finance Corp based in Israel received 25 applications and chose 15 projects for funding.

By September of 2020, Israel had three active projects totaling $580 million in US backed loans.

In 2019, DFC committed $480 million to two “Egyptian projects” – except they were not truly projects accruing to Egyptian interests but rather schemes to transport and sell Israeli liquid natural gas from the Leviathan fields being developed by Noble Energy.

Morocco is now surely in line for even more US taxpayer – backed Israeli energy export projects.

The plurality of Americans would cut aid to Israel after compelling studies released by Israel’s B’Tselem about its apartheid practices and more recently Human Rights Watch.

The White House has already dismissed those findings. But even as it touts itself as a leader in racial justice, the unconditional support the Biden administration and Congress give Israel are actions that speak far louder than words.

Grant F. Smith is the director of the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy in Washington which is co-organizer of the 2022 Transcending the Israel Lobby at Home and Abroad conference at the National Press Club and publisher of the new book “Architects of Repression: How Israel and Its Lobby Put Racism, Violence and Injustice at the Center of US Middle East Policy.”

AIPAC called a ‘Hate Group’

by

Since plenty of years the U.S. is de facto run by pro-Israeli Jews either directly, or indirectly through the might of their Jewish lobbies. The Israeli paper Ma’ariv (02.09.1994) even wrote:

“The U.S. has no longer a government of Goyim [Gentiles], but an administration in which the Jews are full partners in the decision making at all levels. Perhaps the aspects of the Jewish religious law connected with the term ‘government of goyim’ should be re-examined, since it is an outdated term in the U.S.”

The powerful American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) tried to convince Americans that a humanitarian Congress member, Betty McCollum of Minnesota, is ‘worse than ISIS’ because of her bill to protect Palestinian children. AIPAC officials have been investigated for espionage on behalf of Israel. It has long advocated for the Israeli government… Claims to represent all Jewish Americans but today represents only a tiny minority…

“In reality, they are not independent of the israeli government.”

By Allan C. Brownfeld, reposted from WRMEA

REP. BETTY MCCOLLUM (D-MN) called the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) a “hate group” after it placed ads on Facebook which implied that McCollum and other members of Congress who had defended the rights of Palestinians were worse than the terrorist group ISIS.

McCollum declared: “as a member of Congress and the vice-chair of the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, I believe defending human rights and freedom are foundational to international security and our democracy.

The struggle to promote human dignity inevitably results in confronting entrenched forces determined to dehumanize, debase and demonize individuals or even entire populations to maintain dominance and an unjust status quo. Hate is used as a weapon to incite and silence dissent.

Unfortunately, this is my experience with AIPAC.”

In explaining why he was not attending this year’s AIPAC conference, Sen. Bernie Sanders declared: “The Israeli people have the right to live in peace and security. So do the Palestinian people.

I am concerned about the platform AIPAC provides for leaders who express bigotry and oppose basic Palestinian rights.”

In a column headlined, “AIPAC Makes Sanders’ Point for Him,” Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank writes: “AIPAC and Netanyahu seemed intent on proving Sanders’ point.

As the conference opened…Netanyahu, speaking to the group via satellite…derided the Palestinians as ‘the pampered children of the international community.’

The AIPAC audience applauded….Netanyahu told AIPAC he was moving forward with plans to annex Palestinian territory—-a move that would make the long sought two-state solution all but impossible.”

In what many considered a direct effort to influence the American presidential election, Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations Danny Danon declared: “We don’t want Sanders at AIPAC.

We don’t want him in Israel. Anyone who calls our prime minister a racist is either a liar, an ignorant fool, or both.”

In Milbank’s view, “AIPAC…finds itself not only at odds with Democrats, but also with most American Jews, instead of its tradition of representing strong, broad support for Israel, AIPAC is becoming about as bipartisan as the National Rifle Association.

Even Netanyahu reportedly regards AIPAC as just another right-wing American interest group.

‘We don’t need AIPAC anymore,’ Netanyahu reportedly told one of his advisers. ‘We have enough support in the United States from the evangelicals.

israel depends on the loons for support

I’d happily give up on AIPAC if we didn’t need to counteract J Street,’ a liberal pro-Israel group.

Writing in The Forward, Batya Ungar-Sargon, in an article titled, “How AIPAC Proved Bernie Right,” notes, “I had never before been in the same room as a person who has defended genocide…until the AIPAC policy conference.

