by Marsha B. Cohen
News sites throughout the US — and Israel — are still displaying shock over the defeat of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor by a Tea Party challenger in Virginia’s June 11 primary. The GOP leader was widely expected to succeed John Boehner as Speaker of the House of Representatives within the next [...]]]>
by Marsha B. Cohen
News sites throughout the US — and Israel — are still displaying shock over the defeat of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor by a Tea Party challenger in Virginia’s June 11 primary. The GOP leader was widely expected to succeed John Boehner as Speaker of the House of Representatives within the next 3 years; hardly anyone predicted his loss to the political newcomer, Dave Brat. Cantor is the first Majority Leader since 1899 to fail renomination by his party.
Cantor’s defeat will have widespread repercussions for US domestic politics, epitomizing the growing fissure in the Republican party between mainstream center-right Republicans and the Tea Party. Cantor himself danced awkwardly between the two, blurring their boundary. But nothing in Cantor’s stated positions or House votes on social and economic issues distinguishes him from other conservative Republicans.
Cantor was the sole Jewish Republican in the House of Representatives during his 7 terms in office, putting him on the very short list of the Jewish members of Congress who have found a political home within the GOP. There are currently no other Republican Jews in the Senate, so Cantor’s departure from the House will mean that there won’t be a single Jewish Republican in either chamber of Congress. In the 113th Congress, 21 Democrats in the House and 11 in the Senate are Jewish, as is 1 Independent senator. This will be rather awkward for the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC), which has not only been arguing for three decades that American Jews are abandoning their traditional loyalty to the Democratic party and increasingly identifying as Republican, but also that Jewish interests are better served by Republicans. Cantor was the RJC’s poster boy.
Indeed, here’s RJC Executive Director Matt Brooks statement on Cantor’s resounding defeat:
We are disappointed that our friend Eric Cantor lost his primary race tonight, but we are proud of his many, many accomplishments in Congress…Eric has been an important pro-Israel voice in the House and a leader on security issues, including Iran sanctions. We deeply appreciate his efforts to keep our country secure and to support our allies around the world.
Although support for pro-Israel and anti-Iran legislation has been overwhelmingly bipartisan, Cantor has played a unique role on the GOP side of the aisle. Alexander Burns of Politico points out:
…with Cantor’s defeat, there’s no longer a point man to help organize trips to Israel for junior GOP lawmakers, as Cantor routinely did. Jewish nonprofits and advocacy groups have no other natural person in leadership to look to for a sympathetic ear. No other Republican lawmaker can claim to have precisely the same relationship with gaming billionaire Sheldon Adelson, a primary benefactor of both the Republican Party and the Republican Jewish Coalition.
Cantor reportedly spent more than $5 million on his re-election campaign, while his opponent, an Economics professor at Randolph-Macon College, spent only $122,000. With big bucks backing him, Cantor seemed to have little to fear from a political novice supported by the Tea Party. “Brat’s campaign portrayed Cantor as a creature of Washington and an ally of special interests, particularly those representing the financial industry,” writes Jonathan Cohn of The New Republic. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Cantor’s top three campaign contributors for the 2014 cycle were the Blackstone Group, Scoggin Capital Management, and Goldman Sachs.
The New Jersey based pro-Israel political action group NORPAC was also among the major contributors to Cantor’s campaign committee, though Cohn seems to have overlooked this. Ranking #9 on Cantor’s list of top donors, NORPAC had bundled $24,560 from pro-Cantor contributors in the 2014 election cycle, about $2000 less than Goldman Sachs’ $26,600.
AIPAC, the much larger and better known pro-Israel lobbying group, does not donate to candidates or bundle campaign contributions. But the campaign contributions of AIPAC’s presidents and individual activists can be documented, and they can serve as a bellwether of AIPAC’s organizational support. Until recently, AIPAC presidents personally contributed mostly to pro-Israel Democrats running in national elections, Jewish or not, and to the small number of Jewish Republicans then in the House and Senate. While AIPAC has tended to favor incumbents, it has also supported the challengers of candidates running for re-election whose positions were deemed insufficiently supportive of Israel. Since joining AIPAC ‘s Board roughly a decade ago, Michael Kassen has been extending his own campaign contributions to some of the most conservative Republican members of Congress — including Ed Royce, Virginia Foxx, and Ted Cruz — whose domestic policies are sharply at odds with those held by center-to-liberal Jewish Americans. Kassen became president of the organization in 2012 and AIPAC’s Chairman of the Board in 2014.
In a twist of irony, by contributing to the Tea Party’s increasing hold on Congress — as long as candidates’ stated support for Israel was loud and clear — pro-Israel donors like Kassen may have inadvertently contributed to a political climate conducive to the defeat of their single greatest success story, Eric Cantor.
