AIPAC has involved the U.S. in a revolting crime against humanity that will almost certainly undermine American security at home and abroad, writes Cara MariAnna. It must be broken.
Protester outside annual AIPAC meeting in Washington, March 20, 2016. (Susan Melkisethian, Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
By Cara MariAnna
The Floutist
“. . . the United States will not be able to deal with the vexing problems in the Middle East if it cannot have a serious and candid discussion of the role of the Israel lobby.” —John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt.
As Israel began accelerating its bombing campaign in Gaza last month, the president of the United States sat with Israel’s prime minister at the start of an Israeli war cabinet meeting. Benjamin Netanyahu had phoned Joe Biden two days previously to request what The Times of Israel called a “solidarity visit.”
Much has passed since Biden’s visit to Israel. The atrocity of Israel’s indiscriminate military campaign in Gaza is now widely recognized as constituting a genocide. Principled non–Western nations — Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Honduras — began last week to sever relations with Tel Aviv or recall their ambassadors. Since then, an additional five countries have pulled their ambassadors from Israel including South Africa, Jordan and Turkey. The world order, as should be obvious, has been disrupted.
But questions remain. What does solidarity, as Biden pledges, mean when Israel is daily committing war crimes for all the world to see? Why is the U.S., in violation of international law and everything it claims to stand for, aiding and abetting Israel’s agenda of ethnic cleansing in Gaza? Why, bringing matters closer to home, is the United States prioritizing the interests and security of Israel above its own, while simultaneously damaging its credibility and authority abroad?
These questions raise the subject of the role of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. U.S. foreign policy aligns so congruently with AIPAC’s agenda that there is little distinction between them. In effect, the U.S. lacks an independent foreign policy that reflects its own security interests in West Asia.
At this critical moment of violence, human suffering and chaos, we must recognize that AIPAC, an unelected, technically nongovernmental agency, exercises an excessive, wholly inappropriate influence in global affairs as well as in U.S. politics. This is very rarely mentioned in our corporate media, and we can read this silence as a measure of the organization’s unacceptable accumulation of power.
End Aid to Israel demonstration in Washington on Nov. 4 during the Israeli assault on Gaza. (Consortium News)
AIPAC’s influence on U.S. policy, domestic as well as foreign, has been considered many times. Most notably, there is the work of John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, whose 2008 book, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, stands as the most extensive examination of AIPAC’s power we have to date.
Their analysis is now more pertinent than ever. In the current context, given the magnitude of what is unfolding — given its potential impact on relationships among many different nations — we must recognize that AIPAC’s reach extends well beyond Washington or West Asia. Indeed, the committee’s influence is now evident in world affairs altogether. This is our disturbing reality.
Lobbying is paramount among AIPAC’s various activities. As a lobbying group, it devotes its efforts to ensuring that U.S. policy in West Asia
- a) prioritizes the containment of nations considered hostile to Israel, specifically, Iran, Iraq, and Syria,
- b) prevents these countries from acquiring effective deterrents to Israel’s nuclear arsenal, and
- c) precludes any viable solution to the Palestinian question — a crisis caused when the state of Israel was founded and the homes and lands of indigenous Arabs were forcibly taken.
Invading Iraq & Sinking Iran Nuclear Deal
Ranking among AIPAC’s most significant efforts, it was intimately involved in getting Congress to support George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq in 2003. As reported recently by Eli Clifton in Responsible Statecraft, AIPAC cynically repeated the “Bush administration’s erroneous claim that Saddam Hussein was in league with al–Qaeda.”
In The Israel Lobby, Mearsheimer and Walt quote AIPAC Executive Director Howard Kohr’s statement to the New York Sun in January 2003, two months before the invasion, in which he acknowledged that “‘quietly’ lobbying Congress to approve the use of force in Iraq” was one of “AIPAC’s successes over the past year.” Disturbingly, as Clifton reports, AIPAC has since worked to expunge evidence of its support for the unpopular war from the record.
The multi-party agreement governing Iran’s nuclear programs was another among AIPAC’s major targets. In 2015 it spent millions in an unsuccessful attempt to kill President Barack Obama’s signature diplomatic accord, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. This was a major hopeful step toward normalizing relations with Iran and ending decades of crippling sanctions. Undeterred, the lobby continued working to undermine the accord after it was signed in July 2015.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, seated due to an injured leg, bids goodbye to Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif in Vienna, July 14, 2015, after Zarif read a declaration of the nuclear agreement in his native Farsi. (State Department)
Finding an ally in former President Donald Trump — whose campaign was heavily financed by members of the pro–Israel lobby opposed to the JCPOA, notably Robert Mercer and Sheldon Adelson — AIPAC redoubled its efforts, sending thousands of lobbyists to Congress in the months leading up to the U.S. withdrawal from the agreement on May 8, 2018. It was among the first major policy reversals, and one of the most consequential, of Trump’s presidency.
