In a rare act of courage by a serving congressman, Rep Thomas Massie of Kentucky has detailed strong-arm tactics of the Israel lobby to ensure unquestioning support for Israel. He said that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), also known as the Israel lobby, is unique in that it has designated representatives (Massie calls them "AIPAC persons") assigned to each Republican member of Congress to ensure the lawmakers vote for bills Israel supports. Massie has now banned his assigned "AIPAC Person" from his office.
In spite of working on behalf of a foreign government, "AIPAC persons" are not registered as foreign agents under FARA (Foreign Agents Registration Act). Others, such as Paul Manafort (working for Russia) and Ghulam Nabi Fai (representing Pakistan's interests), have been prosecuted, convicted and jailed for violating FARA. No other foreign country has such an organization focusing individually on each member of Congress. There is no British person or Russian person or Chinese person assigned to each member of Congress, Massie says. He has so far defied and survived the onslaught of the Israel lobby which has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in attack ads against him to defeat him in his district. He won over 70% of the votes cast in the recent primary against his Republican challenger funded by AIPAC. Massie is a serious technology entrepreneur and a businessman. He is a graduate of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) with several inventions to his credit. He is a libertarian who opposes all foreign aid to any country, not just Israel.
 |
| Rep Thomas Massie (R-Ky) |
When asked why other members of Congress do not talk about it, here's how Massie explained it to Tucker Carlson: "It doesn’t benefit anybody. Why would they want to tell their constituents that they’ve basically got a buddy system with somebody who’s representing a foreign country? It doesn’t benefit the congressman for people to know that. So they’re not going to tell you that".
Massie said the current Congress has spent more time in support of Israel than on any other issues, including domestic issues, in the last year, raising the question as to who do these Congressmen really work for: the American people who sent them to Washington to solve their problems or a foreign government?
 |
| Israel is the Largest Recipient of US Foreign Aid. Source: CFR |
Massie cited several bills recently passed by the US Congress under pressure from AIPAC. Among them are billions of dollars in aid to Israel, the TikTok ban and the bill against anti-semitism which Massie describes as a ban on the New Testament that says "Jews killed Jesus". Massie has called the TikTok ban a "Trojan Horse" for First Amendment rights of free speech.
 |
| Congressman Massie's Tweet. Source: X |
Massie is also opposed to aiding Israel because, as he puts it: "Approximately 1% of Gaza’s CIVILIAN population has been wiped out by Israel in 7 months. We should not fund this war".
 |
| US Military Aid to Israel. Source: CFR |
Here's part of the exchange between Carlson and Massie that occurred on the Tucker Carlson show:
MASSIE: It’s like your babysitter. Your AIPAC babysitter who is always talking to you for AIPAC. They’re probably a constituent in your district, but they are, you know, firmly embedded in AIPAC.
CARLSON: And every member has something like this.
MASSIE: Every Re– I don’t know how it works on the Democrats’ side. But that’s how it works on the Republican side. And when they come to D.C., you go have lunch with them. And they’ve got your cell number and you have conversations with them. So I’ve had like–
CARLSON: That’s absolutely crazy.
MASSIE: I’ve had four members of Congress say, “I’ll talk to my AIPAC person.” And like that’s clearly what we call them, my AIPAC guy. I’ll talk to my AIPAC guy and see if I can get them to, you know, dial those ads back.
CARLSON: Why have I never heard this before?
MASSIE: It doesn’t benefit anybody. Why would they want to tell their constituents that they’ve basically got a buddy system with somebody who’s representing a foreign country? It doesn’t benefit the congressman for people to know that. So they’re not going to tell you that.
The Israel lobby showers its friendly politicians with money from wealthy Jewish donors. It also works to ensure the defeat of those politicians who dare to speak out against Israeli policies in the Middle East. As one former Democratic senator, Ernest Hollings, put it on leaving office, ‘you can’t have an Israeli policy other than what AIPAC gives you around here.’ Or as Ariel Sharon once told an American audience, ‘when people ask me how they can help Israel, I tell them: “Help AIPAC.”’
