Capuano and Kucinich Come Clean
About the Lobby
Why is the Peace Movement Silent About AIPAC?
from the best site on the left : CounterPunch
http://www.counterpunch.org/walsh04172007.html
By JOHN WALSH
"AIPAC!" was the forceful one-word answer of
Congressman Michael Capuano when we asked him,
"Why was the Iran clause forbidding war on Iran
without Congressional approval taken out of the
recent supplemental for the Iraq war funding?" I
nearly fell out of my chair at his reply - not
because this was news but because of who had just
said it. Capuano is a close ally of Nancy Pelosi,
her fixer and enforcer. That was last Friday morning
when a small delegation from Cambridge and
Somerville, MA, were visiting the Congressman, known
for his bluntness, as part of the nationwide UFPJ
(United For Peace and Justice) home lobbying effort
during the Congressional recess.
Later that day, Dennis Kucinich made an appearance
at Harvard, where he was asked the same question,
the reason for removing the Iran provision. "AIPAC,"
I volunteered out loud. Kucinich looked my way and
said, "Exactly." Again my chair almost failed to
contain me.
A few weeks earlier we had gone to the offices of
Senators Kennedy and then Kerry to discuss the war.
(My intention was to call their attention to
www.FilibusterForPeace.org to which the Kennedy aide
was sympathetic and the Kerry aide predictably
hostile.) I raised the question of AIPAC directly
with Kerry's aide, inquiring about its hawkish
influence on Kerry and other Senators. Suddenly the
aide was quite engaged. Leaning forward, he said:
"That will never be discussed publicly. That will
never be discussed publicly." Clearly even Kerry's
office is unhappy with the pressure that comes from
AIPAC.
It is widely acknowledged that the reps and senators
are ticked at AIPAC, and their hostility seems to be
growing these days. With upwards of 60% of their
campaign contributions coming directly or indirectly
from the Israel Lobby, the Democratic congressmen
are not free to respond to their antiwar base. This
opens them to an antiwar electoral challenge on the
Left or Right from forces not subservient to AIPAC.
And that could cost them their next election, a
little thing which has them very worked up. Capuano's
cry of "AIPAC" was no simple outburst of candor but a
cri de coeur for his career.
So here we have even Congressmen and Senator's aides
complaining publicly about AIPAC. AIPAC is being
outed all over the mainstream media, largely thanks
to the door opening work of Mearsheimer and Walt.
AIPAC is skewered routinely by Justin Raimondo on
Antiwar.com and by Alex Cockburn and many others
here on CounterPunch. But there remains no anti-AIPAC
campaign within the mainstream antiwar organizations,
like UFPJ or Peace Action. (Even one supposed
Congressional ally of the peace movement was
announced as a celebrity guest at the recent
colossal AIPAC meeting in Washington, where half the
Congress shows up and ***** Cheney is a regular
speaker. What gives?)
I have been told by leaders of the peace movement
that AIPAC is a distraction from the main thrust of
the antiwar movement. And so we should not engage it;
AIPAC is to be immune. But with all due respect to
the sentiments of that leadership, immunity for
AIPAC is a prescription for disaster. To use a
military analogy, which I do not especially like,
suppose that we were trying to take a hill in Germany
in 1944. And suppose we said that we would not attack
one pillbox, which kept devastating our forces. Leave
just that one pillbox alone! The result would be
devastating; we would be cut down with every
succeeding attempt at advance. So it is with AIPAC
which campaigns relentlessly for war on Iraq, war on
Iran, war on Syria, war on Lebanon and the slow
genocide of the Palestinian people. AIPAC constantly
puts the peace movement on the defensive while it is
free to be on the offensive all the time.
AIPAC is not just an issue for Jewish Americans or
the Jewish wing of the peace movement like Jewish
Voice for Peace; it is a major force, although not
the only one, driving the U.S. to wars in the Middle
East. AIPAC is no less a force for war than is the
Republican National Committee. In fact it is worse,
because it sinks its teeth into the foreign policy
establishment of both parties, perhaps the Dems more
so than the Republicans. If the peace movement is to
be worth its salt, then it must take action against
AIPAC. (It is marathon season here in Boston and my
friend, Israeli expatriate Joshua Ashenberg, tells
me that the foregoing thought harbors a logical
error. As he says: "A 'movement' that does not work
against AIPAC is NOT a peace movement by definition.
It will not help if I call myself a marathon runner,
while I never ran a marathon.")
In the Boston area, AIPAC appears to be especially
powerful, and so we have a special responsibility to
take it on. At the recent AIPAC conference in
Washington, the delegates from Boston/New England
were the most hawkish toward Iran. Just before the
last election a notorious ad in the Boston Globe,
cheering on the Israeli bombing of Lebanon, was
engineered by the Jewish Community Relations Council,
an arm of AIPAC here. Every major political figure
in MA signed the ad, including our "liberal"
governor, Deval Patrick, and supposed peacenik
Congressman Jim McGovern. Only Conressmen Capuano
and Delahunt withheld their signatures. In addition
AIPAC appears to raise a lot of money in our neck of
the woods.
So I have a modest suggestion. On Sunday, April 29,
beginning at 6 pm, AIPAC has its annual fundraising
dinner at the Westin Hotel in Copley Square in
Boston. (Last year a good table for 10 went for a
modest $10,000.) Show up at 5 pm to protest the
machinations of AIPAC. Which peace organizations in
our area will be there? Which ones will promote the
rally? And which will maintain their silence?
* American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)
John Walsh urges one and all to sign and circulate
the petition at
WWW.FilibusterForPeace.org.
The Senate Dems have the power to stop the war
with 41 votes; tell them to use it.
This article linked from: antiwar.com
(as are many posts seen in this NG)
http://www.counterpunch.org/walsh04172007.html
--
Scott Ritter on YouTube
Israel's influence of U.S. policy & the Israel lobby
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O125hGt9qt4&NR
--
fate of critics of the Israel Lobby
http://www.muzzlewatch.org/
.
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