The Israel lobby, led by AIPAC, exerts inordinate influence on all government discourse and policy matters related to Palestinian sovereignty and rights. Voices in support of Palestinians are almost never heard within the government — a prohibition AIPAC has cultivated over many decades. Any critique of Israel or AIPAC, in turn, is labeled anti–Semitic and swiftly punished.
Congresswoman Ilan Omar, for example, was removed from her position on the Foreign Affairs Committee in early 2023 for comments she made on Twitter questioning “the financial relationship between AIPAC . . . and members of Congress.”
Trump speaking at AIPAC, Washington, D.C., March 21, 2015. (Lorie Shaull, Flickr, CC BY 2.0)
A recent Washington Post article, “In Israeli–Palestinian battle to sway Congress, only one side wins,” describes the unparalleled and unrivaled power AIPAC has over public discourse and ultimately American policy:
“Pro–Israel lobbyist groups and individuals contributed nearly $31 million to American congressional candidates during last year’s election cycle — more than six times the contributions candidates received from the gun rights lobby — according to Open Secrets, a Washington nonprofit that tracks campaign finance and lobbying data.”
Biden’s Visit to Israel
With this reality in mind — a dangerous reality given AIPAC’s extremist character — let’s consider Biden’s visit to Israel last month.
Biden has given two speeches since that war cabinet meeting, one in Tel Aviv on Oct. 18, the other upon returning to Washington, when he addressed the nation on Oct. 20. In each, the president reiterated all of the talking points and established dogma that have long characterized the U.S. relationship with Israel, all of which support Israeli priorities.
Nothing new was offered — no moral clarity, no fresh vision of how to address the original moral crime committed against the Palestinians when their homeland was taken from them 75 years ago, a theft of land that accounts for the never-ending cycle of violence we witness once again.
Biden performed on command in Israel: He was called to Tel Aviv, and answered the call, solely to legitimize what is profoundly illegitimate and to provide political cover for Israel as it finds itself increasingly alone in a world in which few nations beyond the West sanction the crimes it now commits.
Biden with Netanyahu in Tel Aviv on Oct. 18. (The White House, Public domain)
He assured Israel of U.S. unconditional support and subsequently promised $14.3 billion in new military assistance — this atop of a 10-year package of $38 billion committed during the Obama years. In short, Biden has licensed Israel to do whatever it wants — and Israel is doing just that — including razing Gaza City to the ground and ridding the north of the territory of all Palestinians.
Two factors explain this abject policy failure: First and obviously, this president isn’t capable of statesmanship of the magnitude required. Moreover, he professes a deep personal affinity for the Zionist vision — for Israel to seize all the lands of Biblical Palestine as its own — and no incentive to do anything other than align himself with Israel’s interest.
More important and directly to my point, with Biden serving as an almost perfect example: No new thinking and no new policies are ever possible because of AIPAC’s stranglehold on U.S. elections, politics and politicians.
"You Dont Have To Be Jewish To Be A Zionist" pic.twitter.com/CJYaPAU6BX
— Marcus Ljunggren (@MarcusLjunggre4) October 9, 2023
The world is a far more dangerous place, far more Palestinians have been killed, and the U.S. is far less secure, since Biden’s visit to Israel. AIPAC is more or less directly responsible for this.
It should not be difficult to miss the gravity, the peril indeed, of the post–Oct. 7 crisis in West Asia. The region threatens to explode, and there is no able leadership in the United States, in large part because its foreign policy has been shaped by a special-interest group that has worked for decades in behalf of another nation.
Washington’s unthinking, pro–Israel bias has blinded U.S. policy elites such that no one in Washington, and certainly not Biden nor Secretary of State Antony Blinken, appears to understand that there is a seismic shift in global power taking place.
No truce with terrorists. No ceasefire with Hamas. https://t.co/5IAVClt2WM pic.twitter.com/hf8e210H9H
— AIPAC | Text ISRAEL to 24722 | #StandWithIsrael (@AIPAC) November 10, 2023
U.S. security and standing in the world are suddenly more precarious than they have been the whole of its history. The U.S. is being damaged — is seriously damaging itself — by its continued unwavering support of a nation that is so clearly out of control and that has been recognized by many human rights organizations as an apartheid state. Supporting Israel is no longer in the best interest of the United States, if ever it was, and is becoming an increasing liability.
We cannot any longer overlook the role of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in all this. It bears considerable responsibility for this global upheaval and for the damage the U.S. sustains as it supports the nation AIPAC serves.
AIPAC & the 1953 Qibya Massacre
Founded in 1954 as the American Zionist Committee for Public Affairs, AIPAC’s mission was at the start threefold: to advance a pro–Israel agenda within the U.S. government; to shape public opinion in support of Israel; to close ranks within the American Jewish community, so creating a monolithic and united Jewish front, by censoring and ostracizing any Jew who criticized Israel, no matter what Israel did. From the beginning, then, AIPAC’s mission was bound to be detrimental to U.S. democracy and policy alike.
