The Truth will prevail, But only if we Demand it from Congress!
9-11 Inside Job and Neocons Hacked 2004
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s annual conference is
one of Washington’s most important—and least reported—events.
by Philip Weiss
For three days in the capital in early June, suspense built over the
question of how the American Israel Public Affairs Committee
conference would greet Barack Obama. There was a lot of grousing
about Obama in the hallways of the Washington Convention Center, and
AIPAC officials repeatedly warned the faithful to be respectful. “We
are not a debate society or a protest movement. … our goal is to
have a friend in the White House,” executive director Howard Kohr
said in a strict tone. It wasn’t hard to imagine things going
poorly: Obama gets booed on national television. He feels insulted.
Conservative Jewish donors and voters turn off to Obama. He becomes
president without their support. AIPAC has no friend in the Oval
Office.
But of course, Obama complied. His speech became the annual example
the conference provides of a powerful man truckling. Two years ago,
it was Vice President Cheney’s red-meat speech attacking the
Palestinians. Last year, it was Pastor John Hagee’s scary speech
saying that giving the Arabs any part of Jerusalem was the same as
giving it to the Taliban. Obama took a similar line. He suggested
that he would use force to stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons,
made no mention of Palestinian human rights, and said that Jerusalem
“must remain undivided,” a statement so disastrous to the peace
process that his staff rescinded it the next day. Big deal. The
actual meeting had gone swimmingly.
This was my first AIPAC conference, and the first surprise was how
blatant the business of wielding influence is. The conference makes
no bones about this function, the most savage expression of which is
the Tuesday dinner at which AIPAC performs its “roll call,” where
the names of all the politicians who have come to the conference are
read off from the stage by three barkers in near auctioneer fashion.
The pols try to outdo one another in I-love-Israel encomia. House
Speaker Nancy Pelosi surely won the day when she teared up while
dangling the dogtags of three Israeli soldiers captured by Hezbollah
and Hamas two years ago.
The second big surprise was that apart from coverage of the headline
speakers, the AIPAC conference is a media no man’s land. It would be
hard to imagine a more naked exhibition of political power: a
convention of 7,000 mostly rich people, with more than half the
Congress in attendance, as well as all the major presidential
candidates, the prime minister of Israel, the minority leader, the
majority leader, and the speaker of the House. Yet there is precious
little journalism about the spectacle in full. The reason seems
obvious: the press would have to write openly about a forbidden
subject, Jewish influence. They would have to take on an unpleasant
informative task that they have instead left to two international
relations scholars in their 50s—Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer,
authors of last year’s book The Israel Lobby.
The press is missing a phantasmagorical event. Imagine a basement
meeting in the Warsaw Ghetto transplanted to the biggest hall in
Vegas, and you have something of the feeling of the thing. The
staging is faultless. Little documentaries called “Zionist Stories”
play on the Jumbotron, complete with footage of Auschwitz, and then
the subject of the documentary comes out on stage to thundering
applause. There is breakout session after breakout session on Middle
East policy and Jewish identity and anti-Semitism, with star turns
by Natan Sharansky, Bill Kristol, and Leon Wieseltier. The press was
excluded from “Advanced Lobbying Techniques,” but still this is a
feast of the political condition. And posh. The roll call is
described by AIPAC as the largest seated dinner in Washington. The
wine flows. I went about in a daze of awe and admiration.
My awe was for men like Haim Saban, a toymaker and giant donor to
the Democratic Party. After his Zionist story, Saban came out on
stage wearing a platinum tie and white shirt and silver gray suit.
He has wonderful presence and something of an Arab
look—black-haired, wide forehead. He was surrounded by 200 college
students, veterans of the Saban Leadership Seminars he sponsors at
AIPAC.
On Middle East policy, Saban is barely distinguishable from his
Republican counterparts, who are there in equal force. The main hall
of the conference was filled with lavishly-produced banners
featuring AIPAC donors, not a few with trophy wives, alongside
statements of their mission. There was Donald Diamond, an Arizona
real estate developer whom the New York Times recently profiled on
the front page after he raised $250,000 for John McCain. The Times
said nothing in its piece about Diamond’s Israel work. But that was
all the banner was about. “The U.S.-Israel relationship is the
single most important determinant of democracy in the world, and we
must commit to securing it,” Diamond wrote. “It is so obvious to us
that the Jewish community is a family and that we have to take care
of each other.”
I was writing that down when an AIPAC spokesman stopped to check my
credentials. The audience for this stuff isn’t the public, it’s
people in the hall—other rich Jews who might put AIPAC in their
wills.
At most conventions, people gather out of self-interest. Therein
lies my admiration: the AIPAC’ers didn’t come for selfish reasons.
They are devoutly concerned with the lives of people they don’t
know, very far away. Yes, people with whom they feel tribal kinship.
When Israelis came out on the dais to speak, they were almost
invariably overwhelmed by the generosity, if not the Vegas schmaltz.
