American Israel Public Affairs Committee Totally Explained

Everything about The American Israel Public Affairs Committee totally explained

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) is an American advocacy group that lobbies the United States Congress and White House in favor of Israeli and US interests as it sees them. Describing itself as "America's Pro-Israel Lobby," it's a not-for-profit, mass-membership organization including Democrats, Republicans, and independents. AIPAC is funded through contributions from its members.

History

Founded in 1953 by Isaiah L. "Si" Kenen, AIPAC's original name was the American Zionist Committee for Public Affairs. According to UCLA political science professor and author, Steven Spiegel, "the tension between the Eisenhower administration and Israeli supporters was so acute that there were rumors (unfounded as it turned out) that the administration would investigate the American Zionist Council. Therefore, an independent lobbying committee was formed, which years later was renamed [AIPAC]."
In his book describing the history of AIPAC, Kenen wrote that AIPAC's Executive Committee decided to change their name from American Zionist Committee for Public Affairs to American Israel Public Affairs Committee "to enlarge constituency and support" AIPAC's web site states that it "has grown into a 100,000-member national grassroots movement."

Aims and activities

AIPAC's stated purpose is to lobby the Congress of the United States on issues and legislation including:

Pressuring the Palestinian Authority to adhere to its commitments to fight terrorism and incitement against Israel.
Strengthening the bond between Washington and Jerusalem through shared intelligence and foreign military and economic aid (totaling $2.52 billion in 2006).
Condemning the actions of Iran for pursuing nuclear status and questioning the Holocaust, and levying financial restrictions in order to hinder its nuclear development.
Additional actions against countries and groups hostile towards Israel.
Bringing Democracy to the Middle East through an influential alley

AIPAC isn't a political action committee, and doesn't directly donate to campaign contributions. As a lobby, it regularly meets with members of Congress and holds events where it can share its views. Nevertheless, according to The Washington Post, "money is an important part of the equation." Like many other American lobbying groups, AIPAC provides analyses of the voting records of U.S. federal representatives and senators with regard to how they voted on legislation related to its concerns. The Washington Post states that AIPAC's "web site, which details how members of Congress voted on AIPAC's key issues, and the AIPAC Insider, a glossy periodical that handicaps close political races, are scrutinized by thousands of potential donors. Pro-Israel interests have contributed $56.8 million in individual, group, and soft money donations to federal candidates and party committees since 1990, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. ... Between the 2000 and the 2004 elections, the 50 members of AIPAC's board donated an average of $72,000 each to campaigns and political action committees." The New York Times described AIPAC on July 6, 1987 as "a major force in shaping United States policy in the Middle East." The article also stated that: "The organization has gained power to influence a presidential candidate's choice of staff, to block practically any arms sale to an Arab country, and to serve as a catalyst for intimate military relations between The Pentagon and the Israeli army. Its leading officials are consulted by State Department and White House policy makers, by senators and generals."
AIPAC took no official position on the merits of going to war in Iraq. According to the Jewish News Weekly, "AIPAC never explicitly supported or lobbied for the Iraq war, but some in the pro-Israel community once saw the war as an effort that would more closely align the United States and Israel against a common enemy: Arab and Muslim radicalism. Additionally, it was considered churlish to deny support to the Middle East policy of a president who is so profoundly pro-Israel. Those views are now unraveling with the ongoing violence in Iraq." According to the Washington Post, "Once it was clear that the Bush administration was determined to go to war [inIraq], AIPAC cheered from the sidelines"