Friendly reminder that none of this would be happening if America was a real democracy. https://t.co/fYCHfDuIK9
— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) November 10, 2023
The pro–Israel lobby as we now have it emerged as a public relations response to a massacre of Palestinians in the village of Qibya 70 years ago last month. Doug Rossinow, an academic historian, described the events in “The dark roots of AIPAC, ‘America’s Pro-Israel Lobby,’” published March 6, 2018, in The Washington Post:
“. . . on Oct. 15, 1953, all hell broke loose. News spread that a special Israeli army unit had struck into the Jordanian-occupied West Bank and committed a massacre in the Palestinian village of Qibya, killing more than 60 civilians indiscriminately in retaliation for the murder of a Jewish woman and her two children in Israel on the night of Oct. 12.
The strike reflected Israeli policy. . . . Prime Minister David Ben–Gurion had fixed on a policy of reprisals — military assaults, intentionally disproportionate, on local Arab populations — as a response to any such attacks. After the Oct. 12 killings, Ben–Gurion and top colleagues chose nearby Qibya to suffer retribution.
Time magazine carried a shocking account of deliberate, even casual mass murder by Israeli soldiers at Qibya — ‘slouching . . . smoking and joking.’ The New York Times ran extensive excerpts from a U.N. commission that refuted Israeli lies about the incident.”
The response from Washington was immediate: Aid to Israel was suspended. At the U.N. Security Council, the United States supported a censure of Israel. This was during President Dwight Eisenhower’s first term in the White House. Today, any American response of this kind to Israeli violations of international law is inconceivable — testimony to AIPAC’s success.
U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Linda Thomas-Greenfield, center, toured Israel’s borders with Gaza and Lebanon and was briefed by IDF commanders on Nov. 16, 2021. She also visited the Iron Dome battery, Hezbollah tunnel and held a meeting with Defense Minister Benny Gantz in northern Israel. (US Embassy in Jerusalem, Flickr, CC BY 2.0)
Ben-Gurion’s policy of asymmetrical retaliation is precisely what is now happening in Gaza. It is the enactment of a longstanding Israeli strategy of inflicting maximum casualties on Palestinians to crush them into submission or, failing that, eliminate them completely. America, it must be noted, remains silent.
This is the historical context that AIPAC has successfully erased from public discourse and memory. In direct consequence, when Hamas launched its attack on Oct. 7, Israel was able to deny that their own policies helped to create the conditions that set the stage for the Hamas strike.
This intentional erasure of history enables the Israel lobby to twist public perceptions so that American sympathy lies with Israel while the suffering of the Palestinians remains largely invisible.
Swearing Fealty
AIPAC’s influence on the U.S. political process and within party politics is well-known and well-documented. No one makes it into the White House, and very few are elected to Congress, without swearing fealty to Israel and the American Israel lobby. Few politicians last in political office without accommodating the demands of AIPAC.
The lobby spends millions of dollars promoting its favored candidates while aggressively undermining any who express criticism of Israel or concern for the plight of Palestinians.
One-by-one, pro-Palestinian protesters continuously disrupt a House Judiciary Committee hearing about free speech on college campuses. pic.twitter.com/y5Pj1acEtI
— CSPAN (@cspan) November 8, 2023
Obviously, U.S. foreign and domestic policies should reflect and respond to American security interests and the needs of its people, and not the needs of Israel. It is therefore not surprising that a key feature of AIPAC propaganda is the fiction that U.S. interests naturally align with those of Israel.
Reinforcing this, AIPAC routinely flies new congressional representatives to Israel, where they meet with government officials in a process of pro–Israel indoctrination to secure continuing U.S. political, financial, and military support. In reality, U.S. uncritical support of Israel has long enraged the Arab world, making the U.S. less safe, and was one of the motives behind the 9/11 attacks.
Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff, second from right facing camera, and senior White House staff meet with a group of Jewish community leaders in the Indian Treaty Room at the White House.on Oct. 11 to express support for Israel following the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks. (White House, Oliver Contreras)
AIPAC’s reach extends deeply into the legislative and executive branches of U.S. government, U.S. think tanks, foreign policy elites, corporate media and academia — a phenomenon extensively researched and documented by Mearsheimer and Walt. In a working paper published in 2006 under the same name as their book and available here, the authors had this to say:
“. . . were it not for the lobby’s ability to work effectively within the America political system, the relationship between Israel and the United States would be far less intimate than it is today.”
Seventeen years later this reads like a gross understatement. The Israel lobby is effectively running U.S. foreign policy in West Asia and funneling billions of dollars to Israel in support of a racist Zionist agenda — a system of apartheid, according to the U.N. and Amnesty International — that weakens the United States, undermines our domestic policies and welfare, and destabilizes the entire region.
