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sabang

It's that time of year again- the Annual Policy Conference of AIPAC- American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the central player in what is generally known as the Israel lobby, and the worlds most powerful lobby group. Of course, it is held in Washington DC, and more than 5000 pro-Israel activists descended for this years conference.

Tha AIPAC Conference makes the Oscars look amateur in terms of star pulling power. Condeleeza Rice was greeted by stony silence, when she made the following comment to the assembled AIPAC audience yesterday-
"Israelis have waited too long for the security they desire and deserve," she said, "and Palestinians have waited too long, amid daily humiliations, for the dignity of a Palestinian state." israelinsider: diplomacy: At AIPAC, Rice call for Palestinian state greeted with silence

From the Asia Times-

WASHINGTON - They're all here - and they're all ready to party. The three United States presidential candidates - John McCain, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Madam House speaker Nancy Pelosi. Most US senators and virtually half of the US Congress. Vice President Dick Cheney's wife, Lynne. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Embattled Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. And a host of Jewish and non-Jewish political and academic heavy-hitters among the 7,000 participants.

Republican presidential candidate McCain is opening this year's AIPAC jamboree; Clinton and Obama are closing it on Wednesday....

AIPAC has explicit Zionist roots. The founder, "Si" Kenen, was head of the American Zionist Council in 1951. The body was reorganized as a US lobby - the American Zionist Committee for Public Affairs - in 1953-4, and then renamed AIPAC in 1959. Under Tom Dine, in the 1970s, it was turned into a mass organization with more than 150 employees and a budget of up to US$60 million today. Dine was later ousted because he was considered not hawkish enough.

The top leadership - mostly former AIPAC presidents - is always more hawkish on the Middle East than most Jewish Americans. AIPAC only dropped its opposition to a Palestinian state - without endorsing it - when Ehud Barak became Israeli prime minister in 1999....

Every member of the US Congress receives AIPAC's bi-weekly newsletter, the Near East Report. Walt and Mearsheimer stress that Congressmen and their staff "usually turn to AIPAC when they need info; AIPAC is called upon to draft speeches, work on legislation, advise on tactics, research, collect co-sponsors and marshal votes".

Hillary Clinton has learned long ago she should not cross AIPAC. Clinton used to support a Palestinian state in 1998. She even embraced Suha Arafat, Yasser's wife, in 1999. After much scolding, she suddenly became a vigorous defender of Israel, and years later wholeheartedly supported the 2006 Israeli war against Hezbollah in Lebanon. Clinton may have gotten the bulk of Jewish American donations for her 2008 presidential campaign.

Rice also learned about facts on the ground. She tried to restart the eternally moribund "peace process" when visiting the Middle East in March 2007. Before the trip, she got an AIPAC letter signed by no less than 79 US senators telling her not to talk to the new Palestinian unity government until it "recognized Israel, renounced terror and agreed to abide by Palestinian-Israeli agreements".

The power of the lobby seems unassailable. In March 2007, the US Congress was trying to attach a provision to a Pentagon spending bill that would have required President George W Bush to get congressional approval before attacking Iran. AIPAC was strongly against it - because it viewed the legislation as taking the military option "off the table". The provision was killed. Congressman Dennis Kucinich said this was due to AIPAC.

Asia Times Online :: Middle East News, Iraq, Iran current affairs

AIPAC is really quite an extraordinary phenomenon. The other two most powerful Lobby groups in Washington are considered the NRA, and the AFL/CIO. But these Lobby groups speak for a lot more of the US population (gun owners and unionists) than AIPAC- 3% or so of the US population are Jewish, many of them however are not Zionist.

Lets take a look at AIPAC.

__________________
To err is human. To blame someone else is politics.

Butterfly

someone should bomb that conference, problem of the world solved in one shot

sabang

Mccain is considered a certainty to win the safe majority of the Jewish vote this election- his opponent is willing to actually talk to the President of iran, and his middle name is Husein. So he did not disappoint in his speech to AIPAC:-

WASHINGTON - In a major address on Middle East policy on Monday, Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican candidate for president, pledged to maintain the George W Bush administration's hard line against Iran and expressed strong skepticism about the ability of the current Palestinian leadership to reach a peace accord with Israel.

McCain, who was speaking at the opening session of the annual policy conference of the powerful American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), called for much tougher international sanctions against Iran, including a "severe limit on Iranian imports of gasoline" and a "worldwide divestment campaign" directed against companies doing business with the Islamic Republic, as a means of forcing it to freeze its alleged nuclear weapons program.

And he ridiculed his likely Democratic rival in the November elections, Senator Barack Obama, for proposing unconditional talks with the Iranian leadership on a range of issues, despite the fact that a new poll just released by the Gallup organization found that nearly six in 10 US voters, including nearly half of all Republican respondents, believe a US-Iranian summit would be a "good idea"....

After two and a half days of speeches, including by Obama and Senator Hillary Clinton, as well as the top leadership of both parties in Congress, as many as 7,000 members of the group from all over the country will trek to Capitol Hill to press their lawmakers to quickly approve pending bills in Congress that, if approved, would impose a new set of sweeping unilateral sanctions against Iran and companies that do business with it.