President Jimmy Carter who helped broker peace between Israel and Egypt knows the Israel lobby well. He told Amy Goodman of "Democracy Now" many years ago: "I think it’s accurate to say that not a single member of Congress with whom I’m familiar would possibly speak out and call for Israel to withdraw to their legal boundaries or to publicize the plight of the Palestinians or even to call publicly and repeatedly for good faith peace talks..... And I would say that if any member of Congress did speak out, as I’ve just described, they would probably not be back in the Congress the next term ".
The fact that Republican Congressman Massie and several progressive Democratic Congresspeople are questioning the power of the Israel lobby in shaping the US Middle East policy is an indication of a growing rebellion against the strong-arm tactics used by AIPAC to bully US elected representatives to blindly support Israel. Could it be that the mortal fear of the AIPAC is just beginning recede in Washington DC? Or is it something similar to what is happening on the US college and university campuses?
Here's a link to the full video of Tucker Carlson's interview with Rep Thomas Massie:
https://youtu.be/omBSEuFTYEo?si=8FF8UEwrwYS_IP82
Related Links:
Haq's Musings
South Asia Investor Review
Modi and Netanyahu: Two Sides of the Same Coin
Israel's Gaza Attack is Criminal, Not Defensive
Pictorial Review of Israel's Young Gaza Victims
American College Campuses Rise Up Against Israel's Genocidal War on Gaza
Israeli Settler Colonialism
Islamophobia Driving US Policy in Middle East and South Asia?
Israeli Scholars Offer Insights into Zionist Psyche
Total, Extended Lockdown in Indian Occupied Kashmir
What is India Hiding From UN Human Rights Team?
Indian JNU Professor on Illegal Indian Occupation of Kashmir, Manipur, Nagaland
Riaz Haq Youtube Channel
PakAlumni: Pakistani Alumni Social Network
10 comments:
Bipartisanship or Republican meddling? AIPAC is biggest source of GOP donations in Dem primaries
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/06/09/aipac-republican-donors-democratic-primaries-00162404
AIPAC sees support for Israel as bipartisan, and its donors come from both parties. But its practice of sending money from GOP donors into Democratic races has enraged progressives.
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee has become a fundraising juggernaut in recent years, raising more money for candidates than any similar organization this cycle as part of its mission to back candidates who support Israel.
It’s the rare political organization that still garners support from Republican and Democratic donors while supporting candidates from both parties. But its primary focus has been leveraging its weight in competitive Democratic primaries, spending millions to boost moderates over progressives who have been critical of Israel.
That has made AIPAC the biggest source of Republican money flowing into competitive Democratic primaries this year, according to a POLITICO analysis of campaign finance data — and drawn outrage from the left over what it sees as GOP meddling in Democratic contests.
Nearly half of AIPAC donors to Democratic candidates this year have some recent history of giving to Republican campaigns or committees.
Criticism from the left has intensified as the partisan politics around U.S. support for Israel have shifted in the aftermath of the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attack on Israel. Israel’s subsequent invasion of Gaza, and its mounting civilian casualties, have led even Democrats who have long favored Israel to question whether the U.S. can continue its level of support.
AIPAC still sees support for Israel as an issue that transcends partisanship. And its focus on Democratic primaries comes as it tries to ensure voters in blue districts elect Democrats who are aligned with its vision for supporting Israel.
“AIPAC donors are single-issue donors,” said Doug Forand, a strategist working with the campaign of George Latimer, a Democrat whose challenge of progressive New York Rep. Jamaal Bowman has drawn more support from AIPAC than any other campaign this cycle.
Forand noted that most of the AIPAC donors to the campaign are Democrats, “but for those who are not, this may be the first time they’ve given to a pro-choice, pro-LGBTQIA+, pro-labor, anti-gun Democrat, but their goal is simply to protect Israel’s right to exist and they are donating to ensure that can happen.”
But progressives see AIPAC’s form of support for Israel as out of step with Democratic voters, particularly in the liberal districts where the group is directing the most funds. A partisan gap in support for Israel has grown dramatically in recent years, with growing numbers of Democrats questioning what was once a bipartisan position. Democrats are now more likely to say they sympathize with Palestinians than Israelis, driven in part by low levels of support for Israel among young voters.
