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AIPAC underwrote Islamophobia in the Republican Party, and the Democratic Party too

Here are a few facts in pursuit of a pattern.

1. The foreground. Frank Gaffney is an Islam-bashing neoconservative who as much as anyone contributed to the thinking behind Donald Trump’s ban on visitors from six Muslim-majority countries.

2. Back in time: Gaffney was exposed in 2011, when Eli Clifton and several other writers at the Democratic-Party-linked thinktank, the Center for American Progress, published a report called Fear Inc that said there was a network of groups spreading Islamophobia. One of them was Gaffney’s Center for Security Policy. Gaffney also showed up when Clifton and Ali Gharib published a report for that same Democratic Party-linked thinktank on the donors behind an Islamophobic film called “The Third Jihad.” Gaffney was one of the leading voices in that film; and the two writers said that some of the donors behind the film also supported Israel and the settler movement.

3. Still five years ago: A pressure campaign was launched by the Israel lobby against the presence of Clifton and Gharib and others at the Center for American Progress— that Democratic Party linked thinktank. The writers were called anti-Israel by a bunch of pro-Israel hacks. I should have said, a successful pressure campaign. Clifton and Gharib both left CAP after they were repeatedly humiliated by the organization. In the process, some writings were scrubbed of criticisms of Israel. For instance, that article about the Third Jihad movie: it lost all its references to Israel.

4. What goes around starts coming around. Two years ago, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tried to submarine Obama’s Iran Deal, and CAP President Neera Tanden rewarded him by inviting the Israeli PM to her Democratic-Party linked thinktank for a public lovefest. The invitation caused an uproar among the enlightened, and somebody (I have no idea who!) leaked Glenn Greenwald CAP emails about the earlier Israel lobby pressure campaign that showed that after CAP published that report by Gharib and Clifton about donors to the Third Jihad/Gaffney movie, Democratic Party consultant/boss Howard Wolfson sent Neera Tanden an email linking the article and saying simply:

“For the love of God!”

Tanden then passed along Wolfson’s benediction to others– translating it for the hard of hearing:

“Is it wise to throw around the Israel issue in this?”

AIPAC had also taken part in the effort to fire the staffers. Greenwald related a choice moment from an email:

[In 2012, CAP chief of staff Ken] Gude wrote an excited email to top CAP officials, including Tanden. The subject was Gude’s meeting with AIPAC’s deputy director of policy and government affairs, Jeff Colman, which Gude gushed was “very positive.”

In light of “the steps we have taken” — the public apologies, the censorship, the denouncing of CAP’s own writers — AIPAC, said Gude, deemed that CAP “now was moving in the right direction.” The AIPAC official singled out several CAP staffers for praise, saying AIPAC now believes “CAP/AF [Action Fund] is in good hands.”

5. What goes around comes all the way around. On Wednesday, Eli Clifton reported at Lobelog that in 2015, AIPAC gave $60,000 to the Center for Security Policy, Frank Gaffney’s group. The $60,000 is embarrassing because AIPAC claims that it fights Islamophobia and bigotry. Clifton turned the gift up in a tax document.

6. The end zone dance. On twitter Wednesday, Eli Clifton called out his former boss Neera Tanden, linking his new disclosure to AIPAC’s role years ago:

.@neeratanden Perhaps a clue as to why ppl affiliated w AIPAC attacked ur staffers who authored Islamophobia report?

Let me throw in a couple of other data points here.

Right after she invited Netanyahu to her Democratic Party-linked thinktank– after the prime minister’s charm offensive to submarine the signature foreign policy achievement of a Democratic president– Neera Tanden crowed (in an email released by Wikileaks) that by doing so she had landed a big new donor to CAP, Jonathan Lavine, who loves Israel– even if she had divided the staff in the process. As Greenwald wrote in 2015, this is about money:

Under Tanden, [CAP] has repeatedly demonstrated it will go to almost any length to keep AIPAC and its pro-Israel donors happy, regardless of how such behavior subverts its pretense of independent advocacy…

And it’s about war in the Middle East. As Eli Clifton reported, AIPAC quietly pushed the Iraq war and later claimed that it had not done so. According to Clifton’s latest report, the $60,000 went to a New Orleans address associated with the neoconservative Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs– which Colin Powell said was the “crowd” that convinced Donald Rumsfeld of the urgent need to invade Iraq.