Here, again, are Mearsheimer and Walt:
“If the lobby’s impact were confined to U.S. economic aid to Israel, its influence might not be that worrisome. Foreign aid is valuable, but not as useful as having the world’s only superpower bring its vast capabilities to bear on Israel’s behalf. Accordingly, the lobby has also sought to shape the core elements of U.S. Middle East policy. In particular, it has worked successfully to convince American leaders to back Israel’s continued repression of the Palestinians and to take aim at Israel’s primary regional adversaries — Iran, Iraq and Syria — as well as groups like Hezbollah.”
As we have it now, U.S. support for Israel’s brutal destruction of Gaza — its project of ethnic cleansing — for which the U.S. is now complicit in war crimes and genocide — is due largely to decades of AIPAC lobbying efforts, particularly in Congress. AIPAC’s influence is such that it has involved the U.S. in a revolting crime against humanity that will almost certainly undermine American security at home and abroad, as it threatens to expand into a regional conflict. No lobby should have this kind of power.
It is very difficult to criticize Israel, and U.S. policy that favors Israel, for several reasons. First, media coverage of events in West Asia has long been slanted in Israel’s favor so that it is almost impossible to get unbiased information from mainstream news sources.
Related to this and as I have already mentioned, the historical context surrounding the conflict has been erased by the press and in public memory. Last, one of the more cynical strategies AIPAC employs is branding anyone who criticizes Israel an anti–Semitev— an accusation it habitually and obviously uses to censor and silence dissent.
NEWS: Columbia University is suspending Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) as official student groups through the end of the fall term. https://t.co/ttTZbUYawC
— Alex Kane (@alexbkane) November 10, 2023
Impeding a Resolution
All that I outline here has made it impossible to resolve the need for Palestinians to have a secure homeland, whether that is a one– or two-state solution. Until this fundamental issue is resolved, the entire region will remain unstable, Israelis will never be safe, Palestinians, denied basic human rights, will continue to suffer under Israeli apartheid, and the Palestinian resistance will continue its sporadic attacks — all of which undermines global stability and security.
For things to change the United States needs entirely new thinking, a new vision, an altogether new foreign policy agenda regarding the state of Israel and West Asia. This will only come to be when AIPAC loses the influence it currently holds over America’s elected officials and policy elites — and indeed at all levels in Washington, within corporate media, and academia — is broken.
AIPAC, it is time to conclude, must be broken. Peace in West Asia and a stable order elsewhere depend on this project.
The way forward as I see it is twofold:
First, a bright light must be kept focused on Israel’s war crimes and on its long-established policy of apartheid.
Second, and related to this, the history that has been erased must be resurrected — the history of Zionism, of the founding of Israel, and of the sustained and systemic violence perpetrated against the Palestinian people.
Along with this, the U.S. must come to terms with the historical presence and influence of Christian Zionism, a movement that sustains AIPAC’s influence as it enables the expansion of illegal Israeli settlements.
The project I describe is in no way easily accomplished. It will necessitate a relentless and sustained campaign: on social media, within independent journalism and within the political arena, a project capable of reaching deeply into American society and politics.
It is an effort each of us can take up according to our abilities and influence. Among other things, it will require time and courage, including the courage to risk accusations of anti–Semitism.
Ultimately, it may be that Israel’s conduct itself is what will eventually break AIPAC’s influence. People around the world, including in America, can see for themselves, now as clearly as they did after the Qibya massacre in 1953, that Israel’s behavior is not rational or just and that it constitutes an intentional program of ethnic-cleansing.
Above all else, America — and ordinary Americans — must regain a more balanced and critical perspective toward Israel, one that properly prevailed before the advent of AIPAC.
Cara MariAnna publishes a Substack newsletter, Our Journey. She is a painter and has a Ph.D. in American Studies.
The original version of this article was published by The Floutist.
The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
Thank you so much much for this well written and well researched article. I agree with the analysis. The one thing missing, that is always important to include, is the way in which having a violently aggressive and expansive western military base in the Middle East, West Asia, South Central Eurasia serves the geopolitical strategy of the U.S. empire and the British empire before it. While it seems Israel and AIPAC are dragging U.S. policy toward disaster, the larger analysis is that Britain and the U.S. have used the holocaust and the sympathy it caused for Jewish people, to wage another crusade to bludgeon and divide the Arabs, sow chaos and control oil and Sheikdoms. I always make the point that the U.S. and Israel are partners in crime. Yes the Jewish lobby and Jewish representation have a seat at the table of power, but make no mistake, it is the Capitalist/Christian empire that is using Israel, not the other way around.