MAGA Republican's Fight With Pro-Israel Group Heats Up - Newsweek
https://www.newsweek.com/thomas-massie-fights-pro-israel-group-united-democracy-project-1844742
Massie, a Kentucky Republican, is among a handful of lawmakers opposing military aid to Israel amid its war with Hamas, citing his concerns about the economic impact Republican leadership's $14.5 billion aid package would have on Americans. His opposition sparked pushback from the pro-Israel lobby, including the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), a major political donor that has donated tens of millions of dollars into elections in recent campaign cycles.
The AIPAC-affiliated United Democracy Project is running advertisements targeting Massie in his northern Kentucky Congressional district. The advertisement compares his votes to progressive Democratic Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar, members of the so-called "Squad," calling his record on Israel a "disgrace."
Massie responded to the advertisement Thursday night in a post X, formerly Twitter, writing: "Why does Israel historically get more foreign aid than any other country? Because they have the most aggressive lobbyists working for them. I voted NOT to send another $14.3 billion overseas, so now they're running ads on radio, TV, and [F]acebook. I won't vote to give them your $."
A spokesperson for AIPAC responded to Massie in a statement to Newsweek.
"It is a simple fact that Representative Massie is aligned with the most extremist fringe in Congress by refusing to stand with Israel in its fight against Hamas. We will not be deterred by his malicious attacks in our work as citizen activists supporting America's ally, Israel," the statement reads.
Israel lobby funded a quarter of British MPs
https://www.declassifieduk.org/israel-lobby-funded-a-quarter-of-british-mps/
Some 180 of Britain’s 650 MPs in the last parliament accepted funding from pro-Israel lobby groups or individuals during their political career, Declassified can reveal.
That includes 130 Conservative MPs, 41 Labour MPs and three Liberal Democrats.
Three members of the DUP, two independents and Reform’s only MP complete the list.
The total value of the donations from pro-Israel groups, individuals, and Israeli state institutions amounts to over one million pounds.
Between them, the politicians made over 240 paid-for trips to Israel, at a cost of over half a million pounds.
Some of those trips involved visits to the Occupied Palestinian Territories, and a small number were co-sponsored by groups which do not form part of the Israel lobby.
Remarkably, fifteen MPs have accepted funding to travel to Israel amid the Gaza genocide.
Huda Ammori, the co-founder of the direct action network Palestine Action, told Declassified: “Accepting funding from a lobby group on behalf of the perpetrators of a genocide should immediately bar anyone from standing as an MP.
“To see how politicians continue to travel to Israel and engage with the genocide lobby explains why our government continues to defy international law by facilitating Israel’s war crimes”.
The full list of MPs can be accessed at the foot of this article. Around 47 of them are not standing for re-election.
No MPs from the Scottish National Party, Sinn Fein, Plaid Cymru, SDLP, Alba, Greens, Alliance or Workers Party received hospitality or funding from the lobby.
US Congressman Says Countries Tired of Inflation Tax, Could Abandon US Dollar
https://sputnikglobe.com/20240520/us-congressman-says-countries-tired-of-inflation-tax-could-abandon-us-dollar-1118547041.html
WASHINGTON (Sputnik) - Countries are growing weary of the US dollar and could abandon the currency due to inflation, US Congressman Thomas Massie said on Monday.
“The whole world is holding dollars, so when we devalue the dollar, we’re not just taxing our own people, we’re taxing the entire world,” Massie said in an interview with Glenn Beck.
“The rest of the world is getting tired of being used that way… and when they start using alternate forms of money to do their transactions, or holding different assets in their own sovereign wealth funds, then we’re not going to be able to do that trick on anybody except for US citizens.”
Last week, Massie introduced bills to audit and abolish the Federal Reserve, citing their contribution to inflation. The Federal Reserve devalued the dollar and enabled free money policies that caused high inflation, Massie said.
The legislation to end the Federal Reserve now has over 20 cosponsors in the House of Representatives, Massie said.
https://x.com/SputnikInt/status/1790041974902247876
Opinion | Jamaal Bowman fights AIPAC to keep a progressive seat in Congress - The Washington Post
By Karen Attiah
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/06/11/bowman-congress-aipac-millions/
“Shut up or else” is the message a pro-Israel lobby is sending to Black lawmakers in America who are critical of what’s happening in Gaza. The front line is New York’s 16th Congressional District, where Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D) is facing one of the most expensive primary challenges in history.