This article was first published by LobeLog.
Photo: Rep. Eric Cantor shakes President Barack Obama’s hand at the conclusion of a bipartisan Congressional leadership meeting in the Oval Office Private Dining Room on Nov. 10, 2013. Credit: White House Photo by Pete Souza
]]>by Marsha B. Cohen
Today hundreds of buses packed with what organizers claim are about a thousand citizen advocates departed from various pick-up points in and around New York and New Jersey for Washington, DC. They represent NORPAC (not an acronym for anything), a much smaller, localized grassroots [...]]]>
by Marsha B. Cohen
Today hundreds of buses packed with what organizers claim are about a thousand citizen advocates departed from various pick-up points in and around New York and New Jersey for Washington, DC. They represent NORPAC (not an acronym for anything), a much smaller, localized grassroots version of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), whose annual policy conference brought an estimated 10,000 activists and students to the nation’s capital to lobby for pro-Israel legislation in March.
NORPAC’s annual Mission to Washington, DC lasts just one day, modeled on the climactic conclusion on the third day of AIPAC’s confabulation that dispatches busloads of attendees to their respective Senate and House members to thank them for their support for Israel and ask for more. Attracting little or no attention outside the regional Jewish media, NORPAC markets its annual pilgrimage to the nation’s capital as a fun day of family togetherness where kids (minimum age is 12) can join their parents and grandparents in coming face-to-face with members of Congress (“MoCs”), armed with NORPAC Talking Points, and demanding to know — in unequivocal and uncompromising “yes” or “no” terms — whether they will co-sponsor and vote for pending legislation supportive of Israel and detrimental to Iran.
The NORPAC annual Mission is also a bargain. The non-discounted registration fee for AIPAC’s three day policy conference in 2013 was $599 per person, not including transportation from the participants’ home city and a 2-3 night hotel stay in pricey Washington, DC. NORPAC on the other hand charges $175 for adults and $125 for students and this fee includes bus transportation from pick-up points throughout New York and New Jersey, breakfast, lunch, dinner and a plenary meeting upon arrival. Since the Mission is accomplished in a single day, there’s no need for any hotel expense. Advocacy training prior to the Mission is also included.
NORPAC differs from its big brother AIPAC not only in size, but in actually being a PAC (political action committee), aggregating and disbursing financial contributions to members of Congress. Throughout the course of each election cycle, NORPAC members host both Democratic and Republican political candidates and office holders — Sen. Susan Collins of Maine was the guest of honor in Teaneck, NJ at a NORPAC event on April 28 – establishing personal relationships even with out of area members of Congress who receive the lion’s share of NORPAC’s largesse. Political donors contributing through NORPAC can earmark their political contributions to any candidate they choose, even if he or she is not officially endorsed. NORPAC never endorses a candidate who challenges an incumbent with a pro-Israel record, as Shmuley Boteach discovered. Nevertheless financial contributions to challengers are accepted and contributed in NORPAC’s name.
Contributions channeled through NORPAC are not huge, but, as the organization enjoys pointing out, the impact of relatively small contributions is magnified when they are aggregated. More importantly, pooling campaign contributions through NORPAC exaggerates the pro-Israel lobby’s unity, strength and influence.
The top donor through NORPAC in the 2012 election cycle contributed $7,500, with the rest of the top 25 donors contributing $4,000-$5,000. In that cycle, NORPAC disbursed $10,603 to House Democrats, $6,350 to House Republicans, $62,330 to Senate Democrats and $54,741 to Senate Republicans. Political donations to individual candidates are generally in the $2,500-$5,000 range for House members and typically in the $5,000-$10,000 range for Senators, according to Open Secrets’ database – not huge in the Super PAC era, but significant insofar as these sums, pooled and presented to politicians by NORPAC, have a greater impact than smaller ones by individual donors.
What do NORPAC’s Mission minions, rolling into the nation’s capital on their chartered buses, want? According to NORPAC’s website:
Each year NORPAC selects different issues to present to Members of Congress related to legislation in the U.S. House and Senate. Previously we have advocated for stronger Iran sanctions, continued foreign aid, increased military and strategic cooperation between the U.S. and Israel, and additional funding for the Iron Dome anti-missile defensive system. A talking points handout is supplied to all Mission attendees before the event to bring them up to speed on the latest, most pressing issues.
