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A NEWSLETTER WITH AN EYE ON POLITICAL MEDIA

AIPAC Goes Full Trump

It endorses most of the GOP representatives who voted to overturn the
Electoral College results-but not pro-Israel hawk Liz Cheney.

AIPAC has been in the news lately, and not in a good way. After decades
of pretending that it would not know a political contribution if it
bumped into one and broke its nose, it ended the charade and announced
in December 2021 that it would be creating a super PAC to donate
directly to congressional candidates. Having raised nearly $16 million
in its first quarter of existence, it has now endorsed 109 of the 147
Republican congressmen who supported Donald Trump's campaign to try to
overturn the Electoral College's results on January 6th, along with a
few Democrats. "Our goal is to make America's friendship with Israel
so robust, so certain, so broadly based, and so dependable that even the
deep divisions of American politics can never imperil that relationship
and the ability of the Jewish state to defend itself
,"
it explains.

In a Boston Globe op-ed by Alan Solomont and Nancy Buck

(both associated with J Street), however, we learn that "AIPAC's new
endorsees include such allies of Donald Trump as Representative Jim
Jordan of Ohio
,
who refuses to cooperate with the Select Committee to Investigate the
January 6th Attack on the US Capitol ;
Representative Pete Sessions of Texas
,
who met with 'Stop the Steal' leaders just days before the
insurrection; and Representative Scott Perry of Pennsylvania
,
who has echoed white nationalist conspiracies about 'replacement
theory' and compared Democratic leaders to the Nazis."

And guess which Republican AIPAC apparently forgot to include? That's
right. The rather crazily "pro-Israel" Lynn Cheney

is being blackballed. In the past, Cheney has taken the AIPAC line down
the line. Even before she was in Congress, she represented the
Republican Party at an AIPAC Policy Conference panel and (falsely)
complained of Obama: "There is no president who has done more to
delegitimize and destabilize the State of Israel in recent history than
President Obama." She also attacked Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, in a
manner consistent with AIPAC's attacks on them. But now, apparently
because she's become persona non grata with the people out to destroy
American democracy, she's getting stiffed.

Cheney is understandably pissed, accusing AIPAC's leadership of
"playing a dangerous game of politics
."
AIPAC's behavior has also angered many people who would normally be
inclined to march in step with it. Richard Haass, the president of the
Council on Foreign Relations, termed AIPAC's list "morally bankrupt
and short-sighted
."
Even former Anti-Defamation League leader Abe Foxman could not stomach
it, calling the endorsements a "sad mistake."

Given that a mere 4 percent of American Jews, in 2022, put Israel at the
top of their list of concerns

(and they are divided on the issue), and that the vast majority voted
for Joe Biden and oppose Trump and the Republicans, what AIPAC
shamelessly calls its "United Democracy Project" is clearly not only
undermining its bona fides as a supporter of American democracy; it is
also renouncing whatever claim it had to represent the values, and
interests, of American Jewry.

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Then again, it's not as if AIPAC, its allies in Congress, and the rest
of the world of establishment Jewish organizations can claim to care
about democracy inside Israel, either. After all, there can be no
argument that the laws under which the Palestinians are forced to live
in the West Bank are even remotely subject to democratic rule. Did you
know, for instance, that if a West Bank Palestinian marries an Israeli
Arab citizen, they are not allowed to move in with their spouse inside
the Green Line
?
And did you also know that at Palestinian universities faculty are not
allowed to invite speakers to their classes who are not preapproved by
Israel's minister of defense
?
This past February, the Israeli occupation authorities quietly issued a
new 97-page ordinance called "Procedure for Entry and Residence for
Foreigners in Judea and Samaria Area," (which is what Israel calls the
West Bank) demanding that "Foreign-passport holding Palestinians must
provide information-for visa purposes-on an application for approval
prior to travel, which includes the names and national ID numbers of
"first-degree" relatives, or other non-relatives with whom they may
stay or visit." This article

notes that the rules also "complicate and formalise written and
unwritten entry restrictions for foreigners wishing to visit, do
business, reunite and reside with their Palestinian families, work or
volunteer in the West Bank, or study or teach at Palestinian academic
institutions." These are actually relatively minor examples recently
in the news. One could list the hundreds of ways in which Palestinians
are not allowed to exercise the same rights that extend not only to
Israelis but also to settlers.

Yet the vast majority of establishment Jewish organizations in the
United States, including but hardly limited to AIPAC, are spearheading
legislation to demand that both the federal government and state
authorities treat the West Bank as indistinguishable from Israel. For
instance, last month Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-NY) introduced legislation
prohibiting participation in boycotts or requests for boycotts of "a
country which is friendly to the United States" that are "enforced
by foreign governments or international organizations."