Words like apartheid and genocide and ethnic cleansing are often thrown around in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict…

But it wasn’t a defender of Israeli war crimes, real or imagined, who was hosted by AIPAC. It was someone from a different context entirely.

“In July of 1995, 8,000 Muslims were murdered in Srebrenica in what the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia deemed a genocide.

Under the command of Ratko Mladić, a Serbian paramilitary unit killed thousands and thousands…Aleksander Vučić was then serving as Minister of Information. He imposed fines for journalists who opposed the government and banned foreign TV networks.

The Serbian media he oversaw was accused of justifying atrocities and demonizing ethnic minorities….Vučić has reinvented himself…and has been serving as president of Serbia since 2017…AIPAC welcomed the Serbian President to address its 18,000 delegates.”

Over the years there have been frequent calls for AIPAC to register as a foreign agent. In the 1970s, Sen. J. William Fulbright (D-AR), then chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, argued that this should be done, as have other U.S. foreign policy and intelligence analysts.

In April 2005, AIPAC policy director Steven Rosen and AIPAC senior Iran analyst Keith Weissman were fired from AIPAC amid an FBI investigation into whether they passed classified international security information to Israel.

They were later indicted for illegally conspiring to gather and disclose classified information to Israel. AIPAC agreed to pay the legal fees for Weissman’s defense through appeal if necessary, but charges were ultimately dropped.

In May 2005, the Justice Department announced that Lawrence Franklin, a U.S. Air Force Reserve Colonel working as a Department of Defense analyst in the Pentagon, had been arrested and charged by the FBI with providing classified international defense information to Israel.

The 6-count criminal complaint identified AIPAC by name. Franklin pleaded guilty to turning over classified material to both AIPAC and an Israeli government official.

He was sentenced to almost three years in prison.

Respected Jewish commentator Peter Beinart said of AIPAC, “In reality, they are not independent of the Israeli government.

The Zionists are leading a war of terrorism against their opponents, using organisations such as Mossad, Betar-Tagar, the Jewish Defense League, and the Anti-Defamation League.

When Netanyahu came out against the Iran deal, AIPAC did not have an independent choice of whether it was going to or not. It pretty much has to kowtow to the Israeli government all the time.”

According to journalist Connie Bruck, AIPAC has been able to “deliver the support of Congress” to prevent any president who wants to negotiate with Israel from using the multi-billion dollar packages of military aid that go to Israel each year as leverage for passing the spending and taking away this strongest negotiating chit.

AIPAC has helped to make Israel the largest cumulative recipient of U.S. foreign assistance since the end of World War ll. It now receives more than $3.8 billion in aid yearly.

As a result of AIPAC’s efforts, this aid includes numerous provisions that are not available to other American allies.

According to the Congressional Research Service, these provisions include providing aid “as all grant cash transfers, not designated for particular projects, and transferred as a lump sum in the first month of the fiscal year, instead of in installments.

Israel is allowed to spend about a quarter of the military aid for the procurement in Israel of defense articles and services…rather than in the U.S.”

An important reason for AIPAC’s influence is that it markets itself as representing American Jewish opinion. In fact, most American Jews disagree with its embrace of total support for Israel as its governments steadily move away from democracy.

A recent Pew Center poll showed that only 38 percent of American Jews believe that the Israeli government is seriously pursuing peace, while 44 percent believe that the continued construction of settlements in the occupied territories damages Israel’s national security.

Increasingly, young Jewish activists are separating themselves from AIPAC. In March the Washington Post reported, “…the activists represent a new generation of Israel critics that differs with the pro-peace movement of the 1990s.

That earlier movement focused on a two-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict…The new groups are the product of the post-millennial liberal politics, with antipathy for nationalism of all kinds and a hunger to tear down the entire system of money in politics.”

Jeremy Ben-Ami, president of J Street, which formed in 2007 as a liberal but still pro-Zionist alternative to AIPAC, declares: “What we said was: ‘There’s another way to be pro-Israel, you don’t have to support whatever the Israeli government does.’”

According to the Washington Post, “Younger groups are saying: ‘You don’t have to be pro-Israel, you should be pro-human rights, and everyone should have a state.’”

“When a Jew, in America or in South Africa, talks to his Jewish companions about ‘our’ government, he means the government of Israel.”

