[NYTr] AIPAC's Influence Allegedly Waning

[nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com]

sent by Steven L. Robinson (activ-l) - Jul 24, 2007

Washington Report on Middle East Affairs - July 2007
http://www.wrmea.com/archives/July_2007/0707059.html

AIPAC's Influence Continues to Wane

By Allan C. Brownfeld

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) long has been
considered one of Washington's most effective lobbying groups. On the
surface, it may appear that its influence remains as strong as ever. At
its annual Washington policy conference in March, 6,000 AIPAC members
heard Vice President Dick Cheney warn that failure in Iraq would
endanger Israel. Stressing that he stood before the crowd "as a strong
supporter of Israel" and that "Israel has never had a better friend in
the White House than George Bush," Cheney's address came at a time of
swelling criticism of the Iraq war in the U.S. as a whole and from many
quarters in the American Jewish community.

Cheney's call on AIPAC to oppose withdrawal from Iraq overshadowed the
meeting. Organizers had hoped the plenum would focus on the need for
tough economic sanctions against Iran, without having the effort
portrayed publicly as advocating military action against the regime in
Tehran. But attempts to avoid such a perception suffered a blow when
Congressional Quarterly reported on AIPAC's role in blocking a House
proposal that would have required the Bush administration to obtain
congressional approval before taking military action against Iran.

Beneath the appearance of continuing power and influence, it is becoming
increasingly clear that AIPAC does not in fact represent the views of
the constituency in whose name it claims to speak, the American Jewish
community. Rather than supporting AIPAC's embrace of the war in Iraq, a
recent Gallup Poll placed the American Jewish community at the top of
the list of "major" religious groups opposed to the war. The Reform
movement-the largest synagogue denomination in the U.S.-has gone on
record in opposition to the war. According to Rabbi Eric Yoffie,
president of the Union of Reform Judaism, his group's resolution fairly
reflects the Jewish community's attitude toward the war. "It is not us
that are out of step with American Jews," he said.

AIPAC's role is coming under increasing scrutiny, spurred in part by the
debate initiated by Professors John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt
in their in-depth 2006 study of the Israel lobby, which originally
appeared in the London Review of Books (and was reprinted in the "Other
Voices" supplement to the May/June 2006 Washington Report). Mearsheimer
and Walt argued, among other things, that AIPAC had encouraged the U.S.
to adopt policies that were neither in the American national interest
nor in Israel's long-term interest.

"It is suddenly becoming possible to ask hard questions about America's
relationship with Israel." Despite the widespread criticism which the
two professors received from some in the organized Jewish community, the
criticism and scrutiny of AIPAC's role has increased dramatically in
recent months.

Declared New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof: "There is no serious
political debate among either Democrats or Republicans about our policy
toward Israelis and Palestinians. And that silence harms America, Middle
East peace prospects and Israel itself..Within Israel, you hear
vitriolic debate in politics and the news media about the use of force
and the occupation of Palestinian territories. Yet no major American
candidate is willing today to be half as critical of hard-line Israeli
government policies as, say, Haaretz, the Israeli newspaper."

One reason for such silence, Kristof wrote, "is that American
politicians have learned to muzzle themselves. In the run-up to the
2004 presidential primaries Howard Dean said he favored an 'even-handed
role' for the U.S.-and was blasted as being hostile to Israel.
Likewise, Barack Obama has been scolded for daring to say: 'Nobody is
suffering more than the Palestinian people.' In contrast, Hillary
Rodham Clinton has safely refused to show an inch of daylight between
herself and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert."

Writing in the April 12 New York Review of Books, George Soros, the
billionaire philanthropist and political activist, argued that the U.S.
is doing Israel a disservice by allowing it to boycott the Hamas-Fatah
Palestinian unity government and to turn down the Saudi Arabian peace
initiative. But, he pointed out, there is no meaningful debate of such
policies.

"While other problem areas of the Middle East are freely discussed,
criticism of our policies toward Israel is very muted indeed," Soros
wrote. Pro-Israel activists, he added, have been "remarkably successful
in suppressing criticism."

