MJ Rosenberg joins the battle between Steve Walt and Rob’t Satloff over the true aims of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and says the thinktank is just a "cutout" for the Israel lobby.
I was working at AIPAC and it was Steve Rosen who cleverly came up with the idea for an AIPAC controlled think-tank that would put forth the AIPAC line but in a way that would disguise its connections.
There was no question that WINEP was to be AIPAC’s cutout. It was funded by AIPAC donors, staffed by AIPAC employees, and located one door away, down the hall, from AIPAC Headquarters (no more. It has its own digs). It would also hire all kinds of people not identified with Israel as a cover and would encourage them to write whatever they liked on matters not related to Israel. "Say what you want on Morocco, kid." But on Israel, never deviate more than a degree or two.
So why does it matter?
It matters because the media has totally fallen for this sleight of hand and WINEP spokespersons appear (especially on PBS) as if WINEP was not part of the Israel lobby.
So Satloff is engaging in pure subterfuge in telling Steve Walt that all we do around here is think about Morocco. This is why I often call the lobby a conspiracy, in the sense of the word that Lincoln used when he saw a conspiracy of the slave interest pervading our politics. There are a number of players and when you call them out they deny their role.
