The Jewish Daily Forward is an important American newspaper in the Jewish
community so its op ed piecces tell us what the Jewish community is
thinking. Remember, Bernie is the only candidate to have refused AIPAC's
invitation. Also remember that Hillary is a strong supporter of AIPAC and
Issrael and that Sidney Blumenthal is one of her most important advisors.
Many of those emails were from him. He is the father of Max Blumenthal who
started the petition urging Bernie to refuse AIPAC's invitation. I've been
wondering if Max and Sidney are on speaking terms.
Miriam
---The Forward March 18, 2016
Donald Trump Is Actually the Perfect Person To Speak at AIPAC
http://forward.com/opinion/336295/donald-trump-is-actually-the-perfect-perso
n-to-speak-at-aipac/?utm_content=daily_Newsletter_MainList_Title_Position-1&
utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=New%20Daily%202016-03-20&u
tm_term=The%20Forward%20Today%20Monday-Friday
By Simone Zimmerman
Image: Getty Images
Many AIPAC supporters are shocked that the policy conference has invited
Republican front-runner Donald Trump to be a speaker this year. I'm not. In
fact, I think Trump and AIPAC are a great shidduch.
Far from being a deviation from AIPAC's norm, this invitation is perfectly
emblematic of their strategy. Anyone who's been watching AIPAC closely
should see that.
I grew up in a Jewish community where participating in AIPAC was as sacred a
duty as going to synagogue. I attended the conferences and leadership
training. Over the years, however, it has become clear to me that for the
sake of being "pro-Israel," AIPAC has asked American Jews and our allies to
check all our other values at their door. Hosting Trump is simply the latest
and most egregious example of what happens when a major Jewish organization
puts its narrow agenda above Jewish values like equality and freedom.
AIPAC takes pride in being a bipartisan organization whose sole mission is
to strengthen the U.S.-Israel relationship. But for years, this rhetoric has
masked a more complex reality: that AIPAC consistently supports dangerous
policies from an extreme right-wing Israeli government, regardless of their
moral implications.
While AIPAC claims it only promotes consensus issues, in practice the
organization has lobbied hard for hawkish positions that support the ongoing
occupation, expansion of settlements and the 2014 assault on Gaza, which
left over 2,100 Palestinians dead, including almost 500 children. Members of
Congress know that speaking out against these policies is guaranteed to
jeopardize AIPAC's support.
Last March, when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu flew to
Washington to denounce the Obama administration's diplomatic initiative with
Iran, AIPAC called his message "critical" and celebrated the "overwhelming
bipartisan attendance," while ignoring the deep insult to the White House
and the fact that 58 members of Congress skipped his speech in protest. This
summer, AIPAC went head to head with President Obama and a diverse
progressive coalition, spending over 20 million dollars to fight the Iran
deal. They lost big as the deal passed with broad support from Americans,
American Jews and even the Israeli security establishment - and they made
clear that they are willing to side with hawkish Netanyahu-inspired policy
over their own administration's.
This year's policy conference is an attempt to resuscitate AIPAC's lost
veneer of wide support. The conference's slogan, "Come Together," is a clear
statement of their commitment to a false unity over values. One of this
year's major lobbying asks is to make boycotting settlements illegal, a
blatant silencing of dissent and further attack on the American
administration's longstanding anti-settlement policies.
American Jews aren't fooled. AIPAC's language of bipartisanship can no
longer conceal what is actually a hawkish partisan agenda: anti-diplomacy,
anti-human rights, anti-peace.
Enter Trump, whose racist policy proposals and fascist-style rhetoric have
earned him condemnation from across the American political spectrum and the
Jewish world, including the Reform Movement, Reconstructionist Movement, J
Street, Ameinu and the Anti-Defamation League (though the ADL has yet to
comment on the candidate's appearance at AIPAC).
In recent weeks, Trump has called for banning all Muslims from the country,
creating a registry of religious minorities, inciting violence against
political opponents, and a policy towards refugees so cruel that, had it
been in place in the 1930s, many of our grandparents would never have set
foot on U.S. soil. Apparently none of this troubles AIPAC enough to warrant
a condemnation.
Forward columnist J.J. Goldberg may be right that AIPAC's legal
not-for-profit status mandates that they remain open to all active
candidates, and surely some feel that there should be a forum for every
potential president to state her or his position on Israel. But AIPAC's
refusal to acknowledge the moral implications of this invitation, and their
swift move (even if it was later disavowed) to bully into silence potential
protests at the conference, signals a dangerous acquiescence to his
politics.
13 Ways To React When Trump Takes the Stage at AIPAC
Jane EisnerMarch 16, 2016
Trump speaking at AIPAC is not an anomaly; it's the logical conclusion of
the systematic abandonment of values that AIPAC has propelled in our
community. The same thinking explains why, over the years, they have hosted
Islamophobes and people like Naftali Bennett, who supports settlements and
the erosion of Israeli democracy and opposes the two-state solution. The
animating ethos is "That's not our problem." So it doesn't matter if Trump
is racist and misogynistic. It doesn't even matter if he holds base
anti-Semitic ideas about Jews and our money: AIPAC doesn't care as long as
he will maintain unquestioning U.S. political and economic support for an
Israeli government that is leading Israelis and Palestinians down an
increasingly destructive path. This is a vision of security for those with
power, at the expense of everyone else on the margins. Jews should know
better.
Speakers at AIPAC consistently bring up the rise of Hitler and Nazism in
talking about threats to Israel. They warn that we must learn from history.
So why does AIPAC feel no responsibility at all to speak out about a
violent, hateful demagogue who people across the board have likened to
Hitler and who has a real chance of taking charge of this country?
American Jews of conscience who want to walk out on Trump: It's time to
recognize that the same values you abhor - the Islamophobia, support for
building big walls, indifference to human rights, bullying of opponents -
are the same values that have been given a platform for years at AIPAC. How
many missteps does the lobby have to make before you walk out for good?
Those who want to dump Trump should dump AIPAC along with him.
If you do, you will be greeted outside by hundreds of us who are no longer
willing to check our values at our community's door. I am helping to
organize a group of young Jews who are so passionate about this cause that
they're devoting their weekend to driving from New York City to Washington
to protest at the AIPAC conference. And even more protesters will come from
within Washington itself. Together, we'll show how much our values mean to
us - and how hard we're willing to fight to keep them.
Simone Zimmerman is an activist and organizer based in Brooklyn. She is a
leader of IfNotNow, an emerging movement of young American Jews working to
end their community's support for the occupation. Follow her on Twitter
@simonerzim
