I don’t think I’ve ever been so cussed at as I was Monday night, as the AIPAC delegates left their gala. I was driving by the Convention Center and saw the demo so decided to park and join. “Fuck you” and “putz” and “I know you, you’re an anti-Semite” were some that stuck with me. My line of response was, “you can be more articulate than that.” But most couldn’t.One woman engaged briefly and when she didn’t like my answer just walked off saying, “you’re a fool.” What was noteworthy was young people were much more interested in engaging, many of them respectfully. Older people would walk by and tell then not to talk.
Scott McConnell was also at the demos. He saw the same vituperation and writes at American Conservative that AIPAC is a “sclerotic” organization.
Who knows whether it matters in the long run, but it is deeply satisfying to see thousands of AIPAC delegates have to walk right by a mocked up Code Pink checkpoint, where members of the “Pink Police” with faux IDF helmets force headscarved older women to crouch on the ground while they scream out in guttural accents “No Muslims allowed—this City is for Jews Only!”
This year’s protest were highlighted by Liza Behrendt, a spirited young woman who got inside the AIPAC conference and disrupted a session on how to combat pro-Palestinian advocacy on campus. She’s a Brandeis student and bundle of energy. On Monday, when we demonstrated outside the White House, the Park police had us sequestered behind a line about fifty yards in front of Pennsylvania Avenue. Liza was a settlement—that is she was wearing a big cardboard “settlement” building around her, and she kept “expanding,” waddling over the boundary line, twenty yards, thirty yards past into the “disputed territory. ” The Park Police surrounded her, but I think they were laughing too much to arrest her.
AIPAC is of course a superpower; as Jeffrey Blankfort said at the CODE PINK meeting on Saturday, to call AIPAC a lobby is really like calling a mouse a cat. It is in fact a shadow government, dictating an alternative foreign policy to American Congress—and resoundingly successful in its efforts. If Netanyahu gets his way and brings American into another Middle Eastern war, AIPAC can take full credit.
But despite its power, I think AIPAC feels more strain than last year. Of course this isn’t a scientific sample. But last year, as we stood in the Mount Vernon Park at dawn on early Sunday as thousands of AIPACers filed past us, I could sense nothing but smugness and condescension. They were powerful, we weren’t—so they thought, and surely they were right. A few commented on my Giants cap, some shook their heads or smirked at our placards and banners.
A quite different feeling this time, though we were a group of more or less the same size with more or less the same banners and temperament. They were angry. It seemed that at least one of every forty or fifty of the men walking by would snarl, or give us the finger. Displaying real hatred. The ground is beginning to shift and they know it.
Probably my favorite line from Max Blumenthals video’s was from New York, this guy recognizes Max and tells everybody to ignore/browbeat the guy… he says, “Oh, look, its Max Blumenthal, the self hating asshole…”
Blumenthal can be heard asking: So, I hate myself for being an asshole?
HAHAHAAA — A classic.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R611drTEHPA
As distasteful as the teeth gnashing etc is — It can incredibly funny
The ‘shadow government’ smear returns.
So how much influence does AIPAC have on foreign policy towards China’s military activities near Japan and Taiwan? What influence does it extert towards the Australia-US bilateral relationship? Brazil? Cuba?
What does have it to do with US health care policy, alternative energy, immigration, how high taxes should be, our education policy and who funds our universities, for-profits? How about internet regulation?
I could go on.
AIPAC is a powerful lobby determined to shape US policy on the Middle East, primarily, because that’s the region that Israel is most affected by. It probably affects US foreign policy in small, minor ways(such as Europeans boycotting Iranian oil, but that does weave into the Middle East anyway, so the point still stands) but that’s about it.
A government’s foreign policy is very varied, especially a country as powerful as America.
And then it has a range of domestic issues which has nothing to do with Israel.
Using terms like ‘shadow government’ in a Jewish context ought to be verboten. Blankfort may do it on purpose but Scott should know better.
Critique of AIPAC is vital, but it should be specific. Playing with anti-Semitic undercurrents, or casually quoting other’s use of it, in an approving fashion, does not help critics of US foreign policy towards the Middle East to capture a larger share of the mainstream of America, which I think is possible.
But it’s impossible to ignore the ease into which some people wallow into anti-Semitism, even if they don’t mean to.
“Sclerotic”. exactly. Like their veins, perhaps, they have grown old and fat with the (lipids of their) beliefs and assurances (we are right, none dare oppose us, no need to look inwards, no need to look at reasoning, and certainly no need to examine ethics, morals, rights (of others), international law, etc.).
The younger AIPACniks seem to have been a bit less sclerotic. Let’s hope so.
“Mensch” is the worst , most cruel, most degrading insult in the zionist vocabulary.
” The ground is beginning to shift and they know it.”
Indeed they do.