How are NORPAC’s Talking Points for 2013 ”different” from all other years? They aren’t. Senate and House members are being asked whether or not they support the $3.1 billion earmarked for US military assistance to Israel plus $221 million more to fund Israel’s Iron Dome program in the 2014 federal budget, the details of which are currently being negotiated. The busloads of Israel supporters on NORPAC’s Mission and at the conclusion of the AIPAC Policy Conference are there to persuade members of Congress that the political price of even nipping, let alone slashing, military aid to Israel is not one that they will want to pay.
Meanwhile, Defense News reports that Israel is slashing its own military budget, violating a 2007 understanding with Washington that incremental hikes in US annual military aid would not be used to compensate for proportionate cuts in Israel’s defense spending. While US House Speaker John Boehner has declared that repayment of loans to China should be a higher budget priority than paying active duty US troops, members of the Israeli Defense Forces will be receiving a 21% raise. Of course, NORPAC’s Talking Points won’t be mentioning that.
Besides preserving military assistance to Israel in the 2014 budget, NORPAC is asking House members to sign on as co-sponsors of House Resolution 850, which, as a New York Times editorial points out, “would pile on tougher sanctions [on Iran] just as the two sides are trying to create trust after decades of hostility.” Senators are meanwhile being asked to co-sponsor Senate Resolution 65, which makes it increasingly likely that the US will be dragged into a war with Iran if Israel initiates one, despite the disclaimer that the Resolution does not actually authorize military action. The language of the original bill, introduced in the Senate in late February by Democrat Robert Menendez and Republican Lindsey Graham, initially granted Israel full US support if it chose to attack Iran in “self-defense,” which some Senate staffers viewed with alarm as “a back door to war”, according to Ori Nir of Americans for Peace Now. But it now includes the phrase “legitimate self-defense.” Even with the APN-approved language, concerns remain that the passage of S. 65 increases the likelihood that the US would not only support an Israeli initiated war with Iran but also be dragged into it.
The last item on NORPAC’s wish list is the demand that members from both houses of Congress sponsor and support H.R. 938 and S. 462 – The United States-Israel Strategic Partnership Act — two parallel bills in the House and Senate that upgrade Israel to the unique status of a “strategic partner” of the U.S. Ironically, the authors of NORPAC’s Talking Points seem unaware that the hold-up in the passage of these bills comes from the Israeli side, not Congress.
One provision of the “strategic partnership” is the mutual waiving of visa requirements for Israelis entering the US and Americans entering Israel. Israel’s problem with this provision in what Lara Friedman calls the Best Ally with Benefits bills is that Israel wants the right to impose restrictions on Americans of Arab or Muslim descent or on anyone whose political views it deems questionable or undesirable.
Currently, the rate of rejection of Americans seeking to enter Israel exceeds 3%, the maximum allowing threshold for reciprocal visa-free agreements between the US and other countries. US senators are bending over backwards to accommodate the pro-Israel lobby’s efforts to help Israel evade the requirements of visa reciprocity in exchange for the “strategic partnership” proposed by AIPAC and advocated for by NORPAC.
The Senate bill sponsored by Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) proposes that Israel be granted visa waiver status if the Secretary of State determines that Israel “has made every reasonable effort, without jeopardizing the security of the State of Israel, to ensure that reciprocal travel privileges are extended to all United States citizens.” According to Mike Coogan,“Attorneys for both individual members and committees privately advised that complying…would be a flagrant violation of certain U.S. laws barring discrimination, and would undermine the U.S. government’s call for the equal protection of all its citizens traveling abroad.”
Promoting the upcoming Mission in the New Jersey Jewish News last week, NORPAC President Ben Chouake called May 8 “a day to play an oversized role for Israel.”
The oversized role that a few determined and committed people can play in our nation is astounding. Going down to Washington with NORPAC is a leveraged way of making oneself heard. Our members have made compelling cases and been key players in promoting legislative initiatives. This year we will have about 475 meetings planned for small NORPAC groups. A sincere citizen advocate in Washington is far more compelling than the most sophisticated lobbyist. Each of you that attend the mission has more influence than the 10,000 that stay at home.
Chouake’s article elicited a reader comment by Sherry Rosen, which reads in part:
…my take-away is that the most important issue facing Israel today is the need to encourage Israeli leaders to the negotiating table for peace talks. In the last few days alone, the Arab League has endorsed the idea of a two-state solution based on “comparable” and “minor” land swaps. and the re-endorsement of the official Arab Peace Initiative by non-Palestinian Arab countries is remarkably similar to the American framework that has been put forth for these negotiations.
