2020 Dem Presidential Hopefuls Flee Israel Lobbies' AIPAC After MoveOn.org
Boycott Call
By Juan Cole, Informed Comment
22 March 19
Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg and Julian
Castro, among candidates for the Democratic Party nomination for president,
have all announced that they will not attend the annual conference of the
American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)
The powerful grassroots organization of center-left Democrats, MoveOn.org,
has called for a boycott of the annual AIPAC conference.
It is a potential watershed moment. MoveOn.org was founded in 1998 by tech
entrepreneurs Joan Blades and Wes Boyd, a husband and wife team behind
Berkeley Systems. It came initially out of an email campaign aimed at
preventing the impeachment of Bill Clinton, arguing that Congress should
censure him and "move on." The emails went viral, tipping Blades and Boyd to
the potential of grassroots internet organizing as opposed to depending on
corporate sponsors.
MoveOn.org seems to me to have moved left over time, including on
Israel/Palestine. It spearheaded the movement to get out of Iraq in the
zeroes. It also protested the 2009 war on little Gaza.
A Bernie Sanders spokesperson told NBC News that the senator is "concerned
about the platform AIPAC is providing for leaders who have expressed bigotry
and oppose a two-state solution." Sanders did not go to AIPAC in 2016, but
Hillary Clinton has been a frequent guest and is close to the Israel lobbies
and the Netanyahu government. She hasn't given any sign of caring what
happens to the Palestinians one way or another since about 1996. Nancy
Pelosi and Chuck Schumer will be headliners at AIPAC this year. The
organization says it isn't disturbed by the exodus of presidential
candidates, insisting that it focuses on Congress. Hmm. I wonder what it
does for the congressional representatives?
The MoveOn.org call for a boycott comes after a long period in which some
form of the the far right Likud Party and even further far right coalition
partners have dominated Israeli politics for nearly two decades. This fact
about Israel has in turn shaped AIPAC, which in the early 1990s would not
have met with most of the people it now pushes on the American public as
likeable democrats. In fact, Likud and its partners have adopted an unstated
Greater Israel agenda of completely annexing the Palestinian West Bank, and
the Syrian Golan Heights, conquered in 1967, and of keeping the Gaza Strip
under a debilitating civilian blockade. These actions are illegal in
international law, since the 1945 United Nations Charter forbids acquisition
of other people's territory through warfare.
The US political establishment, which accepts tens of millions of dollars in
campaign contributions from various Israel lobbies, has dealt with this
fascist search for Lebensraum or "living room," as it was called in Central
Europe in the 1930s, by pretending that there is an ongoing political
negotiation toward a Palestinian state, which there has not been for nearly
two decades.
The Democratic Left is calling BS on this charade, which is keeping 5
million Palestinians stateless and under some form of military Occupation
for decades to come.
In the past year the Netanyahu government has
.enacted rules of engagement for unarmed civilian protesters in Gaza
instructing the Israeli army to shoot them dead (a war crime);
.initiated a declaration that Israel's sovereignty is solely invested in its
Jewish citizens, making Palestinian-Israelis (21% of the population) second
class citizens;
.made one of his coalition partners ally with the Kahanist Jewish Power
faction; Kahanists are considered terrorists by the US government.
DC hit peak hypocrisy recently when AIPAC partisans in Congress actually
implicitly condemned Rep. Ilhan Omar for "racism" for pointing out that
AIPAC directs its affiliates to give money to congressional campaigns in
order to influence-peddle for the terrorist-allied, racist Netanyahu
government.
The grassroots left in the Democratic Party is fed up with this shell game.
MoveOn.org's web site notes,
"A new survey from MoveOn Political Action asked members if they believe
progressive candidates vying for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination
should skip this year's American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)
Policy Conference, held Sunday, March 24th to Tuesday, March 26th in
Washington, DC. More than 74% of MoveOn members responded agree or strongly
agree with the statement that "any progressive vying to be the Democratic
nominee for President should skip the AIPAC conference."
The survey, which entails a single prompt, "Any progressive vying to be the
Democratic nominee for president should skip the AIPAC conference," is
prefaced by several facts, including:
.AIPAC spent tens millions of dollars in 2015 to defeat the Iran nuclear
deal negotiated by President Obama along with our European and international
allies--a historic diplomatic agreement that Trump has tried to derail since
taking office.
.This year's AIPAC conference is headlined by Benjamin Netanyahu . who has
been indicted on bribery and fraud charges, and recently made a deal to
bring the "Israeli KKK" . party into the next government.
.AIPAC has . been known to peddle anti-Muslim and anti-Arab rhetoric while
giving platforms to Islamophobes.
.AIPAC has refused to condemn the antisemitism of Republicans, such as
Trump's friend and advisor Steve Bannon."
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