AIPAC includes a wide range of national Jewish groups, such as Americans for Peace Now and Israel Policy forum, that favor engagement by the US - directly or indirectly - with a number of Israel's regional foes, including the Palestinian Hamas, Lebanon's Hezbollah, Syria, and even Iran itself.

However, its neo-conservative leadership remains, for the most part, strongly opposed to such a strategy - in defiance of the current Israeli government, which has itself become increasingly involved in recent weeks in indirect talks with Hamas, Hezbollah and Damascus.

Full Article- Asia Times Online :: Middle East News, Iraq, Iran current affairs

Now if you have read the above, it is pretty obvious that the leadership of AIPAC is considerably more hawkish on ME Issues than:-
The US public
Many of the Jewish organisations that are a part of AIPAC
The Israeli government
The Israeli people (who are less hawkish than the Israeli government)

What is going on here then? The leadership of the worlds most powerful lobby group have apparently hijacked it's rather broad charter, to concentrate on their own Zionist, neo-Conservative viewpoints. I am curious to know actually why there is not more publicity about this- Jewish interest groups would not typically remain silent if another minority faction was steamrolling their own interests.

teflonwillie

The "campus-watch"website might be helpful to include in research...apparently the AIPAC "organization" (I know, I said organ ) operates on quite a few fronts, looks like any attention to this subject is met with thorough criticism.

Unfortunately, I have too few posts to include a link to their website.

Here is an abbreviated version:

campus-watch dot ORG (sorry, there it is again).

I look forward to the discussion.

Milkman

I'll add more tomorrow.

But this conference just show the power and influence that AIPAC has over the US and its foreign policy.

More link will be posted tomorrow afternoon.

Don't enjoy.

Bugs

Me jaw just about hit me chest when I heard Obama say that Jerusalem must remain the capital of Israel and it must remain undivided. I think maybe Obama's speechwriters where hitting on a bong while writing this particular speech.

I don't know how anyone expects to get any kind of long standing peace agreement in Israel if they aslo expect Jerusalem to be undivided and the capitol of Israel - good luck to him.

Throw in his bit about the Palestinian state should be contiguous and cohesive and I think maybe Obama (or maybe his speechwriters on that bong again) failed to do a quick check of a map. If they did do a map check then they either expect Israel will concede enough land to connect Gaza and the West Bank (Maybe they'll build an autobahn type of land bridge) or that the Palestinians will concede Gaza all together?

For those of you that live and die for links (and I know ya'll love Fox News):
Prepared Remarks: Obama at AIPAC Policy Conference - America\’s Election HQ

__________________
"Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it, you'd have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, it takes religion" - Steven Weinberg

benbaaa

Yeah, I saw Obama's speech and it was very creepy. Fuck the Palestinians, we love you Israel, rah rah rah.

I prefer Desmond's analysis, even if his surname is Tutu:

Milkman

I suppose Obama is playing politics now, and trying to get the Jewish vote in Florida, which is a very important, and lately, a very tight state in Presidential elections.

Butterfly

didn't Clinton used the same strategy ? hopefully once elected, he could depart from that silly commitment,

Bugs

Yea then the candidate for change would be exposed as just another politician. Say what ever you need to say to get elected then do what ever the hell you want until re-election time approaches. Some change.

machangezi

What is this some sort of joke or what?

So it's all about Israel, not America?

sabang

AIPAC certainly is. There is something quite humiliating about the AIPAC conference- even senior US Politicians who quite publicly espouse the cause of justice for the Palestinians effectively stand in line to prostrate themselves before this Lobby group.

Why doesn't someone with balls just stand up there and say 'We will continue to be the worlds biggest donor for you, we will continue to guarantee your existence, as long as you vacate the occupied territories".

Considering the Israeli government itself has verbally accepted this position, whats anathemic to standing up and saying the Truth? The US is quite willing to stand up to the UN and anyone else, and put things on the line- why not tiny Israel, the beneficiary of so much of your taxpayers money?

Milkman

I say, F*** Israel.

Who cares.

Be a friend of Americans who pay for the taxes that go to Israel.


Cut off all aid; cut off all ties.



Problem solved.


Here's to you: Israelis.

Marmite the Dog

What. All of them?

Milkman

No, not all. Just the Zionists. I don't like to over-generalize.

benbaaa

That's exactly what I was thinking. Depressing thought, but shame on us for ever thinking it would be different, I guess.

raycarey

^
it was a difficult political decision that will reap two rewards for obama....one, he'll get more votes in florida---and yesterday hamas withdrew its 'endorsement'.

in the end, a sound political decision.

benbaaa

^ But does he believe what he said? That still counts for something, doesn't it? If he doesn't believe it but still said it for political gain, how is he the change candidate?

Milkman

I agree. It's was a political decision.

And...he doesn't have to follow up on it, if and when he gets elected.

Florida is an important state. Sad but true, politics.

sabang

As far as i'm concerned, Obama should just write off the majority of the Jewish vote. He ain't gonna get it.

The ones he will get will do so because of his policy platforms, and they will not be Zionist anyway. By being just another political flimflam man, he's likely to lose their vote, whilst still not gaining the majority Jewish vote.