– David Ben-Gurion, Israeli Prime Minister

This year’s anti-AIPAC campaign was led by the Jewish group IfNotNow. A few days after members of IfNotNow videotaped themselves confronting former Vice President Joe Biden about AIPAC’s opposition to the 2015 U.S.-Iran nuclear deal, Biden said he would go to the conference “to convince them to change their position.”

In the end, Biden sent a video message, telling delegates that Israel’s annexation plans and settlement activities were “choking hopes for peace.”

The idea that supporting the Israeli government’s policies is the way to attract Jewish voters has no basis in reality.

J Street recently asked Jewish voters to name their two most important issues. Just 4 percent chose Israel. The same survey found that 65 percent said they were somewhat or very attached to Israel. The American Jewish Committee’s 2015 poll found a similar result.

The views of most American Jews were never represented by AIPAC and at the present time, AIPAC speaks only for a small minority, which embraces the occupation and the Israeli government itself. It may have become what many, such as Rep. McCollum, call it, “a hate group.”

That it should register as a foreign agent of the government of Israel is increasingly clear. We should not permit it to pretend that it, in any way, speaks for millions of American Jews whose opinions are far different and who embrace human rights and equality for men and women of every nation and faith, in particular the Palestinians.

Is ‘Israel first’ a hot potato in 2020?

by

4

Is ‘Israel first’ a hot potato in 2020?

Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) ignores Foreign Agent Registration Act orders since inception. It is an illegal entity in the US.

haaretz

‘Never Bernie’ AIPAC now sounds a lot like a pro-Trump caucus, not a bipartisan pro-Israel lobby. But it has no choice

This past week AIPAC found a way to alienate just about everyone in the American political world.

After the group’s decision to run Facebook ads calling out some Democrats as “radicals” and “anti-Semitic” only to apologize for doing so, both liberals and conservatives were disgusted with the pro-Israel lobby, accusing it of political bias as well as incompetence.

But while there was much to criticize about its choices, maybe it’s time to acknowledge that in the 2020 election year, AIPAC has been given an impossible task with no possible path to success.

AIPAC’s Facebook ad calling “radicals” in the Democratic Party “anti-Israel” and “anti-Semitic”

The problem facing the pro-Israel lobby is that the political climate simply isn’t conducive to the way it has carried out its mission for the last several decades.

In more normal political times, it was easy for the group to act as an umbrella group uniting supporters of Israel from the right, left and center behind a common agenda of support for

“Israel’s” government and the “Jewish state’s” security.


The problem facing the pro-Israel lobby is that the political climate simply isn’t conducive to the way it has carried out its mission for the last several decades.

In more normal political times, it was easy for the group to act as an umbrella group uniting supporters of Israel from the right, left and center behind a common agenda of support for Israel’s government and the Jewish state’s security.

While it has long been accused of having a right-wing bias, that was largely a myth. AIPAC’s core operating principle was an effort to curry favor on both sides of the aisle.

Supporters in every state and congressional district in the United States had marching orders to cultivate friendships with any politician who might wind up in Congress,and the result was a powerful network that was fueled in part by donations and personal influence.

Elizabeth Warren Says Won’t Attend AIPAC Annual Conference in WashingtonJewish progressive group IfNotNow launches #SkipAIPAC campaign to pressure other candidates not to attend the pro-Israel lobby conference

But it also worked because both Republicans and Democrats rightly understood that support for Israel among American voters was a function of broad and popular consensus.

AIPAC has done its best to nurture that consensus with an almost religious insistence on bipartisanship even when that meant their support for a two-state solution was not quite in step with the Likud-led coalition that has governed Israel for the past 11 years.

Threading that needle was often difficult. But in 2020 it may actually be impossible.

The first obstacle to AIPAC’s ability to maintain at least a façade of bipartisanship rests on the fact that the Trump administration has given both Israel and its American friends more or less everything it has been demanding of every White House for the last 40 years.

Trump’s withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal put him in sync with the lobby’s desperate battle to defeat President Barack Obama’s signature foreign policy accomplishment.

But with Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, support for its sovereignty on the Golan Heights, demands for the Palestinian Authority to halt its subsidies for terrorists and their families and now a peace plan that is heavily tilted toward the Jewish state, he’s left no room for the Democrats to compete with him for the title of Israel’s friend.