As a “determined and committed” American Jew myself, I believe that the “oversized role” we can best play in ensuring “the survival of the Jewish homeland and the Jewish people” is to seize the opportunity that this window of hope offers. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if thousands of similarly passionate American Zionists were to meet with Congressional leaders, on May 8 or any other day, and express our abiding desire for a negotiated solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, rather than confine our powerful voices to perpetuating concerns couched in the language of threats, defense, and funding sophisticated weaponry? Who knows? It might actually work.
NORPAC wants to make sure that their members of Congress never find out.
]]>by Marsha B. Cohen
Taking advantage of the delay in the vote on Chuck Hagel’s nomination to the Senate, the spinmeisters of the anti-Hagel propaganda machine have a new charge to hurl at the former Nebraska Senator. Ben Shapiro of Breitbart.com claims that “Senate sources” have told him that Hagel secretly accepted a campaign [...]]]>
by Marsha B. Cohen
Taking advantage of the delay in the vote on Chuck Hagel’s nomination to the Senate, the spinmeisters of the anti-Hagel propaganda machine have a new charge to hurl at the former Nebraska Senator. Ben Shapiro of Breitbart.com claims that “Senate sources” have told him that Hagel secretly accepted a campaign contribution from “Friends of Hamas.” The allegation has been picked up and promulgated by numerous right-wing websites and blogs, including Algemeiner and the Sheldon Adelson-owned news daily, Israel HaYom (Israel Today).
Putting aside the common sense realization that no real “friends of Hamas” would be dumb enough to actually form an organization in the US or anywhere else, with a bank account that writes checks to political candidates on behalf of an internationally recognized terrorist organization, we have to ask when and where we have heard that phrase ‘Friends of Hamas’ before”?
The first time was during President Bill Clinton’s re-election campaign in 1996, when it festooned an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal by Steve Emerson headlined Friends of Hamas in the White House.
As Ali Mazrui of the International Policy and Strategy Institute (IPSI) pointed out, while “Clinton’s administration had been more pro-Israel than any other U.S. administration since Lyndon Johnson, this same Clinton administration had domestically made more friendly gestures towards U.S. Muslims than any previous administration.” In 1995, Vice President Al Gore had visited a mosque. The following year, President Clinton sent greetings to Muslims for their Ramadan fast. First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton hosted an Eid el Fitr celebration at the White House at the end of Ramadan in 1996, and would do so again in 1998. During the Clinton administration, the first Muslim chaplain in the US Air Force was sworn in. President Clinton discussed a wide range of domestic and international issues with a delegation of Arab Americans at the White House. National Security Adviser Anthony Lake met with a delegation of Muslims to get their views on the Bosnian crisis. Not everyone was pleased by this outreach:
The Clinton gestures towards Muslims were sufficiently high profile that a hostile article in the Wall Street Journal in March 1996 raised the spectre of “Friends of Hamas in the White House” – alleging that some of the President’s Muslim guests were friends of Hamas, and supporters of the Palestinian movement. The critic in the Wall Street Journal (Steve Emerson) had a long record of hostility towards U.S. Muslims. His television programme on PBS entitled Jihad in America (1994) alleged that almost all terrorist activities by Muslims worldwide were partially funded by U.S. Muslims. President Clinton’s friendly gestures to Muslims probably infuriated this self-appointed crusader of Islamophobia.
How exactly did reaching out to Muslims equate “Friends of Hamas” being in the “White House”? Emerson explained:
In response to the terrorist carnage committed by Hamas in Israel, President Clinton has organized an anti-terrorist summit in Egypt to begin today. But other participants at the conference, and the American public as well, might be a bit surprised to learn that both the president and first lady have closely embraced an Islamic fundamentalist group in the U.S. that champions and supports Hamas. This group also openly supports, lobbies for, and defends other Islamic terrorist groups.
The contacts between the White House and the Islamic radicals began on Nov. 9, 1995, when President Clinton and Vice President Al Gore met with Abdulrahman Alamoudi, executive director of the American Muslim Council, as part of a meeting with 23 Muslim and Arab leaders. A month later, on Dec. 8, Mr. Clinton’s national security adviser, Anthony Lake, met with Mr. Alamoudl at the White House along with several AMC board members and other American Islamic leaders. By Feb. 20, Mrs. Clinton was allowing the AMC to draw up the Muslim guest list for the first lady’s historic White House reception marking the end of Ramadan. One person familiar with the situation says that Mrs. Clinton’s syndicated newspaper column of Feb. 8, “Islam in America,” was based on “talking points” provided by the AMC.
