by Jim Lobe
In my 30 years as the Washington DC bureau chief for Inter Press Service, only one institution has denied me admission to their press or public event. That was the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) shortly after the broadcast in 2003 of a BBC Panorama (its equivalent, more or [...]]]>
by Jim Lobe
In my 30 years as the Washington DC bureau chief for Inter Press Service, only one institution has denied me admission to their press or public event. That was the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) shortly after the broadcast in 2003 of a BBC Panorama (its equivalent, more or less, of our “60 Minutes”) program on neoconservatives and their promotion of the Iraq war entitled “The War Party” in which I was interviewed at several intervals. In that case, I was told forthrightly (and somewhat apologetically) by the think tank’s then-communications chief, Veronique Rodman, that “someone from above” had objected strongly to the show (I had my own reservations about it) and my role in it and had demanded that I be banned from attending AEI events. My status as persona non grata was reaffirmed about five years later when Lobe Log alumnus Eli Clifton went there for an event and was taken aside by an unidentified staffer and told that he could attend, but that he should remind me that I was still unwelcome.
Now it seems I’ve been blackballed by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), although, unlike AEI, it has so far declined to give me a reason for denying me accreditation to its annual policy conference, which runs Sunday through Tuesday. All I’ve received thus far is this email that arrived in my inbox Thursday morning from someone named Emily Helpern from Scott Circle, a public relations firm here in DC.
Thank you for your interest in attending this year’s AIPAC Policy Conference as a member of the press. However, press credentials for the conference will not be issued to you. We regret any inconvenience this may have caused.
I emailed Emily back as soon as I received it to ask for an explanation and point out that this is the first time in a decade that I’ve been denied credentials to cover the AIPAC conference. When no reply was forthcoming, I sent a second email to her and to Marshall Wittmann, AIPAC’s communications director, seeking an explanation, but, alas, it seems I’ve become a non-person.
Now, it bears mentioning that I am not the first to be blackballed by AIPAC, apparently for political reasons. As the JTA’s Ron Kampeas reported in 2012, three journalists were denied credentials to the policy conference that year:
Journalists turned away include Mitchell Plitnick, a liberal blogger who has sparred with right-wing pro-Israel groups as well as anti-Zionists, and who was going to provide coverage for Inter Press Service, which emphasizes developing nations coverage as well as what it calls marginalized groups; Adele Stan of AlterNet, a news site that says it encourages advocacy in a number of areas, including human rights and social justice; and Philip Weiss of Mondoweiss, an anti-Zionist site.
Plitnick had been cleared for coverage, only to be told that it was rescinded, and Weiss has covered AIPAC policy conferences at least three times without incident.
Barring coverage in Washington is rare; Government institutions in Washington are known for accommodating a broad range of journalists, including those adamantly hostile to the government of the day.
Actually, at least four journalists were barred from the 2012 conference. Alex Kane, who writes for both Mondoweiss and Alternet, was also denied credentials. Mitchell’s exclusion was particularly bizarre, given the sudden turnabout and the fact that he is a “non-Zionist” — as opposed to an “anti-Zionist” like Phil (barred again this year) — who also believes there should be a state where Jews should be able to gain refuge in the event that they ever face a threat like Nazism again. Of course, his past associations with the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem and with Jewish Voices for Peace (JVP) may have been too much for AIPAC to bear. I have no such organizational affiliations and probably fall somewhere between Mitchell’s idea (my parents were German Jewish refugees) and liberal Zionism to the diminishing extent that it remains a realistically viable option.
Now, however, it seems I’ve been added to AIPAC’s blacklist.
This raises a lot of questions, not the least of which is how thin has AIPAC’s skin become in light of its recent defeats on Capitol Hill. Another is whether it’s also barring its right-wing critics like Adam Kredo who, like me, has written a lot recently about the group’s travails in trying to maintain its bipartisanship while also doing the bidding of Bibi Netanyahu and his Republican and neoconservative allies here. But, of course, AIPAC’s right-wing critics, like Sheldon Adelson and Bill Kristol, have serious money — or access to it — while people like Mitchell, Phil and I don’t have quite as much to offer (although this is an encouraging development).
