Today Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg announced they will be skipping the AIPAC conference conference, which means Michael Bloomberg is the only Democratic nominee definitely attending.
Jewish activists and their supporters descended on Joe Biden’s Philadelphia campaign office this morning to demand that the presidential candidate skip American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s (AIPAC) annual policy conference.
On Sunday, Democratic frontrunner Bernie Sanders confirmed that he would be skipping this year’s AIPAC conference and attacked the pro-Israel organization on his Twitter page.
The Shift is a weekly politics newsletter from Michael Arria taking you to the front…
The pro-Israel lobby group AIPAC once prided itself on doing its business in the dark. But today loving Israel too much is being politicized in the age of Trump. The battle between the liberal Israel lobby and the rightwing Israel lobby portends a day when leftwingers who support boycotting Israel will not be railroaded instantly from US politics.
A coalition of progressive organizations has launched a campaign aimed at pressuring Democratic candidates into skipping the annual American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) policy conference in Washington.
“Well if I do go — I don’t think I am, I don’t think it’s going to be on my schedule — but you know, I have no objection to going, but the question is what I say when I get there. That’s the point. And what I will say is something that I have said for years, and I speak as somebody who’s Jewish, and that is we need a foreign policy in this country, we need a Mideast policy which absolutely protects the integrity and the independence and safety of Israel, but also understands that the Palestinian people have needs and they have got to be treated with respect and dignity. And that is not the case right now. So that is my view. We will treat all people with respect and dignity.”
The DNC’s list of nominees to the platform committee ahead of the 2020 convention is stacked with pro-Israel advocates, including rightwingers with AIPAC connections. The DNC is planning to battle against the progressive wing on Israel, opposing BDS and with all its guns a-blazin. If you wonder why Buttigieg and Warren seem to have tempered their criticisms of Israel, this is why.
Benny Gantz support for annexing the Jordan Valley shows that the left is completely feckless in Israeli politics, and the only liberal hope is in Palestinian politicians. American liberal Zionists should accept that the two state solution is dead, and they should abandon the ideology that created apartheid: Zionism.
Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg derides American political culture as ignorant and ahistorical and says he is a “misanthrope”, while extolling Zionism. “All of Judaism is Zionism because we are a universal religion focused on a very particular place.” Anti-Zionism is essentially murderous, he said, aimed at the “soul” of the Jewish people.