As we all know, those pro-Hamas Clintons survived the assault by Emerson and his echo-chamber. Clinton won re-election. The First Lady almost made it to the top slot on the Democratic ticket twelve years later, and then distinguished herself as Secretary of State for four years. No doubt there’s someone, somewhere, already preparing opposition research to use against the 2016 Hillary Clinton presidential campaign if there is one, diligently compiling the former Secretary of State’s meetings with Arab leaders and chronicling all of the nice things she might ever have said about Muslims. All too soon Jennifer Rubin will be regurgitating them in her Washington Post blog, “Right Turn.”
Emerson’s ominous warning in Middle East Quarterly the following year that Americans should “Get Ready for Twenty World Trade Center Bombings” the following year would elevate him to the status of prophet in the media immediately after 9/11, and make him the face and voice of anti-terrorist Islamophobia. More recently, Emerson was faced with questions about donor transparency with regard to his nonprofit and tax-deductible, Investigative Project on Terrorism Foundation, which avoids revealing much of the information that charities are routinely required to disclose. Emerson is currently making headlines with an entire dossier of “soft on Islam” charges against John Brennan, whose nomination as Director of the CIA is also under consideration in the Senate.
Such is the origin and journalistic debut of the phrase “Friends of Hamas” now being used against Chuck Hagel.
A recrudescence of political Hamasteryia occurred in the spring of 2012, when redrawing the boundaries of New Jersey’s 9th congressional district pitted two Democratic incumbents — Rep. Steve Rothman and Rep. Bill Pascrell — against one another. The heated June primary attracted outside interest, media attention and several endorsements of each candidate by prominent political figures. President Obama remained neutral, but his campaign adviser, David Axelrod, supported Rothman. Bill Clinton favored Pascrell, who had endorsed Hillary Clinton in her run for the White House. Both House members were considered to be pro-Israel. Each had received funding and endorsements in their previous campaigns from NORPAC, a pro-Israel political action committee headquartered in New Jersey, but NORPAC ultimately threw its support behind Rothman.
The primary deteriorated into an Islamophobic hate fest when certain overzealous Rothman supporters tried to smear Pascrell by claiming he had the support of members of New Jersey’s Muslim community. Conservative “investigative journalist” Joel Mowbray was clearly alluding to Emerson’s attack on Clinton when he wrote an article for the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies headlined “The Friends of Bill Pascrell“:
Because of redistricting, Rep. Bill Pascrell (D, NJ) is running for re-election this coming Tuesday against a fellow Democratic incumbent Congressman. Pascrell’s slogan: “100% New Jersey Fighter.”
Given his troubling associations with Muslim figures who have espoused fiery anti-Israel rhetoric and turned a blind eye to Hamas sympathizers, though, it’s hard to tell against whom he’s actually fighting.
Take, for example, one of Pascrell’s closest allies for at least a decade: Mohamed El Filali, who is an executive with a local mosque whose founding imam is in jail on terrorism charges and whose current imam is fighting deportation on terror-related grounds.
El Filali leads what could seem like a strange existence, leading grotesque rallies by day and then cozying up at night with Congressmen — or at least one Congressman in particular, Bill Pascrell…Pascrell appears to be actively targeting the Arab and Muslim community, last week bringing out the first elected Muslim Congressman, Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN), who has become one of the most vocal critics of Israel in Congress…While Pascrell has voted in favor of foreign aid for Israel, he has also engaged in caustic Israel bashing, such as signing on to the so-called “Gaza 54” letter, the Keith Ellison-led effort which accused the Jewish state of collective punishment against Gaza.
…Of course there is no problem with courting support in the Arab and Muslim community. But there seems to be a troubling pattern with the associations Pascrell has chosen to cultivate in garnering that support. Should a congressman be condoning – by accepting contributions and other support – the most radical elements as part of his outreach?
Nonetheless, Pascrell went on to defeat Rothman, facing Republican challenger Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, who was much more subtle in brandishing the pro-Hamas charge against Pascrell. In an op-ed constructed in the form of an “open letter”, Boteach called on Pascrell to repudiate the “Gaza 54 letter”:
Bill, I will not repeat the earlier error made by some members of our community in labeling you an “enemy” of Israel. My religion commands me to speak truth and show gratitude, and you have voted in favor of foreign aid to Israel on numerous occasions. To perpetuate the myth, started in the Democratic primary, that you are a foe of Israel would contravene my value system, which obligates me to thank you for votes in favor of the Jewish state. By assisting in the continuity of American aid to Israel, you have made the Middle East safer, not just for Jews, but for the hundreds of millions of Arabs whose freedom under their own tyrannical regimes is largely predicated on Israel setting an example of a viable democracy in a region which Arab dictators claim can never be democratized.
…I respectfully request of you, Bill, to either explain your signature on the Gaza 54 Letter, or, if it was a mistake to sign it, as I suspect you now believe, to please repudiate it.