While I am under no illusions about my very marginal impact on the fate of the Israel lobby’s premier institution, I do think the fact that AIPAC would actually take the trouble to exclude me from its conference this year testifies — at least a tiny bit — to the organization’s current weakness, or, more precisely, its loss of self-confidence. Aside from AEI, I’ve never been excluded from any organization, no matter how politically or otherwise obnoxious it was to me or I to it. I have attended briefings and events by the the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, the Hudson Institute, and the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, for example, and have always been treated with civility, if not cordiality. It’s hard to believe that AIPAC, which is far bigger and more powerful than any of these others alone or in combination, would think that my presence at a conference attended by 14,000 devoted followers might pose some kind of threat to — or, constitute an unacceptable blight on — its proceedings.
Meanwhile, read John Judis’s excellent analysis of AIPAC’s current plight. Maybe now that he’s written an increasingly revisionist history of Harry Truman and Israel AND critically assessed AIPAC’s problems, he’ll be blackballed, too. I’ll have to ask him.
]]>by Jim Lobe
Last weekend, I noted the increasingly vulnerable position in which AIPAC finds itself in after its defeat on the Kirk-Menendez bill (S. 1881), and less than three weeks before its annual conference, which this year is expected to attract a record 14,000 attendees, as well as keynoter Israeli [...]]]>
by Jim Lobe
Last weekend, I noted the increasingly vulnerable position in which AIPAC finds itself in after its defeat on the Kirk-Menendez bill (S. 1881), and less than three weeks before its annual conference, which this year is expected to attract a record 14,000 attendees, as well as keynoter Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. Reporters who pay closer attention and have better contacts inside AIPAC than I do appear to share this view.
Particularly remarkable is an article entitled, “As Confab Nears, AIPAC Still Trying to Figure Out its Legislative Agenda,” by JTA’s Ron Kampeas. It describes how unprepared the group’s leadership appears to be:
“[J]ust three weeks before the [annual] conference, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee is facing a dilemma: how to craft a legislative agenda after losing a bruising battle with the Obama administration over Iran sanctions and amid uncertainty stemming from regional turmoil and ongoing Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts.
An AIPAC official confirmed that the lobbying group has yet to choose a legislative initiative for the estimated 14,000 activists to support at the March 2-4 conference.
While AIPAC does not unveil the specifics of its favored legislative action until the eve of its conference, what’s unusual is that those close to the group and its Capitol Hill interlocutors say it’s not yet clear even behind closed doors what shape AIPAC’s lobbying will assume.”
A second widely noted article, “How AIPAC Botched Its Biggest Fight in Years,” appeared in the Daily Beast Tuesday morning. It recounts details surrounding last week’s debacle and offers a broader context in which it took place, particularly the apparent splits between AIPAC’s neoconservative/Republican wing and those within the group who hope to maintain its appeal to Democrats as well as, more interestingly, between the latter and the Netanyahu government as represented by its new ambassador here, Ron Dermer, who reportedly lobbied very aggressively for the passage of the bill even when it became clear that there was no way its proponents could get a veto-proof majority or Majority Leader Harry Reid to send it to the floor for an up-or-down vote. (Unlike his predecessor, Michael Oren, Dermer, who grew up in Florida, is said by knowledgeable sources to consider himself a Republican with little interest in or patience for Democrats.) According to Lake’s account, Dermer told Republican Sen. Bob Corker outright that AIPAC and the Israeli government were not on the same page. Lake recounts where the group ended up:
Somehow, on the issue arguably of most importance to both the Israeli government and America’s pro-Israel community—Iran and its nuclear ambitions—AIPAC didn’t merely fail to deliver. It alienated its most ardent supporters, and helped turn what was a bipartisan effort to keep Iran in check into just another political squabble. The lobby that everybody in Washington publicly backs somehow managed to piss off just about everyone.