If you wish to get more info on the history of the Israeli Lobby:
American Section – Jewish Agency for Israel, Inc. de-registered as a Foreign Agent after the DOJ orders it to file secret 1953 covenant agreement with Israeli government
The Israeli Lobby Archive – hxxps://www.israellobby.org
John F Kennedy President, Robert F Kennedy, Attorney General, DOJ orders The Israeli Lobby AZC to register as Foreign Agenty
The Israeli Lobby Archive – hxxps://www.israellobby.org
hxxps://www.israellobby.org/FARA/default.asp
Copies of some of some of the original documents can be reached by links in the listings of documents. This is, I my opinion where the Kennedy Brothers got themselves into some serious trouble. The AZC was the American Zionist Council.
This history starts in 1939 to 5/23/63.
Thanks Kids.
My hat is off to CN again!
I’m surprised at the superficial analysis in this article. It’s the US that controls Israeli policy and not the other way around. See for example the interview:
hxxps://znetwork.org/zvideo/why-does-the-us-support-israel-a-geopolitical-analysis-with-economist-michael-hudson/
Not with the imbecile Joe Biden in charge. Love him or hate him, Netanyahu is a leader. As for Biden, to a battle of wits, he comes unarmed. The U.S. ought to outweigh Israel in controlling or at least leading policy. The only involved party who is arguably dumber and weaker than Joe Biden is Anthony Blinken. Which is exactly why Biden hired Blinken, of all people.
Biden might be an imbcile, but do you really think that he (or any president) sets long-term US policy?
When Americans are in school, they learn what an exceptional nation America is. Sadly the Pr department has nothing to do with reality.
I would ;like to change one thing. After the votes have been counted in elections, I would like each seated person to take a Constitution test. I wonder how many winners have actually even looked the Constitution over?
Is seems that uneducated people and greed and also stupidity makes a mockery of what America is supposed to be.
So, it would be wonderful to score at least an 80% if after the voting that each running for office took a Constitution test to see if they actually knew anything. Maybe then we would have a better Congress. As it is now, there seem to be very strange people running this nation into the ground. ***
While we’re on the subject of genocide, why not address the 50 years of neoliberal economic policy that has silently killed people? “Never again” means: no more genocide, slow motion or massacre-style. Ever. No more involuntary medical experiments, no more hijacking of the healthcare system for profit, no more economic austerity, sanctions, endless first strike wars, inferior public education, exorbitant college tuition, out-of-reach housing prices, genetically-altered and synthetic food, no more silent weapons for quiet wars. We need to cancel all business practices that led to this slow motion global genocide.
Silent Weapons for Quiet Wars
An elitist programming manual for total financial enslavement that corresponds with the ongoing efforts to reform the global governance system
hxxps://drjacobnordangard.substack.com/p/silent-weapons-for-quiet-wars
It is not so different in the UK either.
Thank you for the excellent article.
It seems our focus, all this time, had been diverted away from the actual Hydra – AIPAC; the source that enables Israel’s genocidal project.
Success may very well lie in targeting the many heads of this particular Hydra – namely US retail businesses that are a member, donor, sponsor, funder, supporter of AIPAC. Perhaps boycotting these individual businesses, instead, could end the Hydra’s reign, sooner?
Perhaps it is time to recognize the phrase “rules of war” as something of an oxymoron. Maybe we would be better off finding ways to avoid wars. Its 2023, and we don’t seem to have made much progress in that direction, and as the turmoil around the world grows incessantly, we’d better find an alternative to war, and soon.
Thanks for this excellent account of the subversive power of the Israel Lobby, which is now dragging the US into another war in the Mideast.
Here’s background information on the context from which AIPAC arose.
War Profiteer Story
hxxps://war**profiteer**story.blogspot.com
[To use above link please delete all asterisks and reply xx with tt.]
A new vision could be a 3 state solution. since one Palestinian state is impossible by facts on the ground Gaza is separated from the West Bank and is why the imposable situation exists for the benefit of Israel to not work that hard to divide the Palestinians. Have the UN start with a new State of Gaza and The West Bank with part of East Jerusalem a Separate State. since they have been separate for 75 years why not start with reality? A Three State Solution.
Observing from nearby (Canada) I would say that the author has not exaggerated in the slightest. The hold of AIPAC over the USA’s policy towards West Asia is as irrational and as destructive (of American national self-interest and international reputation) as she says. Her way out of the morass is solid but likely impossible with the intellectually-challenged people in the top echelons of the State Department and the national security establisment.
I also give credit to the author for employing the non-imperialistic and non-colonial term “West Asia”. Words do matter. ‘Framing’ matters.
I wish to add a little support to the assertion that Israel has long followed a policy of disproportionate retaliation. When I was an officer in the Canadian Embassy in Tel Aviv (1958-1961) there were occasional raids – I called them pin-pricks – by Fedayeen from Jordan into Israel resulting in minor damage to a henhouse or something equally vital. Israel would respond with an air raid or military incursion against an Arab village (in what is now the occupied West Bank). Canadian and/or Swedish officers with the United Nations Truce Supervisory Organisation (UNTSO) would investigate and report, to no effect because it would happen again and again. One Canadian officer remarked to me that Israel had amended the biblical prescription to “two eyes for a tooth”.