“There is a tremendous amount of love in this place,” Meir
Nissensohn, an Israeli executive of IBM, said in wonder. “If it was
a beaker, it would explode.” Even a sharp critic like myself of what
AIPAC is doing to American policy in the Middle East was frequently
moved by the pure loving feeling that surrounds you at every moment.
Among the devout there is only one real issue: What is the latest
AIPAC line? This is the organization’s function. After consulting
closely with the Israeli political leadership (leaning toward the
right wing), AIPAC regurgitates a simple version of Israeli policy
to its followers, who in turn regurgitate that line to American
politicians. AIPAC’ers do this with the conviction that Israel’s
life is on the line. “It is we that are the guardians of that
relationship,” AIPAC president David Victor said. James Tisch, the
Lowes executive and leader in the Jewish community, warned the
audience that it might be 1939 all over again were it not for them.
AIPAC makes sure the Israeli line is America’s line by cultivating
politicians before they reach the national scene. Victor described
this process when he warned the audience that 10 percent of Congress
will be new next year because so many seats are open: “Do we know
them? Do they know us? Have they been to Israel? Do they understand
the issues we care so deeply about?” Finding Israel activists in the
suburbs of Detroit is easy, Victor said. “But how about finding the
one right person to reach out to candidates for communities like
Muscle Shoals, Alabama, or Tacoma, Washington, or Council Bluffs,
Iowa? Ladies and gentlemen, the success or failure of the pro-Israel
community rests on three words, our personal relationships.” And
people accused Walt and Mearsheimer of fostering a conspiracy
theory.
AIPAC flashes its relationships the way kids trade baseball cards.
Bill Kristol said that Hart Hasten, a Holocaust survivor and
successful Indianapolis businessman, had been crucial to shaping Dan
Quayle’s view of Israel, having “spent a lot of time” with Quayle
when he was still a congressman. (Quayle’s office later told me,
“The statement Bill Kristol made was not exactly accurate. Mr.
Quayle said his broad knowledge of Israel came from many people and
sources, not specifically from Mr. Hasten.”) Dan Senor, an analyst
on CNN and former AIPAC intern, boasted that AIPAC won over Spencer
Abraham when he was the head of the state Republican Party, years
before he became a Michigan senator. The party was $500,000 in debt,
and an AIPAC leader helped him pay that off. And of course, the
famous story was told of George W. Bush going up in Ariel Sharon’s
helicopter in 1998, two years before he ran for president, and
saying of Israel’s ten-mile waist, “We have driveways in Texas
longer than that.”
The anxiety about Obama is that he is so new to the scene that few
people have had a chance to get to him. The relationship guy is Lee
Rosenberg of Chicago, who introduced Obama. “I can personally attest
that Senator Obama is a genuine friend of Israel,” he said. In 2006,
Obama “fulfilled a pledge he made to the Chicago Jewish community”
and visited Israel. And the topper: Obama “has gotten to know”
Benjamin Netanyahu, the former prime minister who is against ever
dividing Jerusalem. Rosenberg looked pale, drained—as queasily
forceful as a mob boss vouching for an unknown family’s bona fides.
The good news I can report is the new AIPAC line. In some ways the
organization is belligerent: speakers emphasized the need to attack
Iran before it gets nukes and to invade Gaza to take on Hamas. But
peace is in the air, too, now that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s
government is working overtime to cut a deal with the Palestinians
on the West Bank and with the Syrians for the return of the Golan
Heights. AIPAC reflected this policy. I heard a few conference-goers
saying at microphones that the Bible gives Israel a right to the
West Bank. But they received only a smattering of applause, and in
one instance the moderator said the questioner was using
inappropriate language.
The soul of the conference for me was Tal Becker, the highly
personable Israeli negotiator. “I see [Palestinian negotiator] Saeb
Erekat a lot more than I see my wife and kids,” he said, promising
that if he and Palestinian moderates fail to reach an agreement,
their goal is “to keep talking and keep talking and keep talking.”
Yet before you get out your handkerchief, reflect that AIPAC has for
more than 30 years promoted the colonization process. In 1975, when
President Ford wanted to reassess Mideast policy over Israeli
intransigence, he was cut off at the knees by an AIPAC letter signed
by 76 senators. Then in 1989, when James Baker went before AIPAC and
told them to give up their idea of a Greater Israel including the
West Bank, George H.W. Bush received a letter of anger signed by 94
senators. In both instances, AIPAC was hewing to the Israeli
government line and nullifying American policymaking.
No, AIPAC’s change of heart cannot be ascribed to the good thinking
of American Jews. They’re not thinking at all. They have passed on
their full powers of judgment to the Israeli government. In that
sense, the Zionists in that hall might best be compared to
Communists of the ’30s and ’40s, who also abandoned their judgment
to a far off authority even as they argued this and that subclause
codicil in intense councils. On my train ride back to New York, a
little rich kid of about 14, traveling with his uncle in the seat
behind me, called his parents to complain that Obama’s views on
Israel seemed “tailored” and “he’s never really stood up for
Israel.” Indoctrination, pure and simple.