Now, I wouldn’t call AIPAC’s management or mismanagement of the bill a “botch” as the Daily Beast’s headline writer did. I think there is something much more fundamental — and possibly existential — about what is happening to the group. Its neoconservative/ECI/Republican wing, which no doubt includes important donors, is pressing it to abandon its bipartisanship, which is a very, very risky strategy when one considers that a strong majority of the Jewish community remains firmly in the Democratic camp. And, as many polls have shown, Democrats are becoming ever more disenchanted with the policies — not just with respect to Iran — being pursued by Netanyahu’s right-wing politics. This puts AIPAC in an extremely delicate position, and one that it has never before confronted. In that respect, Netanyahu’s keynote speech could be a very important moment in the group’s history.
Jennifer Rubin, a hard-line neocon whose sympathies definitely lie with Republicans, appears to agree with Lake. In an echo of ECI’s attack on AIPAC last Friday, she also wrote Tuesday:
All this plays out while the most prominent pro-Israel group, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, is going through its rockiest period in decades. The administration’s attacks on sanctions advocates as “war mongers” and ability to rebuff sanctions showed AIPAC’s declining influence on the left, a trend accelerated under an administration with the worst relationship with Israel since George H.W. Bush. In awkwardly abandoning the current sanctions battle, AIPAC was accused by the right of bending over backward to accommodate Democrats who aren’t supportive of sanctions. When AIPAC attempted damage control last Friday by issuing a letter from its president saying AIPAC was in fact still in favor of sanctions, the reaction on Capitol Hill ranged from confusion to contempt. At the time its role is most critical, AIPAC is least effective.
This naturally must intensify the heartburn at AIPAC headquarters.
Meanwhile, opponents of more sanctions appear to have gone somewhat on the offensive in the House, especially in light of persistent reports that Majority Leader Eric Cantor and Minority Whip Steny Hoyer were cooking up an AIPAC-backed non-binding resolution designed to define what would or would not be acceptable in a final deal worked out between Iran and the 6 world powers known as the P5+1. A total so far of 104 House members have signed a letter demanding that Congress “give diplomacy a chance.” The letter, which was organised by Reps. David Price (D-NC) and Lloyd Doggett (D-TX) and gained the signatures of four Republicans, adds that any “bill or resolution that risks fracturing our international coalition or, worse yet, undermining our credibility in future negotiations and jeopardizing hard-won progress toward a verifiable final agreement, must be avoided.”
I understand that in a meeting with top AIPAC board members Tuesday, House Democrats made clear that there was no support in their caucus for any Iran resolution — binding or non-binding and that Wednesday’s release of the Price-Doggett letter was designed to underline the lack of appetite for any more legislative battles on Iran until diplomacy plays out. And while the White House announced Wednesday that Obama and Netanyahu will meet Mar. 3 at the White House, there still has been no word as to whom the administration intends to send to address the AIPAC conference that will be going on at the time.
]]>The showing of the movie in the Rayburn House Office Building will be hosted by the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) and a right-wing D.C. [...]]]>
The showing of the movie in the Rayburn House Office Building will be hosted by the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) and a right-wing D.C. Israel lobby group called the Endowment for Middle East Truth (EMET). The RJC invite makes it a point to give “special thanks to Majority Leader Eric Cantor [R-VA] for making this event possible.”
It’s EMET’s involvement that piqued my interest. EMET — whose acronym, emet, is the Hebrew word for ‘truth’ — has a bit of a history with Clarion involving an exposed lie from EMET president Sarah Stern.
Stern, a right-wing activist who has worked for the American Jewish Committee and the Zionist Organization of America, brags in her EMET bio about her efforts on the Hill — behind the backs of the Israeli and U.S. administrations — to spike the Oslo peace process of the 1990s.