Reiterating standards for the Palestinian government through letters signed by 259 House members and 79 senators urging the EU and United States not to provide aid or grant recognition to any Palestinian government until it fulfills internationally backed requirements.
Strengthening U.S.-Israel homeland security cooperation by passing landmark legislation creating an office within the Department of Homeland Security to support joint research and development projects between the United States and key allies such as Israel.
Securing critical foreign aid to Israel, which totaled $2.52 billion in 2006. (Note that United States direct economic assistance to Israel has been phased out as of 2007).
Prohibiting U.S. aid and contacts with the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority (PA) until its leaders recognize Israel's right to exist, renounce violence, and ratify previous Israeli-Palestinian peace agreements.
Extending U.S.-backed loan guarantees to Israel until 2011 and renewing the authority to transfer U.S. military equipment to be stored in Israel for use in a potential crisis.
Ratifying an agreement that led to the Israeli medical service Magen David Adom's admission to the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement (IRC).
Condemning Iran for holding a conference casting doubt on whether the Holocaust happened. The resolutions reproached the anti-Semitic statements made by Iranian leaders and asserted the United States' commitment to preventing a nuclear Iran.
Passing the Iran Freedom and Support Act, which renews and strengthens sanctions aimed at curtailing funds and international cooperation necessary for Iran to pursue nuclear weapons.
Passing the Iran Libya Sanctions Act, which seeks to reduce funds for Iran's nuclear weapons program by allowing sanctions against foreign companies investing in Iran's energy sector.
Reauthorizing the Iran Nonproliferation Act to include sanctions against entities providing technology to the missile and weapons of mass destruction programs of both Iran and Syria.
Fostering U.S.-Israel homeland security cooperation by supporting the countries' efforts to sign a landmark Memorandum of Understading and taking U.S. homeland security professionals on trips to Israel to meet with their Israeli counterparts.
Passing congressional resolutions that demonstrate overwhelming support for Israel's right to self-defense in the face of attacks by Hizballah and Hamas.
Designating Hizballah's TV station as a terrorist entity through legislative language as well as support of a letter to President Bush signed by 51 senators.
Passing the Syrian Accountability Act, which allows the president to sanction Syria for its continued involvement in Lebanon and support of terrorism.
Increasing military aid to Israel by working for $1 billion in government grants that will help cover the escalating costs of the war on terrorism.
Keeping world pressure on Hamas, by working to pass a House Resolution before PA elections that warned of serious policy implications for U.S.-Palestinian relations should Hamas be part of the Palestinian government.

Successes

AIPAC advises members of Congress about the issues that face today's Middle East, including the dangers of extremism and terrorism. It was an early supporter of the Counter-Terrorism Act of 1995, which resulted in increased FBI resources being committed to fight terrorism, as well as expanded federal jurisdiction in prosecuting criminal activities related to terrorism.
   AIPAC has also supported the funding of a number of Israeli military projects that have resulted in new additions to the arsenal of the United States Armed Forces. Israel's Arrow anti-missile system is now the most advanced working anti-ballistic missile system in the world. It is being mass produced at a Boeing plant in Huntsville, Alabama for use by both the United States and Israel. Additionally, the U.S. military has purchased Israeli-made tank armor, unmanned aerial vehicles, and other technologies for use in its operations.
   AIPAC lobbies for financial aid from the United States to Israel, helping to procure up to three billion in aid yearly, although this amount has fallen sharply in recent years. The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs has estimated total aid since 1949 at about $108 billion.
   In 1997, Fortune magazine asked Congressmen to rank the "25 most powerful" lobbying organizations in DC. In 2005, the National Journal did the same. Both times, AIPAC came in 2nd - ahead of, for instance, the AFL-CIO and the National Rifle Association (NRA), but behind the AARP. In 2001, it came in 4th on the Fortune list.

Controversies

AIPAC has been connected to many controversial events particularly matters concerning its relationship with Israel as a Zogby poll conducted revealed that 61% of Americans "strongly or somewhat agree" that AIPAC should be asked to register as a foreign agent and lose its tax exempt status.

Steiner resignation

In 1992, AIPAC president David Steiner was forced to resign after he was tape recorded boasting about his political influence in obtaining aid for Israel. Steiner claimed that he had

met with (then Bush U.S. Secretary of State) Jim Baker and I cut a deal with him. I got, besides the $3 billion, you know they're looking for the Jewish votes, and I'll tell him whatever he wants to hear ... Besides the $10 billion in loan guarantees which was a fabulous thing, $3 billion in foreign, in military aid, and I got almost a billion dollars in other goodies that people don't even know about.

Steiner also claimed to be "negotiating" with the incoming Clinton administration over who Clinton would appoint as Secretary of State and Secretary of the National Security Agency. Steiner stated that AIPAC had "a dozen people in [theClinton] campaign, in the headquarters... in Little Rock, and they're all going to get big jobs."