One more note: Most people forget that the pre-1967 borders of Israel were the result of Israeli gains in the 1948-1949 war between Israel and the Arab States. Those were the borders UNTSO was “supervising”. The “truce” was just that. Today, it is notably Russia and China who are remembering the hitory and calling for the borders to be those in the UN partition resolution of Nov. 30, 1947.
Excellent hard-hitting analysis by Cara MariAnna, thank you Cara and CN . Here is Australia , AIJAC (Australia -Israel and Jewish Affairs Council) seeks to play a similar political influencing role . But there is spirited public resistance from Australia’s large pro-Palestinian elements of public opinion . Federal Parliament and MSM are pretty much securely in the pro- Zionist bag, however . The current shocking brutality on display by Israel in Gaza – collective punishment and grossly disproportionate responses- is affecting public opinion here and leading more people to question the decades of pro-Israel indoctrination . These are objective comments by a former diplomat observer .
In a just system, AIPAC would be required to register as an agent of a foreign country and, thus, would be prohibited from lobbying the US government, but that ship sailed long ago.
This excellent article places too little weight on the power of the Christian zionist community in the United States. Christian zionists outnumber Jewish zionists by a wide margin, and they tend to be very politically engaged. Nevertheless, the media tend to ignore them, possibly because it’s simpler to focus all attention on a single actor—AIPAC.
Understanding Israel as a U.S. military base positioned to control the flow of near east oil, AIPAC becomes not an Israeli instrument to control U.S. policy, but a U.S. foreign policy instrument to ensure that no Congressional or grassroots political actor ever interferes with the supply of U.S. arms to Israel.
Ben Norton’s recent interview with Michael Hudson spells this out clearly:
hxxps://geopoliticaleconomy.substack.com/p/why-us-support-israel-geopolitics
George Washington, the first President of the United States, and sometimes called the “father of our country”, had some fatherly advice, in this case some very good fatherly advice, for our young country:
hxxps://www.deism.com/post/famous-deist-george-washington
Such excellent advice is very obviously and very unfortunately not being heeded.
Lobbyists are not the problem.
Corrupt elected officials the problem!
Like addicts, usa’s so called-representatives suckle at the capitalist teat.
There are few statesmen/stateswomen in WashDC.
Stop Wars!
Stop Genocide.
Protest Loudly!
I have long been aware of the depredations of AIPAC, if not some of the details spelled out in this excellent article. What it does not say Congress persons are allowed to hold dual citizenship with Israel. Moreover, members of Congress who with obvious ties to Israel have attempted to put Americans speaking their mind about Israel in prison. ( hxxps://theintercept.com/2017/07/19/u-s-lawmakers-seek-to-criminally-outlaw-support-for-boycott-campaign-against-israel/ )
This does not meet the legal definition of treason, though it arguably should, and it is certainly MORAL treason against the American people and the American public.
There are obvious policy implications to this:
1. Dual citizenship by members of Congress is unacceptable. Members of Congress, the Supreme Court and Secretaries of cabinet level posts should be called on to disclose any other non-American citizenship they may possess, and renounce any foreign citizenship, or surrender their posts, or be ejected/fired from those institutions.
2. The legal definition of treason should be expanded to include acting on behalf of a foreign country by any member of Congress, the Supreme Court, or the head of any cabinet level post, while holding a citizenship for that country.
All of this has to be fairly and uniformly applied. It should be equally unacceptable to hold, for example, Irish citizenship as a member of the above officialdom.
Obviously this is not happening any time soon in the current propaganda climate. But as Americans, we need to push back against foreign actors having influence including lobbying influence in our country’s political affairs, while avoiding bigotry. It is fair to ask members of Congress and the Supreme Court what, if any, foreign citizenship they may hold (it’s not illegal, and should be), and also press members of Congress why they take money from foreign lobbyists, why they don’t serve the interests of those countries first before ordinary Americans.
I have to be candid I had no idea about AIPAC, or worse still its stranglehold on American political system. I was convicted by the independent, RFK Jr and more critically, Bernie Sanders, now I realise this. Does this extend to the UK, and Europe. Would I be correct in making an assumption that the unelected body is comprised of radical zionist members of the Jewish faith under complicit direction of Israel. I know US thinks of Israel as its “aircraft carrier in the middle east” but there seems to be two distinct forces AIPAC and the neocons and the industrial military complex, both winners in this genocide.
It appears that the Israeli Zionists “own” the US Congress, the State Dept., and the President. This article explains the power of AIPAC’s money to buy and control members of Congress. It does not spell out why the mainstream media’s reporting is so one-sided in favor of Israel: I’d like to know who owns and controls most of establishment media, are they Zionists Jews? For example, I wonder if Rupert Murdoch, who owns Fox News and the Wall Street Journal, fit this category?