But since even the majority of Democrats who are longtime dedicated supporters of Israel opposes those Trump policies that AIPAC applauds – on Iran and the peace process – it’s difficult for the lobby to maintain its traditional stance of bipartisanship.

At the same time, AIPAC is broadly supportive of efforts by centrist Democrats to prevent their party from being hijacked by left-wingers that don’t share their friendly attitude toward Israel. 

In the lead up to the Iowa caucus, the Democratic Majority for Israel, a year-old political action group and super PAC, invested heavily in negative ads aimed at derailing the campaign of Sen. Bernie Sanders.

Mark Mellman, the veteran Democratic strategist who leads the group, told me that its efforts – which are funded by the party’s leading pro-Israel donors – helped steer late deciding voters away from the Vermont Democratic Socialists.

It’s in that context that the AIPAC Facebook ads that so offended Democrats must be seen. For centrist pro-Israel Democrats, the problem with Sanders is not just that he is the most critical toward Israel of all the Democrats. It’s that the left-wing activist base that is fueling his candidacy is also largely hostile toward the Jewish state.

Sanders is backed by Representatives Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich), who are supporters of the BDS movement and are accused of (by 5th column Zionists) using anti-Semitic language and tropes in their criticisms of Israel’s supporters. 

Sanders’ surge and the apparent collapse of support for the centrists’ favorite candidate, former Vice President Joe Biden, has left the Democratic Majority for Israel and its allies in full stop-Sanders mode.

Which is undoubtedly why AIPAC was following the Super PAC’s lead when it ran ads that alleged that “radicals in the Democratic Party are pushing their anti-Israel and anti-Semitic agenda down the throats of the American people.” 

That was a clear shot at Omar and Tlaib. But singling those two women out in a manner reminiscent of the broadsides Trump has aimed at them offended some of AIPAC’s Democratic friends – both because they are leery of taking them on, and also because it seemed to imply that the problem is bigger than just those two BDS supporters.

Faced with criticism from those Democrats who are supportive of Israel, AIPAC had to apologize and take the ads down. 

But doing that angered right-wingers who, not unreasonably, pointed out that what AIPAC had done was to intervene in a Democratic civil war on the side of supporters of Israel.

The Jewish right already thought AIPAC’s reflexive bipartisanship was obsolete in a political environment in which the GOP is a lockstep pro-Israel party, while the Democrats are increasingly split on whether to support it.

But this incident only strengthened that conviction.

That won’t stop AIPAC continuing with business as usual on Capitol Hill in which it works with its friends in both parties. And its annual conference in March will undoubtedly highlight the fact that a record number of Democratic members of Congress went to Israel last year and that Omar and Tlaib aren’t representative of their party’s beliefs.

But with anti-Zionist groups like IfNotNow going all out to persuade Democrats to skip the AIPAC conference this year – a stance that Sen. Elizabeth Warren appeared to endorse – the issue for the group is not whether its doing enough to woo Democrats, but the fact that there may no longer be any neutral ground between the parties to which the lobby can rally its liberal supporters.

At a time of unprecedented hyper-partisanship,and with the possibility that support for Israel will be a point of partisan contention in the fall presidential campaign – especially if the Democrats nominate Bernie Sanders, it’s hard to see how AIPAC can continue to navigate between the parties.

It just isn’t possible to attack Democrats who are anti-Israel without sounding pro-Trump.

While it’s easy to criticize the pro-Israel lobby for its missteps, the real problem is that at a time when Democrats are divided on Israel and Trump is tilting hard toward the Jewish state all the time, AIPAC is just being asked to do something that may no longer be possible.

AIPAC Zionist pep rally by people who can’t tell us anything first hand

by

Brief and analysis so we don’t have to watch and listen to every single creep one by one

 These are individuals who want, more than anything, to have a place in the new world order. They only memorize the required Zionist script. Would anyone argue that the new world order belongs to these Ashkenazim heathens of Europe? There’s probably a bonus for recruiters..

It’s a matter of everyone making their choice. It’s the devil’s contract. We see who signs on, and we see who opts out. Those who want in will do anything necessary and are groveling at the feet of these fake Jews.

This is what the 2 world wars were about. Turns out to be exactly true!

People with no honor, no morals, no common dignity. It’s so plain to see nowadays. Satan is putting it all out front, parading them in front of God. H’es proud of his accomplishments. Are these the end times? Surely there is going to be a reckoning of some sort on a large scale!

