One of the most interesting speeches given at the AIPAC Policy Conference was one that received the least media attention. AIPAC Executive Director Howard Kohr addressed the capacity crowd Sunday night before Newt Gingrich, and he came with a stern and clear warning - there is a growing movement to de-legitimize Israel in the eyes of its allies. He warned it's growing, it's successful and it's coming to the US. In a conference full of fire and brimstone bluster about Iran and the omnipresent threat of annihilation, when it came to this speech Kohr was exactly on the mark.
Kohr moved beyond simply focusing on the familiar bogeymen of Ahmadinejad, Hugo Chavez and the Durban II conference, and took on what is clearly viewed as a grave threat - the growing movement for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel. During his rundown of the gathering storm he included "400 British academics demanded that Britain's Science Museum cancel an event highlighting the work of Israeli scientists" and an Italian "trade union calls for a boycott of Israeli products." He also included the increasing comparisons between Israel and apartheid South Africa. As part of this trend he mentioned Israel Apartheid Week (twice) which he explained,"Its aim, to build boycott, divestment, and sanctions campaigns as part of a growing global movement." He's right.
More impressively, he gave real attention to this movement. Rather than attempting to simply de-legitimatize it with charges of anti-Semitism, he recognized its true motivation: "This is more than the simple spewing of hatred. This is a conscious campaign to shift policy, to transform the way Israel is treated by its friends to a state that deserves not our support, but our contempt; not our protection, but pressured to change its essential nature." And even more, he knows the movement is building steam:
No longer is this campaign confined to the ravings of the political far left or far right, but increasingly it is entering the American mainstream: an ordinary political discourse on our T.V. and radio talk shows; in the pages of our major newspapers and in countless blogs, in town hall meetings, on campuses and city squares . . .
And I want to be clearly understood here. I'm not saying that these allegations have become accepted. But they have become acceptable. More and more they are invading the mainstream discourse, becoming part of the constant and unrelenting drumbeat against Israel. These voices are laying the predicate for a abandonment.
Finally, Kohr threw down the gauntlet:
There is a battle for basic perception underway, a fight to focus the lens through which our policy makers will receive and perceive all events in Israel and the broader Middle East. And the stakes in that battle are nothing less than the survival of Israel, linked inexorably to the relationship between Israel and the United States. In this battle we are the firewall, the last rampart.
Kohr said, "in the moment - we find our mission." And in many ways the threat Kohr identified was an undercurrent throughout the conference. This was seen in the effort by AIPAC to co-opt the divestment mantle by pushing divestment from Iran. Not only is this a focus in Congress, but on campuses and in municipalities as well. After Kohr's speech it was difficult to see these as anything but a diversionary tactic to keep attention on the real movement for divestment Kohr outlined growing across the world.
As with almost everything at the AIPAC convention, Kohr's speech was one part theater, one part policy. I do think his presentation was a bit overblown in an effort to light a fire under his troops as they headed into battle. But he could have chosen many other topics to do that with. Kohr understands that the fight is over themes and frames and that regardless of the millions put into the AIPAC convention or the thousands of lobbyists that head off for the Hill, once the discourse shifts and Israel is a pariah, the battle is lost. He explained to the crowd:
You know, we've all heard many times Israel accused of being a Western outpost in the Middle East. To those who make that accusation I say you are right. Israel is the only democratic country in the region that looks West, that looks to the values and the vision we share of what our society, our country should aim at and aspire to. If that foundation of shared values is shaken, the rationale for the policies we pursue today will be stripped away. The reasons the United States would continue to invest nearly $3 billion in Israel's security; the willingness to stand with Israel, even alone if need be; the readiness to defend Israel's very existence,all are undermined and undone if Israel is seen to be unjust and unworthy. . .
Yes, we must lobby for the particulars --Iran sanctions, peace process principles, foreign aid --but our mission now is to do more than work our talking points. We must add context and foundational arguments that help America's leaders understand the rightness of our cause.
That is the fight at hand, and it's a fight that AIPAC and others have been incredibly good at fighting. But Kohr can see the ground is shifting. And in the end, the influence AIPAC holds over the US policy towards Israel/Palestine may end up disintegrating as the myth of shared values is revealed, and more people realize that funding a "Western outpost in the Middle East" is not only no longer in our interest, but is not in the interests of Israelis and Palestinians as well.
Nobody outside Israel has a strategic interest in forcing Palestinian women to give birth at Israeli checkpoints. That's the flaw in the Yesha model and the folks at AIPAC know it.
Yesha is a model like the Lehman Bros in house capital model. The correlations programmed into the model are hard coded and don't correspond to reality and one day the model will stop working. Lehman was powerful once.