Espionage allegations

In May 2005, the Justice Department announced that Lawrence Anthony Franklin, a U.S. Air Force Reserves colonel working as a Department of Defense analyst at the Pentagon in the office of Douglas Feith, had been arrested and charged by the FBI with providing classified national defense information to Israel. The six-count criminal complaint didn't identify AIPAC by name, but described a luncheon meeting in which, allegedly, Franklin disclosed top-secret information to two AIPAC officials.

In April 2005, AIPAC policy director Steven Rosen and AIPAC senior Iran analyst Keith Weissman were fired by AIPAC amid an FBI investigation into whether they passed classified U.S. information received from Franklin on to the government of Israel. They were later indicted for illegally conspiring to gather and disclose classified national security information to Israel.

In May, 2007 AIPAC agreed to pay the legal fees for Weissman's defense through appeal if necessary.

Lawrence Anthony Franklin pleaded guilty to passing government secrets to Rosen and Weissman and revealed for the first time that he also gave classified information directly to an Israeli government official in Washington. On January 20, 2006, he was sentenced to 151 months (almost 13 years) in prison and fined $10,000. As part of the plea agreement, Franklin agreed to cooperate in the larger federal investigation.

Rosen and Weissman are still awaiting trial. Trial had been scheduled for June 4, 2007, but was postponed until January 14, 2008. Several high ranking Bush administration figures who have been subpoenaed about the matter include Condoleezza Rice, Richard Armitage, and William Burns amongst others.

Supporters

AIPAC has a wide base of supporters both in and outside of Congress. Support among congressional members includes a majority of members of both the Democratic and Republican Parties. According to American Prospect magazine, "AIPAC’s 2002 annual conference included 50 senators, 190 representatives, and more than a dozen senior administration officials."
   Vice President Dick Cheney addressed AIPAC members in Washington on March 12, 2007, stating: "We find unity and strength in the values of liberty and equality and our belief in democracy and the rule of law and in our devotion to the security of America's friend, the state of Israel. As members of AIPAC, you play a vital role in making the strategic and moral case for America's friendship with Israel. I commend AIPAC for the fine work you do ... I stand here today as a strong supporter of Israel and Israel has never had a better friend in the White House than George Bush."
   AIPAC has attracted many political leaders to address their conferences. Among them are Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, Vice President Dick Cheney, Senators John McCain, Evan Bayh, Susan Collins, Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Former Senator John Edwards, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, House Minority Leader John Boehner, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, House Republican Whip Roy Blunt, former speakers of the House Dennis Hastert and Newt Gingrich. It has also included former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, current Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. Several other Congressmen and politicians, such as Barack Obama and Chuck Schumer, have attended conferences hosted by AIPAC.
   In a 2007 bestseller, "Power, Faith, and Fantasy", historian Michael Oren argued that strong American support for a Jewish state derives from Puritan-Republican roots of the United States itself. In May, 2002 BBC News wrote: "Congressman Robert Wexler (D-FL) ridicules suggestions that Israel's supporters control American policy in the Middle East. Instead, he says, America supports Israel because they share fundamental values. 'Americans are just solid, rock-solid with the people of Israel. It is a democratic nation and a freedom-loving people and a very decent people and they deserve to have a free and secure state.'" Nancy Pelosi similarly stated that "America and Israel share an unbreakable bond: in peace and war; and in prosperity and in hardship."

Criticism

When asked in an October 2007 PBS interview about confronting Iran by passing sanctions on the Republican Guard, Presidential candidate, Senator Mike Gravel answered, "Sanctions on the Republican Guard? They already have sanctions. The U.N. passed them in March, Resolution 1747. What is the game they're playing right now to have sanctions? I mean, this was AIPAC that put Lieberman up to do this. This is disaster..." In blaming AIPAC, Gravel subsequently indicated that the resolution was passed in contravention to the will of the American people.

In September 2007, Congressmen Jim Moran of Virginia stated that AIPAC played a strong role in promoting the war in Iraq. Moran noted that AIPAC is "the most powerful lobby and has pushed this war from the beginning. I don't think they represent the mainstream of American Jewish thinking at all, but because they're so well organized, and their members are extraordinarily powerful -- most of them are quite wealthy -- they've been able to exert power." Following these comments, a number of members of both houses of Congress stated that they were not lobbied by AIPAC on Iraq, with some requesting that Moran reevaluate his position.

