Here is an excellent piece of reporting on the AIPAC policy conference by Nathan Guttman at the Forward, saying that AIPAC is tacking left. His piece features Democrat Ann Lewis as a key player in the repositioning. Lewis is Barney Frank’s sister, a Democratic operative and former senior adviser to Hillary Clinton, and Guttman was a good reporter to ask Lewis about apartheid in the West Bank:
Israel’s recent decision to institute segregated bus lines in the occupied West Bank for Palestinian workers is likely to evoke discordant associations with the American South prior to the civil rights era.
The bigger takeaway here is that the Israel lobby is reconstituting itself. Spurred by the Obama victory, the smashing of the Iran-war neoconservatives, and the Yair Lapid surge in Israel, the lobby here is repositioning itself to the center-left to accommodate the new mood on campus. That is the meaning of Elliott Abrams’s embrace of the Israeli center. It is the meaning of Jane Harman saying, “We desperately need a two-state solution.” It is the meaning of J Street’s Jeremy Ben-Ami’s sharing a sweaty microphone with StandWithUs.
I used to argue when people said that J Street was AIPAC-lite. Well they were right and I was wrong; and soon the lobby will be reconstituted as a two-state J Street-AIPAC lobby. More of Guttman’s report:
In seeking to appeal to liberal Democrats prone in recent years to critical views of Israeli policies, the activists are depicting Israel as a progressive promised land where values that liberals can only dream of in the United States are already a reality. The AIPAC advocates cite specific issues, ranging from health care to gay rights to inclusion of minorities.
“We need to speak out more as progressives, not to let the other side own the issue of Israel,” said Ann Lewis, who served as a communications director for President Clinton.
At AIPAC’s Washington conference, which took place from March 2 to March 4, Lewis was among those challenging the notion that progressive Democrats are out of place in the pro-Israel camp — and not only at the conference. For the past three years, Lewis has led missions to Israel on behalf of AIPAC’s sister group, the American Israel Education Fund, in which she has tried to move liberal women closer to the pro-Israel camp.
Among Lewis’s guests on these trips have been Democratic political strategist Donna Brazile; Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards, who noted Israel’s advance on women’s health issues, and Heidi Heitkamp, a newly elected senator from North Dakota.
Note that Cecile Richards was an honoree of The Nation Institute a couple years ago and is on Chris Matthews all the time. This is the Democratic lobby! And Barney Frank used to say that while he opposed the settlements he couldn’t do so publicly without 5000 Jews in his district supporting him. Maybe he was afraid of his sister (who once said, “The role of the president of the United States is to support the decisions that are made by the people of Israel. It is not up to us to pick and choose from among the political parties.”).
These folks are hearing footsteps from the progressive left solidarity camp, though:
“It is a small problem that could get bigger,” said Democratic political adviser and pollster Mark Mellman, who has advised Jewish and pro-Israel organizations. He noted that polling results show that progressive Democrats holding negative views of Israel do not make up a significant portion of the party, “but you need to address problems when they are small.”
This is the kind of fifth-column horsecrap that really gets my goat. No, the role of the President of the United States is to promote the interest of the US and to promote American ideals around the world, not to be meat puppets to a bunch of zionist racists who have a bit of money.
Well, that depends how you define Zionism. Perhaps if the question were a choice between liberalism and Zio-supremacism, the results would be even more meaningful.
Typical on how you got the original story wrong and how you distort the facts.
It is because of the policy of non-segregated buses that actually caused the problem in the first place.
Palestinians stared heavy use of a particular bus line that was also being used by residents of Ariel. Because they totally outnumbered the residents of Ariel using the same bus, the residents of Ariel suddenly found themselves not being able to get home as the buses filled up very quickly with Palestinian passengers. The mayor of Ariel needed to come up with a solution on how to get his residents home. Now if you were mayor, what would you do? And please don’t tell us to press the magic button for more buses to appear.
You are a incurable optimist Phil.
AIPAC won’t move left imo.
AIPAC is dedicated to the zionist/Israel ‘ideology’; Jewish State, Jewish supremacy, Jewish majority-rule, Jewish Exceptionalism in world law and norms, …take away the ‘practices’ of this in Israel and you literally have no Israel as a ‘Jewish State’ left.
Dirtbags like Lewis are, as she said, trying to short circuit the growing left criticism of Israel to keep the Dem party on board.
She’s not going to be able to “re-legitimize” Israel among the left that has a critical movement on it going I don’t think…….that train has left the station already.
However in reality I don’t think it matters in influencing the Dem Party, unless those who choose ‘liberalism’ have the political money to throw at it. Public opinion won’t matter until it becomes ‘overwhelming’—probably as the result of some too much egregious thing Israel does.
Ann Lewis is an Israel Firster. It needs to be said.
When you say:
You’re basically saying, the U.S. president must be a slave to Israel.
Is there any other country Ms. Lewis would add to that list? I highly doubt it. If the German nation elected a right-wing nationalist government, it’s dubious at best if she would leap to Germany’s defence in the same way or any other Western democracy.
Also, the quote that Phil raised was said in a discussion with Bill Kristol.
Maybe I’m totally wrong on this one, but when you’re chummy with a far-right neocon, you’re not exactly representative of the progressive grassroots. To add to this; Ann Lewis is an old woman. She’s a Clinton-era Democrat. A lot has changed since then. There’s a much stronger shift on economic issues to the left and we’re seeing a shift on foreign policy too.
The last few days of combined right/left outrage on drones is a case in point. The old establishment in both the GOP and the Democratic party are having trouble finding their feet. This is the milieu that Ann Lewis comes from and was shaped in.
She’s the past. And in fact, Israel is not very progressive. Canada for one is more progressive on almost any issue. Same is true with Britain or Australia and so on.
And neither of those countries practice apartheid. That’s a thing Ann Lewis isn’t concerned about. Israel Firster.