‘Occupy AIPAC’ now has 100 orgs behind it (and neocons try to block its appeal to ‘Jewish liberals’)

Occupy AIPAC

This is interesting. More than 100 organizations are moving ahead to “Occupy AIPAC” at the beginning of March in Washington. It will be some party near the convention center– a lot of coalition-building and consciousness-raising. “We are the 99 percent, from Cairo to NY, from Jerusalem to DC.”

I can’t wait to compare the average age of the AIPAC’ers to that of the anti-AIPAC’rs– AIPAC’s biggest fear. The dustbin of history.

One sign that Occupy AIPAC is working is that Commentary has launched a broadbrush attack on it and the Occupy movement generally as… anti-semitic. The neoconservatives are clearly worried that the boycott movement and the end-to-aid to Israel movement are gaining traction in American politics and what are they doing– appealing to Jewish liberals to marginalize these movements.

Not to marginalize the neocons, but to marginalize the lib-left-human-rights-crowd! It’s the old neocon-We-are-Jewish-Family trick. Sadly this has worked countless times before. But this effort is so wild it’s funny. Jonathan Tobin:

Many Jewish liberals have been in denial about the anti-Israel and often anti-Semitic tone of much of the Occupy Wall Street movement since its inception. As our colleague Jonathan Neumann wrote in the January issue of COMMENTARY, the leftist hatred for Israel is thoroughly integrated into the Occupy worldview even though some mainstream sympathizers with the movement would prefer to ignore it. But their tolerance for the way this virus has attached itself to a movement that is supposedly about “social justice” will soon be put to the test again….

The only question is when, if ever, are mainstream Jewish liberals who want nothing to do with the Occupy AIPAC leftists going to face up to the fact that there is no distance between this group and the rest of the Occupy mob.

Josh Ruebner of the US Campaign to End the Occupation has responded forcefully and with slashing wit to the Commentary attack: 

The neo-con rag Commentary had an especially tendentious post on its blog Contentions on Friday proving for themselves beyond a shadow of doubt that there exists a grand conspiracy between Marxism, anti-Semitism, the Occupy movement, and the US Campaign to “sabotage or at least overshadow the AIPAC event,” by organizing Occupy AIPAC.

Let’s leave aside for the moment the hypocrisy of a magazine formerly dominated by Communists (who then found the light in shucking for American imperialism) engaging in McCarthyite red baiting. Um, dudes, the 1950s was like so last century….

Damn right, Commentary, we’ll be Occupying AIPAC come March. AIPAC’s number one lobbying item is always to advocate for more U.S. taxpayer-funded weapons transfers to Israel, weapons which will be misused in violation of U.S. law to commit human rights abuses against Palestinians like Mustafa Tamimi who died in December after he was shot in the face by an Israeli soldier with a high-velocity tear gas canister likely manufactured by Combined Systems, Inc. of Jamestown, PA and paid for with U.S. taxpayer money.

We’ve got so many better things to spend our money on than killing Palestinian protesters like Mustafa Tamimi who want nothing more, nothing less, than their inherent and fundamental human rights to a life of freedom, justice,and equality, rather than brutal military occupation and apartheid. So, yeah, Commentary, we’ll be there protesting AIPAC’s agenda and all of your silly accusations about who we are and what we stand for won’t stop us.