The conservative pro-Israel lobbying giant AIPAC announced this spring that it would take extraordinary steps to remove progressive lawmakers who have called for a cease-fire in Gaza. Through a new super PAC called the United Democracy Project, funded primarily by right-wing billionaires, the group has pledged to spend $100 million this year to oust candidates it considers unsupportive of Israel.
Keep in mind: The Biden administration backs a plan for Gaza that would include a cease-fire, and polls show Americans increasingly support a cease-fire. Yet AIPAC is going full steam ahead. Bowman is the lobby’s first major target. As the June 25 primary approaches, the two-term congressman is facing what could prove to be the most expensive primary challenge in history. AIPAC has pledged to spend, through the super PAC, up to $25 million to elect Westchester County Executive George Latimer.
It’s hard to overstate the importance of the Bowman vs. Latimer showdown for progressives. The outcome represents much more than just the issue of money in politics. It raises concerns about right-wing money being funneled into Democratic primaries and tests the ability of AIPAC to shield Israel from criticism. But bigger than that, it is a test of how far America’s right wing will go to crush progressive movements. No one should be surprised that a Black politician is the canary in the coal mine.
————-
Because on the issue of Israel and Gaza in particular, Black leaders have become targets in more ways than one. A majority of the primary challengers funded by AIPAC are opposed by candidates of color (Cori Bush of Missouri, who also called for a cease-fire, is next on AIPAC’s list later this summer). The New York Times reported that a large number of Black lawmakers were targeted in an Israeli-commissioned social media influence campaign designed to gin up support for the war effort.
Meanwhile, the Congressional Black Caucus has largely been silent on Black incumbents under threat. AIPAC boasts that it is the top fundraiser for Congressional Black Caucus members. House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries (N.Y.), who has endorsed Bowman for reelection, is one of the top recipients of AIPAC funds. Even the NAACP released a statement urging the Biden administration to stop sending weapons to Israel and push for a cease-fire — and yet the Congressional Black Caucus can’t (or won’t) protect its own members?
The Israel Lobby Matters
BY
ED MCNALLY
https://jacobin.com/2024/05/isreal-lobby-western-strategic-interests
If the settler-colonial project in Palestine is to be dismantled, then defeating the Israel lobby in the West must be one of our tasks. “Truth,” Frantz Fanon wrote, “is what hastens the dislocation of the colonial regime . . . and good is quite simply what hurts them most.”
------
How should we explain the unflagging and disastrous Western backing of Israel? The Israel lobby plays a huge role, persuading lawmakers that support for Israel is still in the strategic interests of their countries.
Back in 2017, an Israeli diplomat in London was recorded demanding action against Alan Duncan, then a British foreign office minister. Soon after, Duncan went to brief the department’s ranking civil servant on the revelation, recalling the exchange in his diary: “I teasingly remind[ed] him . . . of what I said to him on my first day as a minister. ‘Simon. . . didn’t I tell you? The CFI [Conservative Friends of Israel] and the Israelis think they control the Foreign Office. And they do!’”
For some on the Left, complaints like Duncan’s exemplify wrongheaded conspiratorial theories about the omnipotence of Israel and its lobby. We are told by such opponents of the Israel lobby thesis that the tail cannot wag the dog and that Israel serves American strategic interests — then, now, and forever more.
“The value to US imperial power of Israel — a dependable, militarily powerful ally in a geostrategically crucial region of the world — is perfectly obvious, and requires no lobbying to be understood,” the British commentator David Wearing writes. In a book-length study of the lobby released last year, scholar Hil Aked argues similarly. Suggestions that support for Israel is contrary to American national interests and that the lobby bears responsibility for this distortion, Aked insists, are “problematic”: misguided “progressive nationalism” at best, “potentially xenophobic in tone” at worst. These are predetermined political rehearsals, at some remove from concrete analysis of the concrete situation.
Similarly, Andreas Malm recently dedicated a significant portion of an essay — about the Gaza genocide and its antecedence in combined histories of colonial and ecological catastrophe — to repudiating the lobby thesis. He concurs with the claim of Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah that “Israel used to be a tool at the hands of the British, and now it is a tool in the hands of America.” Malm counterposes “the distortionist theory of the lobby” to “the instrumentalist theory of empire and entity,” and finds in favor of the latter, arguing that it is vindicated by “evidence from the deep past, as well as from the recent past and present.”