Sorry for them! I see Israeli Ambassador to the US Ron Dermer, House Majority Leader Rep. Steny Hoyer, former senator Joe Lieberman and TV host and author Meghan McCain, daughter of the late Sen. John McCain, Pence, Gantz, former US envoy to the UN Nikki Haley and US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman… and probably half the world!

AIPAC allies should stop hiding behind Jews

by

“Years ago, when Wolf Blitzer was an AIPAC employee and we appeared together on a panel discussion, he literally shouted at me that, as Americans, AIPAC members had the right to lobby Congress. My response then was the same as it is now: when lobbying is being done for a foreign government, as AIPAC does, it’s wrong.”  ~Sam Husseini

husseini.posthaven

As a virtual lynch mob moves to chastise Rep. Ilhan Omar over her recent remarks around Israel, the new congresswoman basically has three options before her: (1) Fold; (2) Continue the back and forth of the last several weeks or (3) Get more specific and expand the public critique.

The current back and forth may be alluring for Rep. Omar. It keeps her the center of much attention, but I fear it will likely presage little positive change in U.S. policy or increase the prospects for a just peace in the Middle East. It feels to me rather like how Yasser Arafat acted on occasion, a sort of longterm game of crit and retreat that might make for a thrilling, star-studded career, but ends up amounting to surprisingly little.

Get Specific, Expand the Critique: It pays to recall this is hardly the first go around with someone trying to stand up to AIPAC. The Israel lobby has targeted numerous representatives before, most obviously Reps. Pete McCloskey, Cynthia McKinney and Earl Hilliard. Also, as even the New York Timesrecently recalled in a piece about AIPAC now targeting Rep. Omar and other freshmen, it went after Republican Sen. Charles Percy and Rep. Paul Findley, who literally wrote the book They Dare to Speak Out: People and Institutions Confront Israel’s Lobby.

Former Senator James Abourezk, possibly the most radical senator of the post-World War II era wrote in 2011: “Years ago, when Wolf Blitzer was an AIPAC employee and we appeared together on a panel discussion, he literally shouted at me that, as Americans, AIPAC members had the right to lobby Congress. My response then was the same as it is now: when lobbying is being done for a foreign government, as AIPAC does, it’s wrong.”

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists hosted a live international news conference in Washington DC, to announce the 2019 time of the Doomsday Clock. “Israel’s weapons must be included.” Just a few words on Israel and nuclear weapons.

Grant Smith, author of Big Israel, has tracked the history of how AIPAC avoided the law. He writes that In 1962, AIPAC, which actually began as a project of the American Zionist Council, “was ordered to register as an Israeli foreign agent. The Justice Department kept this fact secret until 2010. It has never tried to enforce the order.” Imagine how much more quickly the U.S. Jewish community could have found its own voice rather than be pigeonholed regarding Israel if the law was enforced.

Much of Rep. Omar’s comments to date have been about herself, about her relationship to Jews and Jewish constituents. What they have been insufficiently about is actual Israeli and U.S. government policy towards the Palestinians and others.

For example, talking about U.S. policy being literally “all about the benjamins” is highly dubious. Money is certainly a needed ingredient, but the U.S. government’s backing of Israel more than anything has to do with geopolitics, most obviously Israel effectively crushing Arab nationalism in 1967, preventing the development of the region along lines remotely responsive to the people of the region.

Rep. Omar can highlight such critical aspects. Some are timely: The recent UN report on Israeli atrocities against Palestinians.

Some are long crying out for public discussion: The U.S. government refuses to acknowledge — as a matter of policy — that Israel has nuclear weapons. I know, I’ve asked numerous politicos about this. In 2011, when Mike Pence was on the House Foreign Affairs Committee — the same committee Rep. Omar is on now (and what AIPAC is quite clearly aiming to get her off of) — his response was nearly comical. If you haven’t, see for yourself (video). But of course Pence wasn’t laughed out of Washington, D.C. or widely derided — he attained the vice presidency.

With Rep. Omar being the center of much attention just now, her highlighting Israeli criminality and nuclear threats to humanity itself could have an immeasurable positive effect. Recall that when George Galloway was at the center of enormous attacks over the alleged “oil for food” scandal in 2005, he turned the tables and derided Sen. Norm Coleman and the entire political class over the Iraq invasion being based on a “pack of lies” to great effect; Coleman would go on to lose his Senate seat. See video.

