AIPAC Is Indifferent to America. Period.
That is why it can provide critical support to antisemites, insurrectionists and traitors.
Tonight as you watch the January 6th committee begin to outline the dimensions of the GOP insurrection led by Donald Trump, consider that AIPAC has now endorsed for re-election 109 House Republicans (see list here) who refused to certify the election of President Biden and endorsed the lie that the election was stolen. These are the Republican allies of the insurrection who Rep. Liz Cheney characterized on Sunday, on 60 Minutes, as “antisemitic” and “white nationalists.” (You can watch Cheney below).
How does AIPAC respond to the revulsion in the overwhelmingly Democratic and liberal Jewish community that it is now financially supporting the re-elections of the very people who threaten the security, well-being, and the long or even short term future of Jews in America?
This is AIPAC’s official response:
“This is no moment for the pro-Israel movement to become selective about its friends,. Israel faces nuclear threats from Iran’s rulers and terror tunnels built by Hezbollah and Hamas. An international movement seeking to isolate and demonize the Jewish state continues to make inroads, especially here in the United States.”
Note the absence of all but one reference to the United States. America is not mentioned except as the place where those who are seeking to “isolate and demonize the Jewish state” are making “inroads.”
To put it simply. AIPAC is indifferent to the United States except as it relates to Israel. Although it is often referred to as “the Jewish lobby,” it is as indifferent to the fate of American Jews and the terrifying rise in antisemitic violence here since Trump’s first campaign as it is to anything that does not relate to Israel.
Of course, it is a single issue lobby like the (monstrous) NRA, the American Hospital Association or any one of a thousand lobbies that are concerned with its own little or big issue.
However, it is the only one whose concern is a foreign country. AIPAC is like the NRA in many ways, but one way it isn’t is that the NRA’s meretricious mission is all about the US—the Second Amendment, domestic munitions makers and anything that might deter Americans from being armed to the teeth. The NRA is wrong about everything but it is all about the kind of America it wants (and, to be honest, has successfully achieved).
AIPAC is indifferent to this country.
It is no more an American interest group than the Saudi, French, or Japanese lobbies are. The only difference is that those lobbies, and 100 others representing the interests of other countries, operate out of law offices, PR firms and the like and are banned by US law from any involvement in US politics.
Every meeting their representatives hold with US government officials, and every dollar they spend to influence US officials, must be reported to the Department of Justice. All their activities are regulated under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. AIPAC, which is Israel’s lobby in the United States created the fiction that it is just an organization of Americans who care about Israel—while, of course, strictly adhering to official Israeli government policy and foisting it on the US government through endless pressure, threats, and money to reward or punish.
Hence, it can merrily fund candidates who are seditionists, racists, and antisemites without a second thought. So long as they say they love Israel and promise to vote as AIPAC dictates.
Again, in AIPAC’s own words “this is no moment to become selective” about “its friends.”
Imagine proclaiming that in Germany prior to the 1932 elections. This is no different. Except this. Here the millions of dollars AIPAC is pouring into the coffers of rightists, racists, and antisemitic candidate can make the difference between a Democratic (and democratic) Congress or one led by the enemies of democracy. This year Congress. Two years later they could have it all.
With the support of AIPAC.