AIPAC will very well to hold on to the attention of the US for another 10 years.
There were over a dozen comments on this earlier today, and now they're all gone, except for one posted much more recently.
What gives?
Yes, the posts of critical comments posted here on Israeli activities and especially those Americans
who do that–all vanished. What gives?
The Zionist bubble is akin to the subprime mortgage bubble–so recently burst of its own fraudulent weight—the Zionists are busy trying to prop it up, by inflating a new bubble, same as with the USA economic
"bailout" and stress tests, etc.
A real peace between Israel and the Palestinians would emasculate the movement to de-legitimize Israel. Staying the course will only strengthen it and give it even more legitimacy.
Look at which investment firms survived intact. Obama is similarly allowing Israel Firsters to live on–I hope & pray he is playing the political game; after all he did this with whites, why not with
jewish people? I hope his humanitarian brain is not proportionate to his skull size.
what happened to all the comments on this thread?
From Paul Craig Roberts in today's Counterpunch:
"On October 16, 2004, President George W. Bush signed the Israel Lobby’s bill, the Global Anti-Semitism Review Act. This legislation requires the US Department of State to monitor anti-semitism world wide."
To monitor anti-semitism, it has to be defined. What is the definition? Basically, as defined by the Israel Lobby and Abe Foxman, it boils down to any criticism of Israel or Jews."
Rahm Israel Emanuel hasn’t been mopping floors at the White House. As soon as he gets the Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009 passed, it will become a crime for any American to tell the truth about Israel’s treatment of Palestinians and theft of their lands."
That's good. Average Americans have a bad tendency to actually look at deeds, not merely creeds.
We must keep them ignorant of the facts on the ground, and keep spinning rhetoric in behalf
of the chosen people they are not.
I suspect the comments disappeared because of a glitch with the IntenseDebate comment software. It does appear to be active anymore. Adam is not into censorship.
I'm starting to wonder if Paul Craig Roberts is a crackpot. Every article has that same over-wrought tone to it. I mean, quote the document or the definition please.
*
Excellent post, analysis. Wouldn't it be great if Israel responded to concerns about such a movement by hammering home a resolution to the conflict, treating its Arab citizens like citizens of a democracy and generally behaving more like other western democracies (without implying any illusions about how wonderful those democracies actually are).
However, it seems more like a battle cry to redouble the propaganda efforts …
Yes , we need more hate crime legistlation. We must ape the old early Red model, where the first priority legislation was making the crime of anti-semitism prevail throughout the jurisdiction. This is the new Inquisition, and even now we are tracing you IP address. You are not part of the Star Chamber. And, we have your children in tow; we already have them harnessed as taxpayers; next we
will draft them–and they will feel they are part of a revolution, the very revolution we hold in our hands via the Federal Reserve, with its extended powers. Bow to your fate, cattle.
Brad:
"Wouldn't it be great if Israel responded to concerns about such a movement by hammering home a resolution to the conflict, treating its Arab citizens like citizens of a democracy and generally behaving more like other western democracies (without implying any illusions about how wonderful those democracies actually are)."
I agree. The Israeli Arabs should serve in the Israeli Army and get all the benefits received by service people.
Paul Craig Roberts is a 911 "truth" guy. They are all wackos.
Just recently the whole world was witness to how Zionists went berserk to prevent Israel from being publicly labeled a "racist state." What do think would happen when we also begin to talk about how anti-Semitic Israel is?
The article in this link provides a few examples. link to palaestina-portal.eu
Yours for Peace and Justice,
George Pumphrey,
Berlin, Germany
Kohr did not mention dismantling settlements, treating Palestinians as equals or observing Israel's legal boundaries set by the UN in 1947 to rehabilitate Israel's reputation. Without these changes Israel will eventually lose its subsidies. But what bothers me is he claimed Israel to be "our country." Americans will also eventually tire of having belligerent dual loyalists dominating its foreign policies.
AIPAC: "And the stakes in that battle are nothing less than the survival of Israel, linked inexorably to the relationship between Israel and the United States." Why does that sentence bring to mind an image of the Statue of Liberty with a creature from the movie 'Aliens' forming a mask over its face? The Zionists seem intent on validating every negative stereotype in the book about Jews as perpetual parasites. I wonder if they've ever considered for even one moment doing what America's Founders did and going it alone. I mean, how much contempt do these people have to bring upon themselves decade after decade before it occurs to them: "Hey, we might have an attitude problem. Is being a perpetual mooch really the way we want to continue to go? Where has it gotten us, really?”