Yet these repudiations of the Israel lobby thesis fall short both analytically and strategically. In the world conjured by such arguments, there is a preformed and basically unchanging US imperial interest, always served by unconditional support of Israel. This is the putative base, which the ideological attachment of American elites to Israel faithfully mirrors. Often this fixed imperial interest is simply taken for granted, with its articulation by US leaders standing in for anything approaching substantiating evidence or rigorous investigation. Thus can Malm take Joe Biden at his word when he parrots his long-held view that “were there not an Israel . . . the United States would have to go out and invent an Israel,” so unswervingly and effectively does the entity serve the empire.
The Israel Lobby Matters
BY
ED MCNALLY
https://jacobin.com/2024/05/isreal-lobby-western-strategic-interests
If the settler-colonial project in Palestine is to be dismantled, then defeating the Israel lobby in the West must be one of our tasks. “Truth,” Frantz Fanon wrote, “is what hastens the dislocation of the colonial regime . . . and good is quite simply what hurts them most.”
---------
Yet these repudiations of the Israel lobby thesis fall short both analytically and strategically. In the world conjured by such arguments, there is a preformed and basically unchanging US imperial interest, always served by unconditional support of Israel. This is the putative base, which the ideological attachment of American elites to Israel faithfully mirrors. Often this fixed imperial interest is simply taken for granted, with its articulation by US leaders standing in for anything approaching substantiating evidence or rigorous investigation. Thus can Malm take Joe Biden at his word when he parrots his long-held view that “were there not an Israel . . . the United States would have to go out and invent an Israel,” so unswervingly and effectively does the entity serve the empire.
There are many pitfalls of reading the existing interests of the American empire off cherry-picked pronunciations from certain of its leaders. Most obviously, US leaders are more than capable not only of making disastrous strategic miscalculations, but of clinging onto wrongheaded conceptions about the interests of the empire they superintend. This is not something we typically have trouble accepting. There were all variety of pseudomaterialist theories about the imperial interests that supposedly drove George W. Bush to invade Iraq, for instance, but few would now question that the war — and perhaps post 9/11 adventurism more widely — was a net-negative for American power. Here was a disastrous ideological crusade, based on self-defeating hubris about the world-making potential of shock-and-awe military interventions.
In other words: of course many American leaders, Joe Biden today foremost among them, firmly believe that Israel is an effective imperial outpost, and a worthy investment. But they could well be wrong. Questioning the strategic self-conceptions of imperial rulers is not a case, as one determined opponent of the lobby thesis has it, of “whisper[ing] to the exterminationist class that their calculus is off,” but rather a matter of insisting on a serious, integrated understanding of the enemy — generally worth more, as Perry Anderson once insisted, than “bulletins to boost doubtful morale.”
Another glaring problem with taking Biden at his word is that two can play the game of archival hook-a-duck. Take this 1975 remark from Henry Kissinger, which would seem to directly contradict arguments about Israel as a major strategic asset for America, precisely when the case was strongest, during the Cold War: “Israeli strength does not prevent the spread of communism in the Arab world. . . . So it is difficult to claim that a strong Israel serves American interests because it prevents the spread of communism in the Arab world. It does not. It provides for the survival of Israel.” Today we could point to huge dissent in the US State Department over Biden’s Gaza policy and to a chorus within the world of US “national security” expertise about the strategic perils of unflinching support for Israel.
At a more fundamental level, left opposition to the Israel lobby thesis often rests on an outmoded and mechanical view of imperial power. First: in an overdetermined political field such as that of the American imperial state, ideological forces — Biden’s aspic-preserved Zionism, for one — can have determinant material affects detrimental to the empire’s hegemonic position and its twenty-first century shelf-life. It is this realm in which Israel and the lobby exerts its force.
The Israel Lobby Matters
BY
ED MCNALLY
https://jacobin.com/2024/05/isreal-lobby-western-strategic-interests
If the settler-colonial project in Palestine is to be dismantled, then defeating the Israel lobby in the West must be one of our tasks. “Truth,” Frantz Fanon wrote, “is what hastens the dislocation of the colonial regime . . . and good is quite simply what hurts them most.”