Pascrell won the House seat by a landslide, taking 75% of the votes cast. Even with the financial backing of Sheldon Adelson, Boteach received less than a quarter of the congressional district’s votes, and was livid when NORPAC declined to support him.
Now it’s Chuck Hagel’s turn. Will the Hamas canard prove to be “strike three” for the Islamophobic and “pro-Hamas” smear? Or will a phantom campaign contribution break the neoconservative losing streak — and usher in a new era of transparency whereby every political candidate is responsible for the views and ties of their campaign donors, both real and imagined?
]]>by Marsha B. Cohen
The hearings to confirm Chuck Hagel as Secretary of Defense seem to have been obsessively focused on Israel, and on the threat Iran poses to Israel, with little interest on the part of most senators on Hagel’s views of Afghanistan, Pakistan, and North Korea. Several senators seemed [...]]]>
by Marsha B. Cohen
The hearings to confirm Chuck Hagel as Secretary of Defense seem to have been obsessively focused on Israel, and on the threat Iran poses to Israel, with little interest on the part of most senators on Hagel’s views of Afghanistan, Pakistan, and North Korea. Several senators seemed clueless that many of the candidate’s views, expressed in speeches, votes, etc. were the purview of the Secretary of State, not the Secretary of Defense.
Why the obsession with Israel? The quick and easy answer is AIPAC, which claims the title of “America’s Pro-Israel Lobby” on every page of its website and in all of its publicity. But there’s more to pro-Israel lobbying than AIPAC. Unless you live in New Jersey or Rockland County, New York, and read the New Jersey Jewish Standard – or are a member of the House or Senate — you’ve probably never even heard of NORPAC.
NORPAC is a proudly bipartisan, relatively small and somewhat obscure Political Action Committee (PAC) which has been supporting pro-Israel congressional candidates from both parties for nearly two decades that has joined ranks with right-wing, rabidly partisan Republican neoconservative groups such as the Emergency Committee for Israel in opposition to Hagel’s nomination.
But there’s something truly, totally and uniquely bizarre about NORPAC’s anti-Hagel stance. In order to fully appreciate its monumental cognitive dissonance, it’s necessary to know a bit more about NORPAC, AIPAC and the internal politics of the “pro-Israel community.”
AIPAC
AIPAC, which boasts 100,000 members, receives most of the credit — and blame — for the legislation agenda of “the Israel Lobby.” Despite the widespread misperception — based largely upon the last three letters of the acronym — AIPAC isn’t a Political Action Committee. Contributions to AIPAC go toward the organization’s lobbying activities on behalf of its legislative agenda, not to specific candidates. AIPAC’s Press Office “assists the media with frequently updated briefs on important issues affecting the Middle East and United States/Israel relations” (i.e. churning out statements, memos and tweets that reduce the messy complexities of Middle East politics to straightforward AIPAC talking points) and getting college students of all faiths and backgrounds “politically engaged.”
AIPAC provides seminars in Washington, DC, and trips to Israel for members of Congress and even has its own spinoff think tank, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), which regularly participates in AIPAC briefings. It anticipates that its 2013 Annual Policy Conference in Washington, DC, (on March 3-5) will be “the largest gathering of the pro-Israel movement,” to which “thousands of participants come from all 50 states to take part in ‘three of the most important days affecting Israel’s future.’”
But there are things that AIPAC does not do, which NORPAC does, fitting it neatly into the “pro-Israel lobbying” matrix. As an organization, AIPAC doesn’t endorse political candidates, and it doesn’t give them any money. AIPAC also “does not take positions on presidential nominations,” according to spokesman Marshall Whitman. Eli Lake of the Daily Beast reports that AIPAC is staying officially neutral on the nomination of Chuck Hagel as Secretary of Defense, much to the outraged chagrin of Breitbart’s Joel Pollak.
AIPAC was badly burned and its reputation tarnished in 1992 when its president, David Steiner, resigned after an an audiotape of a secretly recorded telephone conversation surfaced shortly before the presidential election. A businessman named Harry Katz had phoned Steiner to ask for recommendations on how to apportion the $150,000 that Katz wanted to give to pro-Israel political candidates. During the course of the conversation, Steiner boasted about the extent of his influence with the Bill Clinton campaign and the role he would have in shaping the new administration’s cabinet choices if Clinton was elected.
