The Power of the Israel Lobby

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) opened its annual conference in Washington, D.C. last Sunday. Prominent politicians dropped everything and ran to appeal to their Jewish constituents. Democrat and Republican leaders, Secretaries, and presidential candidates lined up for the chance to give a speech. Roughly one third of U.S. Representatives and half of all Senators stopped by the three-day event.

On the first day, President Obama declared that “Israel’s security is sacrosanct. It is non-negotiable.” Clinton and Bush have previously taken similar stances. Each time, such speeches have been ribbed as the President’s “oath of loyalty.” Sometimes called “God’s Group”, AIPAC has approximately 50,000 members. Although this may seem a small proportion of the 6.5 million strong Jewish American population, many influential figures with affluent connections are forming networks behind AIPAC. Indeed, 60 percent of U.S. campaign funds come from Jewish pockets.

After meeting with Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) Chairman Yasser Arafat in 1982, Republican Congressman Paul Findley asserted that, to resolve conflicts in the Middle East, the U.S. would need to implement a more balanced set of policies. Findley thus criticized the pro-Israel bias of American foreign policy. In the elections of that year, Jewish organizations raised money for Findley’s rival Democrat candidate. Findley lost the election, putting an end to his 22-year service in the U.S. Congress. Not long after, Findley wrote a book titled “They Dare to Speak Out”, detailing his altercations with the Israel lobby.

Republican Charles Percy, Democrats George McGovern and Earl Hilliard have also lost elections due to their anti-Israel comments. It’s almost as if the only kind of person allowed to criticize Israeli policies are Israeli Knesset members themselves. In 2007, cartoonist Won-bok Rhie came under fire for his comic series “Far Country, Neighbor Country” when he wrote about how Korean Americans clash with the barriers put up by the Jewish community. After Jewish organizations caught wind of this, the cartoonist came out to say his intentions were not to come off as anti-Semitic. The publisher destroyed the copies of the comic it held in its inventory.

There are 3,500 Jewish organizations in the U.S. and Canada alone. America has exercised its veto power in the U.N. Security Council 32 times for Israel. Nonetheless, President Reagan once went against AIPAC and sold Airborne Early Warning and Control surveillance planes to Saudi Arabia. In 2006, two professors from Harvard University and the University of Chicago wrote a long report criticizing the Israel lobby. Influential newspapers, big figures in finance, prominent scholars and famous columnists are talking about the adverse effects of the Israel lobby, urging America to distance itself. It seems it’s not always so great to be so powerful.