An insider’s look at how moderate pro-Israel voices get sidelined at AIPAC
Posted by Cecilie Surasky under AIPAC
Realistic Dove has a fascinating, must-read piece by new Ameinu executive director Gidon Remba about participating at the recent AIPAC policy conference.
Ameinu, which used to be called the Labor Zionist Alliance, occupies an important place in the political spectrum as a voice for progressive Zionists who support a two-state solution and social and economic justice inside of Israel.
Remba gives a no-holds barred look into the workings of AIPAC and process, offering a greater understanding of how they can wield power based on the myth that they represent a significant Jewish position, while consistently pursuing extremist hardline policies.
In this new role[as Ameinu director], I am one of 50-odd delegates of major Jewish organizations who sit on AIPAC’s Executive Committee. In reality, AIPAC stacks the deck by including in the Committee many more AIPAC leaders and activists than heads of major Jewish groups, thereby insuring that no decision will be taken which flouts the wishes of its hard-line big donors. The AIPAC conference opened with a meeting of the Executive Committee devoted to approving AIPAC’s “action agenda” for 2007. Three days later, a citizens’ army, mostly American Jews, marched on Capitol Hill to meet with their members of Congress, armed with talking points emanating from the order of battle we had approved—over my dissenting vote, and the objections of others.
If 87% of American Jews voted Democratic in the last election, the other 13% seemed to have crowded into the annual AIPAC bash. Where else would Vice President Dick Cheney, king of the neocons, and Pastor John Hagee, the right-wing Christian Zionist televangelist preacher and Greater Land of Israel territorial maximalist, receive a wildly enthusiastic welcome, punctuated by serial standing ovations throughout their bellicose remarks? AIPAC lent its platform to Cheney who informed his cheering audience that anyone who fails to support the Bush Administration’s policy of escalation in Iraq—opposed by most Americans and the great majority of American Jews—is sending a signal of “weakness and surrender” to Iran and endangering Israel.
Remba goes on:
If the policy conference is a circus maximus, a monster rally in a cavernous convention center stretching two city blocks with a giant audio visual show designed to manipulate the emotions, where politicians proffer platitudes tailored to spark applause—mass public political entertainment on a lavish scale—the Executive Committee meeting is the opening chariot race.
Rather than devoting itself to a real discussion of the issues, the committee spent the bulk of its time giving far right ZOA leader Mort Klein the opportunity to table some two dozen amendments to AIPAC’s action agenda, designed to push an already hard-line agenda off the cliff into an abyss of ultra-hawkish fantasy. And he who tables an amendment is entitled to step up to the microphone to defend it, followed by others who respond. To be sure, there was a debate, but it was between Attila and the Huns. Virtually no other organization offered an amendment to the agenda (an oddity which, you may rest assured, dear reader, will not be repeated at the next session, if I and others in the moderate pro-Israel camp have our say). |