In Sept. 2008, Stern hired flak Ari Morgenstern to help EMET promote the movie “Obsession” during its distribution to tens of millions of ‘swing-state’ homes during the 2008 election. Morgenstern gave an interview to me at the time, describing himself as an EMET spokesperson.
Five days later, EMET pulled out of the “Obsession” distribution project — a $17 million effort we now know was likely funded by major Chicago Republican donor Barre Seid. Stern told JTA at the time that she was hoodwinked by Clarion, and that she’d never talked to Morgenstern.
But she was lying. JTA‘s Eric Fingerhut got the goods (with my emphasis):
[T]he communications strategists for the project, Baron Communications LLC and 30 Point Strategies, shared e-mails and phone records that showed Stern had at least four telephone conversations earlier in the week with Morgenstern. In addition, they produced an e-mail from Sept. 22 which showed Stern approving of a press release and other materials announcing EMET’s participation. Another e-mail a day later from Stern included a lengthy note backing the project’s mission and the sign-off “Soldier On!”
But Stern hadn’t run the project by EMET’s board, so she pulled out.
I was a bit surprised, then, to see two months ago that Stern landed on Clarion’s new hawkish advisory board, which has some overlap with her shop.
Daniel Pipes and CSP chief and “Iranium” star Frank Gaffney are listed on both the EMET and Clarion advisory boards. James Woolsey, who never saw a neocon project he didn’t want to hitch his wagon to, and Iran hawk Kenneth Timmerman, both sit on EMET’s board and are featured prominently in “Iranium.”
Other hardliners among the EMET advisors include CSP fellow and JPost editor Caroline Glick; Hudson and Ariel Center‘s Meyrav Wurmser, the wife of Cheney advisor David and founder of MEMRI; Heritage‘s Ariel Cohen; Gal Luft, a so-called greenocon whose colleague Anne Korin appears in “Iranium”; and a host of other right-wingers.
In fact, there are two fundraising videos on EMET’s website where Stern is praised by Steven Emerson, Gaffney, Pipes, Heritage’s Cohen, Hudson‘s Tevi Troy, and Lori Palatnik, who, along with her husband, works for the ultra-orthodox, Israel-based evangelist group Aish Hatorah, which is intimately tied to Clarion.
Another troubling place where Stern gets support from is the House Foreign Affairs Committee, whose hawkish new chairperson, Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), has a long-established relationship with Stern. On an EMET page, Ros-Lehtinen commends Stern’s services:
I am writing in strong support of Sarah Stern, who has worked with my office on matters of legislative importance…. I have known Sarah for many years and find her to be passionate and knowledgeable…
Three of the top-listed EMET advisors are ex-Israeli diplomats associated with the Likud. These are the very figures with whom Stern worked on Capitol Hill to spike Oslo. From a piece on IPS written by myself, Eli and Jim, at the time of the “Obsession” controversy (with my emphasis and added links):
Also among the top names of listed advisers to EMET are three Israeli diplomats. Two of them, Ambassadors Yossi Ben Aharon and Yoram Ettinger, were among the three Israeli ambassadors whom then-Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin referred to as “the Three Musketeers” when they lobbied Washington in opposition to the Oslo accords. Indeed, Stern began her career at the behest of three unnamed Israeli diplomats who were based in Washington under Rabin’s predecessor, Yitzhak Shamir, according to EMET’s website.
Ettinger was at one time the chairman of special projects and is still listed as a contributing expert at the Ariel Centre for Policy Research, a hard-line Likudist Israeli think tank that opposes the peace process.
Ben Aharon was the director general – effectively the chief of staff – of Shamir’s office.
The third Israeli [diplomat], Lenny Ben-David, was appointed by Likud prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to serve as the deputy chief of mission – second in command – at the Israeli embassy in Washington from 1997 until 2000. Ben-David had also held senior positions at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee for 25 years and is now a consultant and lobbyist.
