Say Something Nice About AIPAC. OK.

I have a piece on AIPAC in the forthcoming American Conservative. You have to buy it. If it goes online, I’ll link and offer further impressions. My piece contains flashes of real sympathy; it was great for me to hang out with a lot of old rich Jews, all of them more fearful than I am about our place in American life. One point I didn’t get in the piece (it was off the record at the time, I didn’t have permission yet) is when a woman rose in the audience at a breakout session to say that speakers were supporting the “ethnic cleansing” of Jews from Judea and Samaria–i.e., they are supporting the removal of settlers from the West Bank. Jews have a biblical right to the land of Eretz Israel. Tom Sawicki, an AIPAC staffer in Jerusalem, cut her off sharply, and said she was “using terminology which is not acceptable in this conference.” Bottom line: AIPAC is actively supporting the 2-state solution to save Zionism, and to stave off the growing left flank…