In 2006, the New York Review of Books published a letter from Representative Betty McCollum to AIPAC executive director Howard Kohr. In the letter, McCollum demanded an apology from AIPAC after McCollum says that, in a recent phone conversation with her chief of staff, that an AIPAC representative told him that "Congresswoman McCollum's support for terrorists won't be tolerated," after Representative McCollum voted against H.R. 4681 (Palestinian Anti-Terrorism Act of 2006) (External Link

). McCollum stated that AIPAC representatives won't be allowed in her office until she receives a written apology for the comment. The AIPAC rep denied the accusation and wouldn't issue an apology. Kohr requested a meeting to talk it over. McCollum's voting had shown support for Israel and senior activists in Minnesota’s Jewish community and congressional staffers who know her well describe her as a supporter. McCollum has since declared the incident over.

The Washington Post reported that Representative Dave Obey, the ranking Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, stated that AIPAC has "'pushed the Likud Party line and in the process has crowded out other voices in the Jewish community, especially those pressing for withdrawal from West Bank settlements as a concession in the peace process."

The Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), requires those who receive funds or act on behalf of a foreign government to register. AIPAC is a registered American lobbying group, and maintains that no funds or directions are received from the State of Israel. Past critics, such as former Senator William Fulbright and former senior CIA official Victor Marchetti, contended that AIPAC should have registered. The recent Lawrence Franklin espionage scandal has increased attention to FARA's possible applicability to AIPAC.

Hedrick Smith noted in his book The Power Game: How Washington Works that AIPAC had become a superlobby: "[It] gained so much political muscle that by 1985 AIPAC and its allies could force President Reagan to renege on an arms deal he'd promised to [Jordan's] King Hussein. By 1986, the pro-Israel lobby could stop Reagan from making another jet fighter deal with Saudi Arabia, and Secretary of State George Shultz had to sit down with AIPAC's executive director -- not Congressional leaders -- to find out what level of arms sales to the Saudis AIPAC would tolerate".

In their 2006 working paper The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, University of Chicago professor John Mearsheimer and Harvard University Kennedy School of Government professor Stephen Walt accuse AIPAC of being "the most powerful and best known" component of a larger pro-Israel lobby that, they say, distorts American foreign policy. They write: "AIPAC's success is due to its ability to reward legislators and congressional candidates who support its agenda, and to punish those who challenge it. ... AIPAC makes sure that its friends get strong financial support from the myriad pro-Israel PACs. Those seen as hostile to Israel, on the other hand, can be sure that AIPAC will direct campaign contributions to their political opponents. ... The bottom line is that AIPAC, which is a de facto agent for a foreign government, has a stranglehold on the U.S. Congress. Open debate about U.S. policy towards Israel doesn't occur there, even though that policy has important consequences for the entire world." Michael Massing discusses the controversy over Mearsheimer and Walt's paper in his essay "The Storm over the Israel Lobby" in The New York Review of Books. Former United States Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said the article was "highly overstated", and U.S. ambassador/chief Middle East peace negotiator Dennis Ross stated: "Mearsheimer and Walt should know better."

The Economist magazine stated that AIPAC's political power is one of the main reasons for America's support of Israel. "Why is America so much more pro-Israeli than Europe? The most obvious answer lies in the power of two very visible political forces: the Israeli lobby (AIPAC) and the religious right." The Economist also says that AIPAC's claim to represent Jewish opinion in the U.S. isn't without question, and that AIPAC is often too willing to "close down the debate with explosive charges of anti-Israel bias" when people question whether AIPAC's "passing [of] more than a hundred bits of pro-Israel legislation a year... is a good thing."

Philip Weiss wrote about what he calls the "Great Jewish Hope" in the April 23, 2007, edition of The Nation. Drawing on an interview with Mitchel Plitnick of Jewish Voice for Peace and two articles by George Soros and Nicholas Kristof, respectively, Weiss hypothesizes the founding of an alternative to AIPAC to represent the growing number of "left wing Jews [who] feel alienated from Jewish organizations that supported two disasters—The Iraq War and Israel's war on Lebanon." Soros has been quoted as stating:

Journalist Alexander Cockburn of CounterPunch and former congressperson Cynthia McKinney maintain that AIPAC was instrumental in helping to defeat Congressional candidates that AIPAC deemed unfriendly to Israel, including McKinney (after her first term as a Representative) and Earl F. Hilliard of Alabama.Further Information

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