------
Second, by definition, the image of an unchanging American imperial interest always well-served by support for Israel is sustainable only in the absence of any conjunctural understanding: there is no attempt to grasp, theoretically or empirically, the contemporary workings of US empire. There are all number of reasons to question Israel’s utility to its American benefactors today. The Eastern Mediterranean, and even the Persian Gulf (though Israel was never of much value in the latter), are of greatly decreased strategic significance. Meanwhile, Washington is facing imperial overstretch by trying to compete on three major fronts at once — Eastern Europe, East Asia, and the Middle East — all against the backdrop of degradedmilitary-industrial capacity.
Israel’s long-rogue, now genocidal, behavior renders unthinkable the kind of wider regional stability, made possible by improved Arabian Gulf relations with Iran, that America needs to comfortably “draw-down” from the Middle East militarily. In this connection, John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt’s point in The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy about the circularity of arguments for Israel’s strategic importance seems especially pertinent: “Israel is portrayed as a vital ally for dealing with its dangerous neighbours, but the commitment to Israel is an important reason why the United States sees these states as threats in the first place.”
Lastly, the notion that the “tail can never wag the dog,” while generally a well-intended anti-conspiracist aphorism, elides decades of innovation in the historical study of empires, focused on how imperial peripheries and outposts have acted on metropolitan centers. Margins matter: the supplicants might not be omnipotent, but nor are the masters. “Who’s the fucking superpower here?” Bill Clinton despaired to advisors after meeting Isreali prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
What of the politics? Much of the lobby’s work consists in persuading — carrot and stick — Western leaders and legislators that supporting Israel is in the strategic interests of their countries. When it comes to public opinion, the lobby faces a harder task than ever: as the genocide in Gaza continues, majorities are becoming receptive to the demands of the Palestine solidarity movement. In this context, the Left nodding along as Biden repeats that Israel is a trusty guarantor of American interests seems politically foolish.
Conspiracist views about the totality of Israel’s “control” are disempowering, but so too are these stale notions of US empire as a frozen monolith — the latter often accompanied by grandiose rhetoric implying the Palestinians must await the toppling of Western civilization in its entirety for their deliverance from Zionism.
It so happens that concrete analysis points toward Israel’s increasing strategic superfluity to the American empire, and so suggests a heightened role for the lobby in ensuring continued sponsorship. But the empirical understanding one reaches about the US-Israel relationship and its nature is in a sense secondary: insofar as it is engaged in the strong and slow work of mass politics, the Left should advance ethical and strategic arguments against support for Israel regardless.
If the settler-colonial project in Palestine is to be dismantled, then defeating the Israel lobby in the West must be one of our tasks. “Truth,” Frantz Fanon wrote, “is what hastens the dislocation of the colonial regime . . . and good is quite simply what hurts them most.”
Glenn Greenwald: Antisemitism, Attacks on Free Speech, and Everything You Need to Know about Brazil
The Tucker Carlson Show
https://www.happyscribe.com/public/the-tucker-carlson-show/glenn-greenwald-antisemitism-attacks-on-free-speech-and-everything-you-need-to-know-about-brazil
.... Like, almost none, because hearing chants that are pro palestinian or anti israeli make them feel vulnerable. Like the conservatives in Congress, like Elise Stefanik and Virginia, all Mike Johnson, they had, like, a horde of jewish students from Harvard coming and saying, I don't feel safe at my school. The very things that conservatives have been mocking so viciously, when that came from black students or trans students or immigrants or Muslims or whatever, the hypocrisy, the stench of it is suffocating and nauseating.
[00:28:31]
From my perspective as an american, I think you can have any opinion you want on Israel. I'm not actually that interested. I personally like Israel. Whatever the red line for me is, this is my country. My birthright is free speech. God gave me that right. You cannot take it away. And if you're telling me what I'm allowed to say in my country, you're my enemy. It's just kind of that simple. You can't tell me what to say or think, period. Because I'm an american.
[00:28:56]
Exactly. And. But if there were a consistent standard, like, let's say there were consistent, period.
[00:29:00]
Like, let's just walk back from there.