Just like Clarion, where the producers and writer/director of the “Iranium” film are from the Israeli religious right, here we have, again, the Israeli right pushing policy on Washington.
There are few other ways to accurately describe it: This is the Israeli right directly pushing on Capitol Hill for an escalation with Iran, even pressing for an attack on the Islamic Republic.
These are the people we are supposed to trust about bombing Iran.
]]>Perhaps that’s why, just in time for the holidays, the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) launched a scathing attack on some of the most prominent — and pro-Israel– [...]]]>
Perhaps that’s why, just in time for the holidays, the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) launched a scathing attack on some of the most prominent — and pro-Israel– Jewish Senators and organizations like the Anti-Defamation League (ADL).
Noah Silverman, RJC’s Congressional Affairs Director since 2006, may have been moved by the sight of boiling oil when he made his debut as an official RJC blogger. No sooner writ than said, Silverman’s pontifications splattered over to RJC’s e-mail list on Thursday night.
Silverman attacks Jews and Jewish organizations who have come out in support of the immediate ratification of the New START Treaty. Picking up where the Emergency Committee for Israel (ECI) and JINSA left off, Silverman’s rails against “an unprecedented effort to ‘make START a Jewish issue‘ by pressuring Jewish communal organizations to advocate for the treaty’s ratification.”
He’s irate with the ADL and the American Council of World Jewry, both of whom objected when Senate Republicans made it known that they would use member prerogative to block ratification: “We are deeply concerned that failure to ratify the new START treaty will have national security consequences far beyond the subject of the treaty itself,” a Nov. 19 letter from the ADL to all members of the Senate asserted. ”The U.S. diplomatic strategy to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons requires a U.S.-Russia relationship of trust and cooperation.”
Granted that the ADL was speaking from the perspective of its anti-Iran agenda. Nonetheless — and perhaps especially so — it’s bizarre to hear the RJC’s Silverman challenging the right of Jewish organizations to weigh in on issues other than Israel. And Silverman is livid that Senate Democrats would dare to use an argument about Israel’s security to enlist AIPAC in the effort to get START ratified.
MJ Rosenberg — citing Nathan Guttman in the Forward and Ron Kampeas at the Jewish Telegraphic Agency — suggests that
AIPAC is in agony. It desperately wants to support the US-Russia START treaty aimed at limiting nuclear warheads because the treaty would greatly advance Israel’s security.
But it is afraid of defying right-wing Republicans in the Senate. Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ), in particular, is telling AIPAC “don’t you dare.” His reason is simple: Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has ordered Republicans to block anything the President submits to the Senate except, of course, tax cuts for millionaires. That includes START.
Tight-with-the-right Washington Post blogger Jennifer Rubin is Silverman’s source that the involvement of AIPAC in a non-Israel issue is shocking. Rubin writes, “An experienced Israel hand tells me, ‘Well, they of course claim there is a direct link to Israeli security. But, no, this must be very rare.’ A Capitol Hill adviser from another office says ‘I’ve never seen this done with AIPAC on a non-Israel issue.’”
But it’s not all that rare, according to Rosenberg:
AIPAC argues that it does not get involved in congressional battles that do not directly involve Israel. Of course, they do. They always have. Even when I worked at AIPAC decades ago, they put their full lobbying weight behind a then-controversial plan to establish a military base on the Pacific island of Diego Garcia.
Why? Because the Republican President at the time asked them to. More recently, AIPAC made sure that its friends in Congress knew that the “right vote” for Israel was supporting both Iraq wars. (Had AIPAC not indicated its support for war, far fewer Democrats would have voted for the second Iraq war.)
Silverman frames the effort to pass START as evidence of “a panicked White House is scrambling to salvage what it can of its legislative agenda before its influence in Congress is diminished next year.” But the letter to AIPAC which so outrages Silverman was written by two longtime senators who supported arms control long before Barack Obama was elected president.
