AIPAC Struggling as Media Starts Reporting
by M.J. Rosenberg
It's Friday and things seem to be breaking our way. According to National Journal, Majority Leader Harry Reed is strongly resisting demands from AIPAC Senators to bring its sanctions bill to the floor for a vote. John McCain says that the game will be to get Jews to put the pressure on their senators and, if Reed resists, to keep bringing the bill up and forcing Reed to block it. That way the Democrats will be exposed as anti-Israel and the Republicans will benefit in November.
AIPAC and its deputy, Chuck Schumer, are giving Reed the same message: if we don't do this, AIPAC donors will boycott us and will lose our majority. But Reed is good at standing up to special interest pressure. So the old boxer may very well stand tough. We'll see. But so far, so good. Especially with some in the media finally addressing AIPAC's bum rush to war.
Exposure is never good news for the lobby, which is why it operates behind closed doors. And successfully. It has managed to create a situation where any American can say or write anything about the United States and its leaders but not about Israel. You won't lose your job if you write that President Obama was born in Kenya or is a secret terrorist, but suggest that Netanyahu is a stinker and you are in serious trouble. This is perverse.
Back in September 1982, I began a four year stint as a senior staffer at AIPAC. My politics have obviously evolved since then. I left that job still in synch with AIPAC's worldview and on good terms with the place. In fact, I continued fundraising for the organization after I left. I didn't come around to seeing AIPAC as an enemy of peace until years later.
But back to 1982. In my very first day on the job, AIPAC's then research director, Steve Rosen (later indicted under the Espionage Act but never tried) left a memo on my desk. It said this: "A lobby is a night flower. It thrives in the dark and dies in the sun." Then, in a postscript, "Remember, the walls have ears." The Rosen memo became famous, appearing both in the Washington Post and the New Yorker. (Yes, I leaked it years after leaving the organization).
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