The great sadness here is that American Jewry is the most educated,
most affluent segment of the public. Yet on this issue there is
little independent thinking. The obvious question is whether they
don’t have dual loyalty. As a Jew, I feel uncomfortable using the
phrase, given its long history, but the facts are inarguable. Leon
Wieseltier of The New Republic speaks of everything “we” should do
to make peace with the Palestinians, then corrects himself to say
what Israel should do. Speaker after speaker says that Israel is in
our hearts. People who emigrate to Israel are applauded, and when
the national anthems are played, one cantor sings the “Star Spangled
Banner,” but the “Hatikvah” has two cantors belting it out, with the
audience roaring along. Maybe most revealing, I heard a right-wing
Israeli politician sharply criticizing Olmert’s policy in the West
Bank. Think of the scandal it would cause if American politicians
went abroad and criticized the president’s foreign policy. It’s no
scandal here because AIPAC is a virtual extension of Israel.
Of course, AIPAC and its roll call of politicians would say that
American and Israeli interests are identical. I wonder how those
politicians really feel. Their I-love-the-miracle-of-Israel rhetoric
is so endless that it creates an undercurrent of doth protest too
much—an impression that if there weren’t so much money at stake,
they would run from Israel with winged heels.
AIPAC takes care to remind the pols of deeper reasons to help the
Jews. The Holocaust imagery never stops. And there is a related
theme: that Jews are the golden goose of Western society. The very
last of the “Zionist Stories” AIPAC showed before Obama and Clinton
spoke was of a scientist, IBM’s Nissensohn. The piece emphasized
Israel’s contribution to high-tech industry from software to
desalination, hinting at a traditional Jewish idea: for a society to
flourish, it must treat Jews well. Haim Saban’s story made the same
point. Look what Egypt lost when it forced the Saban family to flee.
The theme of the conference was “The U.S.-Israel Relationship: Built
to Last.” But that seems another case of protesting too much. AIPAC
is beset on many sides.
It surely noticed how much attention Palestinians got this spring
for commemorations of the Nakba, their dispossession in 1948 and
onwards. AIPAC fought back with its own dispossession narrative.
About 700,000 Jews, including Haim Saban, were forced out of Arab
societies following the formation of Israel. One of them was
novelist Eli Amir, who grew up in privileged Baghdad and was forced
into a refugee camp in 1950. Amir appeared live by satellite and
berated AIPAC for not highlighting his story before this year.
Another problem for AIPAC is the growing alienation of younger Jews
from Israel’s hardline policies, especially as those Jews do well
here and assimilate. “I worry a lot more about the American Jewish
community than I do about Israel—about which I have grave doubts,”
Wieseltier said.
AIPAC is happy to work with non-Jewish Americans. At one dinner, I
sat at the same table with Mark and Carrie Burns, Christian
evangelical radio hosts from Illinois. Carrie said that many
Christians she knows will vote on Jerusalem being in the hands of
the Jews as a litmus issue. Thus AIPAC may hope to replace dwindling
elite influence with populist numbers. I wouldn’t hold my breath.
Carrie said that at a synagogue she addressed, the first question
came from a high-school girl who said, “But isn’t Israel an
apartheid state?”
The Jews are quietly leaving the room. Saban described his horror at
visiting his son’s college, Wesleyan, and seeing a table on peace in
the Middle East at which Israel was demonized. Some of the kids at
that table were surely Jews.
Especially now that an alternative lobby, J Street, has formed on
its left, AIPAC seems to be making gestures in a more peaceable
direction. One was the testimony from Sderot, the Israeli city
bordering Gaza that American politicians must learn to pronounce or
face political doom. (I think it’s Stay-ROTE.) It was inevitable
that someone from the region would take the stage, and it’s
impossible to imagine a more appealing spokesperson than Chen
Abrahams, a pretty, soft-spoken kibbutz-dweller of about 40. The
audience was utterly quiet as she described the terrible price her
community has paid for the siege of Gaza. Nothing like the price the
Palestinians have paid, I’d note. Still, if this was schmaltz, it
was real schmaltz. At the end of her taped appearance, Abrahams
said, “My biggest hope is for peace. I believe in talking to them, I
don’t believe in wiping them out.” I was stunned.
Then Abrahams came out on stage to a standing ovation, and it struck
me that it might be possible to take all the loving energy in this
place now directed at helping other Jews and redirect it to great
effect. If the AIPAC legions were somehow convinced that Jews will
only be safe in the Middle East if the Arabs among them were also
safe—without checkpoints, without a siege, with the dignity and
freedom that Jews have had in the West—all these arrayed powers
might then be directed to a larger idea of family and produce a
miracle at last.
__________________________________________
Philip Weiss is at work on a book about Jewish issues. He blogs at
www.philipweiss.org/mondoweiss/.
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