Some, including Rep. Omar, ask why people can freely talk about the influence of the NRA and not AIPAC — and it’s a good question, but also ironic: Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, author of Loaded: A Disarming History of the Second Amendment, has argued focusing just on the role of the NRA distracts from the settler colonial origins of the Second Amendment.

Indeed, perhaps the most potentially profound of Omar’s recent tweets are ones like this:

“I am told every day that I am anti-American if I am not pro-Israel. I find that to be problematic and I am not alone. I just happen to be willing to speak up on it and open myself to attacks.”

This all depends on how you define the U.S. and how you define Israel. I increasingly don’t see countries. I see forces. And what many mean when they talk about a “special relationship” between the U.S. and Israel — whether they acknowledged it or not — is the settler colonial pattern they have both followed.

The origins of this connection is examined by Rev. Michael Prior, in an essay titled “The Right to Expel: The Bible and Ethnic Cleansing” for the book Palestinian Refugees: The Right of Return: “The term ‘ethnic cleansing’ itself, I suggest, is related to a conflation of the biblical notions of ‘unclean’/profane’ with the command to ‘drive out’ the inhabitants of Canaan (Exodus 23-24; Numbers 33; Deuteronomy 33 and Joshua), because, according to the biblical legend, they had defiled themselves by their evil practices (Leviticus 18:24). Uniquely in ancient literature, the biblical legend projects the extermination of the defiled indigenes as a divine mandate. With the authority of its religious provenance that value system has been incorporated into European imperialist ideologies, ‘legitimizing’ the destruction or displacement of indigenous peoples.”

That is, the most gruesome part of the Old Testament was used as justification for settlers in what would become the U.S., killing and robbing the native inhabitants. And the same mentality is now used once again in the land of Canaan. At a very high standard, Rep. Omar cannot claim that she is free from anti-Israel bias if she singles out Israel’s settler colonialism but engages in mythology regarding the U.S.’s settler colonialism and continued imperial politics. This includes a worldwide system of bases, divide-and-rule practices in the Middle East and elsewhere, a renewed explicit commitment to the Monroe Doctrine now targeting Venezuela to mention a few.

She did confront some of this when recently questioning U.S. envoy to Venezuela Elliott Abrams, a criminal abettor of genocide. She questioned Abrams far more strongly than any of the other congressional representatives, but when he claimed the U.S. government wanted democracy, she extraordinarily agreed.

The criminal rot of imperial policies that is highlighted by the U.S.-Israeli “special relationship” rests on lies and ridiculous absurdities and is therefore vulnerable, but it runs deep and it will take a very determined critique to dislodge. Many are now saying #StandWithIlhan, but a huge question is how firmly she will stand.

AIPAC is the swamp

by

1

The only difference between Trump and Hillary is the hostile rhetoric against Russia. Otherwise they are both in Israel’s pocket.

AIPAC is the monied Deep State and Trump is one of their many swamp creatures that are playing his blinded Christian Zionist supporters better than Obama, the Bush’s, the Clintons could do combined. He is truly the perfect Zionist operative.

Everyone wants to cozy up to the money in D.C., Trump included. As David Ochs, stated above AIPAC is the richest, most influential lobby in Washington.

It is Israeli interests that utilize their vast network of compromised political elite and the Israeli dual-citizen Neocons controlling the Pentagon to drag us into perpetual war on their behalf. It is this Israeli loyal contingent that is the Deep State swamp in U.S. politics who are running the show.

When Baron Edmond De Rothschild set out to establish a Zionist state in Israel back in the late 1800’s that was not some pet project of the family, it was their entire End Game. Israel is the most important thing to this family and they will drag the world into the fires of hell to make sure their vision of a Greater Israel is made manifest.

If you want to find the ancient dragon, then follow the money and that money leads back to Israel, who in turn leads back to the Rothschild’s controlling interest in the region.

AIPAC is the monied Deep State and Trump is one of their many swamp creatures that are playing his blinded Christian Zionist supporters better than Obama, the Bush’s, the Clintons could do combined. He is truly the perfect Zionist operative.