Steiner’s bragging and subsequent downfall wasn’t the first disaster to hit AIPAC that year, as Robert Friedman recounted in detail in “The Wobbly Lobby” for the Washington Post. When Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir asked the Bush administration for $10 billion for absorbing immigrants and Bush said he wouldn’t approve it unless the Israelis stopped building settlements in the occupied territories, AIPAC officials assured Shamir that AIPAC had the votes in Congress to override a presidential veto. Shamir’s party lost the Israeli election in June, and by August, Israel’s first native born Prime Minister, Yitzhak Rabin of Israel’s Labor Party had been elected and crossed swords with AIPAC. Adding to AIPAC’s woes that August was an expose by the Village Voice revealing that AIPAC’s Policy Analysis division (previously known as “Opposition Research”) had been monitoring, harassing and discrediting anyone expressing what the organization deemed as “anti-Israel” or “pro-Arab” views. Michael Lewis (the son of historian Bernard Lewis) who headed — and still heads — AIPAC’s Policy Analysis office, wrote in an internal memo,”There is no question that we exert a policy impact, but working behind the scenes and taking care not to leave fingerprints, that impact is not always traceable to us.”
NORPAC
The North Jersey PAC (NORPAC) was founded in 1992 by Rabbi Menachem Genack, the rabbinic administrator of the Orthodox Union’s kashrut division, just as AIPAC’s political fortunes seemed headed into a tailspin from which many feared (and others dared hope) it might not recover. By 1993, AIPAC was refocusing its attention on lobbying Congress, leaving the presidency to Israel’s Prime Minister, and building an infrastructure for “grass roots lobbying.”
Although the two organizations have remained separate and distinct, there’s been an overlap of talking points, priorities and modus operandi. NORPAC’s leaders describe it as a “single issue” organization, dedicated exclusively to promulgating the passage of Israel-related legislation, of which anti-Iran sanctions have become an integral part. NORPAC has an annual Mission to Washington each May that brings busloads of activists — well over a thousand participants in recent years — to Washington, DC, to meet personally with members of Congress, armed with NORPAC’s talking points and an agenda of legislative priorities on behalf of the “pro-Israel community.”
NORPAC hosts fundraisers for candidates of both parties, and, unlike AIPAC, doesn’t restrict itself to members of Congress. It also provides AIPAC members, and anyone else with money to give to “pro-Israel” candidates, with a long list of members of the House and Senate whose records are considered kosher from a pro-Israel perspective, or, in NORPAC’s words, “who demonstrate a genuine commitment to the strength, security, and survival of Israel.” NORPAC doesn’t endorse challengers, preferring to show appreciation to sitting members of Congress for their pro-Israel votes.
AIPAC’s ex-president David Steiner was among the very earliest donors to funnel a portion of his campaign contributions through NORPAC, according to the organization’s FTC filing in 1993. The Center for Responsive Politics’ Open Secrets website shows Steiner contributing $40,000 to political candidates through NORPAC between 1995 and 2007 — not quite 10% of the political largesse he’s donated over the past two decades. Several presidents of AIPAC, including its current president, Michael Kassen, have channeled a portion of their personal political contributions through NORPAC as well.
Here’s how it works: donors give up to the maximum individual contribution of $2,500 to a political candidate through NORPAC, which aggregates it with other donations that are earmarked for that candidate. A single larger and therefore more significant check, channeled through a pro-Israel organization, is then sent to the candidate, with expectations and an agenda.
In terms of dollars expended, NORPAC is generally bipartisan, although more often than not the numbers tilt in favor of Democrats. Nevertheless, the single biggest recipient, who remained on NORPAC’s approved list for the 2012 election cycle even though he was defeated in the Republican primary, Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN), received a $20,000 contribution from NORPAC in the 2012 election cycle, more than any other candidate from either party. (NORPAC has been Lugar’s top donor over the past five years, from whom he received $40,000 between 2007-2012.) Typical NORPAC contributions average around $3,000 for House members and $5,000 for senators, with $10,000 nearly always being the most given.
Chuck Hagel
Which brings us back to Chuck Hagel…
While AIPAC as an organization has not weighed in on Hagel, a former Executive Director, Morris Amitay, was among the first to sound the anti-Hagel alarm bells even before his nomination was official. Numerous anti-Hagel smears have been sourced to AIPAC’s former spokesman, Josh Block. But AIPAC itself? No fingerprints.
In contrast, NORPAC has been vocal, even shrill, in its opposition to the nomination, launching an Action Alert against Hagel on its website:
Dear NORPAC Members
NORPAC is opposing the nomination of Senator Chuck Hagel for Secretary of Defense. This position represents the single most important Cabinet and Administrative position other than the President. Senator Hagel’s history on opposing action on the threat of Iran can be best described as a fringe position. His refusal to acknowledge the danger of a Nuclear Armed Iran to America and all it’s allies, and his consistent opposition to every legislative effort to contain Iran is in contrast to almost every other member of the Senate. We are concerned that his judgment on these matters is either severely flawed or affected by prejudices. We are asking you to call the legislative leaders outlined at the bottom of this email to ask them to oppose this nomination.
