'Just World News' with Helena Cobban

New Challenges to AIPAC

An interesting crop of articles examining AIPAC - the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee - has emerged in the wake of the latest AIPAC convention in Washington.

In his taboo breaking Sunday column in the New York Times, Nicholas Kristof bravely observes what has long been obvious here:

"There is no serious political debate among either Democrats or Republicans about our policy toward Israelis and Palestinians. And that silence harms America, Middle East peace prospects and Israel itself."

George Soros laments the same problem in the April 12 issue of the New York Review of Books:

"Any politician who dares to expose AIPAC's influence would incur its wrath; so very few can be expected to do so. It is up to the American Jewish community itself to rein in the organization that claims to represent it."

An article in the current issue of Salon closes with a similar ironic challenge:

"We find ourselves in a very strange situation. America's Mideast policies are in thrall to a powerful Washington lobby that is only able to hold power because it has not been challenged by the people it presumes to speak for. But if enough American Jews were to stand up and say "not in my name," they could have a decisive impact on America's disastrous Mideast policies."

In his essay, Soros anticipated that, "Anybody who dares to dissent may be subjected to a campaign of personal vilification." (Ask Mearsheimer & Walt, Carter & Hagel, etc.)

As noted by the new web site from Jewish Voices for Peace, "Muzzlewatch," the New York Sun, as if on cue, shamelessly accused Soros, Kristof and others of being no different from the Nazis in pursuing a "new blood libel" against Israel.

And so it goes.

I'm reminded of a very bright student activist I knew 3 years ago, working on behalf of Israel. I ordinarily delight in seeing students care enough about any political issue to become informed and involved. Through this student's group, I learned of their ties to AIPAC and I read one of the AIPAC training programs. As far as I could tell, the training program's chief aim was to create student activists who would lobby effectively in support of whatever Israel's policy was at the time.

In short, the student group's sole purpose was to defend Israel, no matter what. No questioning. No forums to examine the merits of this or that Israeli policy. Just belief that whatever the policy was, it must be defended. Criticism became equated with self-hatred.

Funny thing, my students with Arab and especially Iranian heritage or connections had no such restrictions. Indeed, they often engaged in heated public debate with each other, quite in the spirit of the Jeffersonian motto for the University - of "here we are not afraid to tolerate error, so long as reason is free to combat it."

But to students in this AIPAC tied group, at least that year, the right to criticize that which they purported to defend as a democratic island seemed an ironically touchy subject. And woe to the instructor who dared to ask.

I can only hope that this curious taboo will yet be removed. Israel needs better friends.