[00:29:02]
Right. But if there were some consistent standard, like, western Europeans have hate speech laws, whatever that kind of. They don't really apply them consistently. But at least there's, like, a dogma. Like, hate speech is not part of free speech in the United States. We don't have a hate speech exception to the first. There is no such thing. So if you suddenly now start, you know, and it's not just in the discourse, they're passing laws. Oh, I mean, where, like, Greg Abbott issued an executive order that said there will be no more anti semitism, meaning anti semitism speech, antisemitic speech, or ideas allowed in the state of Texas. And you have, I don't know if you saw the video this week, but there was a video emerging where a school administrator went to a group of palestinian protesters and said, I just want you to know, if you chant from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free or globalized, the intifada, you will be turned over to law enforcement. We will call the police on you and you will be arrested and held legally accountable. That is now a crime. In Texas. They passed a law.
[00:30:04]
Is that actually true?
[00:30:05]
Yes. Yes. Yes. I mean, the whole point of Greg Abbott's executive order was to say no anti semitic speech is permissible in Texas any longer. You're allowed to have anti black racist speech. You're allowed to have anti muslim speech. You're allowed to have white, anti gay speech. You can have anti white speech. You just can't be anti semitic to the point where these students are now being told that if they do these political chants, no violence, no obstruction of buildings, nothing illegal, the chants themselves, the ideas themselves will be decreed illegal. Now, as you say, like, you don't have to hate Israel or whatever, but we talk all the time like you have at every pro Israel rally in the United States. You will hear people saying, wipe out all the Arabs. Turn Gaza into a parking lot. Gaza belongs to Israel. We constantly talk about bombing this country, bombing that country. We're always advocating violence against this group, against this country. You know, this country is illegitimate. There's only one country that has the protection of these laws, which is the country of Israel.
Has AIPAC become a pro-Netanyahu, anti-Israel lobbying group?
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-755035
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s war on Israeli democracy is turning Jews and other supporters away from Israel at an alarming rate, raising the question of whether they will find another home or just go away.
For half a century, their home was the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), where support for Israel had been single-mindedly bipartisan. The lobby group was careful not to rate or endorse candidates, and largely kept hands off when it came to campaign contributions until it felt threatened by a small rival.
I spent the 1980s as the organization’s legislative director, and am very proud of my bipartisan group of lobbyists who put aside our own politics for the good of the cause. All of us got occasional flak from friends and family for working with lawmakers with whom we often disagreed on so many other, unrelated issues.
Has AIPAC become a pro-Netanyahu, anti-Israel lobbying group?
No longer. AIPAC has plunged into partisanship with a hard turn to the Right, embracing Evangelical Christians, hardline conservative Republicans, and election deniers whose views on everything but Israel were largely anathema to the mainstream Jewish community.
The group apparently shared Netanyahu’s view that those groups were a more reliable base, more inclined toward his thinking than those argumentative Jews and liberals. The lobby’s leadership at the staff and donor levels were predominantly right wing and in tune with Likud and Republican brands.
Netanyahu cultivated a close relationship with congressional Republicans and conservative AIPAC figures when he was number two at the Israeli embassy in Washington in the early 1980s. That led to a dramatic turning point in the US-Israel relationship in 2015, when the prime minister blind-sided then-president Barack Obama by accepting the Republican speaker of the House of Representatives’ invitation to help lead the GOP opposition, in coordination with AIPAC, to the administration’s Iran nuclear agreement.
Netanyahu already had a reputation for meddling in US partisan politics on behalf of Republicans, and this brought further deterioration in relations with American Jewry and the Democratic Party for which Jews traditionally cast nearly three out of every four of their votes.
Israeli premiers Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres, Ehud Olmert, Ehud Barak, and even Ariel Sharon complained that AIPAC, in cahoots with Netanyahu, consistently worked against their peace policies, which had broad support among Jews and Democrats.
If Iran was a turning point, the assault on democracy and Israel’s independent judiciary may be a breaking point.
A Haaretz editorial this week called AIPAC “the pro-Netanyahu, anti-Israel lobby.” It accused the group of “helping” Netanyahu “perpetuate a coup” to “destroy democracy” in Israel by trying to soften Democratic opposition to his assault on the justice system.
Post a Comment