FYI: Convicted felon and spy Larry Franklin has not started serving his sentence. I wonder if DoJ will just never ask him to report to prison. Federal Bureau of Prisons Inmate Locator
Its not a myth. The shared values are largely real and considerable. If others adopt similar overlapping shared values, then there is a basis of reconciliation.
What shared values? Israel is an ethnocracy (catch-22, but imperialism makes it acceptable). Now, if we're comparing histories then sure, maybe we have some shared 'values'. Although, by values you'd mean racism, colonialism, jingoism, etc. The Euro-American colonists fought a bunch of 'savages' and stole their land from them to make their Christian empire. The Zionists are doing the same right now. All in all, this is not about 'values' it's about power. Colonialism and Imperialism. That's the shared history. All this talk about 'values' is just self-gratifying.
If others adopt similar overlapping shared values, the world will be eyeless. (Apologies to the Mahatma and Aldous Huxley.)
In his last years in power, De Klerk tried to get constitutional guarantees for the white minority in South Africa. He largely failed in this, in large part because it came out to what extent his government was secretly fostering even more extreme violence against the blacks that his predecessor, P.W. Botha had. Of course, he did still get a constitution that assured equal treatment, with any constitutional amendments requiring a 2/3 vote. If it strikes a deal soon, Israel can probably get a better deal than that. There can probably still be a Law of Return for Jews in a new Israel/Palestine, so long as there is a fair equivalent for the Palestinians. Any constitutional guarantees can be backed up by U.N. resolutions, an international treaty with foreign guarantor governments, and perhaps a foreign military force on scene to force such an agreement. But if the Israeli Jews wait too long, they may not even get as much as the South African whites ended up getting. They may end up facing the fate of the pieds noirs European settlers in French Algeria.
This was mentioned or referenced on another Mondoweiss thread: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1083089.html
The only thing is worth reading.
Correction: The whole thing is worth reading. Concrete evidence.
Israel gets a much better deal because Jewish Israelis are the majority, not a tiny minority as in SA. In the Algiers, the French were a small minority. Regardless, the Jews are in their homeland, the white SAs and Algerians were not. And for matter, it would appear that a large percentage of Arabs in the territories are also not in their homeland, unless they count the entire Middle east as their homeland.
No Jew of character would ever move to the Hebraic pigsty of Israel. Only Jewish criminals. Jewish vermin.
9 out of 10 physicists agree: Israel must go! Stephen Hawking, commenting on the Israeli pestilence: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1jjLRXmIck&eu...
concrete evidence as in 'pouring concrete'
I don't like Israel very much, but that's not helping…
Israeli Jews are only a majority if you conceptually remove the Palestinians within the expanded borders. It may well be true that 'the Jews' are in their homeland, but why does that require ruling over civilians with military law? Even the new ambassador is worried that Israel will be forced into a one-state solution due to the difficulty of removing settlers (thus no two state) and demography. http://www.commentarymagazine.com/viewarticle.cfm...
"The Zionists seem intent on validating every negative stereotype in the book about Jews as perpetual parasites." A book you no doubt posses a rare first edition of. And what's so nice, they're still sending you updates! It must be the thickest book in the world!
The values which the US shares with Israel are certainly not my values, nor those of any right-thinking person in the 21st century.
Richard – Would you explain what "real and considerable" values are shared, please?
"If it strikes a deal soon, Israel can probably get a better deal than that. There can probably still be a Law of Return for Jews in a new Israel/Palestine, so long as there is a fair equivalent for the Palestinians." B-b-b-b-b-b-b-but, THAT would upset the "demographic balance", not to mention destroying the "Jewish character" of the State.
I don't see how almost anything here is "helping". You get a mix of groundless accusations, one-sided opinions, and some anti-Semitism thrown in for fun.
Israeli ReMax is selling new homes in suburban Jerusalem, erected on stolen land. American Jews are buying. The sales pitch is directed by and to "anglo-saxon" jews.
Their homeland? That's what Hitler said when he went East, for lebensraum. In myth it was all Aryan land.
Good. It would mean that Israel would cease to be a racist, apartheid state. How can a racist apartheid state be a good thing? Who cares about maintaining a demographic balance of white people to black people or Christians having a majority in the USA – only racists do. Zionists are racists, Zionism is racism. It needs to end!
Israel values?!! Israel is not sharing any values with no one. Zionism manipulate history and west world's mainstream. If what's Kohr saying (that Boyott and sanctions against Israel is start entering the American mainstream) is right, then the Americans' conscious strat watching and observing the real Isreali criminal behavior and intention toward the whole word and humanity. At the end, the Americans will figure out that supporting Israel State was not their perfect desicion. Arabs or no Arabs, Christians or Muslims, all have eyes to watch, minds to think and conscious to Judge either to Boycott the Dark Evel values or to support them.