Lots of people are talking about the Deep State these days, whether or not it exists. This is my candidate for the Deep State, or a portion of it anyway. The Israel lobby: which claimed scalps of honest journalists at a Democratic Party thinktank because those individuals were allegedly anti-Israel, which censored their writings, which brings a rightwing prime minister to speak at a supposedly progressive American thinktank, which funds Islamophobic policy in a Republican administration. And the lobby is impervious to elections, it has other bases for its power; which is why Obama couldn’t do anything to all those Democrats who sandbagged him on the Iran deal. Which is why, per Edward Snowden’s definition of the Deep State, anti-Iran Treasury officials Stuart Levey and Adam Szubin miraculously survive fundamental changes in administration (Obama kept Levey on from Bush; Trump is keeping Szubin on).

Today T’ruah, the liberal Zionist group, is calling on AIPAC to apologize for the Gaffney gift: “renounce all ties with this dangerous group; and make an equivalent gift to an organization working to protect Muslims, immigrants and/or refugees.”

But let’s be clear: this behavior is utterly consistent with AIPAC’s opposition to the Iran deal, its support for the Iraq war, its support for Israeli settlers and rightwingers. AIPAC doesn’t care. T’ruah should be telling its good friend Americans for Peace Now to leave the AIPAC board: That’s where liberal Zionists have agency. Peace Now always ducks my challenge here, but how will Peace Now feel when the young Jews of the Jewish Resistance put these facts together, and realize that Americans for Peace Now is a member in good standing of the Conference of Presidents board, and therefore a constituent of AIPAC, and a party to the Islamophobic Gaffney gift? The next #IfNotNow demonstration against the “Jewish establishment” could be outside the Peace Now offices, demanding that it cut its ties with these rightwing organizations that fund Islamophobia (ties that Peace Now formed out of a once-understandable need for Jewish solidarity in the face of the goyim; conditions that IMHO no longer apply).

Thanks to Max Blumenthal.

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@Phil

I don’t think Lobbies qualify as part of the deep state. The constitution specifically grants the people the right to lobby congress for redress. Laws openly call for meetings and hearings with constituencies likely to be impacted by legislation. AIPAC is openly a group, the primary group, of Americans interested in Israeli affairs. As a society we have created intermediation mechanisms to translate broad uniformed and often contradictory public opinion into actionable pressure so that legislation and executive action can result. Political parties, interest groups and lobbies are those intermediation mechanisms.

The deep state is the group of people involved in secret manipulation of government policy. AIPAC only manipulates government policy in line with how our democracy works. American democracy has lots of problems but those problems in many ways result because these intermediation mechanisms are breaking down as mistrust for elites, the establishment, is growing. I don’t think there is a deep state in the USA but even if there were lobbies would not be part of it.

What you are citing in this article are mostly examples of lobbies coordinating among themselves on policy. Lobbies that have conflicting policy would want to influence one another and thus form a consensus of opinion so that unified government action can occur. Lobbies in their intermediation role are expected to come to consensus on matters on policy. If the lobbies just conflict with one another they are only slightly better than public opinion on creating actionable pressure. You would expect what you are citing to occur in a democracy.
That isn’t a bug its a feature.

Another Pulitzer Prize-worthy article from Mondoweiss. Documenting the Israeli money behind the Muslim bashing in America is extremely important. Israel benefits from this in two ways. First, it distracts attention from its own crimes and atrocities. Second, it drums up misinformed support for those crimes and atrocities. This reality deserves to be included in all the media’s discussions that decry Islamophobia, and this article can help that happen.

The article is also important because it documents the way Israeli money sabotages a full and honest discussion of an American foreign policy issue of extreme importance, an issue of war and peace, of life and death on a mass scale.

As a companion article for readers who missed it, I recommend “‘There is a deep state,’ Snowden says, contradicting the liberal press”
http://mondoweiss.net/2017/03/snowden-contradicting-liberal

@Keith

Get real. The Deep State refers to those elite institutions and individuals which effectively control our society. The 99% sure as hell doesn’t.

I’d say our recent presidential election proves otherwise. You have a guy detested by the 1% and broadly supported by the 99% who won the primaries and then the presidency. Almost none of the 1% have high school or less education. Very few are disadvantaged by trade, much the opposite. None are concerned about rising health insurance premiums effects on their family’s welfare. Etc….

And AIPAC along with the rest of the major American Jewish organizations is an integral part of the Deep State.

Which means what? Translate this from conspiratorial speak into something that makes sense. What are you claiming in plain english? What is AIPAC doing that economic elites support and middle class Jewish Republicans oppose?

“AIPAC only manipulates government policy”……..this statement confirms for me that AIPAC interferes with American Governance, which many of us here have known for sometime. So therefore it is acting as a Foreign Agent of Israel and needs to be removed from American soil along with all those it employs and bribes.