Jeez Louise, The New York Times has published a big story on the political failure of the leading Israel lobby organization, AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee). The Times says AIPAC has lost for the first time in 30 years in failing to ramp up sanctions on Iran.
Its top priority, a Senate bill to impose new sanctions on Iran, has stalled after stiff resistance from President Obama, and in what amounts to a tacit retreat, Aipac has stopped pressuring Senate Democrats to vote for the bill.
Even Abe Foxman concedes the Iran sanctions have stalled, and reporter Mark Lander says that the lobby “overreached” by pillorying Debbie Wasserman Schultz for her silence re the Obama deal with Iran. And after long silence, Hillary Clinton also knows which way the wind is blowing.
On Monday, 70 House Democrats sent Mr. Obama a letter backing his diplomatic efforts and opposing new sanctions. Former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton added her voice to those urging no legislation.
Landler is no bombthrower, but he has the temerity to talk about AIPAC’s “rich donor base.”
Aipac officials said that their fund-raising is at record levels and that the March meeting will be the largest in its history. The group has helped secure $3.1 billion in American aid for Israel for the fiscal year
Money surely explains Wasserman Schultz’s silence (she’s chair of the Democratic National Commitee) and Hillary Clinton’s fencesitting, and an incident Landler also cites: Bill de Blasio humiliating himself to AIPAC on January 23. A few of his best friends (i.e., biggest donors) were surely in that room. I’m waiting for that reporting. But The Times mentions the long list of Jews, including many liberal Zionists, who published a letter rebuking de Blasio and saying AIPAC doesn’t speak for them. De Blasio is now inching away from that groveling speech. Capital NY:
Addressing his unannounced, closed-press speech last month to AIPAC, Bill de Blasio told Brian Lehrer this morning that he was “unabashedly pro-Israel,” but added, “Where I agree with President Obama is on sanctions. I think the deal that has been struck with Iran is an incredible first step.”…
During his speech to the pro-Israel group last month, de Blasio told AIPAC members, “When you need me to stand by you in Washington or anywhere, I will answer the call and I’ll answer it happily ’cause that’s my job.”
The Times also quotes a Connecticut Democratic Senator who says he doesn’t care about AIPAC:
[Christopher] Murphy said he was not worried about bucking Aipac. “The pro-Israel community in Connecticut knows I’m a strong supporter of the U.S.-Israel relationship,” he said, “and I always will be.”
This demonstrates what we’ve pointed out here for some time: The lobby is splitting. There’s the right wing (AIPAC Iran hawks) and the liberal wing, the liberal Zionists (we wish they hadn’t built all those settlements!). But it’s not like the liberal wing is very critical of Israel; they also want it to get US billions and immunity for human rights violations. “All it takes to crush the lobby is to stand up to it,” MJ Rosenberg says. Yes, but what will take its place? Other forms of the special relationship with Israel– continued political veneration, until such time as Jewish Voice for Peace replaces J Street as the lefthand segment of the Jewish community. Till older Jewish donors, who regard Israel’s creation as a miracle, are replaced by young Jews for whom anti-Semitism is a spent force.
Here is Hillary’s letter to Sen. Carl Levin, saying she opposes the AIPAC sanctions bill and supports President Obama’s deal with Iran. Excerpt:
“I share the opinion of you and many of your colleagues that these sanctions and the carefully constructed global consensus behind them are responsible for driving Tehran to the negotiating table….Now that serious negotiations are finally under way, we should do everything we can to test whether they can advance a permanent solution. As President Obama said, we must give diplomacy a chance to succeed, while keeping all options on the table. The U.S. intelligence community has assessed that imposing new unilateral sanctions now ‘would undermine the prospects for a successful comprehensive nuclear agreement with Iran.’ I share that view. It could rob us of the diplomatic high ground we worked so hard to reach, break the united international front we constructed, and in the long run, weaken pressure on Iran by opening the door for other countries to chart a different course.”
By the way, much of what Landler states in the Times re Congress — a 30-year run of victories, with unanimous votes– is what Walt and Mearsheimer said eight years ago, echoed by Michael Massing in the NY Review of Books. It’s taken a while for that news to get out. Walt and Mearsheimer, in LRB:
A key pillar of the Lobby’s effectiveness is its influence in Congress, where Israel is virtually immune from criticism. This in itself is remarkable, because Congress rarely shies away from contentious issues. Where Israel is concerned, however, potential critics fall silent. One reason is that some key members are Christian Zionists like Dick Armey, who said in September 2002: ‘My No. 1 priority in foreign policy is to protect Israel.’ One might think that the No. 1 priority for any congressman would be to protect America.
They were judged to be anti-Semitic because they used a capital L among other reasons.
Defeat for AIPAC? Maybe. Defeat for the Lobby? No. The argument is between politicians who think sanctions will help keep Iranians terrorized by Israel’s nuclear weapons, and those who think relaxing sanctions will do the job better. Both sides want to keep Israel hundreds of times more powerful than all its neighbors together.
Clinton’s letter states..” The U.S. intelligence community has assessed that imposing new unilateral sanctions now ‘would undermine the prospects for a successful comprehensive nuclear agreement with Iran.” that may be true, but whether new sanctions now would undermine an agreement is a purely political decision, to be made by elected officials, not an intelligence agency. Still she sees the way the wind is blowing, but she is such an opportunistic war monger, she would just as easily change tack if it furthered her political ambitions.
AIPAC has been clamoring for war with Iran for some time now. Check out the coverage of AIPAC’s national conventions, which typically feature a ticking bomb, labelled “Iran”. Roger Cohen, writing in The New York Times in 2009 (FIVE YEARS AGO!) , has documented a long history of proclamations by Israeli officials, saying Iran is “just about” to get nuclear weapons. These proclamations go back a couple of decades, to at least 1992 (TWENTY-TWO YEARS AGO). And Cohen had the chutzpah to mention that back in the 1980’s (THIRTY YEARS AGO), Israel and the Reagan Administration sold weapons to Iran.
Yes, this is a defeat for Israel and the Israel Lobby. No, it isn’t the first defeat. The constant clamor for war with Iran has failed. And it failed in the past.
(Other failures: Dershowitz failed to stop publication of Finkelstein’s Beyond Chutzpah; Smears of Jimmy Carter failed. Smears of Chomsky have failed for decades.)
Her quoting the US intelligence community is significant in that it places AIPAC’s goal to enact new sanctions as directly contrary to the judgment of our own intelligence community, in addition to our President and (current) State Department. Talk about daylight between Israel and US. AIPAC/Likud have perhaps now demonstrated to the Israeli right wing that the US cannot be pushed as far as some apparently assumed it could be. This shows Israel/AIPAC is being run by a group that is increasingly out of touch. The hope is that this will weaken and isolate the right wing within Israel, helping lay the groundwork for peace. The risk is that a real effort for peace will create havoc in Israel, dissolving governments, riots, further attempted assassinations of peace-makers, a parallel disarray emerging there, as among American Jews here. A constitutional democracy is designed to survive such turmoil, to continue to perfect itself. Can the Jewish State?
Perhaps the biggest clue about whether or not the public started paying attention to Isr is the NYT stopped all comment sections on Israel articles.
Public opinion got too hot for the NYT and the Lobby.
An article like this would have gotten a hundreds+ of comments —now the last thing they want is Americans reading what other Americans have to say about I-Firstdom and Isr.