It includes a section to prevent "U.S. citizens and companies and
federal and state governments from providing information to foreign
governments and international organizations that assist boycotts of
friendly countries."

OK, that's anti-free speech and all, but it also insists that the
legislation label the U.N. Human Rights Council's creation of a
database of companies doing business in the West Bank, East Jerusalem,
and the Golan Heights as an act of BDS. "Too many, even in the halls
of Congress, have emboldened antisemitic and anti-Israel rhetoric by
accepting the BDS movement," Zeldin said. "This legislation not only
reinforces congressional opposition to the BDS movement but protects
American companies from being forced to provide information to
international organizations that peddle this hate-filled movement and
holds those who attempt to violate that protection accountable." (Much
the same law was introduced in 2018 by Sens. Ben Cardin (D-MD) and Rob
Portman (R-OH), and earned 58 Senate co-sponsors-42 Republicans, 15
Democrats, and one independent-and 292 House co-sponsors-216
Republicans and 76 Democrats. Another earlier version was introduced by
Zeldin in 2020, when it enjoyed 63 Republican co-sponsors and one
Democrat, and died in committee. I wrote of my opposition to both BDS as
well as these laws here
.)

Recall that last year, the liberal ice cream impresarios Ben Cohen and
Jerry Greenfield announced that they would no longer allow their ice
cream to be sold in the occupied territories, though it remained widely
available across Israel itself. In doing so, they spoke in the
traditional terms of American liberal Zionists. Describing themselves as
"proud Jews" and "supporters of the State of Israel,"

they said they simply wished to voice their opposition both to the
Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, which targets all of
Israel, and to an Israeli policy that "perpetuates an illegal
occupation that is a barrier to peace and violates the basic human
rights of the Palestinian people who live under the occupation."

And yet in his recent book, It Could Happen Here
,
Jonathan Greenblatt, who replaced Foxman as the ADL's CEO, termed
Cohen and Greenfield's decision "an insidious effort to delegitimize
the Jewish state." Pro-Israel lobbyists have demanded-and
won-divestment from whatever investments countless states hold in
their pension funds in the ice cream company's parent company,
Unilever. These and other punitive actions were taken because the two
men took a position that Israel and the occupied territories should be
treated as separate entities-that the West Bank was not "Israel,"
and vice versa. They did so, moreover, at a moment when most Americans,
including 58 percent of American Jews
, wanted
the United States to restrict its aid to Israel to prevent it from being
spent on settlements.

Never mind that, though, according to William Daroff, CEO of the
53-member Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish
Organizations, the umbrella group for mainstream Jewish leaders. "With
Ben & Jerry's, it's not just about Unilever," he explained in a
February interview. "It's about every other multinational company
that may come under pressure from fringe elements. And we want them to
see the tsuris ... that's the technical term-that has been caused
for Unilever in state capitals, where 33 states have effected some sort
of action to push back against boycott, divestment and sanctions
."

In other words, their purpose was clear: intimidation.

Never mind, also, that you can still buy Ben & Jerry's pretty much
everywhere in Israel today. It is only in the West Bank where it has
been withdrawn. So the only way you can complain about a boycott of
"Israel"-much less bigotry, etc.-is if you believe there is no
distinction to be made between Israel and its occupied territories. And
if you believe that, well, you can't possibly argue that Israel is a
democracy. In fact, there's a word defined in the 1988 Rome Statute
that created the International Criminal Court that defines "inhumane
acts" undertaken "in the context of an institutionalized regime of
systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other
racial group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining
that regime." Want to guess what that word

is?

Odds and Ends

Are you depressed by the Games People Play
with lies and
political disinformation like those described above? Are you worried
that there Ain't No Sunshine
when comes to the
future of U.S. democracy (or Middle East peace, or climate action, or
economic inequality, or even this damn virus) and that everything
worthwhile in this country might just Drift Away
? Then, friends, do what I
do and Say a Little Prayer
.

See you next week.

~ ERIC ALTERMAN

Become A Member of The American Prospect Today!

Eric Alterman is a CUNY Distinguished Professor of English at Brooklyn
College, an award-winning journalist, and the author of 11 books, most
recently Lying in State: Why Presidents Lie-and Why Trump Is Worse
(Basic, 2020). Previously, he wrote The Nation's "Liberal Media"
column for 25 years. Follow him on Twitter @eric_alterman

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