Michigan Democrat Carl Levin was first elected to the Senate in 1978, where he’s Chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee. He’s been consistently supportive of conventional forces and basic, reliable weapons systems to protect national security. His support for START is anything but last minute. In a column in the Niles Daily Star on July 9, Levin wrote:
As Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, described it, New START will “make our country more secure and advance our core national security interests.” This treaty is in keeping with a long tradition of bilateral, verifiable arms control agreements with Russia and its predecessor, the Soviet Union, and it strengthens the U.S. commitment to stopping the spread of nuclear weapons.
Silverman not only ignores Mullen’s endorsement of START, he seems completely oblivious to the support expressed by Republicans for “resetting” the Treaty. They include what Jim Lobe calls are the “big guns in what remains of the Republican foreign policy Establishment, including five former secretaries of state whose service spanned the last five Republican administrations.” They include Colin Powell, James Baker, Henry Kissinger, George Schultz and Lawrence Eagleburger, who wrote in a Washington Post op-ed that there are “compelling reasons” for Republicans to approve ratification of START.
Bloomberg News reports that several Republican senators — among them Richard Lugar, Bob Corker, Lamar Alexander, Bob Bennett, John McCain, and Kyl himself, are hinting they could support the reset of START in the lame-duck Senate session if (and perhaps only if) the Senate voted to extend the expiring Bush-era tax cuts to cover Americans in all income groups. So it’s domestic politics, not national security, that may determine the fate of START, JINSA notwithstanding. MJ Rosenberg also thinks that “Kyl may come around and then AIPAC can too.”
Silverman, who worked for seven years as a legislative aide in Kyl’s office, also uses his first blogpost to defend Kyl against what he deems to be assaults on his former boss’s reputation. He is no doubt bristling at the thought that his former boss will give in on START out of political expediency. Although the RJC launched some of the most vicious ad hominem attack ads against Obama before the 2008 election, Silverman huffs that “Pro-Obama commentators attacked Kyl in the most demeaning and personal terms — including calling him unpatriotic.”
The “demeaning” attack on Kyl to which Silverman links is a Huffington Post rhymed rant by self-described Ranting Political Poet Jim Parry. The personal attack: a single Tweet by Washington Monthly contributor and blogger Steve Benen. And the accusation of Kyl’s being “unpatriotic”? A tweet by actress Elizabeth Banks, co-star of the frat-boy comedy film Zack and Miri Make a Porno.
Does Silverman really consider two tweets and a rant “pro-Obama news commentary”? If so, it explains alot.
Like why, after 25 years of Republican Jewish Coalition activism, there is only one single Jewish Republican to be found in the U.S. Congress — in either the upper or lower chamber.
]]>Kampeas writes (with my emphasis):
Iran
Republicans have sharply criticized Obama’s outreach to Iran and said he was too slow [...]]]>
Kampeas writes (with my emphasis):
]]>Iran
Republicans have sharply criticized Obama’s outreach to Iran and said he was too slow to apply sanctions.Over the summer, however, Obama dialed back the outreach to the Islamic Republic and signed a sanctions bill. His Treasury Department already has intensified sanctions, particularly against Iran’s financial sector. U.S. and Israeli officials say Iran is feeling the bite.
The principal U.S.-Israel difference remains timing, or what to do when: When does Iran get the bomb — and what happens then?
[GOP house minority whip Eric] Cantor, in his interview with JTA, emphasized that Obama must make it clear that a military option is on the table.
Congress, however, cannot declare war by itself, and while a flurry of resolutions and amendments pressing for greater confrontation with Iran may be in the offing, they will not affect policy — except perhaps to sharpen Obama’s rhetoric ahead of 2012.
Should Obama, however, return to a posture of engagement — this depends on the less than likely prospect of the Iranian theocracy consistently embracing diplomacy — a GOP-led Congress could inhibit the process through adversarial hearings.