Beneath this call to arms is a letter, to be sent to the NORPAC member’s senators, urging them to oppose Hagel’s nomination with a rehashing of the six-week-old talking points churned out by neoconservatives since mid-December. These same talking points are echoed in a recent op-ed by NORPAC’s president, Ben Chouake, in the New Jersey Jewish Standard. The veracity of these assertions, most of which have been made by William Kristol, Jennifer Rubin, and Emergency Committee ads, among others, have been scrutinized, called into question and dismissed as only “half true,” “mostly false,” and “overblown” most recently by PolitiFact, Factcheck.org, the Associated Press, and J Street – the much maligned liberal Zionist organization (whose support for Hagel has probably contributed to the opposition to Hagel emanating from right-wing pro-Israel organizations).
But here’s the kicker: NORPAC’s Action Alert letter and Chouake’s op-ed fault Hagel for most of the same positions taken by Richard Lugar, who, as noted above, has not only been endorsed by NORPAC but received more funding in 2012 than any other single candidate. For example, the letter and op-ed state:
In October 2000, when Yasser Arafat’s Palestinian Authority (PA) launched a terror war against Israel after rejecting without counter-offer a plan for Palestinian statehood accepted by Israel, Hagel was one of only four senators who refused to sign a Senate letter in support of Israel.
Richard Lugar didn’t sign that letter either.
In July 2001, Hagel was in a minority of only two senators to vote against extending the original Iran-Libya sanctions bill, designed to deny both regimes revenues that would assist their weapons of mass destruction programs.
The other “no” vote? Richard Lugar.
In April 2002, Hagel was one of only 10 senators to oppose banning the import to America of Iraqi oil until Iraq stopped compensating the families of Palestinian suicide bombers.
So was Lugar.
In 2006, at the outbreak of the Lebanon war, Hagel argued against giving Israel the time to break Hezbollah, urging instead an immediate ceasefire. The following month, he was one of only 12 Senators who refused to formally call upon the European Union to declare Hezbollah a terrorist organization.
Another one of the 12 was Lugar.
In 2007, Hagel declined to support the bipartisan Iran Counter Proliferation Act aimed at targeting governments and businesses that assist Iran’s nuclear program.
In 2004, a New York Sun op-ed railed against the almost identical foreign policy positions of Lugar and Hagel, which it dubbed as “Lugar-Hagelism,” in an effort to defame John Kerry for sharing them. Yet in Chouake’s op-ed, headlined as “Senator Hagel’s Divisive Nomination,” he writes that several of Obama’s cabinet appointments “make sense,” including his choice of John Kerry as Secretary of State:
Senator John Kerry, set to replace Hilary Clinton as Secretary of State, is the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and has built tremendous crossroads with his Republican neighbors across the aisle by working hand in hand with Ranking Republican Member Senator Richard Lugar on important issues.
The absurdity of vilifying Hagel for taking the same positions as Lugar, who received more cash from NORPAC than any other candidate in the last election cycle, has apparently eluded NORPAC’s members. So too, apparently, does the fact that in adding its voice to the vitriol over the Hagel nomination, by echoing accusations emanating from the Jewish Republican right-wing, NORPAC is contributing to both the “divisiveness” Chouake bemoans and the demise of the last vestiges of bipartisanship that the organization made its hallmark for two decades. An observation in an obituary to Lugar’s political career by Ron Kampeas of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency last May pointed out:
Israel advocates and GOP insiders explained that Lugar represented a breed of lawmaker who pro-Israel groups see as valuable to their cause and disappearing: One who reaches across the aisle.
“Lugar wasn’t actively pro-Israel, but he wasn’t anti either,” said Mike Kraft, a staffer on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in the 1970s and 1980s who now is a consultant on counterterrorism. “But generally losing a good, balanced, thoughtful guy on foreign policy is a real tragedy,” said Kraft, who worked for a number of pro-Israel lawmakers. “It weakens the American political system.”
It’s interesting that NORPAC-supported candidates were among the more reasoned and moderate members of the Armed Services Committee. The more vicious of Hagel’s critics didn’t make the list. Perhaps they are hoping, by their professed fealty to Israel, that they might be on that list for the next election cycle?
Photo: Former Sen. Chuck Hagel answers a question at his confirmation hearing in the Senate Armed Service Committee at the Dirksen Senate Building in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 31, 2013. DoD photo by Erin A. Kirk-Cuomo.
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