Not pointing any fingers... well, except maybe my middle one at aipac and another middle finger at Duke...
Go to
http://www.aipac.org/ and you see right there in the home page a quote from the New York Times
"The most important organization affecting U.S. relationship with Israel"
I think aipac is very proud of that.
I don't think there is much argument that aipac makes a difference. To argue that they make very little or no difference is to say that tens of thousands of people are being scammed out of a considerable amount of money they invest to support a worthless organization. I don't think that is the case.
The debate should be is what policies are aipac and the Israel Lobby supporting, and are these policies helpful to bringing about peace and justice in the world or not. Many people think these policies are not helpful to anyone... most especially it is hurtful to the Palestinian people, but also damaging to the United States and even Israel itself...
Despite what aipac says... supporting policies of militarism and occupation and so on is not helping Israel.
It would be like some lobby in France working to get France to "support the US" by lobbying support for Bush's policies. Now some americans may equate supporting America with supporting Bush's policies, but i am not among them. Such a lobby would not be doing me any favors.
No doubt that is how many Israelis see aipac.
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http://www.jewishjournal.com/home/preview.php?id=15634Wandering Jew - Propaganda for the Insipid
I’ve been working as teacher’s assistant at my temple’s religious school for the past four years. I love teaching my second-graders their first Hebrew letters. I love watching my sixth-graders find Israel on a map. But what I love most is the connection my job gives me to Judaism and to Israel, where I hope to travel during college. That is why I jumped at my grandfather’s invitation to attend the annual American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) policy conference in Washington D.C., where I could join more than 1,000 students and 4,000 adults in discussing the future of Israel. I returned from the conference, however, feeling manipulated, disturbed and disgusted with a great deal of what I witnessed there.
The first thing I noticed about the conference, besides the sheer volume of participants, was the carefully manufactured atmosphere of fear and urgency. The cavernous hall that hosted all our meals and plenary sessions was always filled with dramatic classical music, red lighting and gigantic signs reading “Now Is The Time.” That, combined with the montages of terrorism footage projected onto six giant screens, whipped the audience into a “Save Israel” fervor that most found inspiring. By the time we finished our meal, the audience seemed eager to agree to anything that would protect Israel — even war.
The conservative slant of the conference became obvious as I chose “Policy Perspectives: How the Democrats and Republicans View Foreign Affairs” for my first breakout session. The Republican speaker, John Podhoretz of The New York Post, got to have the first word and the last word on almost every question. Podhoretz insulted the Democratic Party, calling it “schizophrenic” and “weak” because of its division on certain issues, and calling Democratic protests about the Iraq war “inappropriate and dangerous.”