The second Temple was called Herod’s Temple, and Jesus cursed it and predicted its collapse, the 3rd Temple in Jerusalem will undoubtedly be called the Rothschild Temple once built, it doesn’t take a genius to see where all this madness is headed, but it does take the entire blinded Christian Zionist establishment to fall for this ungodly lie and support it for it to play out like Revelation indicates it will. Even the elect will be deceived Jesus told us, well we’re living it right now.

Here with us to stay.

Paul when calling out the Jewish betrayers in his day asked this of the Galatians “So have I become your enemy by telling you the truth?” No doubt, Trump and his Zionist handlers will weaponize the antisemitism rhetoric and turn it against all of us that are telling the Truth about Zionist influence in our government, in our day. History repeats itself because the devil is always up to his old tricks.

russia-insider

 

It’s not a theory… Israel owns us

by

Trump calls Ilhan Omar to resign
After outrage over US legislator’s anti-Semitic remarks about AIPAC, president says if she doesn’t step down, she should ‘certainly resign from the foreign affairs committee’

President Kennedy wanted Israel’s foreign lobbies to register as foreign agents but he was assassinated first.

Everyone gets fired if they say ANYthing about Israel or Israel’s interests unless it’s “I love Israel”. That’s all anyone is allowed to say or they get the axe. And to be called to resign by the president?! Doesn’t get any worse than that I don’t think. Our president and everybody else has to jump on it fast and hard to please Israel. Why, what will Israel do? Well that’s not the right question. The right question is who owns Israel and is making up the rules? Someone I read in a comment asked and answered the right question: “Why doesn’t someone just kill all the Rothschild’s already?”

But the Rothschild Zionists leaders in Israel [occupied Palestine] are allowed to make up their own stupid rules. That’s what I think. They are the warriors for Rothchild Satanists. Any other leader on the planet serves Israel, if they are to survive. It doesn’t seem that anyone can do anything about it. But someone could at least tell the Rothschilds and their minnions that they’re not fooling the thinking people anymore.

Trump calls Ilhan Omar to resign
After outrage over US legislator’s anti-Semitic remarks about AIPAC, president says if she doesn’t step down, she should ‘certainly resign from the foreign affairs committee’

She tweeted:

It’s all about the Benjamins baby 🎶 https://t.co/KatcXJnZLV

— Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN) February 10, 2019

Controversy over the tweet continued to grow overnight and Monday morning, and on Monday afternoon, Democratic Congressional leaders issued a statement condemning Omar’s comments:

Is it really anti-Semitic to criticize AIPAC?

The Washington post wrote:
Why is AIPAC influential?
AIPAC’s influence stems from several factors beyond money, some of which predate its emergence as a lobbying powerhouse in the 1980s.

“It operates in a very favorable political environment. Americans have been sympathetic to and approving of the Jewish-Israeli position over the Arab and Palestinian position for decades. Israel is viewed by a majority of Americans as being close to the United States in cultural, religious and political terms. A swath of the U.S. public views Israel as “like us.” This is also clearly demonstrated by the high levels of support for Israel among the evangelical Christian community.”

Today this is a complete lie! It may have USE TO BE true. Certainly not today since the Israeli war criminals and war crimes and the Zionist 5th column have been outed via the internet and activism.

Philip Giraldi, a former CIA officer, executive director of the Council for the National Interest wrote about AIPAC: 

Pro-Israel organization should not get a pass.

The power of the Israel Lobby and of AIPAC is not cost free for the American public. The current $3 billion plus that Israel, with a thriving first world economy, receives in military assistance is on top of the $130 billion that it has received since 1949. Protecting Israel in international organizations like the United Nations has sometimes marginalized the U.S. in such bodies and the lobby’s influence over American foreign policy has often been noted. In 2010 General David Petraeus stated that Israeli policies were putting American military personnel in the Middle East in danger. He quickly recanted, however.

FARA Registration for AIPAC and Congress Is Washington’s Interest
In reality, the security of the U.S. part is a bit of a sham as AIPAC in no way works to strengthen the United States or benefit the American people. Quite the contrary. The bilateral “special” relationship is a one-way street that has done considerable damage to the United States in terms of its international standing and national security.

AIPAC is all about Israel and always has been. Its hundreds of staffers lobby Congress and the White House daily to support legislation and policies favorable to Israel and damaging to its enemies and critics. It works closely with the Israeli government to obtain maximum benefit from the U.S. Treasury and Pentagon, to the detriment of American citizens and genuine national interests.