Singling out AIPAC as a key source of the problem, Soros accused the
lobby of pushing a hawkish agenda on Israeli-Palestinian issues. "AIPAC
under its current leadership has clearly exceeded its mission," he
maintained, "and far from guaranteeing Israel's existence, has
endangered it."

Noting that "I have a great deal of sympathy for my fellow Jews and a
deep concern for the survival of Israel," Soros declared that he
"cannot remain silent now when the pro-Israel lobby is one of the last
unexposed redoubts of this dogmatic way of thinking...I believe that a
much-needed self-examination of American policy in the Middle East has
started in this country; but it can't make much headway as long as
AIPAC retains powerful influence in both the Democratic and Republican
parties...I should like to emphasize that I do not subscribe to the
myths propagated by enemies of Israel...Neither Israel's policies nor
the critics of those policies should be held responsible for
anti-Semitism. At the same time, I do believe that attitudes toward
Israel are influenced by Israel's policies, and attitudes toward the
Jewish community are influenced by the pro-Israel lobby's success in
suppressing divergent views."

In its March 17 issue, The Economist of London devoted a full page to a
discussion of the "changing climate" facing AIPAC: "The Iraq debacle has
produced a fierce backlash against pro-war hawks, of which AIPAC was
certainly one. It has also encouraged serious people to ask awkward
question s about America's alliance with Israel. And a growing number
of people want to push against AIPAC..AIPAC's ace in the hole is the
idea that it represents Jewish interests in a country that is generally
philo-Semitic. But liberal Jewish groups retort that it represents only
a sliver of Jewish opinion. A number of liberal groups have started to
use their political muscle-groups such as the Religious Action Center
of Reform Judaism, Americans for Peace Now and the Israel Policy Forum.
These groups scored a significant victory over AIPAC by persuading
Congress to water down a particularly uncompromising bit of
legislation, the Palestinian Anti-Terrorism Act, which would have
prevented any American contact with the Palestinian leadership...The
growing activism of liberal Jewish groups underline a worrying fact for
AIPAC: most Jews are fairly left-wing. Fully 77 percent of them think
that the Iraq war was a mistake compared with 52 percent of all
Americans..."

Beyond this, The Economist declared, "An even greater threat to AIPAC
comes from the general climate of opinion. It is suddenly becoming
possible for serious people-politicians and policymakers as well as
academics-to ask hard questions about America's relationship with
Israel. Is America pursuing its own interests in the Middle East, or
Israel's? Should America tie itself so closely to the Israeli
government's policies or should it forge other alliances?...The biggest
challenge facing AIPAC is how to deal with this changing climate. Its
members have been admirably honest about their mission in life. They
boast about passing more than a hundred bits of pro-Israel legislation
a year. But they are too willing to close down debate with explosive
charges of anti-Israel bias when people ask whether this is a good
thing. America needs an open debate about its role in the Middle
East-and AIPAC needs to take a positive role in that debate if it is to
remain such a mighty force in American politics."

Former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski worries that
America is seen in the Middle East as "acting increasingly on behalf of
Israel." In his new book, Second Chance: Three Presidents and the
Crisis of American Superpower, he calls for "stricter lobbying laws"
because groups such as AIPAC have too tight a hold on U.S. policy. It
is Brzezinski's view that AIPAC has seriously distorted U.S. policy in
the Middle East.

Increasingly, more and more Jews feel alienated from Jewish
organizations that supported both the Iraq war and Israel's war in
Lebanon. "The virtually unqualified support of organized American Jewry
for Israel's brutal actions...is not new but now no longer tolerable to
me," Sara Roy, a scholar at Harvard's Center for Middle Eastern
Studies, writes in a new book, The War On Lebanon.

"The Moderate Jewish Left" According to Dan Fleshler, an activist in the
pro-Israel peace community, Middle East violence has helped awaken a
large "universe" of liberal, politically active Jews. "Many of them are
alienated from Israel and want nothing to do with it," he says. "Maybe
the most important thing to them is the Sierra Club. They're cultural
Jews, they've never been involved with Israel per se." Their passivity
has allowed right-wing Zionists who care more about the issue to affect
policy, Fleshler explains, adding that the challenge to an alternative
lobby is figuring out how to capture "the moderate Jewish left" on
Israel issues.