I also have a suspicion that some important politicians in Congress are being blackmailed by Israel via the secret Mossad honeypot operation run by Epstein (now dead). How many sex-with-minor video tapes are the Mossad holding to make sure politicians and others in high places (media, banking, universities) do what they are told to do by the Israeli Zionist psychopathic ruling group?
Web sites give Murdoch’s ancestry as Scottish, English, and Irish.
Excellent article Cara! I agree with you 100%. We all need to understand why our country is being so badly mislead. I would also recommend the investigations by James Bamford that have revealed it was Israel that approached the Trump campaign in May of 2016. By following up a FOI document concerning the Mueller investigation, Bamford became aware that it was Israel not Russia, that had manipulated that election. According to that document an Israeli agent offered to help the Trump campaign by planting information, that their intelligence had gathered, regarding the Russian hacking of Hillary Clinton’s emails. In exchange for their help Israel requested, that once he was elected, President Trump would recognize Jerusalem as the Capital of Israel. Trump, of course, did as he agreed. This is example of how Israel manipulates elections in the United States….and other democracies as well…
This flies under the radar but $100,000 from the Russian internet company and it’s worse than Pearl Harbor! Shows you the balance of the MSM.
Excellent recap of the role of one of the most powerful bribe-masters in DC, the Israel Lobby, AIPAC being the most prominent. As outlined in the article and comment, the US Congress can routinely ignore the will of the majority with impunity: Don’t like The Biden regime? Whadda we gonna do? Vote for DT? There is no way to vote against the interests of the oligarchy, but millions still believe the fairy-tale of US democracy.
Bernie Sanders has proven to be a two-faced hypocrite many times. Plus, Bernie the Sheepdog, always herds the disgruntled Ds into supporting another lying, corrupt, right-wing warmonger. (HRC, Biden). I refuse to “vote” for the lesser evil, the more effective evil or any evil.
Converging interests and “epistemic community”: Of course the other centers of power in DC also benefit from Israel policy: the MIC and Wall St. especially. The vast majority of US oligarchs and Wall St. bosses support Israel. Mass slaughter is good for business.
Thanks to all “5 comments” ! I agree!
The liberation of Palestine can become a reality only when the USA liberates itself from the chokehold of the AIPAC.
It is heartening, that more and more Jews are rejecting AIPAC and insist that Zionist violations of human rights and international law do not represent their views. A point the article should also have made.
America does not remain silent. There is tremendous grass roots support for the Palestinians. It is only the official America that remains silent, and fails to protest the appalling genocide being carried out by Israel.
The disconnect between the U.S. government on this matter and the people of the U.S. only reveals how far we have come from being a democracy where the government serves the people.
I think AIPAC has given the US/Euro settler colonial project cover for its continued expansion across the world. That project is on thin ice at this point as it was pointed out in the article that the people of the world, including in the West can see who the aggressor is.
Not only is our security endangered, but the ability of life on earth to continue if the current trajectory holds. The officials in all countries supporting Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians should rightly be charged and stand trial at the ICC. That is the only satisfactory outcome.
Indeed, we need an case in the Internal Court of Justice (settled in The Hague, Netherlands) that the Palestinians have never have a land and a voice that opens up the power of Israel over Palestina since 1948
The westward expansion of the USA through the 1700’s-1800’s might be seen as a deterent by empire builders. It was in many ways a model for the Reich and Zios. Looking in mirrors, personal inventory is not a craft of pathology.
It’s not just AIPAC. Jews comprise a strong majority of America’s ruling elite. Not a problem, if you like what they are doing with the country.
Until the US has a massive cut back on the current $850 Billion dollar per year Department of War budget our foreign policy will not change. If the DofW budget were in the $150 Billion range where it should be, Ukraine and Russia likely would have settled matters on their own, Israel would be more understanding of the plight of the Palestinians, and the people of Iraq and Libya would be living much better lives than they are after the US “liberated” those citizens.
Pre war Russia’s military budget was $56 Billion. Tales of corruption in Russia are likely true but Russia still seems to get a lot more military bang for their buck than the US does. Think of how absurdly high the DofW budget is.
1. It exceeds that of the next 9 military budgets in the world.
2. The US has the most favorable large country natural borders in the world. Pacific Ocean, Atlantic Ocean, small friendly Army to the North, small no threat Army to the South. Who are we defending against?
And yet the US hasn’t “won” a war in my lifetime. The denizens of the 1960 Deep State considered Eisenhower to be a harmless, not very bright Midwestern guy. But he turned out to be a prophet with his 1960 end of term comment warning Americans about the risk posed by the MIC. Well, fast forward 63 years and should be apparent to all that the MIC/Deep State won, and won big time.
Yes. Although AIPAC certainly has a malign effect on our electoral politics, our military support has a malign effect on theirs. As RFK, Jr. revealed, our alliance with Israel is like having an aircraft carrier in the Middle East to protect our access to oil. They’re not running our country, we’re running theirs, to the detriment of the majority of citizens in both countries.