Rep. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.), running for the open U.S. Senate seat in Illinois, has been plagued [...]]]>
Rep. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.), running for the open U.S. Senate seat in Illinois, has been plagued by apologies for exaggerations of his record [...]. Now Democrats are accusing Kirk of falsely claiming credit for a hunk of the Iran sanctions act passed this summer. This time, however, the Kirk campaign is sticking to its guns and accusing the Dems of politicking.
Kirk has said that legislation he and Democrat Rep. Rob Andrews (D-N.J.) sponsored shaped legislation that targeted companies that deliver refined petroleum to Iran, a major crude producer, but with a refinement capacity that has been in disarray. He said Rep. Howard Berman (D-Calif.), the chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives Foreign Affairs committee, eventually slapped his name atop the bill — which is customary, because major bills need heft to pass.
Berman says Kirk had nothing to do with the final bill, according to this Chicago Sun Times account, a notion Kirk’s campaign strongly rejects. Backing Kirk is Rep. Ileana Ros Lehtinen (R-Fla.), the ranking member of the committee. That puts her in the uncomfortable position of directly contradicting Berman — upsetting the Foreign Affairs Committee’s norm of chairs and ranking members going out of their way to get along.
Kampeas gives Kirk the win “on points.” He initially described Kirk’s appraisal of his role in creating the sanctions package as “hubristic.” After being contacted by Kirk’s campaign and going through incarnations of the bill, Kampeas concludes that “hubristic” might have been too strong and Kirk deserves some credit.
It should be noted that Kirk and Berman are both favorites of the right-wing, pro-Israel lobby. Kirk is far and away the largest fundraiser from pro-Israel PAC’s, having raised a career total of $1.4 million (50 percent more than his next competitor). While Berman has raised a relatively paltry $400,000, he is known for also toeing the pro-Israel line.
We pointed out in our August 5 Daily Talking Points that Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD) president Cliff May noted in a National Review article that, as the sanctions packages were being drafted by Congress, several members of a task force went to the Hill to brief the authors of the legislation. This group included two experts from the FDD and was put together by the neoconservative American Foreign Policy Council.
UPDATE: Foreign Policy‘s excellent The Cable blog, authored by Josh Rogin, gets a former AIPAC spokesperson to recount Kirk’s role in authoring the legislation, which was a top priority in recent years for the Israel lobby group:
]]>“There’s no question that Mark Kirk was one of the first, if not the first member of Congress to advocate restricting the flow of gasoline to Iran as a way of pressuring Iran on its nuclear program,” said Josh Block, who was the chief spokesman for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which was intimately involved in the bill’s legislative journey.
We covered [...]]]>
We covered the poll, via the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, in our October 12 Daily Talking Points, but here is some further analysis from our colleague Jim Lobe where he calls upon Harvard political scientist Stephen Walt‘s take on the numbers:
]]>Support for U.S. military action against Iran “to prevent it from developing nuclear weapons… if diplomacy and sanctions fail” rose from 53 percent to 59 percent since last March, while opposition to such a course fell from 42 percent to 35 percent over the same period.
As recently as its 2008 survey, the AJC found that 47 percent of respondents opposed an attack, while a 42-percent plurality supported one.
“I don’t think these results are surprising, especially given the drumbeat of Islamophobia in the American media, the constant pounding on the Iran threat by Israeli politicians and their supporters here, and the Obama administration’s repeated failure to explain what it thinks it is doing in the Middle East,” said Stephen Walt, a Harvard international relations expert and co-author of the controversial 2007 book, “The Israel Lobby”.
“They’ve let their critics define the narrative, while doing nothing to give anyone on either the left or the right any confidence in their leadership,” he added. “If I’d been asked, I’d have said my approval of the job he’s doing was pretty low, too, though I obviously don’t agree with the idea of attacking Iran.”
The survey suggested that the hawkish views of the right- wing leadership of major Jewish organisations, including the AJC itself, have been gaining traction with the more-liberal Jewish public over the last eight months.