This past March, while thousands of AIPAC delegates traveled to Capitol
Hill to advocate for tough sanctions on Iran and no negotiations with
the Palestinian Authority until it renounces terror and recognizes
Israel, two other Jewish groups were urging the opposite.

Americans for Peace Now called on the Bush administration to change
course and adopt a policy of "limited, constructive engagement" with
Tehran. In a statement, the group recommended that the U.S. develop "a
basket of meaningful diplomatic and economic carrots and sticks
sufficient to persuade Iran to halt further development of its nuclear
program."

Another group, Brit Tzedek v'Shalom, urged its supporters to call their
senators and tell them not to sign a letter to Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice, sponsored by Senators Bill Nelson (D-FL) and John
Ensign (R-NV), calling for "no direct aid and no contacts" with any
members of the Palestinian Authority "that does not explicitly and
unequivocally recognize Israel's right to exist, renounce terror and
accept previous agreements."

In an e-mail to supporters, Brit Tzedek declared: "At a time when the
U.S. should be supporting forces of moderation among the Palestinians,
this letter weakens those forces and demonstrates to the Palestinian
people that moderation brings them nothing."

M.J. Rosenberg of the Israel Policy Forum headlined a recent column
"Pandering Not Required." In it he called on presidential candidates
instead to show their support for Israel by pledging: "If I am elected
president, I will do everything in my power to bring about negotiations
between Israelis and Palestinians with the goal of achieving peace and
security for Israel and a secure state for the Palestinians."

Explaining how far AIPAC's positions are from the American Jewish
mainstream, columnist Douglas Bloomfield wrote in the March 15
Washington Jewish Week that, "Most American Jews, like the rest of the
country, oppose the Iraq war, but [Israeli Prime Minister] Olmert gave
it a ringing endorsement in his live satellite hook-up to AIPAC..that
could have been written by Dick Cheney...Olmert's over-the-top embrace
of the Bush policies is one more example of how the Israeli government
is out of touch with the mainstream of American Jewry. His intervention
in the most explosive issue before this nation is sure to give a lot of
Israel's friends in Washington serious heartburn."

Bloomfield went on to point out that "Most Americans support a peace
process leading to a two-state solution, and they see settlements as an
obstacle to that goal-which is what backers intended. Settlements have
never been popular among most American Jews (or Israelis these days),
and Olmert's recent decision to expand them did not sit well in the
Jewish community. More damaging may be the perception of excessive
Israeli government tolerance of settler violence against Palestinians,
which reinforces the belief there is a double standard for justice in
Israeli society. Most American Jews are uncomfortable with AIPAC's and
the Israeli government's warm embrace of the religious right. AIPAC
delegates...enthusiastically cheered a speech by evangelical Pastor
John Hagee, who railed against territorial concessions to the
Palestinians as 'appeasement' and 'crocodile food.' Most American Jews
are progressives and uncomfortable with the alliance with evangelicals
like Hagee; and don't share his hard-line views about peace with the
Palestinians and have less to agree about on domestic policy."

Not only is AIPAC not representative of the constituency in whose name
it professes to speak, but its former foreign policy chief, Steve
Rosen, and its former Iran analyst, Keith Weissman, are now being
prosecuted by the U.S. government for allegedly sharing classified U.S.
information about Iran with Israeli diplomats, journalists and others.
By any standard, AIPAC appears, more and more, to be a rogue
organization speaking only for a narrow extremist constituency both in
Israel and the U.S. As this reality becomes increasingly clear, its
influence is likely to recede dramatically.

[Allan C. Brownfeld is a syndicated columnist and associate editor of
the Lincoln Review, a journal published by the Lincoln Institute for
Research and Education, and editor of Issues, the quarterly journal of
the American Council for Judaism.]