I don’t know why commenters mention the name Biden in connexion to Israel/Palestine, because no person called Joe Biden exists. Yes , there is a body, but there is no mental activity at all. He is the visible puppet who is controlled by the Presidential Aides, who make the decisions on behalf of the USA based Globalist Elites as to what is good for their ‘Empire’. Everybody knows this don’t they ?
Literally anything can happen in the next year, before they get the taxidermists in to do their job on Biden. This whole genocide against Palestinians is the bait for dragging Iran into a war which the Zionists in the ÙSA and those in Israel know will destroy Iran for decades to come. If conventional warfare against Iran fails, which is pretty unlikely, I have absolutely no doubt that either or both of the Zionist states will destroy it with nuclear. Who is going to stop these psychopathic lunatics ? When that happens the Globalists will have a foothold on the Big Island ( Asia ).
We need to make Lobbying in all of its forms illegal. Until there is Separation of Interest Groups & State there can be no democracy.
We need separation of Business & State, Media & State, Diaspora’s & State, Media & Business so that Democracy can function.
I can only see one way to do this. Eliminate donations of any kind to political parties, and have them directly funded by taxpayers on their yearly tax form. (Every tax payer gets to designate $100 to a political party yearly, and can change every year if not happy) In a similar way media needs to be directly funded by the consumer of the media and not by corporations, or interest groups so that the information being consumed is not tainted. Substack might be a good model.
This article shows why publicly funded elections, and term limits, are absolutely essential to returning to any semblance of a democracy in this country. Beyond the reach of AIPAC on foreign policy, one could also point to the out-sized influence of Big Pharma, the for-profit health care ‘industry,’ the arms manufacturers, the oil industry, etc., who all drive the policies which are detrimental to the population and the planet.
As as aside, it is hard to understand that AIPAC and the other pro-Israel lobbies don’t see that this unabated suppression, and now outright slaughter of Palestinians will never lead to Israel’s peace and security. Its just creating more resentment and future violence. As well, it will lead to more antisemitism, as the crimes of Israel will be associated with all Jews, despite the fact that many Jews are prominent in denouncing this current genocide. For all the billions wasted on death and destruction, instead we could have lent our support to where a one-state solution could be realized, without this endless madness we are now witnessing.
John,
I rally to support your cry to end lobbying. It has hopelessly corrupted our politics.
Another measure to shift our paradigm as a military empire would be to make wars unprofitable by pursuing reparations to be paid by armaments corporations and Wall Street profiteers for the families of those killed and maimed in wars that are based on lies, motivated by greed, lust for power, incitement to anger, fanning malice, lust, wrath and revenge. All wars are crimes against humanity. There is no such thing as a just war or a good war.
Thank you for this wonderful and eye-opening article! Most of all thank you for including your solutions to the this current nightmare – We need more voices like yours Cara!!
+++100%!
As I posted at the Floutist as well, I’ve been long aware of the imbalance of influence from and for this one country. But now, even I stand amazed at Congress pressing full steam ahead on their 14B+ package when, FINALLY, a huge chunk of America from across the political spectrum is raising holy hell about the horrific Israeli response. (I am not a bit surprised by the moronic response from the anti-diplomacy-driven Biden administration. My expectations from them can sink no lower than they already have from the Ukraine meat grinder.) Of course, the Democrats didn’t like the Republican bill but still enough crossed the aisle to get it passed. Only two republicans voted against it. No surprise which one those were–Thomas Massie and Marjorie Taylor Greene.
Democracy doesn’t have much of a chance in this country (and none in Israel in its present form), but it certainly will continue to be the sham it is as long as the PACs exist and buy our entire electoral process.
Like the ‘racism’ card, the ‘anti-semitism’ card is played whenever the facts inconveniently come into conflict with the globalist narrative. The U.S. Congress is manipulated by a tiny minority whereas any representative government should mainly concern itself with the will of a majority of the people. The other main power group in Washington D.C. is the military industrial complex. As a result, the U.S. finds itself fighting two very hot proxy wars that a majority of voters oppose. AIPAC and the MIC have united in dominance of the Democrat party for the past several years. Their reckless spending on forever wars has bankrupted the treasury and must be tamed before it destroys our entire economy. The one positive aspect of the war in Gaza is that the brainwashed younger generation has suddenly turned on the cultural Marxists in our educational system who have taught them to hate their country and themselves. The best way to undo the damage these two evil forces has done will be to dismantle the administrative state. The growth of the government bureaucracy has reached a point where it serves no one and nothing save for itself. We will know that we are on our way to recovery once the Federal gravy train screeches to a halt.
“Several years”? Several decades, you mean.
I agree, Carolyn. The Uniparty has been running this scam for decades. Both Parties. But as the Democrats are the home team in Washington right now, they must be the first to face a reckoning. And removed from the power to promote their forever wars.